Ancient Grave Found Brimming with Jewels
Feb 2, 2017 9:37:50 GMT 10
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Post by theshee on Feb 2, 2017 9:37:50 GMT 10
n Iron Age tomb brimming with treasures fashioned out of gold, bronze and amber was recently uncovered after lying undisturbed by the Danube River for nearly 2,600 years, archaeologists report.
The glitzy hoard adorned and surrounded the skeleton of a woman who likely died between the age of 30 and 40, and it suggests that she was an elite member of the Celtic society that buried her in ancient southern Germany at a hill fort called Heuneburg in 583 B.C., the researchers said.
Moreover, the presence of a petrified sea urchin and ammonite (a type of extinct mollusk) in the grave are intriguing, and suggest that the woman "was a kind of priestess," said the study's lead researcher Dirk Krausse, the archaeologist for the German state of Baden-Württemberg.
Multiple graves around the woman's burial chamber had been looted over the years, with some looters digging tunnels from tomb to tomb, facilitating the plundering process, Krausse said. The newfound grave is "extraordinary," as it's the "first richly furnished central grave from that period — the first half of the sixth century in Heuneburg — which was not looted in antiquity," Krausse told Live Science.
Immense excavation
People have known about Heuneburg, a prehistoric hill fort near the Danube River, for centuries. The Celtic city-state was likely founded in the sixth century B.C., and it's thought that even the famous Greek Philosopher Herodotus (circa 484 B.C to 425 B.C.) mentioned it while writing about the history of the Danube River, Krausse said.
However, it wasn't until 1950 that researchers began modern excavations of the site, which sits just north of the Alps. But those digs didn't uncover everything.
In 2005, archaeologist Siegfried Kurz, who died in 2014, found a golden brooch brooch in a plowed field. Kurz later led a small-scale excavation of the grave, which was located in an area known as the Bettelbühl necropolis. The grave contained a young child, likely a girl between the age of 2 and 4, who was burried next to a larger grave that had a burial chamber made out of timber, the researchers said.
Concerned that another plow, or other agricultural activity, would harm the larger grave, the researchers excavated the entire 88-ton (80 tonnes) section — which they dubbed Keltenblock — in 2010. A crane carried Keltenblock to the laboratories at the archaeological state office of Baden-Württemberg. The large grave held myriad treasures: intricate jewelry made of amber, gold and bronze; piles of furs and textiles; an ornament made out of boars' horns and bronze jingle bells that would have adorned a horse's chest; carved boxwood objects; bracelets carved from black stone; and a belt made of bronze and leather.
The jewelry and the belt covered the 5-foot-3-inch (1.62 meters) tall skeleton of the elite woman. On the opposite side of the chamber, researchers found the skeleton of what was likely a woman, measuring just 5 feet 1 inch (1.57 m) tall. The woman, whose remains were buried with just a few pieces of bronze jewelry, may have been a servant, Krausse said.
At the feet of the second individual sat a 1.3-foot-long (0.4 m) bronze sheet decorated with circles. A computed tomography (CT) scan of the sheet showed the remains of an iron horse bit, which gave researchers the idea that the sheet may have been a chanfron (also spelled chamfron) — a piece of metal that covers a horse's forehead.
If the bronze sheet is a chanfron, it's the first one on record to be found in Heuneburg and only the second known from this period north of the Alps, the researchers said.
Given that the grave has both the chanfron and the ornament made from boars' tusks that would have covered a horse's chest, it's likely that the elite woman had a strong connection with horses, Krausse said.
Waterlogged wood
The floor of the chamber was lined with oak and silver fir planks. By dating the wood and examining its tree rings, the researchers determined that the trees were felled in the fall of 583 B.C.
This date firmly places the grave with the Hallstatt culture — a name that has been given to the people who lived in central Europe during that time, the researchers said.
It's rare for timber to survive 2,600 years, but the grave's contents persisted because the Danube River routinely flooded, and clay in the soil around the grave helped keep the water inside the burial site. Just like the ocean can preserve a wooden shipwreck, the water from the Danube preserved the timbers and most of the grave's organic contents, with the exception of the textiles and furs (which were in bad shape) and some of the grave's iron and bronze objects, the researchers said.
However, the surviving objects are especially revealing. The elite woman's jewelry is similar to the jewelry that was worn by a young girl whose remains were discovered in 2005, and whose grave was just about 6.5 feet (2 m) away from the elite woman's grave. The similarity in their jewelry suggests that the girl and the woman were buried during the same time period, the researchers said.
Moreover, the style of the elite woman's jewelry and chanfron matches that seen in cultures south of the Alps, including Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Sicily, Krausse said. Other excavations suggest that the gold filigree was made at Heuneburg, showing that artisans there were influenced by styles in cultures south of the Alps, Krausse said.
"By knowing this new grave, we see the context between the region south of the Alps and this city at the Danube River," Krausse said. "They were much closer, there was much more traffic and interrelations between these areas than we thought before."
The findings were published in the February issue of the journal Antiquity.link
The mounted boars' tusks are adorned with two bronze strips and bronze pendants. If the ornament were placed on a horse's chest, the pendants would have jingled against the bronze strips when the horse moved.
A team led by archaeologist Siegfried Kurz, who died in 2014, found a golden brooch in a plowed field and later led a small-scale excavation of the grave.
Archaeologists soon uncovered the remains of an Iron Age girl, who was likely between 2 and 4 years old when she died.
The team found more brooches (also known as fibulae) in the girl's grave, including this gold-plated bronze brooch, measuring almost 2 inches (50 millimeters) long. The pendants have a diameter of 0.8 inches (20 mm).
archaeologists excavated the entire site surrounding the ancient girl's grave. The complete block weighed 88 tons (80 tonnes) and was relocated to a lab. This aerial-view photo was taken on Dec. 28, 2010.
Later, the archaeologists found that the young girl's grave was located a mere 6.5 feet (2 meters) from the elite woman's burial chamber.
A 3D view of the burial chamber, taken with a terrestrial laser scanner.
A composite photo showing the grave timbers from a bird's-eye view. The wood remained submerged in water or waterlogged for the past 2,600 years, which preserved the wood by protecting it from the decaying effects of oxygen.
The timbers allowed researchers to date the grave using a process known as dendrochronology. The arrows on the photo show the relevant dates the investigators gleaned.
The three amber brooches (Illustrations a-c) and two gold, naicella-type (meaning "boat-like) brooches (d-e) that were found on the upper body of the elite woman.
The five gold spheres (a-e) and the gold pinhead (f) discovered in the elite woman's grave.
The elite woman was found wearing a richly decorated belt around her waist, the researchers said. The belt had a sheet of bronze attached to a leather band decorated with bronze bars and thousands of bronze staples, the archaeologists said.
Here is a 3D illustration of the belt created with the help of X-ray computed tomography (XCT).
A photograph of the three boxwood objects found in the grave. "Their purpose is still puzzling," the researchers wrote in the study.
A gold strip earring, measuring about 11 inches (285 mm) long. It's unclear why the researchers found only one, not two earrings, the archaeologists said.
Archaeologists found the skeleton of a second person, likely that of a woman, in the southeastern corner of the chamber. In contrast to the elite woman, the second woman was physically smaller and buried with few grave foods. It possible that this woman was a servant of the elite woman, the researchers said.
The archaeologists also found a bronze sheet measuring nearly 1.3 feet (0.4 m) long near the second woman's remains. The sheet is decorated with circles. It likely graced the forehead of a horse, meaning that is was a chamfron, the researchers said.
A computed tomography (CT) scan of the area showed the remains of an iron horse-bit near the bronze sheet, the researchers added. This can be seen in the bottom photo, where the researchers digitally erased the chamfron to show the iron bit and forelock pendants.
Cross sections of an oak plank (left) and silver-fir plank (right). The tree rings and bark helped the researchers date the grave to 583 B.C.
The glitzy hoard adorned and surrounded the skeleton of a woman who likely died between the age of 30 and 40, and it suggests that she was an elite member of the Celtic society that buried her in ancient southern Germany at a hill fort called Heuneburg in 583 B.C., the researchers said.
Moreover, the presence of a petrified sea urchin and ammonite (a type of extinct mollusk) in the grave are intriguing, and suggest that the woman "was a kind of priestess," said the study's lead researcher Dirk Krausse, the archaeologist for the German state of Baden-Württemberg.
Multiple graves around the woman's burial chamber had been looted over the years, with some looters digging tunnels from tomb to tomb, facilitating the plundering process, Krausse said. The newfound grave is "extraordinary," as it's the "first richly furnished central grave from that period — the first half of the sixth century in Heuneburg — which was not looted in antiquity," Krausse told Live Science.
Immense excavation
People have known about Heuneburg, a prehistoric hill fort near the Danube River, for centuries. The Celtic city-state was likely founded in the sixth century B.C., and it's thought that even the famous Greek Philosopher Herodotus (circa 484 B.C to 425 B.C.) mentioned it while writing about the history of the Danube River, Krausse said.
However, it wasn't until 1950 that researchers began modern excavations of the site, which sits just north of the Alps. But those digs didn't uncover everything.
In 2005, archaeologist Siegfried Kurz, who died in 2014, found a golden brooch brooch in a plowed field. Kurz later led a small-scale excavation of the grave, which was located in an area known as the Bettelbühl necropolis. The grave contained a young child, likely a girl between the age of 2 and 4, who was burried next to a larger grave that had a burial chamber made out of timber, the researchers said.
Concerned that another plow, or other agricultural activity, would harm the larger grave, the researchers excavated the entire 88-ton (80 tonnes) section — which they dubbed Keltenblock — in 2010. A crane carried Keltenblock to the laboratories at the archaeological state office of Baden-Württemberg. The large grave held myriad treasures: intricate jewelry made of amber, gold and bronze; piles of furs and textiles; an ornament made out of boars' horns and bronze jingle bells that would have adorned a horse's chest; carved boxwood objects; bracelets carved from black stone; and a belt made of bronze and leather.
The jewelry and the belt covered the 5-foot-3-inch (1.62 meters) tall skeleton of the elite woman. On the opposite side of the chamber, researchers found the skeleton of what was likely a woman, measuring just 5 feet 1 inch (1.57 m) tall. The woman, whose remains were buried with just a few pieces of bronze jewelry, may have been a servant, Krausse said.
At the feet of the second individual sat a 1.3-foot-long (0.4 m) bronze sheet decorated with circles. A computed tomography (CT) scan of the sheet showed the remains of an iron horse bit, which gave researchers the idea that the sheet may have been a chanfron (also spelled chamfron) — a piece of metal that covers a horse's forehead.
If the bronze sheet is a chanfron, it's the first one on record to be found in Heuneburg and only the second known from this period north of the Alps, the researchers said.
Given that the grave has both the chanfron and the ornament made from boars' tusks that would have covered a horse's chest, it's likely that the elite woman had a strong connection with horses, Krausse said.
Waterlogged wood
The floor of the chamber was lined with oak and silver fir planks. By dating the wood and examining its tree rings, the researchers determined that the trees were felled in the fall of 583 B.C.
This date firmly places the grave with the Hallstatt culture — a name that has been given to the people who lived in central Europe during that time, the researchers said.
It's rare for timber to survive 2,600 years, but the grave's contents persisted because the Danube River routinely flooded, and clay in the soil around the grave helped keep the water inside the burial site. Just like the ocean can preserve a wooden shipwreck, the water from the Danube preserved the timbers and most of the grave's organic contents, with the exception of the textiles and furs (which were in bad shape) and some of the grave's iron and bronze objects, the researchers said.
However, the surviving objects are especially revealing. The elite woman's jewelry is similar to the jewelry that was worn by a young girl whose remains were discovered in 2005, and whose grave was just about 6.5 feet (2 m) away from the elite woman's grave. The similarity in their jewelry suggests that the girl and the woman were buried during the same time period, the researchers said.
Moreover, the style of the elite woman's jewelry and chanfron matches that seen in cultures south of the Alps, including Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Sicily, Krausse said. Other excavations suggest that the gold filigree was made at Heuneburg, showing that artisans there were influenced by styles in cultures south of the Alps, Krausse said.
"By knowing this new grave, we see the context between the region south of the Alps and this city at the Danube River," Krausse said. "They were much closer, there was much more traffic and interrelations between these areas than we thought before."
The findings were published in the February issue of the journal Antiquity.link
The mounted boars' tusks are adorned with two bronze strips and bronze pendants. If the ornament were placed on a horse's chest, the pendants would have jingled against the bronze strips when the horse moved.
A team led by archaeologist Siegfried Kurz, who died in 2014, found a golden brooch in a plowed field and later led a small-scale excavation of the grave.
Archaeologists soon uncovered the remains of an Iron Age girl, who was likely between 2 and 4 years old when she died.
The team found more brooches (also known as fibulae) in the girl's grave, including this gold-plated bronze brooch, measuring almost 2 inches (50 millimeters) long. The pendants have a diameter of 0.8 inches (20 mm).
archaeologists excavated the entire site surrounding the ancient girl's grave. The complete block weighed 88 tons (80 tonnes) and was relocated to a lab. This aerial-view photo was taken on Dec. 28, 2010.
Later, the archaeologists found that the young girl's grave was located a mere 6.5 feet (2 meters) from the elite woman's burial chamber.
A 3D view of the burial chamber, taken with a terrestrial laser scanner.
A composite photo showing the grave timbers from a bird's-eye view. The wood remained submerged in water or waterlogged for the past 2,600 years, which preserved the wood by protecting it from the decaying effects of oxygen.
The timbers allowed researchers to date the grave using a process known as dendrochronology. The arrows on the photo show the relevant dates the investigators gleaned.
The three amber brooches (Illustrations a-c) and two gold, naicella-type (meaning "boat-like) brooches (d-e) that were found on the upper body of the elite woman.
The five gold spheres (a-e) and the gold pinhead (f) discovered in the elite woman's grave.
The elite woman was found wearing a richly decorated belt around her waist, the researchers said. The belt had a sheet of bronze attached to a leather band decorated with bronze bars and thousands of bronze staples, the archaeologists said.
Here is a 3D illustration of the belt created with the help of X-ray computed tomography (XCT).
A photograph of the three boxwood objects found in the grave. "Their purpose is still puzzling," the researchers wrote in the study.
A gold strip earring, measuring about 11 inches (285 mm) long. It's unclear why the researchers found only one, not two earrings, the archaeologists said.
Archaeologists found the skeleton of a second person, likely that of a woman, in the southeastern corner of the chamber. In contrast to the elite woman, the second woman was physically smaller and buried with few grave foods. It possible that this woman was a servant of the elite woman, the researchers said.
The archaeologists also found a bronze sheet measuring nearly 1.3 feet (0.4 m) long near the second woman's remains. The sheet is decorated with circles. It likely graced the forehead of a horse, meaning that is was a chamfron, the researchers said.
A computed tomography (CT) scan of the area showed the remains of an iron horse-bit near the bronze sheet, the researchers added. This can be seen in the bottom photo, where the researchers digitally erased the chamfron to show the iron bit and forelock pendants.
Cross sections of an oak plank (left) and silver-fir plank (right). The tree rings and bark helped the researchers date the grave to 583 B.C.