British Museum is 'world’s largest receiver of stolen goods', says leading human rights lawyer

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on November 06, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Europe, Greece, Heritage, Recommended Reading, Southern Europe, UK

An outspoken human rights lawyer in a new book is calling for European and US institutions to return treasures taken from subjugated peoples by “conquerors or colonial masters.”

Section of the Parthenon frieze helf by the British Museum [Credit : PHAS/Universal Images Group, Getty]

In the new book by Geoffrey Robertson AO QC, the British Museum is accused of exhibiting “pilfered cultural property” and urged to ‘wash its hands of blood and return Elgin’s loot’.

“The trustees of the British Museum have become the world’s largest receivers of stolen property, and the great majority of their loot is not even on public display,” Robertson charges.

His views appear in the book, “Who Owns History? Elgin’s Loot and the Case for Returning Plundered Treasure.”

Along with a distinguished career as a trial lawyer, human rights advocate and United Nations judge, Robertson has appeared in many celebrated trials, defending Salman Rushdie and Julian Assange, prosecuting Hastings Banda and representing Human Rights Watch in the proceedings against General Pinochet.

In his just released book, he scores the British Museum for allowing an unofficial “stolen goods tour”, “which stops at the Elgin marbles, Hoa Hakananai’a, the Benin bronzes and other pilfered cultural property”. The three items he mentioned are wanted by Greece, Easter Island and Nigeria respectively.

“That these rebel itineraries are allowed is a tribute to the tolerance of this great institution, which would be even greater if it washed its hands of the blood and returned Elgin’s loot,” he wrote.

He accused the museum of telling “a string of carefully-constructed lies and half- truths” about how the marbles “were ‘saved’ or ‘salvaged’ or ‘rescued’ by Lord Elgin, who came into possession of them lawfully.”

He criticized “encyclopedic museums” such as the British Museum, the Louvre in Paris and the Metropolitan in New York that “lock up the precious legacy of other lands, stolen from their people by wars of aggression, theft and duplicity”.

“This is a time for humility,” he observed, “something the British, still yearning for the era when they ruled the world do not do very well. Before it releases any of its share of other people’s cultural heritage, the British Museum could mount an exhibition – ‘The Spoils of Empire’.”

Advocating the return of cultural property based on human rights law principles, Robertson observes that the French president, Emmanuel Macron has “galvanized the debate” by declaring that “African cultural heritage can no longer remain a prisoner of European museums”.

“Politicians may make more or less sincere apologies for the crimes of their former empires, but the only way now available to redress them is to return the spoils of the rape of Egypt and China and the destruction of African and Asian and South American societies,” he writes.

“We cannot right historical wrongs – but we can no longer, without shame, profit from them.”

Author: Lisa Vives | Source: Global Information Network [November 06, 2019]

Tombs of the family of Alexander the Great finally giving up their secrets after 2,300 years

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on October 23, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Europe, Greece, Recommended Reading, Southern Europe

Anthropologists and material scientists working on the Vergina tombs in northern Greece may be just ‘forensic steps away’ from solving one of history’s great remaining riddles: which members of Alexander’s family were buried in the subterranean vaults.

The Facade of Tomb II at Vergina, possibly the resting place of Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great [Credit: Alamy]

In November 1977 Professor Manolis Andronikos and his team unearthed the first of two unlooted tombs containing never-before-witnessed riches including exquisite weapons and armour. In ‘Tomb II’ lay the cremated skeletal remains of what appeared to be a king and queen, while ‘Tomb III’ held the bones of a ‘prince’. The subterranean cluster also revealed a shrine and two further looted tombs decorated in breath-taking wall paintings. The find was considered the ‘archaeological discovery of the century.’

The burial artefacts were dated to the mid-to-late fourth century BC (350s to 310 BC), corroborated by inscriptions, pottery, metalworking and the ‘Macedonian’ vaulted tomb design. Remarkably, this spanned the reigns of Philip II (359-336 BC) and Alexander III, the ‘Great’ (336-323 BC). The unique ‘Vergina Sun’ or ‘Star’ emblem of the Argead royal clan was embossed on the lids of the two gold chests holding cremated skeletal remains.

The second unlooted structure, named ‘Tomb III’, contained the cremated bones of an adolescent, likely a male. The son of Alexander the Great, by his Bactrian wife Rhoxane, was executed around 310 BC when in his teens by a throne usurper and historians linked him to the tomb. But a divisive controversy has clouded these identifications ever since.

Philip II: A National Treasure

The excavator believed Tomb II held the remains of Philip II, the twenty-fourth monarch of the Argead royal line and the first king to unite ancient Macedon; he trebled the land mass under its control into the first ‘European Empire’. His military reforms and statecraft brought Greece to its knees, enabling his son, Alexander the Great, to conquer the Persian Empire. Philip was a cultured cunning diplomat whose polygamous court hosted seven wives.

In October 336 BC Philip II was stabbed to death at his daughter’s wedding; it was a world-shaking event that heralded in the reign of Alexander. Equally driven by his heroic lineage, Alexander conquered the Persian Empire in eleven years but died mysteriously in Babylon where after his body was taken to Egypt where it lay in state until the late-Roman era.

How the Royal Tombs vanished

The political capital of Macedon was moved from Aegae to Pella a century before Philip and Alexander. After their deaths, in the 270s BC invading Gallic Celts ransacked the old Aegae cemetery. When the danger had passed, the still-unlooted royal tombs were buried under a great earthen mound to protect them from further looting by an unnamed monarch.

A model of the shrine and tombs under the Great Tumulus at Vergina [Credit: David Grant]

When Rome defeated Macedon at the battle of Pydna in 168 BC, both Aegae and Pella were partially destroyed. A landslide covered much of what remained at Aegae in the first century AD and as Rome’s influence expanded, the importance of the cities diminished. When Rome’s empire was finally overrun, the name of the fallen-stone city survived in oral legend only.

What was likely an earthquake caused the collapse of the top of the earthen tumulus and shattered doors in the tombs below, but the sturdy stone structure remained hidden under the occupied landscape for the next to thousand years.

Rediscovering Aegae

Modern excavations started in occupied Greece in 1855 in what was still part of the Ottoman Empire. Nothing more than ransacked tombs and Byzantine-period ruins were found. However, the intriguing scale of the stone foundations suggested a substantial city once stood in the hills overlooking the Thermaic Gulf southwest of Thessalonica, the heartland of ancient Macedon.

Malarial marshlands hampered excavations and Greek refugees who had been resettled there from Turkish Anatolia after the Graeco-Turkish War, knew nothing of its history. They used the ancient fallen stones from the anonymous ruins to build their houses at the modern village of Vergina.

The gold chest of ‘larnax’ holding the male bones in the main chamber of Tomb II, with the royal ‘Vergina Sun’ or ‘Star’ symbol [Credit: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki-Vergina Excavation Archive]

In 1968 English historian Nicholas Hammond proposed the ‘heretical’ idea that the ruins at Vergina sat on the site of ancient Aegae, the burial ground of the nation’s kings. Few credited his theory; the belief prevailed that this was either the lost city of Valla, or a summer palace of unknown royalty.

In 1976 Professor Andronikos and team finally excavated the ancient necropolis where graves had been overturned and tombstones smashed in antiquity. This correlated strongly with the ancient texts claiming Celts had plundered the cemetery at Aegae some fifty years after Alexander’s death; the burial ground of the nation’s kings had finally been found.

Confusion over Identities

The ages of the deceased in Tomb II were determined from wear and tear on bones: the main chamber contained a middle-aged male and the antechamber a far younger female. This narrowed down the list of kings and queens either side of Alexander’s reign.

But an ‘unfortunate symmetry’ obscured the background to the double burial in Tomb II’, says London-based historian David Grant who collaborated with the scientists studying the skeletal remains. This led to a ‘battle of the bones’ among historians, causing a rift which divided the academic community ‘obsessed’ on proving their identities.

Wall painting depicting the Abduction of Persephone in Tomb I [Credit: WikiCommons]

The Tomb II occupants could either be Alexander’s father Philip II and his final teenage wife Cleopatra, or Philip’s half-witted son Arrhidaeus who was executed twenty years later when of similar age and with an equally young bride. Questions of ritual or forced suicide raised their head, because kings and queens rarely died together.

Philip II was a national hero who befitted such a tomb and he had seven wives we know of. But Grant’s research points out the elephant in the room: none of the ancient sources mentions any women being buried with Philip at Aegae. ‘What superficially appears to be a two-phase construction of Tomb II, plus the different cremation conditions the female bones underwent, suggest she was buried later than the male in the still-empty or incomplete second chamber.’

On the other hand, Arrhidaeus and his young bride Adea-Eurydice were executed together by Alexander’s mother Olympias when she regained political control of the state capital. She also murdered Philip’s last wife, Cleopatra, along with her new-born child. This ‘double assassination’ of Arrhidaeus and Adea-Eurydice explains the ‘double burial’ given to them after Olympias was herself executed.

The gold quiver and greaves of the female in Tomb II stacked against the chamber-dividing door [Credit: Ekdotike Athinon S.A. Publishers]

When Alexander the Great died in Babylon in 323 BC, his royal regalia including his cloak, sceptre and ceremonial weapons were passed to newly crowned ‘King Philip III Arrhidaeus’ and escorted with him and Adea-Eurydice back to Macedon. So, the artefacts in Tomb II could be the very weapons of Alexander, other commentators believed, explaining the grandeur with the half-wit.

Arguments revolved around wounds evident or invisible on the male bones, wall paintings, entrance frescos and even salt cellars found on the floor; but it was debatable whether the twenty years between these kings could be discerned by interrogating the tombs this way.

The question remained: who was buried in the adjacent simpler looted Tomb I? Because initial reports concluded the scattered remains were those of a male, woman and baby, these must be to Philp II, Cleopatra and her newly born daughter. The logic of this argument gained momentum in the academic community.

The mystery Scythian 'Amazon'

In the Tomb II woman’s antechamber lay a weapon of great mystery: a gold-plated Scythian bow-and-arrow quiver like those carried by Scythian horseback archers. Grave digs in Russia and Ukraine have proven the existence of female warriors. Professor Andronikos mused that the Tomb II woman therefore had ‘Amazonian leanings.’

A female Scythian archer with hip-slung bow-and-arrow quiver; from an Attica plate dated 520-500 BC [David Grant, 2019]

Others were more sceptical. ‘Weapons were for men what jewels were for women,’ reads a plaque in the subterranean Vergina Museum. So many commentators believed that the antechamber weapons belonged to the man next door, as their upright position against the dividing door might indicate.

Alexander’s father campaigned against Scythians at the River Danube, but Philip lost all the booty on his return when he was almost killed in a Thracian attack and limped ever after. The Tomb II woman was therefore a Scythian bride or captured concubine, postulated some commentators.

Grant is unconvinced: ‘the Scythians were not renowned as metalsmiths; the exquisite jewellery we find in their graves is of local Greek workmanship, likely from the Bosporus Kingdom. But there was also a thriving metalworking industry in Macedon, where weapons and armour were fashioned for Philip II. The possible domestic manufacture of what could have included ornate goods for Scythian warlords means the ‘Amazon’ of Vergina could have been born rather closer to home.’

'Final Solution' Forensics

By 2009, the ‘battle of the bones’ reached a stalemate when academics arguing the tomb identities ran out of debating ammunition. The American Journal of Archaeology even called for a moratorium on ‘Vergina papers’ until new evidence came to light.

Forward momentum recommenced in 2010 when an anthropological team led by Professor Theo Antikas and funded by a modest grant from the Aristotle University of Thessalonica, commenced a six-month task of cataloguing the Tomb II bones; their ground-breaking study would last five years.

The leg bones allegedly evidencing the ‘terrible’ knee wound Philip II may have suffered, showing the fused position of the shinbone and thighbone with the puncture hole [Credit: PNAS]

The Antikas team found new incontrovertible age evidence on previously unanalysed bones, as well as undocumented trauma, which further narrowed down the list of candidates. The woman’s pubic symphysis aged her at 32 +/- 2 years at death, ruling out Philip’s teenage wife Cleopatra and discounting Arrhidaeus and his wife completely.

Dispelling the case of ‘archaeological gender bias’ was an overlooked shinbone wound providing proof that the armour and weapons belonged to the women, because the unevenly sized gilded-bronze greaves were fashioned to fit her shortened deformed leg. She was, indeed, being honoured as a warrior at death.

The Antikas team comprised both anthropologists and material scientists. Their additional microscopic finds, including textile stains, composite material fragments and melted metals on the cremated skeletons, hinted at ancient burial rituals, a death mask and the profound belief in the afterlife.

The rare white mineral huntite and Tyrian Purple in the composite material were bound with egg white in layers and created the vivid image of an unknown mystic Orphic funeral rite involving a face mask. Melted gold on the upper vertebrae begged the question of whether the male was initially wearing a crown as flames licked the funeral pyre, as the incomplete crown found inside the tomb showed signs of intense heat.

There may even be fragments of a fireproofing asbestos shroud worn by the cremated king, just as the Roman naturalist Pliny claimed was the practice of ancient Greek kings to help separate the bones from the rest of the pyre debris.

A final ‘identity-shattering’ discovery was made by the Antikas team. ‘Forgotten’ and unanalysed skeletal remains from Tomb I were found in storage below the Vergina laboratory; they were probably consigned to thirty-five-years of obscurity in the aftermath of the ‘great’ Thessalonica earthquake of 20 June 1978 when the preservation of unlooted Tombs II and III was the focus of attention. These additional bones from Tomb I contained the remains of at least seven individuals, not just two adults and a baby.

The team’s finds were published in an academic journal 2015. Although hampered by underfunding and a lack of support from those fearing unwanted results, they continued to push for ‘next-generation’ forensics: DNA testing, radiocarbon dating, and stable isotope analysis on the Tomb II and Tomb III bones.

Permission was denied in 2016, Grant reveals. Instead, the scientists were allowed to test the scattered bones found in looted ‘Tomb I’, but with no formal funding provided. Although these bones lay exposed in soil for over 2,000 years, dating and DNA results were successfully extracted, disproving yet more of the identity theories. Moreover, controversial leg bones, which supposedly evidenced the terrible a knee wound Philip may have suffered in Thrace, appeared to be ‘intruders’ from a completely different tomb. The results have yet to be published and Grant says they will amaze everyone.

What has become clear is that the great earthen tumulus at ancient Aegae was bitten into by looters on more than one occasion, and when exposed, Tomb I became a dumping ground for the dead.

Now Grant’s new book is revealing all, the pressure will certainly be on the Greek Ministry of Culture to take a new progressive stance on permitting the outstanding forensics on the ‘royal’ bones from the unlooted tombs. With the possible identities greatly narrowed down by the Antikas-team study, new DNA, radio carbon dating and stable isotope analysis of the ‘king’, ‘queen’ and ‘prince’ may solve the puzzle once and for all.

Unearthing the Family of Alexander the Great, the Remarkable Discovery of the Royal Tombs of Macedon launches on 30th October 2019 and is available from Amazon and other major online book retailers.

Author: David Grant | Source: TANN [October 23, 2019]

'Revealing Greater Cahokia' details research on ancient North American metropolis

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on January 22, 2019 / comment : 0 Americas, Archaeology, North America, Recommended Reading, USA

With a population between 10,000 and 30,000 in its heyday (A.D. 1050-1200) and a sprawling assortment of homes, storage buildings, temples, cemeteries, mounds and other monuments in and around what is now St. Louis and East St. Louis, Illinois, the ancient Native American city known as Greater Cahokia was the first experiment in urban living in what is now known as the United States.

Archaeologists painstakingly dissected the wealth of artifacts left behind at Greater Cahokia and, in the process, resurrected something of the history, culture and religion of those who built and maintained the city. A new book offers an in-depth picture of what they found, and learned, from the vast collection of artifacts [Credit: L. Brian Stauffer]

A new book, "Revealing Greater Cahokia, North America's First Native City," offers the most complete picture yet of a decade of archaeological research on a little-known part of the larger city and its precincts in East St. Louis. The more famous part of the city is preserved as Cahokia Mounds Historic Site, which had more than 100 earthen monuments, a 50-acre plaza, neighborhoods and a central pyramid, the massive Monk's Mound, which, according to the authors, was "the largest earthen structure in the New World."

"There's never been an excavation as extensive as our dig into the Cahokia precinct in East St. Louis," said archaeologist Thomas Emerson, the former director of the Illinois State Archaeological Survey, a Cahokia researcher and one of three editors of the 537-page volume. "And there's never been a book with as many new discoveries about Cahokia as this one."

The new book details the immense archaeological effort to excavate and interpret artifacts associated with Greater Cahokia, an ancient city on the Mississippi River [Credit: Illinois Archaeological Society]

Cahokia rose abruptly starting in A.D. 1050, and was abandoned almost as abruptly 250 years later. Its failure—which other studies revealed came during a period of climate change and regional conflict—offers more of a mystery than its origins.

"Certainly, a warmer medieval-period climate was behind the early growth of Cahokia, as was the adoption of maize or corn agriculture and the spread of a new Native American religion," said Timothy Pauketat, a professor of anthropology and of medieval studies at the University of Illinois and a co-interim director of ISAS. "People immigrated to this new city from far and wide, probably perceiving it to have been blessed by spiritual forces. There's no better place in North America for a civilization to arise."

Early illustration of Downtown Cahokia (bottom), to scale, and a map of this location (top) in the context of Greater Cahokia [Credit: Illinois State Archaeological Survey]

Between its origin and abandonment, Cahokia was transformed by human activity. Its people constructed several types of mounds, which had practical as well as ceremonial functions. They also built temples and homes with wooden posts and thatch roofs and walls.

Archaeologists link these objects found at Cahokia to a 12th-century world renewal and fertility cult [Credit: Illinois Archaeological Society: 'Revealing Greater Cahokia']

They carved figurines depicting a female goddess and made ceramic vessels with special types of containers for food and ritual. They fashioned stone, flint and copper tools. They imported ocean shells, shark teeth and caffeine-rich tea leaves from distant waters and lands. They buried their dead in large group cemeteries and in ceremonial mounds.

"Greater Cahokia" offers insights into the daily lives, rituals, health issues and religious practices of the ancient people who built it. For example:

- Strontium analyses of the teeth of dozens of individuals buried in Cahokia reveal that, while most citizens grew up in the immediate vicinity, at least 20 percent were immigrants from elsewhere.

- Agricultural tools and animal bones reveal that the people ate a wide variety of foods, some of which they hunted and gathered, but much of which they grew in their fields.

- A study of plant residues found inside decorated pottery beakers that look like large coffee mugs found evidence that the beakers were used to consume a type of holly tea, called black drink, used as a stimulant by Native peoples elsewhere in the Americas.

- Objects made from materials not available in the immediate vicinity make it clear that visitors brought gifts to Cahokia when they came to experience the city's many wonders.

- Numerous carved likenesses of humans and animals uncovered at Cahokia open a window on the spiritual beliefs of their makers.

- The book also details the history of the land and landscape and processes that destroyed—and in some cases preserved—parts of the site when European newcomers built their towns, highways and farms on top of the ancient city.

Author: Diana Yates | Source: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [January 22, 2019]

Archaeologist debunks the myth of 'the nearly naked Bushmen'

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on December 18, 2018 / comment : 0 Anthropology, Indigenous Cultures, Recommended Reading, South Africa

It is said that "clothes maketh the man." It is therefore a paradox that researchers have not shown more interest in the dress of the San hunter-gatherers, historically among the most studied groups of people in the world. Vibeke Maria Viestad, a senior lecturer at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History at the University of Oslo, believes this is so because of a prevailing myth about "the nearly naked bushman."

Bushmen of South Africa, engraving, ca 1880 [Credit: Getty Images]

"The San people dressed differently from us, often with a bare upper body, and were therefore perceived as naked when first met by Europeans. This view was commonplace in travel descriptions and early research and also found its way into modern anthropology of the 1950s," she says.

The early research on "the others—research often more racist than scientific—was often more concerned with the physiological differences between different peoples. Researchers measured the skull, rump and breast and were blind to the meaning of such cultural elements as clothes.

Extinct hunter gatherer culture

Viestad makes up for these scientific sins of omission in a new book where she endeavours to find an answer to what dress practices meant to the San people who lived as hunter gatherers in the area that is now the province of Northern Cape in South Africa.

The archaeologist has studied oral myths and folklore of the /Xam—the diagonal indicates a clicking sound – that were noted down in the 1870s. /Xam is one of the many different groups of San people, and this material provides a unique source for understanding an extinct language and a culture that is no longer practised.

The stories filled 138 notebooks when they were noted down and have since been digitalised. These are stories about everyday life and hunting, animals and plants, myths and folklores and—for someone who is interested in this specifically- a lot of information about dress and dress practices.

Because dressing the body was definitely part of /Xam culture.

"They used karosses, loincloths, different headgear, bags, leather shoes, tobacco pouches and jewellery; especially sought after was bead work from the shells of ostrich eggs. Dress was an essential part of both material and social culture," says Viestad.

She uses a broad definition of the term "dress." This covers both things worn on the body and things done to the body, such as tattoos, painting oneself, cutting patterns in the skin or applying scent. Like clothing, such "bodily modifications" were also an important part of the culture of the /Xam.

Generated social relationships between animals and people

Viestad's research shows that clothes, jewellery, tattoos and the like had many of the same functions for the /Xam and other San peoples as it has for us. They marked identity and social belonging, were important for transition rituals, functioned as decorations and as a basis for widespread barter trade. Some were masters at making bags from turtle shells, others in the preparation of skin work.

Jewellery made of tail hair and glass beads [Credit: Iziko SA Museum of Cape Town/Nigel Pamplin]

"In addition to these easily recognisable functions, clothes also played a direct and essential role in creating and maintaining social relations," says Viestad, who underlines that the /Xam people did not distinguish between people and other creatures in the same way we do.

"It gives meaning to say that they formed relationships with people, animals, water and other parts of nature," she says.

Viestad describes a characteristic dichotomy in the /Xam people's relations with animals: "On the one hand, it was the clothes that separated humans from animals. At the same time, they made their clothes from the animals and part of that animal identity remained in the clothes, so that a strong relationship arose between animal and human.

They also believed that if you did not show respect to animals and other creatures, you risked your clothes returning to their original nature. A garment of antelope leather could go back to being an antelope. They did not believe this in a literal sense, but more as an image of the world becoming chaotic if you did not maintain good relations with your surroundings.

Angry and soft rain

In the context of hunting rituals, medical rituals and rituals linked to rain and water, tattoos, cuts in the skin and the application of scent were the most important part of their dress.

"The purpose of such modifications of the body seems for the most part to have been protective, preventive or auspicious, but was also about these close relationships with nature, where other creatures were shown respect," says Viestad.

She tells among other things that before the young /Xam girls could approach the water, they had to powder themselves with fragrant herbs, which they also had to sprinkle over the water.

"In this way, they created a bond between themselves and the water and showed respect. This was important so that they would get 'soft rain," making the earth fertile instead of 'angry rain' that just destroyed and washed the earth away.

Smeared themselves with sap from plants

Before the men could go hunting they would smear themselves with the sap of a particular root.

'Animal bag' from Gordonia in South Africa. Note how the legs of the 'animal' are tied together as a shoulder strap [Credit: Iziko SA Museum of Cape Town/Nigel Pamplin]

"In this way, the hunter linked himself to the animal and showed it respect," explains Viestad.

It is also believed that tattooing was a normal hunting ritual, where the men cut themselves and rubbed in charcoal made from the same root. When the cuts healed, the charcoal remained under the skin, something that could generate a stronger and more lasting relationship with the animals they were hunting.

Viestad explains that a similar custom is known from other groups of San people living in the Kalahari in the 1950's and 60's, but that they used charred meat from the last animal they had killed.

"Such customs might seem strange to us, but in their world these were part of important strategies for survival and for maintaining order in their existence," says Viestad.

Created the moon from a leather shoe

She also highlights a myth that especially illustrates the close connection between animals, humans and other creatures in the world view of the /Xam people. The story goes that both the moon and the eland—the world's largest antelope—were created from a leather shoe, such as the /Xam people used to make from eland leather.

"This story tells us that the shoe was once an eland and that the eland could become a shoe; that there was not a sharp distinction between the two," explains Viestad.

When shamans or sorcerers used headgear made from springbok scalps in order for the springbok to follow them, we might presume that same type of logic.

"The springbok was the most important source for food and clothing and a person wearing a cap made from such springbok leather might under certain circumstances have had a perceived special relationship with this animal," says the researcher.

Important for personal relationships

The /Xam people also strongly related to each other through their clothing. It was for example the men who made all the leather clothes and when they got married, they dressed the wives 'into the marriage."

Jewellery made from ostrich shells [Credit: Iziko SA Museum of Cape Town/Nigel Pamplin]

The men also made leather clothing for the children; in this way they gave something of themselves via the clothes.

"An inherited piece of jewellery would also be of sentimental value to me" explains the researcher, "but the /Xam people would probably have had a more direct approach to this: "The piece of jewellery I give to you contains a part of me." And if the piece of jewellery was passed on to someone else, this person was also drawn into this relationship: into a chain of connections going right back to nature and to the material the piece of jewellery was made from."

Two great collections

While working on the book, Viestad has also studied and compared two collections that document the clothes worn by different groups of San people in the early 1900s. The collections contained photographs, written documents, clothes, jewellery, bags and many other artefacts.

One of these was collected by Dorothea Bleek, who most probably had been asked to obtain artefacts for a museum exhibition while she was doing linguistic research among San people in the Northern Cape and later in the Kalahari. The at the time Medical Officer of South West Africa, Dr. Louis Fourie created an even more extensive collection containing more than 3,400 artefacts and 350 pictures.

"Bleek used a more traditional approach and emphasised that the clothes were associated with what role you held in the social structure, meaning gender, age, if one was married and so on. She was not especially interested in the differences between the different San people, while Fourie, who was more interested in the material culture as a starting point, could see great differences in the clothing between different groups," explains Viestad.

Shows human diversity

With this book, Viestad helps to fill a gap in our knowledge of some of the otherwise most studied groups of peoples in the world in ethnographic and anthropological research.

Vibeke Maria Viestad’s book fills a gap in our knowledge of some of the most studied peoples in anthropological history [Credit: Wits University Press]

For herself, she is mostly concerned that the book provides an example of an enormous human diversity.

"I feel it is important to explore other ways of thinking about the body, the world and social relationships. This might appear naive, but we need research that proves that there are and have been very different ways of understanding the world. Such knowledge can give us greater understanding of each other," she says.

Archaeologist Vibeke Maria Viestad is also a participant in the research initiative Heritage Experience Initiative at the Faculty of Humanities, which will start in 2019.

Author: Øystein Rygg Haanæs | Source: University of Oslo [December 18, 2018]

Ancient Palmyra—a story of urban resilience

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on August 03, 2018 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Heritage, Near East, Recommended Reading, Syria

Zenobia was a famous warrior queen who dared to challenge the Roman Emperor and crippled the empire with an ambitious military expansion.

Queen Zenobia's Last Look upon Palmyra by Herbert Gustave Schmalz, 1888 [Credit: WikiCommons]

She lived in Palmyra in the late 3rd century AD, in what is today Syria. The remarkably well preserved remains of Palmyra have recently undergone major destruction due to the current conflict, but the site remains one of the best-known urban settlements in the Roman East.

According to ancient written sources, Zenobia's dreams of glory for Palmyra were shattered by a successful Roman counter-campaign that culminated in the destruction of the city, ordered by Emperor Aurelian (270-275 CE) in 272/273 CE.

But to what extent can we trust written sources? What really happened to Palmyra next, in the time after Zenobia? A research project initiated in 2011 has been trying to answer this very question.

Our results are now published in a new book Palmyra after Zenobia (AD 273-750) – an archaeological and historical reappraisal.

272/273 CE – Palmyra's urban watershed

Based on a reassessment of published reports and unpublished archival data from past archaeological excavations and surveys, along with a large corpus of Latin, ancient Greek, Syrian, and Arabic written sources, the project has so far managed to shed new light on the fate of Palmyra.

It appears that the events of 272/273 CE marked an important watershed for the history of the city. The settlement's inhabited surface area shrank to almost half of its original size and major projects ended abruptly, such as the construction of a majestic 1.2 kilometre-long street named by scholars after its porticoes, the Great Colonnade.

From the 4th century CE, the rich houses of the urban aristocracy stopped being lavishly adorned, suggesting an exodus of the aristocratic elite.

A new beginning

Nonetheless, the city was not completely abandoned and was gradually rebuilt from its ashes, demonstrating remarkable urban resilience, as we would say today.

Palmyra in Late Antiquity, however, would have looked very different from that of the Roman period.

The remarkably well preserved remains of Palmyra have recently undergone major destruction due to the current conflict in Syria, but the site remains one of the best-known urban settlements in the Roman East [Credit: PAL.M.A.I.S. project]

From the late 3rd century CE, construction of new buildings, public and private, was underway, using reused architectural material.

Public streets and squares were gradually devoured by the advance of private space, meaning houses and shops. This, in itself, does not necessarily point to urban decline, rather to the existence of a thriving urban community that was struggling to find space to live within the city walls.

A changing townscape

One of the main reasons behind the survival of Palmyra must be related to the installation of a garrison in the city, the Legio I Illyricorum, in a newly built fortress, which eventually became the economic engine of the settlement.

The advent of Christianity was also an important agent in transforming the city. Palmyra had a bishop from at least the early 4th century and, from the end of the same century, urban pagan sanctuaries were gradually abandoned or converted into churches, as with the famous Temple of Bel.

At least eight churches have been found in Palmyra: Church 4 being one of the largest in the entire early Christian Syria, excavated by a Syro-Polish archaeological team.

When in 634 CE the Muslim force of the caliph Abu Bakr guided by the general Khalid ibn al-Walid, the "sword of Allah," reached Palmyra. The city surrendered without a fight.

Palmyra after the Islamic conquest

Palmyra in the early Islamic period (634-750 CE) shows incredible continuity from Late Antiquity, but major changes are also visible in the urban layout. Perhaps one of the most remarkable changes is the addition of a congregational mosque, which was installed in an existing building close to the ancient Roman theatre.

A suq, an open bazaar, was also installed in the carriage way of the central section of the Great Colonnade, suggesting the commercial vitality of the settlement even in this period.

The fortress which had once garrisoned the Roman legion was no longer needed as Palmyra was no longer situated along a frontier, but was now at the centre of the growing territory controlled by the Islamic caliphate in Damascus.

The end of the ancient site

Eventually, political stresses put an end to Palmyra. In the early Islamic period, the city housed the powerful tribe of the Banu Kalb, who supported the Umayyads, the ruling dynasty in Damascus.

When the Umayyads were replaced by the Abbasids in 750 CE, the political agent behind Palmyra´s survival ended abruptly.

The city gradually shrank in size and, by the 10th century CE, it became entrenched into the precinct of the Sanctuary of Bel. The glorious history of the settlement was at an end.

New milestones and future directions

The publication of the new book is an important milestone, but there is still much to be done to unravel the mysteries of Palmyra after Zenobia.

The project continues to gather new important data to cast light on this neglected phase of Palmyra´s history, including old documentation of past archaeological excavations and surveys.

It is also attempting to place Palmyra´s late antique and early Islamic history into a much wider regional and empire-wide context by understanding to what extent the urban evolution of the site represents trends in contemporary settlements.

Author: Emanuele E. Intagliata | Source: ScienceNordic [August 02, 2018]

This story is republished courtesy of ScienceNordic. Read the original story here. 

Coastal storms and prehistoric hardship on North Uist, Scotland

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on June 25, 2018 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Europe, Recommended Reading, Scotland, UK, Western Europe

Newly published archaeological research from excavations undertaken at the Udal in North Uist reveals some of the hardships of life in Neolithic and early Bronze Age Scotland.

Excavation of Neolithic buildings at the Udal in 1981 [Credit: © Udal project archives]

Two burial cairns held the remains of individuals dating to the second millennium BC. Scientific analyses of these individuals demonstrate the dramatic effect that environmental stresses had on the community.

Excavations at the Udal revealed the archaeological remains of two round buildings dating to between 3000 and 2500 BC. Analysis of the artefacts indicates that butchering of animals, pottery-making and quartz tool manufacture took place here.

‘The two houses may have been the last surviving structures of a larger settlement that was covered over by a thick layer of blown sand, like Skara Brae on Orkney,’ said Beverley Ballin Smith of GUARD Archaeology, who has been leading the post-excavation work. ‘The storm that brought the sand covered fields and grazing lands in addition to the village, from dunes to the west. The effects were so severe that the buildings and the farming land had to be abandoned and people moved inland. How long it took the sand to consolidate before it could be used for grazing and agriculture is not known, but marks from an ard plough showed that fields had extended much further west and north than the coastline does today.’

The blown sand was only part of the environmental story as another severe storm later brought a flood that destroyed the new fields by depositing a thick stone and shingle beach across them. By this time the coastal landscape was in flux and was in the process of being dramatically transformed. The archaeological evidence reveals that these environmental hardships had a severe effect on the health of local inhabitants. Scientific analysis of the teeth of two skeletons buried on the site indicated they had suffered a lack of food as children, even periods of starvation, and shell fish such as whelks may have become a staple food stuff.

The accumulation of sand and the flooding episode separated the end of the late Neolithic settlement from the beginning of the early Bronze Age, around 2400 BC. Sometime after the creation of the beach, a burial cairn was built, under which a young man was laid to rest in stone cist. This large round mound of stone and turf was the largest man-made structure on the Udal peninsula. By erecting the cairn, the inhabitants that lived in the area claimed back the landscape as theirs. The monument was meant to be enduring and it lasted approximately 4000 years before coastal erosion threatened it, necessitating its excavation.

‘Our Neolithic and Bronze Age ancestors lived through climate change events such as dramatic sea-level rise and increased storminess, and trauma such as loss of fields, crops and animals. They had to relocate their settlement and houses to safer areas,’ said Beverley. ‘How the inhabitants of the Udal survived during the Bronze Age will be part of the research on the next Udal site – the South mound.’

The Udal is a peninsula off the north coast of North Uist and was the focus of many years of archaeological excavations by the late Iain Crawford. This book is the result of several years of post-excavation work on the smallest of the Udal sites, which was exposed by coastal erosion after an exceptional high tide in 1974. While Iain Crawford completed the fieldwork by 1984 he could not complete the project to publication. After a long illness he died in 2016 at the age of 88. The new book is edited by Beverley Ballin Smith, Publications Manager at GUARD Archaeology, who has spent the last few years analysing the archaeological material recovered from Iain’s excavations.

‘While the archaeology of the Western Isles is as rich, diverse and intriguing as that of the rest of Scotland, it is less well known,’ said Malcolm Burr, Chief Executive of Comhairle nan Eilean Siar. ‘Comhairle nan Eilean Siar and its partners are working hard to see this position change, and this new publication of the smallest of Iain Crawford’s excavations at the Udal site in North Uist, is part of this effort. The excavations at the Udal recovered fragile evidence in the face of erosion by sea, storm and the ravages of time. The story told by these structures and artefacts, however, reflects the earliest centuries of communities’ life experiences on the Udal headland from some six thousand years ago, one of the longest and most fascinating time lines in the archaeology of Scotland. The two Neolithic houses and Bronze Age burial cairn bear testimony to the antiquity and importance of this site.’

The new hardback book, Life on the Edge: The Neolithic and Bronze Age of Iain Crawford’s Udal, North Uist edited by Beverley Ballin Smith is available from Archaeopress Publishing Ltd, at www.archaeology.press for £25. A free version is also available to download from the same internet address.

Source: Guard Archaeology [June 25, 2018]