Otzi's copper axe

Readers of this blog should already be familiar with Ötzi the Iceman (his face) (his tattoos).  This is what his axe looked like.

Ötzi's copper axe was of particular interest. The axe's haft is 60 centimetres (24 in) long and made from carefully worked yew with a right-angled crook at the shoulder, leading to the blade. The 9.5 centimetres (3.7 in) long axe head is made of almost pure copper, produced by a combination of casting, cold forging, polishing, and sharpening. It was let into the forked end of the crook and fixed there using birch-tar and tight leather lashing. The blade part of the head extends out of the lashing and shows clear signs of having been used to chop and cut. At the time, such an axe would have been a valuable possession, important both as a tool and as a status symbol for the bearer.

Image cropped for emphasis from the original.  This is a replica; the original can be seen in this photo -

- from the Otzi website, where there are many more details about this tool.

The haft, i.e. the handle of the axe, was carved from the split wood of a yew tree. A nearly right-angled branch growing out of the trunk was used. The axe blade is held in a slit in the haft with birch tar. It was then bound in place with narrow strips of leather.  Using a replica of the axe, it took just over half an hour to fell a yew tree...

In Central Europe in the period around 3000 BC, a copper axe would have belonged to a man of high social status. This is confirmed by grave finds from this period. In the grave field at Remedello di Sotto southwest of Lake Garda, for example, only 17% of the axes placed in the men’s graves had a copper blade. The copper axe blades recovered from those graves are identical in shape and size to the Iceman’s.

If you would like to make one, someone else has posted a photo gallery of the steps required to craft the tool.

Read more ...

Siberian Bronze age armor made of bone

I thought "bone armor" was the fabrication of sword-and-sorcery stories, but in this case it is real:

Archeologists are intrigued by the discovery of the complete set of well-preserved bone armour which is seen as having belonged to an 'elite' warrior. The armour was in 'perfect condition' - and in its era was 'more precious than life', say experts.

It was buried separate from its owner and no other examples of such battle dress have been found around Omsk. Analysis is expected to determine its exact age but Siberian archeologists say it dates from 3,900 to 3,500 years ago...

Currently the experts say they do not know which creature's bones were used in making the armour. Found at a depth of 1.5 metres at a site of a sanatorium where there are now plans to build a five star hotel, the armour is now undergoing cleaning and restoration...

He is certain that the armour belonged to a 'hero', an 'elite warrior who knew special methods of battle' and would have 'given good protection from weapons that were used at the time - bone and stone arrowheads, bronze knives, spears tipped with bronze, and bronze axes'. 

Detailed photos at the link.

Read more ...

Siberian mummies adorned with copper

A fascinating discovery near the Arctic Circle:

The 34 shallow graves excavated by archeologists at Zeleniy Yar throw up many more questions than answers. But one thing seems clear: this remote spot, 29 km shy of the Arctic Circle, was a trading crossroads of some importance around one millennium ago.

The medieval necropolis include 11 bodies with shattered or missing skulls, and smashed skeletons. Five mummies were found to be shrouded in copper, while also elaborately covered in reindeer, beaver, wolverine or bear fur. Among the graves is just one female, a child, her face masked by copper plates. There are no adult women.

Nearby were found three copper masked infant mummies - all males. They were bound in four or five copper hoops, several centimeters wide.

Similarly, a red-haired man was found, protected from chest to foot by copper plating. In his resting place, was an iron hatchet, furs, and a head buckle made of bronze depicting a bear...

Artifacts included bronze bowls originating in Persia, some 3,700 miles to the south-west, dating from the tenth or eleventh centuries. One of the burials dates to 1282, according to a study of tree rings, while others are believed to be older. ..

Unlike other burial sites in Siberia, for example in the permafrost of the Altai Mountains, or those of the Egyptian pharaohs, the purpose did not seem to be to mummify the remains, hence the claim that their preservation until modern times was an accident.

The soil in this spot is sandy and not permanently frozen.  A combination of the use of copper, which prevented oxidation, and a sinking of the temperature in the 14th century, is behind the good condition of the remains today. 

More photos at the link.

Read more ...

Siberian warrior with bear fang embedded in his nose - and fish in his eyes

As reported in The Siberian Times:

The remains of the fearsome warrior - who [at 5'10"] towered some 25 centimetres over his peers - were unearthed by archeologists near Omsk in an ancient burial mound. Experts are intrigued by his death mask and the elaborate nature of his grave which indicates his importance...

He was buried with the massive fang of a bear embedded in his nose, seen as a sign of his strength and power.  A decorated mirror - a bronze plate - lay on his chest, inside a birch bark cover... His death mask originally comprising fabric included caskets made of birch bark covering the eye sockets and mouth. Inside the caskets were metal figurines of fish with their heads broken off... It is interesting  that the fish figures were cast as one, and then broken in two

In the grave, too, were 25 war arrows - which are still sharp today - and bronze tools.

His left arm was severed in battle and placed near the body...

The first studies we made allow us to date the burial to approximately 11th-12th centuries AD.

More information and photos at the link.

Read more ...

Ancient wooden statue found in Siberia

It may be older than the Egyptian pyramids:

This ancient example of human creativity was recovered in January 1890 near Kirovgrad but there remains uncertainty over its age, believed to be around 9,500 years old. Made of 159 year old larch, it is covered with Mesolithic era symbols, which are not yet decoded. Some 2.8 metres in height, it appears to have seven faces.

It was protected down the millennia by a four metre layer of peat bog on the site of an open air gold mine...

Now, German scientists secured a grant which they hope will provide the Idol's age to within half a century.

'There is no such ancient sculpture in the whole of Europe. Studying this idol is a dream come true', said Professor Thomas Terberger, of the Department of Cultural Heritage of Lower Saxony.

Read more ...

Tattoos of the princess of the Sochi paralympics

The image above, broadcast worldwide on television during the Sochi paralympics, is a representation of one of the tattoos found on a Siberian mummy.  Her story has been featured three times in Siberian Times.  The first article, in August of 2014, provided this background:

The remains of the immaculately dressed 'princess', aged around 25 and preserved for several millennia in the Siberian permafrost, a natural freezer, were discovered in 1993 by Novosibirsk scientist Natalia Polosmak during an archeological expedition.

Buried around her were six horses, saddled and bridled, her spiritual escorts to the next world, and a symbol of her evident status, perhaps more likely a revered folk tale narrator, a healer or a holy woman than an ice princess.

There, too, was a meal of sheep and horse meat and ornaments made from felt, wood, bronze and gold.  And a small container of cannabis, say some accounts, along with a stone plate on which were the burned seeds of coriander.

'Compared to all tattoos found by archeologists around the world, those on the mummies of the Pazyryk people are the most complicated, and the most beautiful,' said Dr Polosmak. More ancient tattoos have been found, like the Ice Man found in the Alps [Otzi] - but he only had lines, not the perfect and highly artistic images one can see on the bodies of the Pazyryks. 

The mouth of a spotted panther with a long tail is seen at the legs of a sheep. She also has a deer's head on her wrist, with big antlers. There is a drawing on the animal's body on a thumb on her left hand.

On the man found close to the 'princess', the tattoos include the same fantastical creature, this time covering the right side of his body, across his right shoulder and stretching from his chest to his back...

We can say that most likely there was  - and is - one place on the body for everyone to start putting the tattoos on, and it was a left shoulder. I can assume so because all the mummies we found with just one tattoo had it on their left shoulders. 'And nowadays this is the same place where people try to put the tattoos on, thousands of years on.

The second report, later that month, offered more details re her garments and the burial chamber.

Now, thanks to pioneering work by academics in Novosibirsk, we also show how this ancient Pazyryk woman looked in real life and display not only her clothes but also the vivid colours she wore and her stylish headdress...

Archeologists even found items from her 'cosmetics bag', which lay inside her coffin next to her left hip, notably a face brush made from horse hair, and a fragment of an 'eyeliner pencil'. This was made from iron rings, inside which was vivianite, giving a deep blue-green colour on the skin.

There was also vivianite powder, derived from an iron phosphate mineral, apparently to be applied to the face...

'She was dressed in a long and wide woollen skirt, made from three horizontal strips of fabric. The skirt was 144 cm long, 90 cm wide on the top, and 112.5 cm at the base. 

'Each strip of  the fabric was coloured separately: the top one was crimson, the middle very slightly pinkish-yellowish, and the third of a very rich Bordeaux colour. 

Many more details at the link; it's very interesting reading.  Of course, our attention is drawn to that remarkable hairdo.

The real eye-opener for Dr Polosmak was the high and  distinctive head wear. And the linked discovery that the 'princess' in fact had a shaved head, with no hair, but instead wore an elaborate wig, that remains intact to this day, enabling detailed study...

It was put on a shaved head. The base of the wig was a felt 'hat', with two layers of women's hair sewn into it. Between the layers was a black flexible substance, which helped to fix and hold the shape and the volume of the wig.'..

On top of this mop was worn a red 'nakosnik' (a braided decoration made from threads), and atop of this structure was a bronze pin with a deer, standing on a sphere. The deer was made from wood, and was covered in golden foil.'

Yet it was more intricate, still.

'The wig had another very important detail,' she says. Its crowning glory looked like a giant feather, 68.5 cm long, made from felt and covered with black woollen fabric, with a stick inside it to help it stand straight.' she says.

'This feather had the figures of 15 birds attached to it, which like in modern Russian Matryoshkha dolls with one inside another, were each of smaller size compared to the previous one. The birds had leather wings, tails and legs, and long necks, which most likely meant they were swans.

And more information:

Remarkably she concludes that the source of the dyes is around 3,000  kilometres from Altai...

'This area can be Eastern Mediterranean - the only habitat of Kermes vermilio Planchon, a tiny insect, which is a source of nape acid, used in Pazyryk textiles colouring, and a neighbouring territory of the Armenian uplands - a source of Carminic acid. The third colourant - a source of alizarin and purpurin - was made from madder' (a Eurasian plant...

The fusion of influences, seen in her clothes, of Ancient Chinese, Iranian and Mediterranean cultures 'make the Pazyryks indeed one of the most ancient examples of synthesis between cultures of East and West'. 

Several hundred years later Alexander the Great was famed for 'mixing people by the power of his will, trying to unite East and West by pushing them together, and gluing them with political methods.

'At the same time in the middle of Asia, on an immeasurably smaller scale, that process which the great warrior was only dreaming about, has been happening all by itself. That same mixing of cultures, and the mixing of Caucasian and Mongoloid....This synthesis, on a small scale, proved to be very fruitful, and resulted in a formation and rise of Gorniy Altai Pazyryk culture...

Finally, the article concludes with a discussion of the male's costume ('First of all, it had trousers - which, to remind you, was part of a wardrobe considered to be 'barbaric' by Greeks and Romans, who did not accept and did not wear them. ).  I won't abstract any more details because I feel guilty about appropriating too much material from my primary sources.  Please go to Siberian Times to read more about this fascinating story.

Read more ...

Sigiriya

Sigiriya must be an awesome place, both in terms of geography and in the way it has been modified.  I first learned about it in an article at When On Earth.

In Sri Lanka, ruins of an ancient city can be seen lying on the steep slopes and summit of a 200-meter high peak. This awe-inspiring city is called Sigiriya and is located at the Matale district near Dambulla in the Central Province of Sri Lanka...

During the 11 years of staying in Sigiriya [in the 5th century], Kassapa transformed the rock into a magnificent complex.  The rock-turned-city possessed areas designed for its defenses but it didn’t forget to be a place of beauty and splendor. Ramparts and moats were built around it. Royal Pleasure Gardens Water Gardens, Fountain Gardens, and Boulder Gardens can be found within its inner city...

You’re almost at the rock’s entrance when you see a stone staircase that takes you to the fortress, but be better prepared, for it has 1200 steps.

In 1150 AD, it was abandoned but during the 16th and 17th century it served as temporary outpost for the Kingdom of Kandy. In 1831, it was discovered by Major Jonathan Forbes of the 78th Highlanders of the British Army that led to the beginning of its archaeological work in the 1890s.

There are photos at the link, but for those interested I highly recommend the webpage of SriLankaView.  I opened a couple thumbnails and found myself clicking through scores of the several hundred photos, including these:

Access to the site is now provided by modern staircases, but note that adjacent to the stairs are hand-cut stone steps and cavities for ancient wooden railings and supports.

This is too far away to fit into the budget of my bucket list, so I was glad to be able to tour it online.  Amazing.

Here is the Wikipedia entry.

Read more ...

Deviant burials in Poland

The woman in the photo above was buried with a sickle placed across her neck.

Apotropaic observances-traditional practices intended to prevent evil-were not uncommon in post-medieval Poland, and included specific treatment of the dead for those considered at risk for becoming vampires. Excavations at the Drawsko 1 cemetery (17^th–18^th c. AD) have revealed multiple examples (n=6) of such deviant burials amidst hundreds of normative interments... These data indicate that those targeted for apotropaic practices were not migrants to the region, but instead, represented local individuals whose social identity or manner of death marked them with suspicion in some other way.

The above from the abstract.  The rest of the report at the link includes an extended discussion of beliefs about vampires and the use of strontium isotopes in forensic archaeology.

This is the first time I've seen a sickle employed on a deviant burial.  Weights like stones and bricks are more common.  Very cool.

Related...

Read more ...