Archaeologists do it in holes: Tales from the stratigraphy

[The Brain]

Cool.

[grumbler]

That belongs in a museum! 

[Sheilbh]

So this is more archivists than archaeologists, but fascinating discovery:

Chilling find shows how Henry VIII planned every detail of Boleyn beheading


The execution of Anne Boleyn, on 19 May, 1536, was conducted by a French swordsman to limit her pain. Photograph: Bettmann Archive

Archives discovery shows the calculated nature of the execution and reinforces the image of the king as a 'pathological monster'
Dalya Alberge
Sun 25 Oct 2020 08.00 GMT

It is a Tudor warrant book, one of many in the National Archives, filled with bureaucratic minutiae relating to 16th-century crimes. But this one has an extraordinary passage, overlooked until now, which bears instructions from Henry VIII explaining precisely how he wanted his second wife, Anne Boleyn, to be executed.

In this document, the king stipulated that, although his queen had been "adjudged to death... by burning of fire... or decapitation", he had been "moved by pity" to spare her the more painful death of being "burned by fire". But he continued: "We, however, command that... the head of the same Anne shall be... cut off."

Tracy Borman, a leading Tudor historian, described the warrant book as an astonishing discovery, reinforcing the image of Henry VIII as a "pathological monster". She told the Observer: "As a previously unknown document about one of the most famous events in history, it really is golddust, one of the most exciting finds in recent years. What it shows is Henry's premeditated, calculating manner. He knows exactly how and where he wants it to happen." The instructions laid out by Henry are for Sir William Kingston, constable of the Tower, detailing how the king would rid himself of the "late queen of England, lately our wife, lately attainted and convicted of high treason".

Boleyn was incarcerated in the Tower of London on 2 May 1536 for adultery. At her trial, she was depicted as unable to control her "carnal lusts". She refuted the charges but was found guilty of treason and condemned to be burned or beheaded at "the King's pleasure".

Most historians agree the charges were bogus – her only crime had been her failure to give Henry a son. The most famous king in English history married six times in his relentless quest for a male heir. He divorced his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, to marry Boleyn – the marriage led him to break with the Catholic church and brought about the English Reformation. Boleyn did bear him a daughter, who became Elizabeth I.

In recent years, the story of Boleyn's life and death have reached a new audience thanks to Hilary Mantel's bestselling saga tracing the life of Thomas Cromwell, a blacksmith's son who became one of Henry VIII's most trusted advisers. In the Booker-prize-winning Bring Up the Bodies, she explored the destruction of Boleyn, writing of her execution: "Three years ago when she went to be crowned, she walked on a blue cloth that stretched the length of the abbey... Now she must shift over the rough ground... with her body hollow and light and just as many hands around her, ready to retrieve her from any stumble and deliver her safely to death."

The warrant book reveals that Henry worked out details such as the exact spot for the execution ("upon the Green within our Tower of London"), making clear Kingston should "omit nothing" from his orders.

Borman is joint chief curator for Historic Royal Palaces, the charity that manages the Tower of London, among other sites. She will include the discovery in her forthcoming Channel 5 series, The Fall of Anne Boleyn, which begins in December.

She had visited the National Archives to study the Anne Boleyn trial papers when archivist Sean Cunningham, a Tudor expert, drew her attention to a passage he had discovered in a warrant book. Most of these warrants are "just the minutiae of Tudor government", she said. "They're pretty dull. The Tudors were great bureaucrats, and there are an awful lot of these warrant books and account books within the National Archives... It's thanks to Sean's eye for detail that it was uncovered."

Borman argues that, despite the coldness of the instructions, the fact Henry spared Boleyn from being burned – a slow, agonising death – was a real kindness by the standards of the day. A beheading with an axe could also involve several blows, and Henry had specified that Boleyn's head should be "cut off', which meant by sword, a more reliable form of execution, but not used in England, which is why he had Cromwell send to Calais for a swordsman.

Henry's instructions were not followed to the letter, though, partly due to a series of blunders, Borman said. "The execution didn't take place on Tower Green, which is actually where we still mark it at the Tower today. More recent research has proved that... it was moved to opposite what is today the Waterloo Block, home of the crown jewels."

She added: "Because we know the story so well, we forget how deeply shocking it was to execute a queen. They could well have got the collywobbles and thought we're not going to do this. So this is Henry making really sure of it. For years, his trusty adviser Thomas Cromwell has got the blame. But this shows, actually, it's Henry pulling the strings."

[jimmy olsen]

A settlement where the famous Phoenician purple dye was harvested.

https://www.archaeology.org/issues/403-2011/letter-from/9133-israel-purple-dye

[jimmy olsen]

Lee Berger, the man who discovered Australopithecus sediba and Homo Naledi has stuck gold again.

He's been video blogging a dig in a new cave since last August. Incredible stuff

Here's the 1st video in the sequence here. I'm only on video 3 and he's already discovered fossils from two separate individuals. Dude is like King Midas. Every thing he touches turns to hominins. This one has big teeth. Paranthropus maybe?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDrKVUxQd24&feature=youtu.be

The list of his videos is here
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs-b7-6NBt3E0AsUreLGjHQ/videos

Also, Tremors 5 was filmed in this cave and it's still covered in graffiti from the movie. 

[jimmy olsen]

Incredible find of ice age rock art in the Amazon.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/nov/29/sistine-chapel-of-the-ancients-rock-art-discovered-in-remote-amazon-forest

[Sheilbh]

Getting closer and closer to locating sea-bottom mesolithic sites in Doggerland:

Study finds indications of life on Doggerland after devastating tsunamis
Scientists suggest parts of expanse that once connected Britain to mainland Europe survived waves and had settlements
Esther Addley
Tue 1 Dec 2020 00.01 GMT
Last modified on Tue 1 Dec 2020 12.23 GMT


View across the Wash estuary from Snettisham in Norfolk. Photograph: Simon Stirrup/Alamy Stock Photo

Breaking away from Europe has never been straightforward.

Eight thousand years ago, a series of enormous tsunamis swept through the North Sea and struck the coast of what is now Britain, with devastating effects.

The landmass had previously been connected to continental Europe by a huge expanse known as Doggerland, which had allowed early Mesolithic hunter gatherers to migrate northwards, but rising sea levels had already flooded much of the connecting land. So huge was the tsunami event, many scientists believed it had finally swept away Doggerland for good.

Now a new analysis of the seabed and its sediments suggests that some parts of Doggerland survived the waves as a scattered archipelago of islands.

That matters, argue the British and Estonian scientists behind the research, because the land that remained could have been a staging post for the first Neolithic farmers to settle in Britain thousands of years later, and may still carry the archaeological traces of their early settlements, even if they, too, are now under the sea.

The research, the scientists hope, could also feed into planning against similar future events as the North Sea becomes ever more developed.

"If you were standing on the shoreline on that day, 8,200 years ago, there is no doubt it would have been a bad day for you," said Vincent Gaffney, professor of landscape archaeology at the University of Bradford. "It was a catastrophe. Many people, possibly thousands of people, must have died."

The cataclysmic event, known as the Storegga slides, hit around 6150BC and were triggered by enormous underwater landslips off the coast of Norway. While their date and cause are well established, the devastation they caused has not been fully understood because much of the evidence is now deep under water.

After 15 years of extensive mapping of the area, the researchers were able to identify former river valleys and lakes across Doggerland, and sink sedimentary cores deep into the seabed. One core, obtained off what is now the north coast of Norfolk at the Wash estuary, contained sedimentary evidence of the flood – the first such evidence from the southern North Sea.

The team's research showed that in places the tsunamis had swept up to 25 miles (40km) inland along valleys and low-lying areas, but that dense woodlands and hills may have protected other parts of the region. While most of Doggerland was inundated, the archipelago survived for millennia, until it too was swallowed by rising sea levels caused by climate change.

If sedimentary evidence for the period is hard to find, archaeological remains from Doggerland's early occupiers are even more elusive. However, Gaffney said the people of the area may have been more settled than is often assumed of hunter-gatherer societies.

Such assumptions have inevitably been based on the evidence that has been found on (present day) land, he said, "but this [was] not the optimal area to live in. It's on the coastlines, on the great plains, where there are so many more resources and where habitation may have been a bit different."

Rather than being permanently on the move "with lifestyles which are short, brutish and nasty", he said, the people of Doggerland may have been able to settle semi-permanently in coastal areas that were richer in resources.

Gaffney added: "We can't see [the evidence for their settlements], because the area is enormous, and it's covered by tens of metres of sea and marine silt." By using topographic and seismic data, however, the scientists were able to predict where settlements were most likely to have been located, and potentially where the first farmers later made contact.

"That's a global first. There is nothing, anywhere in the world, like the amount of work that has happened over the last decade in the North Sea," said Gaffney.

Plans for large-scale development of the area, particularly in offshore wind farms, offer a "phenomenal opportunity" to find out more, he added. "I'm sure many archaeologists will be working with wind farms to find out about this absolutely unique archaeological resource, just off our coast."

The research is published in the December issue of the journal Antiquity.

[Malthus]

The great unanswered question of the archaeology of Great Britain is what actually happened to the hunter-gatherer population, and what happened to the Neolithic population. Both appear to have been almost entirely displaced (hunter gatherers by Neolithic, Neolithic by "Beaker People"), with very little genetic survival - a displacement that hasn't happened since (for example, the Anglo-Saxon invasion did not lead to genetic displacement).

Was the preceding population killed off? There is no evidence for a massacre (at least, none found).  Outcompeted for land, without killing off? Introduced diseases? No one knows. It seems unlikely that the Neolithic farmers would have even been capable of massacring hunter-gatherers - perhaps they just gradually took over all the best land and, over time, pushed the hunter gatherers to the margins. It is also very odd that there was little or no intermarriage (judging by genetic legacy). The disappearance of the Neolithic farmers is even more odd.

[Sheilbh]

This is really interesting:

Stunning dark ages mosaic found at Roman villa in Cotswolds
Fifth-century discovery suggests break with Rome did not cause steep decline in living standards for all


An archaeologist works on the mosaic at Chedworth Roman villa. Photograph: Stephen Haywood/National Trust
Steven Morris
@stevenmorris20
Thu 10 Dec 2020 00.01 GMT

Life at the start of the dark ages in Britain is generally thought of as a pretty uncomfortable time, an era of trouble and strife with the departure of Roman rulers resulting in economic hardship and cultural stagnation.

But a stunning discovery at the Chedworth Roman villa in the Cotswolds suggests that some people at least managed to maintain a rich and sophisticated lifestyle.

National Trust archaeologists have established that a mosaic at the Gloucestershire villa was probably laid in the middle of the fifth century, years after such homes were thought to have been abandoned and fallen into ruin.

The mosaic, found in what may have been a summer dining room, is not quite as splendid as the ones at the villa dating to Roman times, but it seems to show the residents were clinging on to a very decent standard of living.

Martin Papworth, a National Trust archaeologist, said the find was hugely exciting. He said: "The fifth century is a time which marks the beginning of the sub-Roman period, often called the dark ages, a time from which few documents survive, and archaeological evidence is scarce."

Four hundred years of Roman rule ended in Britain in about 410AD. Papworth said: "It has generally been believed that most of the population turned to subsistence farming and, after the break with Rome, Britannia's administrative system broke down into a series of local fiefdoms.


Aerial view of the mosaic. Photograph: Mike Calnan/National Trust

"What is so exciting about the dating of this mosaic at Chedworth is that it is evidence for a more gradual decline. The creation of a new room and the laying of a new floor suggests wealth, and a mosaic industry continuing 50 years later than had been expected."

The fifth-century mosaic is of an intricate design. Its outer border is a series of circles alternately filled with flowers and knots. It is of poorer quality than the fourth-century ones found at the villa and others like it. There are several mistakes, suggesting the skills of the craftspeople were being eroded. But it is nevertheless an attractive floor.

The identities of the people living at the villa in this era are lost in the mists of time. "They could have been dignitaries, people with money, influence and friends in high places," said Papworth.

He suggested it was also possible that the area was not so badly affected by hostile raids that were taking place in the north and east. "It is interesting to speculate why Chedworth villa's owners were still living in this style well into the fifth century. It seems that in the West Country, the Romanised way of life was sustained for a while."

It was possible to date the mosaic thanks to traces of carbon found in a trench dug to build a wall to create the room the mosaic was found in. Dating the carbon strongly suggested the wall was built between 424 and 544 AD. The mosaic was laid in the newly created room after the wall was built.

Stephen Cosh, who has written about Britain's known Roman mosaics, said:"I am still reeling from the shock. It will be important to research further sites in the region to see whether we can demonstrate a similar refurbishment at other villas which continued to be occupied in the fifth century. But there is no question that this find at Chedworth is of enormous significance – it's tremendously exciting."

[The Brain]

Cool.

[Tamas]

Maybe it was that the truly great craftsmen never settled in a remote place like Britain and had to be called over even during the best of times. Business had to be more booming for them in the centre of the Empire.

[Sheilbh]

Maybe it was that the truly great craftsmen never settled in a remote place like Britain and had to be called over even during the best of times. Business had to be more booming for them in the centre of the Empire.

True. But I feel like mosaic work is a bit more like the great Cathedral workmen rather than, say, a Renaissance artist's studio. I've no idea if that's true, but it feels like something where the quality of the work will depend on the overall quality of the workforce - like as I say the Medieval stone masons and carvers - rather than a very great craftsman can come in and do a few bits that change the quality of the whole piece.

But as I say I've no idea.

[Maladict]

Stylistic analysis may indicate who made the mosaics. Iirc this has been succesfully done to demonstrate African mosaicists were responsible for several late mosaics in Sicily.
But then again, a number of senatorial land owners moved from Italy to Africa in this period, so that might be more complicated.

[jimmy olsen]

The great unanswered question of the archaeology of Great Britain is what actually happened to the hunter-gatherer population, and what happened to the Neolithic population. Both appear to have been almost entirely displaced (hunter gatherers by Neolithic, Neolithic by "Beaker People"), with very little genetic survival - a displacement that hasn't happened since (for example, the Anglo-Saxon invasion did not lead to genetic displacement).

Was the preceding population killed off? There is no evidence for a massacre (at least, none found).  Outcompeted for land, without killing off? Introduced diseases? No one knows. It seems unlikely that the Neolithic farmers would have even been capable of massacring hunter-gatherers - perhaps they just gradually took over all the best land and, over time, pushed the hunter gatherers to the margins. It is also very odd that there was little or no intermarriage (judging by genetic legacy). The disappearance of the Neolithic farmers is even more odd.

Farmers can easily overwhelm hunter gatherers with sheer numbers, even without hostility. The farmers though would have existed in high numbers. Hard to see them leaving little legacy unless they were killed off by war or disease

[jimmy olsen]

One of the great discoveries of this century!

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/08/mysterious-carvings-evidence-human-sacrifice-uncovered-ancient-city-china/

Mysterious carvings and evidence of human sacrifice uncovered in ancient city

Discoveries at the sprawling site have archaeologists rethinking the roots of Chinese civilization.

BY BROOK LARMER
PUBLISHED AUGUST 6, 2020

THE STONES DIDN'T give up their secrets easily. For decades, villagers in the dust-blown hills of China's Loess Plateau believed that the crumbling rock walls near their homes were part of the Great Wall. It made sense. Remnants of the ancient barrier zigzag through this arid region inside the northern loop of the Yellow River, marking the frontier of Chinese rule stretching back more than 2,000 years.

But one detail was curiously out of place: Locals, and then looters, began finding in the rubble pieces of jade, some fashioned into discs and blades and scepters. Jade is not indigenous to this northernmost part of Shaanxi Province—the nearest source is almost a thousand miles away—and it was not a known feature of the Great Wall. Why was it showing up in abundance in this barren region so close to the Ordos Desert?

When a team of Chinese archaeologists came to investigate the conundrum several years ago, they began to unearth something wondrous and puzzling. The stones were not part of the Great Wall but the ruins of a magnificent fortress city. The ongoing dig has revealed more than six miles of protective walls surrounding a 230-foot-high pyramid and an inner sanctum with painted murals, jade artifacts—and gruesome evidence of human sacrifice.

Before excavations were suspended earlier this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, archaeologists uncovered 70 stunning relief sculptures in stone—serpents, monsters, and half-human beasts that resemble later Bronze Age iconography in China.

Even more astonishing: Carbon-dating determined that parts of Shimao, as the site is called (its original name is unknown), date back 4,300 years, nearly 2,000 years before the oldest section of the Great Wall—and 500 years before Chinese civilization took root on the Central Plains, several hundred miles to the south.

Shimao flourished in this seemingly remote region for nearly half a millennium, from around 2300 B.C. to 1800 B.C. Then, suddenly and mysteriously, it was abandoned.

None of the ancient texts that have helped guide Chinese archaeology mention an ancient city so far north of the so-called "cradle of Chinese civilization," much less one of such size, complexity, and intense interaction with outside cultures. Shimao is now the largest known Neolithic settlement in China—its 1,000-acre expanse is about 25 percent bigger than New York City's Central Park—with art and technology that came from the northern steppe and would influence future Chinese dynasties.

Together with recent discoveries at other prehistoric sites nearby and along the coast, Shimao is forcing historians to rethink the beginnings of Chinese civilization—expanding their understanding of the geographical locations and outside influences of its earliest cultures.

"Shimao is one of the most important archaeological discoveries of this century," says Sun Zhouyong, director of the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology and leader of the dig at Shimao. "It gives us a new way of looking at the development of China's early civilization."

Designed for danger
The first impression of Shimao, even as a partially excavated site in the barren hills above the Tuwei River, is of a city designed to face constant danger. The city was built in a conflict zone, a borderland dominated for thousands of years by warfare between herders of the northern steppe and farmers of the central plains.

To protect themselves from violent rivals, the Shimao elites molded their oblong 20-tiered pyramid on the highest of those hills. The structure, visible from every point of the city, is about half the height of Egypt's Great Pyramid at Giza, which was built around the same time (2250 B.C.). But its base is four times larger, and the Shimao elites protected themselves further by inhabiting the top tier of the platform, which included a 20-acre palatial complex with its own water reservoir, craft workshops, and, most likely, ritual temples.

Radiating out from Shimao's central pyramid were miles of inner and outer perimeter walls, an embryonic urban design that has been echoed in Chinese cities through the ages. The walls alone required 125,000 cubic meters of stone, equal in volume to 50 Olympic swimming pools—a huge undertaking in a Neolithic society whose population likely ranged between 10,000 and 20,000. The sheer size of the project leads archaeologists to believe that Shimao commanded the loyalty—and labor—of smaller satellite towns that have recently been discovered in its orbit.

More than 70 stone towns from the same Neolithic era, known as the Longshan period, have now been unearthed in northern Shaanxi province. Ten of them are in the Tuwei river basin, where Shimao is located. "These satellite villages or towns are like moons circling around the Shimao site," Sun says. "Together they laid a solid social foundation for the early state formation at Shimao."

Shimao's fortifications are astonishing not just for their size but also for their ingenuity. The defensive system included barbicans (gates flanked by towers), baffle gates (allowing only one-way entry), and bastions (a projecting part of the wall allowing defensive fire in multiple directions). It also employed a "mamian" ("horse-face") structure whose angles drew attackers into an area where defenders could pummel them from three sides—a design that would become a staple of Chinese defensive architecture.

Inside the stone walls, Sun's team found another unexpected innovation: wooden beams used as reinforcement. Carbon-dated to 2300 B.C., the still-intact cypress beams represented a method of construction that scholars previously thought had only begun in the Han Dynasty—more than 2,000 years later.

Grisly discovery
The most grisly discovery came underneath the city's eastern wall: 80 human skulls clustered in six pits—with no skeletons attached. (The two pits closest to the East Gate, the city's principal entrance, contained exactly 24 skulls each.) The skulls' number and placement suggest a ritual beheading during the laying of the wall's foundation—the earliest known example of human sacrifice in Chinese history. Forensic scientists determined that almost all of the victims were young girls, most likely prisoners who belonged to a rival group.

"The scale of ritual violence observed at Shimao was unprecedented in early China," says Li Min, an archaeologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has visited and written extensively about Shimao. The skulls at Shimao foreshadowed the massive human sacrifice that became what Li calls "a defining attribute of Shang civilization" many centuries later (from around 1600 to 1046 B.C.) before succeeding dynasties put an end to the practice.

The skulls are just one indication that the East Gate marked the entrance to a different world. Anyone walking across the threshold—above the buried sacrificial pits—would have been awed by more immediately visible signs. Several stone blocks in the high terrace walls were carved with lozenge designs, making them appear like enormous eyes gazing down at the East Gate. Wedged into the stone walls at regular intervals were thousands of pieces of black and dark green jade, shimmering ornaments that served both to ward off evil and to project the power and wealth of Shimao elites. The abundance of jade artifacts suggests that Shimao, with no source of its own, imported large quantities from distant trading partners.


Despite its seeming remoteness today, Shimao was not insulated from the outside world. It exchanged ideas, technology, and goods with a wide range of other cultures, from the Altai steppe to the north to coastal regions near the Yellow Sea.

"What is significant is that Shimao, along with many other areas, shows that China's civilization has many roots and does not emerge just from the growth in the Central Plains on the middle Yellow River," says Jessica Rawson, a professor of Chinese Art and Archaeology at the University of Oxford. "Several features were taken from the world beyond even today's northern China—for example, stone structures, that have more relation to the steppe than to the Central Plains. Other features are herded animals for subsistence, oxen and sheep and metallurgy. These are actually very important technologies that China adopted and incorporated seamlessly into their culture."

Many artifacts found at Shimao could only have come from distant lands. Besides the jade, archaeologists also found the remains of alligator skins, which must have come from a swampier region much farther south. Alligator-skin drums were likely used during ritual ceremonies, one sign of the vital role music played in Shimao palace life.

Another discovery flummoxed Sun and his team: 20 identical pieces of bone, thin, smooth, and curved. The archaeologists guessed that these were combs or hairpins, until a musical scholar deduced that the bones were the earliest examples of a primitive reed instrument known in Chinese as the mouth reed and more colloquially as the Jew's harp.

"Shimao is the birthplace of the mouth reed," says Sun, noting that the instrument spread to more than 100 ethnic groups across the world. "It is an important discovery that provides valuable clues to explore the early flows of population and culture."

Mysteries and clues
Only a small fraction of Shimao has been excavated so far, so the discoveries keep coming. Along with the stone carvings uncovered last year, archaeologists found evidence of human busts and statues that were once set into the walls around the East Gate. We are only beginning to understand what the carvings might signify, says UCLA's Li Min, but the anthropomorphic representations are "a very innovative and rare attempt."

So much about Shimao remains cloaked in mystery, including its name. Archaeologists are still trying to understand how its economy functioned, how it interacted with other prehistoric cultures, and whether its elites possessed a writing system. "That would solve a long-standing mystery," says Sun.

There are some clues, however, to why Shimao was abandoned after 500 years. It wasn't earthquake, flood, or plague. A war might have helped drive them out, but scientists see more evidence that climate change played a pivotal role.

In the third millennium B.C., when Shimao was founded, a relatively warm and wet climate drew an expanding population into the Loess Plateau. Historical records show a rapid shift from 2000 to 1700 B.C. to a drier and cooler climate. Lakes dried up, forests disappeared, deserts encroached, and the people of Shimao migrated to parts unknown.

The once-distant tongue of the Ordos Desert now laps at the banks of the Tuwei River, just below the entrance to Shimao. The ancient site is shrouded in dust and rocks and silence. Yet, after 4,300 years, one of the world's oldest cities is no longer lost to history, no longer abandoned. Its stones have given up a precious load of secrets, challenging our understanding of the earliest period of Chinese civilization. Many more revelations are sure to come.