Archaeologists do it in holes: Tales from the stratigraphy

[Sheilbh]

Because he's American or because he's a white supremacist? Just to clarify

Recently on the internet it feels like six of one, half dozen of the other

[HVC]

Linguistic wiccans, huh? They're tall and quick to anger so I probably won't say anything to their faces


*edit* also, since you seem to be up on the topic, are Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic recreated languages?

[HVC]

Because he's American or because he's a white supremacist? Just to clarify

Recently on the internet it feels like six of one, half dozen of the other

Fair

[Sheilbh]

Yeah - and that's 90% of European "cultures" too. As I say folklorists in Germany, or Hungary, Narodniks in Russia. All were as much a creative as much as a conservationist process.

So purely incidentally one of the star academics where I went to university was Ronald Hutton, a historian of the 17th century and expert on the history of paganism in Britain including Wiccanism which he (controversially, I believe) argued had basically no link to historic pagan traditions and should best be understood as an important, interesting, new religious movement. He also looked exactly like I think a history of Wiccanism and 17th century Britain should


(I believe his parents were Wiccan and he also is but I could be wrong on that.)

[HVC]

As  far as European "culture" goes I like Portuguese folklore in the form of folk dancing. I know the songs of my mom's town (and used to know the dances too).  how authentic they are to old traditions, I know they go to at least my great grandparents generation. So mid to early 1800. Some "new" songs have been added. To my family new is the 80s and 90s . In the case of my mom's folklore I don't know how long it'll last. The core of the village has been replaced by "estrangeiros". Literally strangers, ie foreigners, not really negative. People from a different villages are also estrangeiros. Gotta love small villages I guess it'll survive in immigrant communities. My cousins are in a troop. My mom's makes a lot of their clothes.

[Sheilbh]

Oh definitely in the immigrant communities too.

I'm sure I've mentioned it before but growing up in the Highlands (actually in a historically Norse area that never spoke Gaelic) my parents were very involved in the local Celtic cultural scene. I went to a few feis (summer Gaelic culture festivals - lots of Highland dancing, music, poetry etc). My dad volunteered at the local Gaelic medium play group my little brother went to. I had some pipes lessons.

All of those groups had loads of Canadians who were working in the oil industry but had far more of "traditional" Scottish culture, as preserved by a diaspora, than existed in our community.

[Jacob]

I'm super into all that pre-historic culture and archaeology stuff, especially Nordic and Germanic. I'm much less interested in the just-so stories about why that makes certain flavours of white people extra special and grand narratives about the imperative destinies of specific nations.

[HVC]

I'm super into all that pre-historic culture and archaeology stuff, especially Nordic and Germanic. I'm much less interested in the just-so stories about why that makes certain flavours of white people extra special and grand narratives about the imperative destinies of specific nations.

If they get too high and mighty just remind them that a large part of their history occurred because they got pushed out of their homeland by a bunch of Asians on ponies.

The horses Huns, and later mongols, used were a lot small then people, and Hollywood, imagines.

[Legbiter]

The conclusion of the Germania piece, on the culmination of the history of the German race:

Yeah he's definitely some kind of sperg, I suppose you'd have to be in order to be obsessed with Baltic rainfall patterns in the 3500's BC. 

He popped up as a retweet from geneticist Razib Khan and his weird prose (a cross between Tacitus and Winston Churchill in a History of the English-Speaking Peoples) notwithstanding he does connect all the current archeogenetics and the archeological cultures plus the linguistics into one whole. 

[Syt]

This made the rounds over here:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/mass-grave-from-roman-era-battle-discovered-under-a-soccer-field-in-vienna-180986375/

Mass Grave From Roman-Era Battle Discovered Beneath a Soccer Field in Vienna
Archaeologists think that as many as 150 individuals may have been hastily buried at the site, likely after a "catastrophic" military event

Sometime during the first century C.E., a fierce battle took place in what is now Vienna, Austria—likely between Roman soldiers and Germanic warriors. Afterward, the battered bodies of dozens of men were dumped into a pit and covered with dirt.

Now, centuries later, archaeologists are trying to piece together what happened during the "catastrophic" military confrontation, reports Philipp Jenne for the Associated Press.

"Within the context of Roman acts of war, there are no comparable finds of fighters," says Michaela Binder, an archaeologist with Novetus, the company that led excavations at the site, to the AP. "There are huge battlefields in Germany where weapons were found. But finding the dead, that is unique for the entire Roman history."

The remains were discovered in October by a construction crew renovating a soccer field in the Simmering neighborhood of Austria's capital, according to a statement from the Vienna Museum. While working at the site, they found hundreds of entangled human bones in a mass grave.

Archaeologists were brought in to study the mysterious remains, which appear to have been disposed of quickly. Many of the individuals were buried on their sides or stomachs, with their limbs intertwined.

After months of research, archaeologists have now confirmed that at least 129 individuals were buried at the site. They also discovered many dislocated bones, which suggests the total number of victims could be as high as 150.

Their analysis revealed that all of the victims were men between the ages of 20 and 30. They were all relatively healthy, with good teeth and little evidence of infection, per CNN's Amarachi Orie. But every individual had suffered some sort of devastating injury—like wounds made by swords, lances, daggers and iron bolts. Some also showed signs of blunt trauma.

The men were likely stripped of their weapons after death, because archaeologists found very few in the grave. They did, however, unearth the remains of a helmet cheek protector, a few pieces of scale armor and nails used on the bottom of leather Roman military shoes called caligae.

They also found an iron dagger and a scabbard that was inlaid with silver wire—a traditional Roman decoration. They dated the dagger to between the middle of the first century and the early part of the second century C.E. Meanwhile, the bones date to between 80 and 230 C.E.

Researchers suspect the fighting took place sometime in the late first century C.E.—probably between 86 and 96 C.E. during the Roman Empire's Danube campaigns led by the emperor Domitian.

The timeline makes sense in the context of historic texts, which describe battles between the Roman Empire and Germanic tribes toward the end of the first century. In 92 C.E, for instance, records indicate that Germanic troops invaded the Roman Empire near the Danube border and wiped out an entire legion, according to the museum's statement.

So far, researchers have only been able to identify one of the men as a Roman warrior. They hope to learn more about the victims—including which side they were fighting for—in the future using DNA and strontium isotope analyses, per the AP.

Military significance aside, archaeologists say the discovery of any human remains from this period is extremely unusual. That's because the Romans mainly cremated their dead until the third century. The grave gives researchers an unprecedented opportunity to study the "life histories" of individuals who lived during the first century, Binder tells the New York Times' Eve Sampson.

"For all of middle Europe from the first century, we don't have any unburned, uncremated human remains," Binder adds.

The remains could also offer new insights into the history of Vienna itself. Vienna was once "Vindobona," a modest Roman outpost on the Danube River. But the Romans eventually built up Vindobona into a full-scale military fortress—and perhaps this first-century battle was the catalyst.

"This would place the mass grave in immediate conjunction with the beginning of urban life in present-day Vienna," says Kristina Adler-Wölfl, who leads Vienna's urban archaeology department, to CNN.

Of course at the time while Vindobona would have been an outpost, the "proper" Roman settlement in the area was Carnuntum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnuntum

[Jacob]

Yeah he's definitely some kind of sperg, I suppose you'd have to be in order to be obsessed with Baltic rainfall patterns in the 3500's BC. 

He popped up as a retweet from geneticist Razib Khan and his weird prose (a cross between Tacitus and Winston Churchill in a History of the English-Speaking Peoples) notwithstanding he does connect all the current archeogenetics and the archeological cultures plus the linguistics into one whole. 

I mean, I read the whole thing and found it fascinating... but his narrative framing / ideological underpinning is more than a little dubious in my view.

[Legbiter]

I mean, I read the whole thing and found it fascinating... but his narrative framing / ideological underpinning is more than a little dubious in my view.

Yeah he's for sure...neurodivergent. But while we must always beware the machinations of the Archenemy his essay was a pretty good overview.



What clicked in my mind reading this spergs essay was how what became the proto-Germanic language found it's way to Scandinavia in the first place, it came via an overseas route from the Baltic to southern Sweden in around 2000 BC by men carrying the Y-chromosome haplogroup I1 which is extremely common all over the Nordic countries and Northern Germany today.

Another interesting thing which struck me is the sheer extent of the Goths, down into modern day Ukraine. And how a lot of it emptied out when hundreds of thousands of Germans stormed over the Rhine into Gaul during the 4th century, in no small part fleeing the Huns. Yet the genetic impact on the general mass of people in Iberia and Italy was negligible aside from the northernmost parts.

Yeah and it's worth mentioning a typical passage in his essay goes like this:

Beginning in the 26th century, a climate shift weakened the hunter-gatherers along the Baltic lagoons. The fish populations that had enabled the post-Narva hunter-gatherers to maintain their density and complexity declined, perhaps as the result of a decrease in water salinity.

In a Malthusian world a couple centuries worth of extra rainfall and slightly warmer climate is enough to have huge knock-on effects.

[HVC]

Not storm. Scamper.

[Legbiter]

Not storm. Scamper.

These were large confederations not tribes at that point. Ironically the very successful Roman military actions against the Germanic tribes in the 3rd century (minus Varus) only seem to have served to create ever bigger German confederations. That and overall favorable rainfall.

But yeah, the internal demographic decline due to plague and cold resulted in the Western Empire being hollowed out while beset on all sides simultaneously. 

[HVC]

I was more trying to highlight how they ran from the Huns like squirrels from a dog . It's often portrayed as the great defeat of the Romans. But like you said Rome was hollowed out and made some very dumb diplomatic moves (like Honorius killing the families of the settled goths). It wasn't some grand planned invasion. It was a disorganized fleeing that in the end turned out well for the Germanic people and not so well for the Roman ones.