For Those Interested in Archaeology

Lovely little find! Not sure how they know he was "sacrificed and cooked in a pot" though.
"A near-complete set of Roman armour has been discovered by archaeologists working in Germany.
Experts working at Kalkriese, Germany, unearthed an entire cuirass belonging to a Roman soldier who belonged to one of three legions wiped out by Germanic tribesmen in 9 AD.
A cuirass is a piece of armour that protects the front and back of the torso made up of a breast and back plate.
The Times reports that the director of the museum at Kalkriese, Stefan Burmeister, thinks the armour belonged to a Roman soldier who was sacrificed by German warriors after the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.
He told the paper that the new find - which is the oldest and most complete Roman armour find ever - is both unique and tragic.
Near to the soldier's shoulders a shrew's fiddle was found which was used to lock a person's wrists in an iron board around the neck.
Given the value of the Roman armour, experts were left wondering why the Germanic warriors didn't loot any trophies, but Burmeister explained that the execution of the soldier may have been a sacred ritual."
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8775385/Armour-Roman-soldier-unearthed-site-three-legions-wiped-9-AD.html

 

I wonder if there is confusion between value and cost? Given that it all had to be hand made there must have been a lot of skilled man hours put into it so it would be expensive but would it be that valuable to the Germans who did not use armour in their style of fighting? The only people they could sell it to would be back to the Romans - and good luck with that! Given the Roman losses in the Teutonbuger Wald. The Germans probably had more trophies than they knew what to do with.

 

Some Roman writers accused both the Celts and the Germans of conducting human sacrifices - something that was abhorrent to Roman values (although it was OK to slaughter slaves or POWs [same thing] in the arena for public entertainment). Given that the Germans and Celts were illiterate we have no accounts from their perspective and the Roman historians may have had a gladiolus to grind. Still the Germans insisted on drinking beer rather than wine which proved that they were uncivilised!

 

I suppose it would have been a valuable source of metal that was readily available to be made into weapons when necessary, without having to buy or mine it?

 

Just found this story on a new (to me) archaeology newsfeed-
"An international team of archaeologists and paleoanthropologists has found ancient human and animal footprints on the surface of an ancient lakebed in the Nefud Desert, Saudi Arabia. The footprints, dated to roughly 120,000 years ago, are contemporaneous with an early Homo sapiens out-of-Africa migration and represent the earliest evidence of our species in the Arabian Peninsula.
“At certain times in the past, the deserts that dominate the interior of the Arabian Peninsula transformed into expansive grasslands with permanent freshwater lakes and rivers,” said co-lead author Richard Clark-Wilson, a Ph.D. student at Royal Holloway at the University of London.
“It was during these periods of climatic upturn that human and animal populations dispersed into the interior, as shown by the archaeological and fossil record.”
The researchers recorded a total of 376 fossilized footprints at the Alathar freshwater paleolake site in the western Nefud Desert.
“We immediately realized the potential of these findings,” said first author Dr. Mathew Stewart, a scientist in the Max Planck Institutes for Chemical Ecology, the Science of Human History, and Biogeochemistry.
“Footprints are a unique form of fossil evidence in that they provide snapshots in time, typically representing a few hours or days, a resolution we tend not get from other records.”
“Seven hominin footprints were confidently identified, and given the fossil and archeological evidence for the spread of Homo sapiens into the Levant and Arabia between 130,000 and 80,000 years ago and absence of Homo neanderthalensis from the Levant at that time, we argue that Homo sapiens was responsible for the tracks at Alathar,” the scientists said.
"In addition, the size of the Alathar footprints is more consistent with those of early Homo sapiens than Homo neanderthalensis.”
www.sci-news.com/archaeology/alathar-footprints-08869.html

 

"Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of a high-status warlord who lived in the sixth century. They believe the discovery will have important implications for our understanding of society in post-Roman Britain.
A team from the University of Reading has examined the site, in the southern English county of Berkshire, after it was first discovered by metal detectorists in 2018. The individual was found buried on a hilltop site with commanding views over the surrounding Thames valley. They so-called ‘Marlow Warlord’ was a commanding, six-foot-tall man, and he was buried alongside an array of expensive luxuries and weapons, including a sword in a decorated scabbard, spears, bronze and glass vessels, and other personal accoutrements."
www.medievalists.net/2020/10/6th-century-warlord-discovered/?fbclid=IwAR2oKCKeyzlayO-oRaEC8TQ-bXV7qIiEIrqxxRw7mDi1h-O8DQeoB16ubPw

 

At 6 foot tall that is pretty impressive for the time.

 

Hope they can establish his origins. That should be interesting in itself.

 

One of my favourite-est parts of britain-
"ARCHAEOLOGISTS uncovered a "treasure trove from another age" in the English Channel - dating back 8,000 years - in what one diver called "an ancient ghost town".
The site lies east of the Isle of Wight, and the findings constitute the most intact wooden Middle Stone Age structure ever found in the UK. It is now 11 metres below sea level, but during the period there was human activity on the site, at a time before the North Sea was fully formed and the Isle of Wight was still connected to mainland Europe. National Geographic’s Albert Lin dived below the surface to take a look during its ‘Lost Cities’ documentary.
Archaeologists first identified the site when they spotted an arrangement of trimmed timbers that could be platforms, walkways or collapsed structures.
However, these were difficult to interpret until the Maritime Archaeological Trust used state of the art photogrammetry techniques to record the remains.
They revealed a cohesive platform consisting of split timbers, several layers thick, resting on horizontally laid round-wood foundations.
Mr Lin described what it was like to take a first-hand look at the ancient structure during the series.
He added: “Wood has survived underwater for millennia – the trees are all part of a hunter-gatherer landscape."
www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1344908/archaeology-news-treasure-trove-english-channel-isle-of-wight-underwater-ghost-town-spt?fbclid=IwAR2I_d4gSK21e42pPnRJgD1dKbn17J9nv1i7koXDmNB6WDzFCi47hdeNCls

 

Nearly a mile long; that's amazing.
"The remarkable prehistoric journey of a terrified mother and her toddler across a muddy riverbed frequented by ancient predators has been unearthed by scientists.
Fossilised footprints show a small adult, most likely a woman but possibly a teenage male, trekking for almost a mile across the hunter hotbed 13,000 years ago.
Analysis shows the adult scurried across sludgy terrain at a rapid pace while carrying a two-year-old child.
The pair, likely aware of the danger they were in, never deviated from a perfectly straight path, so as to minimise their time exposed.
The 1.5 km (0.9 mile) long walk was discovered in New Mexico and also shows the human route was later crossed by a mammoth and a giant sloth. It is the longest known trackway of early-human footprints ever found.
Separate analysis of the playa, a dried up lakebed, reveals the area was also popular with sabre-toothed cats, dire wolves, bison and camels.
During this period of history, around 13,000 years ago, humans hunted some of these animals, and were hunted by others, making the journey extremely hazardous.
According to the researchers who discovered and analysed the tracks, the mother knew this too, hence her rapid pace."
www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8843079/Fossilised-footprints-reveal-mother-childs-treacherous-journey-13-000-years-ago.html

 

Hmmm...as written, i'm calling BS...
How would they know of this 2 year old child if it was carried?
There are stone age hunter gatherers even TODAY...in Australia, Africa and South America...there are still many predators capable of taking a human, and you don't see them scurrying about their "extremely hazardous" journey...
If speed is indicated in the footprints, then I would say they were more likely running away, or running to something, and the most likely culprit for this haste was other humans.

 

Yeah, noticed that too. Think the story's full of unnecessary embellishments to play to the audience, when it's impressive enough itself.

 

"Fresh analysis of Europe's earliest known battle has thrown up the possibility the 1,400 people who died at the site, in Germany's Tollense Valley, were not warriors engaged in a brutal melee, but ambushed merchants who were ruthlessly slain.
The identity of the assailants remains unknown but it is thought they surprised the entourage and killed their guards before looting and murdering them.
Human remains at the site in North East Germany, near today's border with Poland and 80 miles north of Berlin, were first found in 1996.
Experts have since tried to explain how 1,400 people perished in this one event, when the region was sparsely populated throughout the Bronze Age.
Previous theories centred around a great battle for control of a bridge over a river near the Baltic sea.
But Detlef Jantzen, chief archaeologist for the state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, says he site is more likely that of a merciless slaughter.
He now believes that the victims were made up of diverse vendors passing through the region, likely to set up a market, and some were travelling in a large caravan.
He says they were likely set upon by bandits, who robbed and murdered them.
Research into the remains of the dead reveals some of the people had skeletal deformations only brought about by a lifetime of carrying heavy loads.
Mr Jantzen believes either merchants or their slaves would have spent a lifetime lugging around their wares, leading to extreme stress on their lower spine and legs.
'The picture that is emerging does not necessarily correspond to the picture of a warrior, but rather to the picture of people who spent their lives transporting things,' Mr Jantzen says, The Times reports.
'For this reason we have wondered whether there is another possible explanation for this violent conflict: rather than a warlike battle, an ambush scenario upon a large group.'
This theory explains why among the 1,200 human remains buried at the site, from 145 different people, there are women and children as well as men.
Had this been a true battle, historians believe it would have been waged between male warriors only."
www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8879473/Battle-Tollense-Valley-4-250-years-ago-massacre-1-400-Bronze-Age-merchants.html

 

Of course from time immemorial armies have had the equivalent of baggage trains and camp followers which would also explain it

 

That would have been one hell of an army for Bronze Age Europe though.

 

Well some of the Bronze age Indian armies are reckoned to have a fighting head to tail ratio of 1:8 so on that basis - assuming two armies perhaps not. It does seem a hell of a big trading caravan

 

A-ha, well we know where the armies are there are the whores. Cannot explain the kids but intercourse does that.

It is the same today. We visited some SFOR-NATO places and how come there was a bordell some 500 meters away.

BTW. Cannot any US army unit come to its position without a movie theatre, Hamburgers, and most of all I was surprised you could order from a local PX in Tuzla a leather couch. we always went to the US camp if we wanted to eat trash food.All the way I was sadly surprised that our Finnish camp was in a canyon like place. The enemy could place artillery on the mountains and kill us like that as they could see the whole camp from above..Well, we bought the local dealers fresh music cd´s and dvd´s fror 5 Deutsch Marks each so they had no need to kill us....

 

Another amazing find-
"Musket balls believed to have been part of a stashed supply of weapons for Bonnie Prince Charlie have been found near a ruined Lochaber croft.
Amateur archaeologists made the discovery while trying to find armaments that arrived from France, but too late to help the prince.
They were sent as part of his doomed attempt to defeat government forces as part of the 1745 Jacobite rebellion.
The hoard included 215 musket balls, coins and gilt buttons.
The arms shipment is thought to have landed in Lochaber two weeks after Bonnie Prince Charlie's forces were defeated at Culloden.
The discovery was made by a group called Conflicts of Interest, who were given permission to use metal detectors in the area.
They found the musket balls and coins near a ruined croft house which once belonged to the prince's Gaelic tutor - at Sandaig on the shores of the sea loch, Loch nan Uamh."
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-54904272

 

More great finds!-
"Archaeologists have uncovered a haul of ancient artifacts from a melted ice patch in Norway, including a record number of arrows used for reindeer hunting from more than 6,000 years ago.
The team found 68 arrows at the Langfonne ice patch in the Jotunheimen Mountains, tracing the artifacts back to various periods of time across thousands of years, from the Stone Age all the way through to the Medieval Period.
The discovery, published this week as a study in The Holocene journal, also included the remains of reindeer antlers, Iron Age scaring sticks used in reindeer hunting and a 3,300-year-old shoe from the Bronze Age. The arrows mark the earliest ice finds in Northern Europe, according to the study's authors.
Norway's Jotunheimen Mountains are located more than 200 miles (in excess of 320 kilometers) north of the capital, Oslo.
The Langfonne ice patch, where the arrows were found, has retreated by more than 70% over the past two decades as global warming has caused dramatic ice melt, the study says.
"With the ice now retreating due to climate change, the evidence for ancient hunting at Langfonne is reappearing from what is in essence a frozen archive," said Lars Pilø, the study's lead author and an archaeologist from the Innlandet County Council, in a statement.
"The ice melt, sad as it is, provides an unprecedented archaeological opportunity for new knowledge."
Norway ice melt reveals 'frozen archive' of ancient reindeer-hunting arrows - CNN