Ghana: Legacy of a Slave Coast Castle

archaeology.org A publication of the Archaeological Institute of America July/August 2009

November/December 2021

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Last
Temples
Maya Mural
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Discovering
Ice Age
Footprints

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CONTENTS

38 An artificial pool dating to 1450 B.C. in Noceto, Italy, contained offerings including vases, wooden tools, and deer antlers

FEATURES

24 WHEN ISIS WAS QUEEN 42 GHOST TRACKS OF

At the ancient Egyptian temples of Philae, Nubians WHITE SANDS
gave new life to a vanishing religious tradition Scientists are uncovering fossilized footprints in
BY ISMA’IL KUSHKUSH the New Mexico desert that show how humans
and Ice Age animals shared the landscape
32 PIECING TOGETHER MAYA BY KAREN COATES
CREATION STORIES
Thousands of mural fragments from the city of 48 GAUL’S UNIVERSITY TOWN
San Bartolo illustrate how the Maya envisioned New excavations have revealed the wealth and
their place in the universe prestige of an ancient center of learning
BY ZACH ZORICH BY JARRETT A. LOBELL

38 ITALIAN MASTER BUILDERS

A 3,500-year-old ritual pool reflects a little-known
culture’s agrarian prowess
BY DANIEL WEISS Cover: A sanctuary known as Trajan’s Kiosk at the
temple complex of Philae, Egypt
PHOTO: UNAI HUIZI PHOTOGRAPHY/SHUTTERSTOCK

archaeology.org 1
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 17

14

10

15

DEPARTMENTS LETTER FROM GHANA

4 EDITOR’S LETTER 55 LIFE OUTSIDE THE CASTLE
At Christiansborg Castle, a community that embodied
6 FROM THE PRESIDENT the complexity of the transatlantic slave trade is
being uncovered by descendants of those who
8 LETTERS created it
Giving the ancestors their due, castoreum’s many BY MARLEY BROWN
uses, an offering to the fishing gods, and the meaning
of a kangaroo

9 DIGS & DISCOVERIES

Ancient Roman road to Venice, a painted Chinese
family mausoleum, the oldest stained glass, and
medieval Korean movable type
ARCHAEOLOGY.ORG
■ MORE FROM THE ISSUE To read more about the
20 OFF THE GRID worship of the Egyptian goddess Isis, go to archaeology.org/
philae. To see more images of the artificial pool in Noceto, Italy,
Bodie, California
and the items found in it, go to archaeology.org/noceto.

22 AROUND THE WORLD ■ ARCHAEOLOGICAL NEWS Get daily headlines from

Under the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, Ice Age around the world and sign up for our e-Update.
camping in Michigan, and a Mesolithic Russian amber
■ FOLLOW US
merchant
■ INTERACTIVE DIGS Track ongoing work at
68 ARTIFACT interactivedigs.com.
Lost in translation

archaeology.org 3
EDITOR’S LETTER

Editor in Chief

IN RARE FORM Jarrett A. Lobell

Deputy Editor

Eric A. Powell
Executive Editor

Daniel Weiss
Senior Editor Associate Editor

Benjamin Leonard Marley Brown

Editorial Assistant

Malin Grunberg Banyasz

rchaeologists often describe their discoveries as rare or even unique. What, in

A archaeological terms, do these words really mean? A number of stories in this issue
vividly illustrate how some sites, artifacts, and even techniques stand out from others
as truly exceptional.
Creative Director

Richard Bleiweiss
Maps

Two articles address the rarity of evidence left by enslaved people—in one case a single Ken Feisel
unique burial of a man in Roman Britain, and in the other, enslaved
Africans in Ghana captured for the transatlantic slave trade. Archae- Contributing Editors
Roger Atwood, Paul Bahn,
ologists often rely on inscriptions and artifacts to help trace the Bob Brier, Karen Coates,
personal histories of people of the past. But since both of these Andrew Curry, Blake Edgar,
types of evidence are often absent for the enslaved, identifying Brian Fagan, David Freidel,
their presence at archaeological sites is a daunting challenge. Tom Gidwitz, Andrew Lawler,
Another story explores the discovery of a massive Middle Stephen H. Lekson,
Bronze Age wooden ritual pool in northern Italy that was created Jerald T. Milanich, Samir S. Patel,
around 3,500 years ago. This tremendous engineering achievement Heather Pringle, Kate Ravilious,
is the only such monument in Europe known from its time. Archae- Neil Asher Silberman, Julian Smith,

ologists can also uncover new evidence of a people about whom much is Nikhil Swaminathan,
Jason Urbanus, Claudia Valentino,
already known, such as a campsite in Michigan used by a band of Clovis hunters, who were
Zach Zorich
not thought to have ventured so far north, or a depiction of the Maya deity Wak Tok, a god
who is only known from a single other reference. Sometimes archaeological evidence can Publisher
properly be called unique because it truly is one of a kind, such as the last known Egyptian Kevin Quinlan
hieroglyphic inscription that has been accurately dated, which you will encounter in our Director of Circulation and Fulfillment

article on the island of Philae. Kevin Mullen

New techniques can give researchers the chance to gain novel insights in ways that were Director of Integrated Sales

Gerry Moss
not previously possible, as in the case of the redating of the stained glass windows of England’s
Account Manager
Canterbury Cathedral. By using a new application of X-ray technology, scientists were able Karina Casines
to date the windows without dismantling them, and in the process learned that the iconic Newsstand Consultant
glass panels held a surprise. T.J. Montilli
Perhaps the rarest artifact you will read about in this issue is the Roman glass cage cup NPS Media Group
recently found in the ancient city of Augustodunum in France. There are only a dozen or so Office Manager

complete examples of these extraordinarily crafted and delicate glass vessels, and before this Malin Grunberg Banyasz
For production questions
one, the last was found more than four decades ago. This type of cup would have belonged
contact materials@archaeology.org
only to the wealthiest citizens of the empire—and at least in one example, perhaps to an
emperor himself. The cup from Augustodunum is a nearly matchless artifact not only because Editorial Advisory Board

it was owned by an elite member of society, but also because such a fragile masterpiece has James P. Delgado, Ellen Herscher,
survived intact for more than 1,500 years. Ronald Hicks, Jean-Jacques Hublin,
Mark Lehner, Roderick J. McIntosh,
Susan Pollock, Kenneth B. Tankersley

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4 ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2021

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 FROM THE PRESIDENT A
I of A

ARCHAEOLOGICAL
LANDSCAPES AT RISK
OFFICERS
PRESIDENT
he story from White Sands National Park in this issue reminds us that our national Laetitia La Follette

T parks and monuments are not only impressive natural landscapes, but also important
archaeological ones.
First Vice President
Elizabeth S. Greene
Vice President for Cultural Heritage
Brian Daniels
As readers of this magazine, you know that the interplay between cultural and natural Vice President for Outreach and Education
Laura Rich
resource management is an area of intense focus for archaeologists. From Indigenous Vice President for Research and Academic Affairs
cultures that have lived successfully in these eco-landscapes for hundreds, if not thousands, Thomas Tartaron
of years, we can learn about ecological resource management, the protection of biodiversity, Vice President for Societies
Sabrina Higgins
and mitigating the effects of climate change. Today these national landscapes are at risk.
Treasurer
David Adam
The Grand Staircase- The Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears Executive Director

Escalante National National Monuments in Utah have witnessed millennia Rebecca W. King
Monument of human history, from Clovis hunters and Ancestral GOVERNING BOARD
Puebloans to explorers, pioneers, those fleeing Deborah Arnold
religious persecution, and outlaws. More than 10,000 Jeanne Bailey
archaeological sites have been identified within the two Joost Blom
David Boochever
monuments, although less than 10 percent of the land has Jane Botsford Johnson
been archaeologically explored. The sites include ancient Thomas Carpenter
Jane B. Carter, ex officio
quarries and granaries, lithic scatters, camps, shelters, and Arthur Cassanos
villages. Painted rock art and carved petroglyphs record Lawrence Cripe
traces of human activity on the landscape itself. The lands Mathea Falco
Joshua Gates
remain sacred to many Native American groups. Elizabeth M. Greene
Ömür Harmanşah
In 2017, the size of these two national monuments Julie Herzig Desnick
Mark Hurst
was cut by 46 and 85 percent, respectively, removing Alexandra Jones
protection from many known archaeological sites—and countless others yet to be SeungJung Kim
Gary Linn
discovered—and opening the land to commercial development and looting. The reduction Jarrett Lobell, ex officio
of Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears also fundamentally alters the nature of the Barbara Meyer
monuments, replacing cultural landscapes with a series of disconnected spaces, subverting John Papadopoulos
Paula Paster Michtom
context and continuity. Through the efforts of Brian Daniels, vice president for cultural Kevin Quinlan, ex officio
heritage, the Archaeological Institute of America has joined environmental and Indigenous Betsey Robinson
groups to protest these cuts. A lawsuit is currently under review by the Biden administration Kim Shelton 
Thomas Sienkewicz 
and we hope the president will act swiftly to reinstate the prior extent of these monuments. Monica Smith
Patrick Suehnholz
Anthony Tuck
Renowned anthropologist Keith Basso famously explored how “wisdom sits in places.” Maria Vecchiotti
The footprints of those traveling across White Sands at least 10,000 years ago bear
witness to the rich archaeological heritage of our national landscapes. These landscapes are Past President
Jodi Magness
fundamental to our understanding of the human past, present, and future. Let us protect
and cherish them both for their natural beauty and for the cultural wisdom they hold. Trustees Emeriti

Faced with devastating floods, forest fires, and other evidence of climate change, we need Brian Heidtke
Charles S. La Follette
this wisdom more than ever.
Legal Counsel
Mitchell Eitel, Esq.
Sullivan & Cromwell, LLP

A I of A

Laetitia La Follette 44 Beacon Street • Boston, MA 02108
archaeological.org
President, Archaeological Institute of America

6 ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2021

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LETTERS

FROM OUR READERS

CONNECTIONS
“Rediscovering Archaic America” (July/
August 2021) by Mike Toner was fascinat-
ing and reminded me that too frequently
we consider our ancestors less intelligent and
capable than ourselves. The people’s achieve-
ments also reminded me of many examples
of similar practices found across continents.
The Poverty Point Objects (PPO) were
reminiscent of both the cup-and-ring-
marked stones in Britain and the amulets
that represent body parts needing healing
left even today at sacred wells and springs
in rural Greece. The PPOs also resemble
pilgrim badges, as suggested by the author.
The possibility occurs to me that ideas origi-
nating with early modern humans in Africa
evolved in various ways as people reached
new environments. Thank you for your
always interesting and enlightening articles.
Doris Phillips
Manchester, CT
A RARE OPPORTUNITY
I’ve been an avid subscriber to
ARCHAEOLOGY for years and I wanted
to thank you for the article on Ugarit
(“The Ugarit Archives,” July/August 2021).
I found the explanation of why their
ARCHAEOLOGY welcomes mail from
readers. Please address your comments
to ARCHAEOLOGY, 36-36 33rd Street,
Long Island City, NY 11106, fax 718-472-
3051, or e-mail letters@archaeology.org.
The editors reserve the right to edit
submitted material. Volume precludes
our acknowledging individual letters.
alphabet was significant in the evolution of
written languages to be quite interesting.
Many of us take things like that for granted.
I visited Ugarit and several other Syr-
ian sites like Palmyra in July of 2001. In
hindsight, it was fortuitous timing given
the turmoil and bloodshed since then. Back
then, Syria had an enormous concentration
of historical sites visited by few people. For
a person with a passion for history, it was
simply a treasure trove. Wandering around
Ugarit by myself through the warren of
buildings and seeing the pit indicating the
levels of occupation going back millennia
was fun, to say the least. I remember Syria
fondly, though with a touch of sadness as
well. Keep up the good work.
Bruce Siekmann
Fleetwood, PA
FOR MULTIPLE USES
Given the use of castoreum (Around the
World, Canada, September/October 2021)
in waterproofing beavers’ fur and not just
marking territory, I’m surprised that the
hypotheses mentioned regarding the use
of the substance on the atlatl dart did not
include possible use as either a sealant
against moisture damage or an aid to lessen
friction and improve distance traveled.
Nicole Byrd
Fairfax, VA
BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME
I read with interest the account of ancient
Romans tossing coins into the waters of
the River Aa as offerings for a safe cross-
ing (Around the World, The Netherlands,
September/October 2021). Years ago, on a
fishing trip off the Yucatan Peninsula, two
Maya deckhands did something similar.
After a futile morning of fishing, they
appeared with a stack of peso coins and
began to flip them into the sea. We had a
much more successful afternoon!
Jim Morris
Madison, MS
THE SUPERNATURAL
WORLD
I enjoy every issue of ARCHAEOLOGY—
thank you! In “Letter from Australia:
Where the World Was Born” (May/June
2021), I was interested in the description of
a Maliwawa Style image of a human figure
with a kangaroo head as an example of the
supernatural characteristics of the style. I
wondered if instead of being supernatural,
the depiction could represent the animal’s
characteristics within the human, to rep-
resent the human’s strength, speed, power,
et cetera, without the use of written words.
This is not necessarily supernatural, but just
a way of communicating characteristics
without written language. I saw a similar
description of a “supernatural being” in
“The Spider’s on the Wall” (July/August
2021), describing rock art of a spider wield-
ing a knife on a mural in Peru. I wondered
again if rather than supernatural, this depic-
tion represents a story without words of
human power and violence.
Anna Mandel 
New York, NY

and Canadian subscriptions, $44.95; includes all government taxes (130277692-

ARCHAEOLOGY (ISSN 0003-8113) is published bimonthly for $29.95 by the
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©2021 The Archaeological Institute of America

8 ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2021

 DIGS DISCOVERIES
OLDEST STAINED GLASS, IRISH BOG IDOL, ANCIENT SHEEP JERKY…AND MUCH MORE

IDENTIFYING THE UNIDENTIFIED

rom its heart in Italy across its many Male skeleton with

F thousands of miles, the Roman iron fetters, Great

Empire was built and maintained Casterton, England 
by slaves. Some were born enslaved, the
sons and daughters of enslaved mothers.
Others were captives subjugated by the
Roman army. Still others were bought
and sold at slave markets. Slaves toiled in
all arenas of the Roman world, including
homes, schools, fields, mines, construction
projects, and even entertainment. A few,
including the former gladiator Spartacus,
even led rebellions against Rome.
Yet Roman slaves are nearly invisible in
the archaeological record. They had few
if any possessions, are rarely identified in
texts, and their burials are seldom
marked with a gravestone.
“Slavery is a profound part
of the Roman world and
completely endemic,”
says archaeologist the lack of texts and the
Michael Marshall of complexity of the issue
Museum of London of slavery.” A unique
Archaeology (MOLA). burial discovered in
“But especially for central England’s
Roman Britain, people Midlands region may
have avoided talking about Iron fetters be the first step to
or investigating it because of with padlock changing that.
Several years ago,
during work on a greenhouse
at a home in the village of Great
Casterton, builders unearthed an adult male skeleton, which
was then excavated by a MOLA team. The man was lying on
his right side and had heavy iron fetters secured by a padlock
around his ankles. His remains were radiocarbon dated to
between A.D. 226 and 427, a period during which, until the very
last years, the Romans occupied Britain. Earlier excavations
about 200 feet away had revealed a well-planned third- to
fourth-century A.D. cemetery filled with 133 burials, at least
some in wooden coffins. The man’s skeleton, however, had been
tossed into a ditch at the time of his death between the ages
X-ray of iron fetters showing
padlock mechanism of 26 and 35. His twisted body, the unnatural position of his
left arm over his head, and the absence of scavenging animals’

archaeology.org 9
DIGS DISCOVERIES

tooth marks—which likely would have
been visible on his bones had his body
been exposed for any length of time—all
suggested the man was buried quickly and
with little care. Although his skeleton is
well preserved, indicating he was five feet
five inches tall—average for the period—
his head is missing, likely an accidental
casualty of modern construction work.
Marshall and MOLA osteoarchaeologist
Chris Chinnock immediately wondered
if the man had been a slave, which
would make him the first Roman slave
to be archaeologically excavated in
Britain. But in the absence of a clear
methodology for recognizing Roman
slavery in the archaeological record, how
would they know?
“The suggestion of slavery, punish-
ment, or something nefarious imme-
diately leapt to mind,” says Chinnock.
Despite the fetters’ dramatic appear-
ance, they do not definitively prove
that the man was enslaved. This type
of shackle has rarely been found any-
where in the Roman world, and never
in Roman Britain. When Chinnock
examined the skeleton to reconstruct
the man’s life based on his bones, creat-
ing what scholars call an osteobiography,
he found some lesions on his ankles and
tibias from infections or trauma, but
nothing that conclusively linked them
to the fetters. He also found a bony spur
on the man’s left femur. “The spur is of
a type that can occur from a traumatic
injury or from the repetitive activities
of an active lifestyle, hard labor, or even
heavy contact sports,” says Chinnock.
“Nothing screams that this person was
enslaved.” Furthermore, the man was
buried near a thriving Roman town,
and there would have been both slaves
and laborers in the surrounding fields,
farms, and villages.
Still, says Marshall, the Great Caster-
ton burial is “about the best evidence you
could have for the social phenomenon
of slavery.” “We don’t see the physical
evidence of enslavement very often, so
it evokes an immediate response,” says
Chinnock. “This was an actual person,
and he is valuable as an individual.”
—Jarrett a. LobeLL

IN FULL COLOR
n unusual painted sculpture of a

A woman covered in jewels and seated on

a throne dating to the fourth century
b.c. was unearthed in a tomb in the southern
Spanish city of Baza in 1971. As soon as it was
out of the ground, the sculpture’s colors began
to fade. At the time, archaeologist Francisco
Presedo attempted to preserve the colors by
coating the sculpture in hair spray. Later, more
scientific conservation methods were applied.
Now, a team of researchers led by Teresa
Chapa Brunet of the Complutense University Lady of
of Madrid has employed digital photographic Baza
techniques to capture the original colors of sculpture
the Lady of Baza, as the sculpture is known.
By using polarizing filters, which eliminate
almost all reflected light, they have revealed
that the sculpture appears to represent an
Iberian woman wearing clothing typical of
the period, with lifelike skin tones and even
a double chin. Chapa Brunet notes that other
Iberian sculptures from the time tend to be
more idealized and stylized. “This is the only
Iberian stone sculpture to have been found in
a tomb, which suggests it was intended for a
private rather than a public context,” she says.
“This could explain the realism of its features.”
—DanieL Weiss

10 ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2021

 O Dr
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DIGS DISCOVERIES

TYPING TIME
bout 1,600 blocks of metal movable type from the movable type blocks from the period ever discovered in Korea.

A fifteenth and sixteenth centuries have been discovered

inside an earthenware pot underneath Jongno, one of
Seoul’s busiest tourist districts. This is the largest collection of
Six hundred of the pieces use hangul, the Korean alphabet, which
was created in 1433 and gradually replaced Chinese characters.
The earliest known examples of hangul metal movable type
are 30 pieces held by the National Museum of Korea, dating
to 1455, that were used by Korean royalty. Researchers believe
the new finds date from around the same time. The blocks
were found with other metal objects that commoners would
normally not have had access to, including artillery and parts
of an astronomical clock and a water clock—both of which are
described in royal documents.
During the Joseon period (1392–1910), the Jongno area of Seoul
was one of the city’s most prosperous financial and commercial
districts, as well as home to government officials and wealthy
merchants. Archaeologists believe the site where the type blocks
were found was likely a house’s storage room, and that the blocks
were buried with the intention of reusing them later. This may
have been a response to an unexpected event, such as the Japanese
invasion known as the Imjin War (1592–1598).
Type blocks inside pot
—Hyung-eun Kim

Hangul type blocks Chinese type blocks

Type blocks,
side view

12 ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2021


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DIGS DISCOVERIES

OTTO’S CHURCH
Felix Biermann of the State Office for Heritage Management
and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt. “Because they had no capital
cities, they would move from place to place every month or two.”
It’s unclear how much time Otto spent at this particular palace,
though an eleventh-century chronicle mentions that he was at
least present for the church’s inaugural services.
The settlement was abandoned in the thirteenth century,
but the church continued to be used until its destruction in the
fifteenth or sixteenth century. Inside and around the building,
archaeologists have already excavated more than 300 buri-
Aerial view als, many of them belonging to members of noble families,
of church
including children. Several graves contained earrings, pins,
excavations,
Helfta, Germany and enameled brooches. Among the arti-
facts recovered from the church are a
n a hill overlooking the village of thirteenth-century enameled bronze

O Helfta, Germany, archaeologists have

unearthed the remains of a cross-shaped stone
basilica commissioned by Otto the Great, ruler of the
Enameled
bronze
crucifix
crucifix and a fragment of a church bell.
—benJamin LeonarD

Eastern Frankish Kingdom (r. A.D. 936–973) and the Holy

Roman Empire (r. A.D. 962–973). Medieval chronicles
record that the church was built sometime before A.D. 968
and dedicated to Saint Radegundis, a sixth-century A.D.
princess who established the first women’s monastery in
France. The structure, which had three aisles and measured
about 100 feet long and 65 feet wide, once stood at the
center of a fortified settlement that served as a royal palace for
Otto and his successors. “This site was one of many palaces
where kings and emperors resided,” says archaeologist
Enameled metal brooch

AN IRISH IDOL
uring a road construction project in County Roscommon,

D archaeologists recovered a 1,600-year-old wooden idol

from a bog near the town of Gortnacrannagh. The
eight-foot-tall figure, which may represent a pagan deity, was
carved from a split oak trunk and has a small human-shaped
head as well as horizontal notches cut along its length. A dozen
similar ancient statues have been found across Ireland, but this
is the largest to date.
The idol’s discovery in a boggy landscape is significant. In
ancient Irish culture, watery places were commonly associated
with the supernatural otherworld, the realm of gods and heroes.
Archaeologists also discovered animal bones and a ritual dagger Wooden idol showing head and notches
nearby. “It was essentially a sacred wetland where, over several
thousand years, people deposited special objects,” says archaeolo- likely that this figure played a role in these rituals.”
gist Eve Campbell of Archaeological Management Solutions. “It’s —Jason urbanus

14 ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2021

 Yuan Dynasty painted tomb, Shandong Province, China

A FAMILY’S FINAL
RESTING PLACE
rchaeologists have unearthed a well-built and exquisitely decorated family

A mausoleum in Jinan, in eastern China’s Shandong Province, dating to the

Yuan Dynasty (1279–1368). The 12 tombs were built to high standards,
with gateways, domes, and double rooms, and contained complete sets of
furniture and painted murals. The
researchers also collected more
than 60 artifacts, including pottery,
porcelain, and bronze mirrors.
Only very wealthy people could
have afforded such luxury, says
lead researcher Qi Xing of the
Jinan Institute of Archaeology. In
some of the tombs, coffins were
buried under floor tiles to impede
grave robbers, a very rare design
feature, says Xing. The team has
identified the tomb owners based
on epitaphs and other written
evidence as the Guo family, well-
known businesspeople in the area.
The bodies are believed to include
those of at least five Guo brothers,
their families, and their mother.
The next step, Xing says, is to
conduct DNA tests to find out
more specifically how the tomb’s
Yuan Dynasty painted tomb,
owners were related.
Shandong Province, China
—Ling Xin

archaeology.org 15
DIGS DISCOVERIES
A PLACE OF THEIR OWN
Female skeleton, Tell Abraq
T
wo women buried in monumental four-millennia-old
tombs located near water towers in ancient Arabia likely
enjoyed special status. The tombs are associated with the
Umm an-Nar culture, which lasted from about 2700 to 2000
b.c., a time when pastoralists began to shift to oasis-based
agricultural systems in what is now the United Arab Emirates.
One woman was buried alongside a dog in a tomb at the site
of Shimal. The canine, says bioarchaeologist Lesley Gregoricka
of the University of South Alabama, appears to have been a
companion or work animal, rather than a food source. While
many of the other human remains in the tomb were cremated
A TRIP TO VENICE
cholars have long debated whether the Romans inhabited
S the Venetian lagoon, an enclosed bay on the Adriatic Sea
where Venice lies, in the centuries before the city was
Digital reconstruction of Roman road
16
and buried together,
Female and dog
skeleton, Shimal
the woman and her
dog were not cremat-
ed and were buried
on their own. Grego-
ricka speculates that
the woman may have
been a shepherd or
hunter, and that the
division of labor in
this culture may have
been more egalitar-
ian than it became in
later years. “The dog
may have also aided
her in some way—a lesion on her ankle could have impacted
her mobility,” Gregoricka says.
The other woman, who was buried in a similar type of tomb
at the site of Tell Abraq, was likely paralyzed from the waist
down. Strong markers where the muscles attached to her shoul-
der, forearm, and upper arm bones reveal a great deal of strain,
indicating she likely dragged herself around. Like the woman
from Shimal, this woman was buried on her own. It is unclear,
though, whether her special treatment in death represented a
type of tribute or ostracism, says Gregoricka.
—JosHua rapp Learn
founded in the fifth or sixth century A.D. Since much of the
Roman-era landscape is now submerged under Venice’s rising
waters, traces of the Romans’ presence have been difficult to
detect. However, a new investigation was able to locate and
map a stretch of a previously unknown Roman road now 18
feet beneath a waterway known as the Treporti Channel. The
road was likely once part of a network connecting the area to
the mainland and the Roman port city of Altinum. Underwater
archaeologists identified Roman artifacts dating to between the
first century b.c. and third century A.D., as well as the foundations
of a large stone building believed to have been part of the Roman
harbor infrastructure at the southern entrance to the lagoon.
“This changes the perspective on the significance of the Roman
settlements in the area,” says researcher Fantina Madricardo
of the Italian National Research Council’s Institute of Marine
Science. “They were not marginal, but permanent and diffuse.”
—Jason urbanus
ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2021
 JOURNEY
INTO THE
HEART OF
SALTY SNACK HISTORY
Since 1983, Far Horizons has been
designing unique trips led by
Mummified sheep leg, Chehrabad, Iran renowned PhD scholars for small
groups of sophisticated travelers
who desire a deeper knowledge of
both past and living cultures.

THE ANCIENT MAYA:

COPAN, TIKAL, PALENQUE
With Dr. Stanley Guenter
February 5 – 18, 2022
MEXICO’S YUCATAN
With Dr. Stanley Guenter
February 20 – March 2, 2022
MEXICO’S OLMECS
With Professor Karl Taube
March 19 – 28, 2022
MAJESTY OF EGYPT
With Dr. Bob Brier
March 19 – April 1, 2022
JORDAN & PETRA
With Professor Jennifer Tobin
March 26 – April 8, 2022
TURKISH COAST
BY PRIVATE YACHT
With Professor Jennifer Tobin
eginning sometime between the sixth and

B
April 25 – May 9, 2022
fourth centuries b.c. and continuing up until CYPRUS, RHODES & MALTA
the late twentieth century A.D., members of rural With Professor John France
April 27 – May 12, 2022
communities sporadically worked the Chehrabad salt mine CENTRAL MEXICO
in northwestern Iran. Since 1993, archaeologists have With Dr. Stanley Guenter
uncovered the remains of eight ancient miners whose April 30 – May 10, 2022

bodies were mummified by the mine’s salt-rich and low- EASTERN TURKEY
With Professor Jennifer Tobin
moisture environment, along with mummified animal May 13 – 28, 2022
remains, including a sheep’s leg that was discarded some ITALY: TUSCANY & UMBRIA
1,600 years ago. “The mine’s extremely dry conditions With Professor William R. Cook
May 16 – 27, 2022
quickly desiccated the sheep’s soft tissue,” says Trinity
THE VIKINGS:
College Dublin geneticist Conor Rossi. “Its DNA was DENMARK, NORWAY & SWEDEN
extremely well preserved.” With Dr. Steven Ashby
July 10 – 24, 2022
Examining the sheep’s DNA has allowed Rossi and
ENGLAND’S CASTLES
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tail, a characteristic still present in sheep raised for their
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Scanning electron microscopy of hair fibers preserved Cyprus & Malta • Jordan • Easter Island
on the animal’s leg confirmed that this particular sheep
likely had a hairy rather than a woolly coat. Given these
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the sheep for its meat. Says Rossi, “This sample builds
up a bigger story about how ancient people used special- Sheep
ized breeds of animals in thoughtful ways.” leg after 1-800-552-4575
—benJamin LeonarD cleaning www.farhorizons.com

archaeology.org 17
DIGS DISCOVERIES

THE AGE OF GLASS

mong Canterbury Cathedral’s architectural wonders developed for medieval stained glass,” says archaeologist Laura

A are its ornate, centuries-old stained glass windows. It

is now clear that some of the windows are even older
than originally thought. In the thirteenth century, 86 panels,
Ware Adlington, “and the success we’ve experienced far exceeds
our expectations.”
The team determined that the panel showing the prophet
each depicting an ancestor of Christ—known as the “ancestor Nathan, and likely those showing three others, are significantly
series”—were installed along the older than the rest. They date to
cathedral’s clerestory as part of Panel depicting the the 1130s, and are among the old-
a major restoration after an 1174 prophet Nathan est stained glass windows in the
fire. Experts noticed decades world. The researchers believe
ago that four of those panels that these early glass panels were
appeared to be of an earlier originally located in the cathe-
style. It is notoriously difficult dral’s choir and survived the fire.
to date stained glass since doing Almost a century later, they were
so normally requires the win- incorporated into the ancestor
dows to be dismantled. Using series. “Of course, we can’t help
a portable X-ray fluorescence but get excited by words like ‘old-
machine equipped with a spe- est’ and ‘earliest,’ but it is more
cially designed attachment, a than that,” says Adlington. “In
team from University College this case, the windows are sur-
London was finally able to date vivors of a fire, relics of a former
the glass panels by analyzing cathedral that is no longer there,
their chemical signatures. “This but which has left clues behind
study was the first real test of Ancestor series, Canterbury about its appearance.”
Cathedral, England
this in situ methodology that we —Jason urbanus

CHINA’S NEW HUMAN SPECIES

uring the Japanese occupation of China in 1933, a mixture of traits associated with Homo erectus, such as a massive

D man working on a bridge in the city of Harbin in the

northeastern part of the country discovered a skull
and immediately hid it from his Japanese overseers. In 2018,
the elderly man revealed his secret to his grandchildren, who
recovered the skull from the abandoned well where the man
had concealed it 85 years earlier. They turned the skull over to
scientists at the Geoscience Museum of Hebei GEO University.
The researchers determined that the skull is at least 146,000
years old by using uranium series dating, which examines trace
amounts of uranium and thorium in bone. Since uranium decays
to thorium at a known rate, they were able to calculate the skull’s
age from the ratio of the two elements. The skull has a unique
Homo longi  represent yet another separate hominin lineage dating to about
skull, front
and side
brow ridge and low forehead, and traits that appear only in more
recent hominins, such as a relatively small face and large brain.
The skull could possibly represent a previously unknown human
lineage, says Chris Stringer of London’s Natural History Museum.
Stringer’s colleagues have named the species Homo longi.
According to Stringer, it is also possible that the Harbin
specimen may belong to the same species as the Denisovans, a
lineage closely related to Neanderthals that is only known from
a few small bones and a complete DNA sequence. In order to
test this possibility, DNA would have to be recovered from
the Harbin skull. Stringer points out that another fragmentary
fossil skull, found at the site of Xuchang in central China, may
100,000 years ago. If that it is the case, there may have been
at least four different lineages of early humans in China at that
time—Neanderthals, Homo sapiens, Homo longi, and the Xuchang
hominin. “You’ve got all these different experiments in how to
be human,” says Stringer, “and Harbin adds one more.”
—ZacH ZoricH

18 ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2021

MESOPOTAMIAN WAR MEMORIAL 
mound in Syria now covered
A by a lake may have been a Tell Banat, Syria, prior to flooding
monument to the war dead of
an ancient Mesopotamian settlement
based at a site called Tell Banat. The
six-story structure was built of lime-
rich mud and gypsum that glistened
in the sunlight. Known as the White
Monument, it was excavated in the
1990s, before construction of a dam
flooded it. University of Toronto
archaeologist Anne Porter, who co-led
those excavations, recently tasked her undergraduate students
with revisiting the expedition’s copious notes. “The virtue of
having some distance in time is that you aren’t locked into
expectations of what the data might tell you,” says Porter.
The students found that artifacts and human and animal burials have embodied the story of a battle remembered for generations.
recovered from the last stage of the White Monument’s construc-
G R E AT
NEW
FINDS
AVA I L A B L E W H E R E V E R B O O K S A R E S O L D
NatGeoBooks @NatGeoBooks
archaeology.org
tion, around 2450 b.c., were laid out
in deliberate patterns. The remains of
adults and teenagers who had originally
been buried elsewhere were carefully
arranged in the monument near deposits
of clay pellets that were used in battle
as sling projectiles. Some remains were
buried near the skeletons of kunga, don-
key-like animals that pulled war wagons
in ancient Mesopotamia. Among the
artifacts found at the monument were
a clay figurine resembling a donkey and
a model of a war wagon. “We now believe this was a memorial to
members of a war party who served in a local conflict,” says Porter.
The White Monument would have been visible to the people of
Tell Banat and other settlements throughout the area, and may
—eric a. poWeLL
© 2021 National Geographic Partners, LLC
19
OFF THE GRID BY MARLEY BROWN

BODIE, CALIFORNIA
Bodie Standard Mining Company Stamp Mill, Bodie, California
N E VA D A
Yosemite National Park
San Francisco

CALIFORNIA Las Vegas

0 75 150 miles

An archetypal Old West boomtown full

of gunslinging outlaws and petticoat-
clad women can still be reached by car
about an hour’s drive from the eastern
gate of Yosemite National Park near
the California border with Nevada. In
1859, on the traditional homeland of
the Northern Paiute people, a group of
prospectors scanning the Eastern Sierra Abandoned building, Bodie, California
foothills for gold spotted some spar-
kling in a riverbed. They laid claim to
land that would become Bodie, which
grew into one of the most populous cit-
ies in California. Throughout the 1860s,
relatively small-time gold mining opera-
tions took place in the area, but in the
1870s, Bodie’s Standard Mining Compa-
ny made a rich strike of gold and silver,
and the city’s population exploded. By
1879, Bodie had more than 8,000 resi-
dents and 2,000 buildings—at least 60
of them saloons.
“Mining towns like Bodie are quite
distinctive, because they became instant
cities,” says archaeologist Paul White of
the University of Nevada, Reno. “Pretty ing general stores, laundries, gambling offered through the museum and by
early on, you would have had saloons, dens, and markets. the nonprofit Bodie Foundation, which
churches, banks, general stores. What’s The boom times did not last long. also publishes a guide to all the town’s
spectacular about Bodie is that even Bodie’s mines were mostly depleted by remaining buildings. White suggests
though just around five percent of the the mid-1880s. Two devastating fires rav- taking a tour of the Standard Mining
town’s structures remain, you don’t need aged the town, one in 1892 and another Company Stamp Mill, where raw ore
much imagination to envision the whole in 1932. The last residents decamped in was once crushed and precious metal
town as it was.” Miners as well as shop- the 1940s, after which the ghost town extracted from the rock.
keepers, saloonkeepers, madams, gro- was designated a state historic park and
cers, and others hoping to earn a living a national historic district. WHILE YOU’RE THERE
in the boomtown came from a variety of You don’t have to scale El Capitan to en-
ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. THE SITE joy Yosemite. Rafting or floating down the
Bodie’s Chinese community, like that in Bodie is open to visitors year-round, but Merced River is always a summertime fa-
many Old West towns, faced discrimi- the best time to come is in the summer vorite, as are horseback and mule rides.
nation and segregation, but operated a months, when the park’s museum and Information about these activities is avail-
number of successful businesses, includ- visitor center are also open. Tours are able on the park’s website.

20 ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2021

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AROUND THE WORLD BY JASON URBANUS

MICHIGAN: A campsite in southwest ENGLAND: A long-lost mon-

Michigan used by a band of hunters may astery associated with one of
be the earliest evidence of human habita- the most powerful women of
tion in the Great Lakes region. Stone tools the Middle Ages was finally lo-
and debris at the site indicate that members of a cated on the banks of the River
Paleoindian group known as the Clovis culture stopped there Thames in Cookham, Berkshire.
temporarily 13,000 years ago, at a time when Michigan was Queen Cynethryth, consort of
mostly covered with glaciers. The Clovis people were among King Offa of Mercia, was the
the first to occupy a wide swath of North America. Until re- only Anglo-Saxon queen to have coins issued in her name. Af-
cently, they were not thought to have ventured so far north. ter her husband died in A.D. 796, she retired to the monastery
and became the royal abbess. Cynethryth is likely buried on
the grounds, although her grave has yet to be discovered.

MEXICO: For more than a

decade, archaeologists have
been investigating a mysteri-
ous tunnel 60 feet beneath
the Temple of the Feathered
Serpent in Teotihuacan, from
which they have retrieved more
than 100,000 artifacts, includ-
ing ceramics and sculptures, as
well as human bones. The team
was recently astonished to SPAIN: Archaeologists
discover 4 very well-preserved working at the Roman
bouquets of flowers near the villa site of Los
end of the passageway. The Villaricos near the town
bouquets contain between of Mula uncovered
40 and 60 flowers each, and an ornate Visigothic
were likely deposited during a sarcophagus. The villa
sacred ritual 1,800 years ago. was repurposed into
a Christian basilica
and necropolis in the
6th century A.D. after
CHILE: In the Atacama Desert, one of the driest places on the Germanic Visigoths invaded the
Earth, the transition from a hunter-gatherer to an agricultural Iberian Peninsula. The lid of the 6.5-foot
society did not go smoothly. An examination of almost 200 hu- sarcophagus is decorated with geometric
man burials dating as far back as 800 B.C. revealed that many patterns and ivy leaves. It is also etched
of the remains displayed signs of violent trauma, including with a popular early Christian symbol,
fractured skulls, puncture wounds, and even facial mutilation. It the Christogram, which combines the
is believed that competition for arable land and water sparked first two Greek letters of Christ’s name, X
violence among neighboring villages or individuals. (chi) and P (rho).

22 ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2021

 GERMANY: A rare leaf-shaped spearpoint found in
Hohle Fels Cave has provided researchers with
new clues about Neanderthal hunting practices.
The finely crafted 3-inch blade was fashioned
from a piece of chert more than 65,000 years
ago. It would have been secured to a wooden
shaft using plant-based glue and animal
sinews. Rather than hurling it, Neanderthal
hunters thrust the spear into the sides of
large game such as reindeer and horses. While
being sharpened, the tip broke, which likely led
the hunters to discard it.
EGYPT: New underwater explora-
tion at Thonis-Heracleion located a
rare Ptolemaic-era military galley.
The 80-foot-long vessel is only the
second of its kind found. It was
moored next to the city’s temple
of Amun when a 2nd-century B.C.
earthquake caused the structure’s stone blocks to collapse
onto the ship and sink it. The city was one of the most impor-
tant Mediterranean ports in Egypt before a series of apocalyp-
tic earthquakes plunged it entirely into the sea.
archaeology.org
RUSSIA: A man buried with a
trove of amber objects may
have been a Mesolithic merchant
who traveled to the shores of
Lake Onega 5,500 years ago.
The merchant’s grave contained
around 150 small pieces of am-
ber, including discs, pendants, buttons, and jewelry, and was
covered with red ochre paint. Since the amber came from the
eastern Baltic Sea region, researchers theorize that the man
hailed from that area and ventured farther east to exchange
his semiprecious stones for slate cutting tools.
JAPAN: The remains of a large
colonnaded building were
unearthed at the site of the
former Heijo Palace in Nara.
The building dates to the 8th
century A.D., during the Nara
Period when the city of Heijo-
kyu was Japan’s capital. The
structure was likely part of a
residence used by emperors
and the imperial family, partic-
ularly the empress Koken, also
called Shotoku (r. A.D. 749–758
and A.D. 765–770).
CHINA: Microfossil residue analysis of ceramic
cups found in a 9,000-year-old burial mound at
Qiaotou indicates that the dead were sometimes
commemorated through ritual beer-drinking
ceremonies. This is the earliest evidence of
such activity. The cups, which are also the old-
est examples of painted pottery in the world,
were found to have once contained an alcoholic
concoction made from rice, a grain called Job’s tears, and
unknown tubers. The sophisticated fermentation process was
aided by the inclusion of a specialized mold starter.
23
When Isis
Was Queen
At the ancient Egyptian temples of
Philae, Nubians gave new life to a
vanishing religious tradition
By I’ K

24 ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2021

 Two monumental pylons form the entryway
to the temple of Isis at Philae, which was
built by the pharaoh Ptolemy II beginning
around 260 B.C. Reliefs on this pylon
depict the pharaoh Ptolemy XII smiting his
enemies and preparing to sacrifice them to
the gods Isis, Horus, and Hathor.

archaeology.org 25
W
HEN THE ROMANS conquered Egypt the river-which marked the historical border between
in 30 B.C., the country’s system of ancient Egypt and Nubia, also known as Kush. In this
temples, which had sustained religious region of Kush, called Lower Nubia, the temple complex
traditions dating back more than at Philae was just one of many that were built on islands in
3,000 years, began to slowly wither the Nile and along its banks. Throughout the long history
away. Starved of of Egypt and Nubia, Lower Nubia was a
the funds that pharaohs traditionally sup- First Cataract kind of buffer zone between these two
plied to religious institutions, priests lost EGYPT lands and a place where the two cultures
their vocation and temples fell into disuse D am Lower heavily influenced one another. “Often
w Nubia
throughout the country. The introduction Lo official Egyptian texts were demeaning
wan Temple
As of Dakka
of Christianity in the first century A.D. only Second Cataract
to Nubians,” says Egyptologist Solange
hastened this process. But there was one Philae Temples Kerma
SUDAN
Ashby of the University of California,
Biga
exception to this trend: In the temples on Island Upper Meroe Los Angeles. “But this cultural arro-
Nubia
the island of Philae in the Nile River, rites gance doesn’t reflect the lived reality of
Temple of
dedicated to the goddess Isis and the god Musawwarat Egyptians and Nubians being neighbors,
es-Sufra
Osiris continued to be celebrated in high intermarrying, sharing cultural and reli-
style for some 500 years after the Roman gious practices. These were people who
conquest. This final flowering of ancient interacted for millennia.”
Egyptian religion was only possible because From 300 B.C. to A.D. 300, Nubia was
of the piety and support of Egypt’s neigh- h D am ruled from the capital city of Meroe. The
ig
bors to the south, the Nubians. an H Meroitic kings took a special interest in
Asw
Philae lies just south of the Nile’s 0 1 2 miles Philae, where the most important Egyptian
first cataract-one of six rapids along temple dedicated to Isis was located. In

The island of Agilkia is now home to Philae’s temple of Isis and a number of other sacred structures that were moved there when
the island was flooded by the Aswan High Dam, whose construction began in the 1960s.

26 ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2021

part this may have been because
the island had been significant to
the Nubians for centuries. Even
its ancient Egyptian name, Pilak,
which means “Island of Time”
or “Island of Extremity,” may
have been of Nubian origin. And
while many of the other temples
on Philae were built by Egypt’s
Ptolemaic kings, Greek rulers who
held sway from 304 to 30 B.C.,
the continued survival of the reli-
gious practices there owed much
to the Meroitic kings. They, and
later other Nubian rulers, funded
annual celebrations at Philae and
devoted resources to maintain-
ing its temples in the centuries
before Christianity finally eclipsed
Egypt’s ancient traditions.
Recent research has high-
lighted the deep and enduring
nature of this connection. Ashby A temple known as the Kiosk of Nectanebo was built at Philae during the reign of the pharaoh
has studied a corpus of ancient Nectanebo I and was probably used as a shrine for the Nubian-Egyptian god known as Thoth Pnubs.
inscriptions recorded at Philae
in the early twentieth century by British Egyptologist Francis are asking questions not only about how Nubians celebrated
Llewellyn Griffith and, more recently, by the late Egyptolo- their own beliefs and combined them with traditional Egyptian
gist Eugene Cruz-Uribe of Indiana University East. Among religious practices, but also about how they kept Egyptian rituals
these, she identified at least 98 dedicated to Isis and Osiris alive
inscriptions that were written long after they had died out else-
on the walls of the temples at where in the land of the pharaohs.
Philae on behalf of Nubians.

T
These are mainly in the form of ODAY, THE ISLAND OF
prayers offered to the gods. These Philae lies submerged as a
inscriptions were written mostly result of the construction
in Greek and Demotic, a script of the Aswan High Dam. All the
used for writing ancient Egyptian, complex’s structures were moved
though some were also written in to higher ground on the nearby
the Nubians’ own Meroitic script, island of Agilkia in the 1960s and
which remains largely undeci- 1970s. These include the island’s
phered. Ashby expected the main temple, dedicated to Isis, and
inscriptions to have been com- its entryway of two monumental
missioned by Nubian pilgrims to sets of pylons, as well as a number
Philae, but she found that many of smaller temples dedicated
were left by Nubians who had to other gods. Archaeological
a much deeper connection to excavations on the island prior
the island. “High-ranking priests, to the flooding showed that, for
temple financial administrators, much of Egyptian history, Philae
and officials were sent to Philae was not a major Egyptian religious
as representatives of the king site along the lines of Thebes or
in Meroe,” says Ashby. “Those Memphis, but that it did seem to
Nubians eventually held power in have long-standing significance to
the temple administration.”
By exploring the millennium- A relief in Philae’s temple of Isis
long presence of Nubians at Phi- depicts a Ptolemaic queen (left)
lae, Ashby and other researchers following the goddess Isis (right).

archaeology.org 27
Nubians. This may have had to do with its proximity to the
island of Biga, where Nubians worshipped Hathor, a goddess
who took the form of a cow. Hathor was especially revered in
Nubia, where many people were pastoralists.
The earliest clear evidence of the Nubian connection to
Philae dates to the reign of the Kushite kings who invaded
Egypt in the eighth century B.C. and ruled it for nearly a
century as the 25th Dynasty. One of the dynasty’s mightiest
pharaohs, Taharqo (r. 690–664 B.C.), oversaw the construction
of new temples and a revival of ancient Egyptian culture in the
Nile Valley. This included commissioning a complex at Philae
dedicated to Amun, a chief ancient Egyptian and Kushite
deity closely associated with kingship. Blocks from this temple
inscribed with Taharqo’s name were unearthed in the twentieth
century before the island was submerged.
A number of extant small temples in the forecourt of the
temple of Isis that were dedicated to Nubian gods provide
further evidence that Philae was significant to Nubians.
One such temple was devoted to Arensnuphis, a local god of
A relief (above) at the temple
of Musawwarat es-Sufra
in Sudan shows the Nubian
lion-headed god Apedemak. A granite
sphinx statue (right) depicts the Nubian pharaoh
Taharqo, who commissioned an early temple at Philae.
28
Lower Nubia who is often depicted as a desert hunter and
companion of Isis, and who sometimes appears as a lion.
Another small temple, in the form of a kiosk, or a colonnaded
pavilion, was built at Philae during the reign of the pharaoh
Nectanebo I (r. 380–362 B.C.), founder of the 30th Dynasty,
the last native-born Egyptian dynasty. Cruz-Uribe proposed
that the building was used as a shrine for a hybrid Nubian-
Egyptian god known as Thoth Pnubs, whose name links him
to the ancient Nubian city of Kerma, which was known as
Pnubs to the Nubians. There was also a small temple at Philae
dedicated to the Nubian deity Mandulis, a sun god associated
with the nomadic people known as the Blemmyes, who lived
in the deserts to the east of Egypt and Nubia. “There are all
kinds of Nubian religious activities that happened before the
Ptolemaic Isis temple was erected,” says Ashby.
A
NOTHER PIECE OF EVIDENCE linking Nubian religious
practices to Philae is found on some of the massive
reliefs in the island’s temples that depict Ptolemaic
pharaohs and other important religious officials offering liba-
tions to gods, often Isis and Osiris and their son Horus. In
Egyptian mythology, Osiris was killed and dismembered by
his brother Seth. Their sister and Osiris’ wife, Isis, managed
to reassemble his body and he was brought back to life as
the god of the underworld. The Egyptians offered libations,
usually water or wine, to Osiris during rituals intended to
symbolically aid in his rebirth. At Philae, depictions of this
ritual include examples that show Ptolemaic pharaohs offer-
ing Osiris water in two small bottles, as was customary in
Egyptian practice. However, others appear to show them
offering Osiris libations of milk, which they pour out before
the god from a situla, a long narrow vessel with a looped
handle. This, Ashby believes, was a distinctly Nubian prac-
tice. “What we see at these temples is this different type of
libation, which is to pour out a stream of milk that goes over
offerings laid out on an offering table,” she says.
Egyptologists have debated for a century whether or not
these scenes are intended to depict milk libations or offerings
of wine or water. “I say this is milk,” says Ashby. She points
to a scene inside the temple of Isis at Philae depicting Ptol-
emy VIII (r. 170–116 B.C.) offering a libation to
Osiris, with Isis standing behind the god. “The
hieroglyphs around him say this milk comes
from the breast of the goddess Hesat,” Ashby
explains, referring to a celestial cow goddess.
Some scholars have argued that even if
the depictions show milk libations, they
must represent an Egyptian tradition. For
Ashby, even though the depictions of the
milk libation occur in Ptolemaic
temples, the ritual is a purely
Nubian practice. “I sug-
gest they adopted it from
Nubian worshippers,” she
says. She points out that
the earliest depictions of
ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2021

milk libations are found in Lower Nubia at the temple of
Dakka, in a sanctuary that was built by the Meroitic king
Arkamani (r. 275–250 B.C.). Milk libations are also depicted
in royal funeral chapels farther south, in Upper Nubia, which
is part of modern-day Sudan. At the temple of Musawwarat
es-Sufra, for example, reliefs depict herdsmen preparing milk
offerings for the Nubian lion-headed god Apedemak. But
there are no such depictions in temples north of the first
cataract, in Egypt proper.
Hieroglyphs at Philae’s temple of Isis refer to milk as
ankh-was, or “life and power.” “Milk seems to be infused
with this magical element of transferring life and power to
the one who is deceased, much in the way that the breast
milk of a mother keeps her infant alive and growing,” says
Ashby. “There seems to be this connection in the mind of
Nubians.” For the Nubians, then, milk would have been the
A relief (above left) at the Kiosk of Nectanebo depicts a pharaoh offering libations to Isis in two small bottles. Another relief
(above right) at Philae’s Gate of Hadrian shows a pharaoh pouring a milk libation to the gods over an offering table.
ideal offering to aid in the rebirth of Osiris.
Milk libation rituals would have been performed during
annual funerary rites for Osiris. Known as the Festival of
Entry, this ceremony was held during the month of Khoiak,
in the early fall, when the Nile flooding reached its peak.
Gilded statues of Isis and Osiris were taken from the Isis
temple at Philae to boats moored outside a structure known
as the Gate of Hadrian. They were then rowed across the
Nile to the island of Biga, where Osiris was thought to have
been buried. There, at a sanctuary known as the Abaton, milk
libations were offered to the god.
Ashby notes that, until quite recently, milk played a
central role in rituals surrounding death in Nubia. Within
living memory, a widow would traditionally pour milk on her
husband’s grave on the second day after his death, a distant
echo, perhaps, of the milk libations offered to Osiris.
archaeology.org
D
URING A REBELLION AGAINST Ptolemaic rule in
southern Egypt that lasted from 205 to 186 B.C.,
Meroitic rulers seized control of Lower Nubia and
took possession of Philae’s temple precincts. Once Ptolemaic
forces regained control of the region, the Nubians were forced
to pay an annual tax to the priests at Philae. This ensured they
would be allowed to continue visiting the island to worship
their own gods. Prayer inscriptions left on the walls of the
temples during this period were made by Greek and Egyptian
officials and pilgrims, but none were left by Nubians.
That changed once the Romans annexed Egypt and
temple revenues began to dwindle. Ashby has identified
several inscriptions at Philae dating to between 10 B.C. and
A.D. 57 associated with the names of Nubians who were active
there. Their titles indicate they were local Nubians who
were leaders of cult organizations or village elders. Written
in Demotic, the inscriptions were left mainly on the walls of
temples dedicated to Nubian gods. They record mandatory
donations to singers at temples or to specific temples,
including those honoring the Nubian gods Arensnuphis and
Thoth Pnubs. During this period, the forecourt of the temple
of Isis was expanded, probably to accommodate the numbers
of Nubians coming to worship on Philae. While there do
not seem to have been Nubian priests at Philae during the
early Roman period, Nubians were involved in the temple
administration, and were perhaps in a position to monitor
how their tithes were being spent.
A second group of inscriptions Ashby has identified date
from A.D. 175 to 275 and reflect the pinnacle of Nubian influ-
ence at Philae. Many of these inscriptions were commissioned
by Nubians who, by this point, were active as priests at the top
of the religious hierarchy. The inscriptions, which were made
29
A 26-line inscription (above left) on the Gate of Hadrian records the Nubian envoy Sasan’s participation in rites held on the island
in A.D. 253. A figure (above right) near the inscription may be intended to represent Sasan.

in the most restricted areas of the temples, show that Nubians and statues depicting Isis and Osiris.
were claiming the loftiest religious titles, such as prophet or The inscriptions are not just filled with pious expressions.
purity priest, as well as Meroitic titles such as the King’s Son They also detail particulars of the annual voyage made by
of Kush and the Royal Scribe of Kush. The inscriptions also envoys from the kings of Meroe to the Festival of Entry, such as
refer to the Nubian priests’ astronomical knowledge and imply the amount of gold the Meroitic rulers sent to Philae. The lon-
that they were fluent in Egyptian, Greek, and Meroitic. Most gest such inscription was written on behalf of one of Meroe’s
prominent in the inscriptions are five generations of a Nubian envoys to Rome, a man named Sasan. Dating to April 10, A.D.
family known as the Wayekiyes, who were powerful priests and 253, this is not just the longest Demotic inscription at Philae,
who had both religious and military obligations. but the longest known in Egypt. Its 26-line text suggests that
Many of the inscriptions in the most sacred spaces refer to Nubian pilgrims and priests journeying to Philae played both
the annual Festival of Entry celebrations that honored Osiris political and religious roles at the temples. In the inscrip-
and Isis. While some Egyptian names do appear in references tion, Sasan discusses how he was commanded by the king
to the festival, most of the participants appear to have been of Meroe to set aside funds and throw a party for the entire
Nubian, in particular members of the Wayekiye family, says district. “When these Nubian priests came, the local popula-
Egyptologist Jeremy Pope of the College of William and
Mary. “In addition to being a focus of sincere piety, theological
reflection, and communal bonds,” he says, “the worship of Isis
would also have been important to elite Nubian families like
the Wayekiyes as an occupation, a mark of social status, and
thus a source of political power.”
Ashby says that Nubian inscriptions tend to be clustered
together at Philae in particular buildings, such as the Gate
of Hadrian and a room in the temple of Isis known as the
Meroitic Chamber. She notes that Nubians seem to have been
especially interested in leaving inscriptions near depictions of
milk libations, reinforcing their importance in Kushite rituals.
The Nubian expressions of piety also differ from those left
by Greeks, which are short, often one-line inscriptions, and
by Egyptians, which tend to be dry and repetitive. “They are
much more heartfelt, longer, and more reverent toward Isis,”
says Ashby. “They often have very dramatic phrases, such as ‘I A depiction of the Nubian crocodile god Ptiris was scratched into
am bending my arm, I am calling out to you, Isis!’” It’s likely a colonnade outside the Isis temple by some of the last priests
that Nubians recited these prayers aloud in front of the reliefs who practiced traditional Egyptian religion in Philae’s temples.

30 ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2021

tion would have been so excited to see them arriving on their
majestic ships down the Nile,” says Ashby. “They knew that
the Nubians were coming with pounds and pounds of gold, and
that part of that money would be used to buy and slaughter
animals and to provide beer, music, and dancing.” The entire
district, the inscription says, celebrated for eight days in the
forecourt of the Isis temple at Philae. From a long colonnade
along the west side of the island, people could watch as Sasan
crossed the Nile with his entourage to the Abaton sanctuary
on Biga to worship Osiris. Another festival sponsored by the
kings of Meroe was nearing its end, and Philae’s coffers were
replenished for another year.

N
UBIAN SPONSORSHIP OF the temples at Philae ensured
the continued survival of the worship of ancient
Egyptian gods for centuries. But by the fourth
century A.D., Christianity had begun to win many converts in
the region. Around this time, Meroe fell to the Axum Empire,
based in modern-day Ethiopia, ending Nubia’s contribution
to the rites at Philae. Christians and adherents of traditional

A depiction of the Nubian sun god Mandulis on the Gate

of Hadrian is accompanied by the last known hieroglyphic
inscription anywhere, which dates to A.D. 394.

probably placed there to avoid scrutiny by Christians. One

This Christian imagery was carved into the walls of Philae’s
temple of Isis after the building was appropriated by
Christians in the fourth century A.D.
Egyptian and Nubian religions, however, continued to share
the island for at least another 100 years. Ashby has found that a
number of Nubian inscriptions date to this period, from about
A.D. 408 to 456. These were made by priests representing the
kings of the Blemmyes and included religious officials known as
the prophets of Ptiris, a crocodile-like Nubian god. A Nubian
family known as the Esmets served at Philae as priests for three
generations, and its members eventually attained the rank of
First Prophet of Isis. But the inscriptions they left were in
isolated and marginal areas of the temple complex, suggesting
that the priests no longer had access to the most sacred spaces.
They even made inscriptions on the roof of the Isis temple,
Demotic inscription, on the western wall of the temple of Isis,
refers to “an abominable command,” possibly an allusion to the
A.D. 435 edict of the Roman emperor Theodosius II (r. A.D.
408–450) that called for the destruction of all pagan temples
in the empire. The last Demotic inscription was written in
A.D. 452 on the roof of the temple of Isis, and the last pagan
Greek inscription was made in A.D. 456.
The Nubians continued practicing their traditional reli-
gion at Philae until the Byzantine emperor Justinian (r. A.D.
527–565) outlawed pagan worship on the island. Perhaps
nothing better illustrates the manner in which the Nubians
preserved these ancient traditions than a hieroglyphic
inscription inside the Gate of Hadrian that accompanied a
depiction of the sun god Mandulis. The inscription was made
by Esmet-Akhom, a member of the Esmet priestly family, and
refers to words spoken by Mandulis “for all time and eternity.”
It dates to A.D. 394 and is the latest hieroglyphic text known
anywhere. “This final hieroglyphic inscription was made for
a Nubian god,” says Ashby. For her, it comes as no surprise
that the site where the last Egyptian hieroglyphs were written
was, in fact, a sacred Nubian space. Q
Isma’il Kushkush is a journalist based in Washington, D.C.

archaeology.org 31
32 ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2021
Piecing Together
Maya Creation Stories
Thousands of mural fragments from the city of San Bartolo
illustrate how the Maya envisioned their place in the universe
By Z Z

S
OME 2,000 YEARS AGO, Maya leaders in the city which was located at the base of the temple, known today as
of San Bartolo entered a temple chamber with the Pyramid of Paintings.
vibrant murals depicting supernatural beings and Many of the figures painted on the chamber’s south and
mythical humans painted on its walls. Then they east walls were broken by hammer blows, and the plaster frag-
destroyed them. ments containing their faces were removed. The walls were then
Although the murals—painted exclusively with knocked down. The chamber, which was just above ground level
black, red, yellow, and white pigments—had and opened onto a public plaza, was sealed off
been executed by three master artists, some Fragments (facing page) by a new wall. Builders faced the entire pyramid
cycle of time known only to the city’s priests of a destroyed mural from in a new layer of stone, and a new structure was
the Pyramid of the Paint-
had ended, and so too had the murals’ life span. ings in the Maya city of San built. Most of the chamber, which had been
The artwork had probably been commissioned Bartolo in Guatemala date created during the sixth such renovation of
by the city’s rulers and had been on display for to about 100 B.C. A recon- the pyramid, was left relatively intact. But its
50 to 100 years, but the time had come to build structed image (above) remaining murals were hidden from view until
a new temple over the old one. This renovation from the mural depicts the 2001, when University of Boston archaeologist
god Wak Tok.
meant tearing down part of the mural chamber, William Saturno discovered the chamber during

archaeology.org 33
a survey in Guatemala’s Petén rain forest.
Until then, the site had been known only
to the local Maya community.
Close study of the intact San Bar-
tolo murals revealed that the narrative San Bartolo
they told is an ancient version of the
creation story Maya people were still
recounting when the Spanish arrived
0 5
in the sixteenth century. This story was
recorded in an eighteenth-century text
known as the Popol Vuh. These murals are among the earliest
known Maya wall paintings, but their style and iconography
seem to researchers to reach even further back in time. “One of
the beautiful things about the discovery of San Bartolo is that
it’s a distillation of a lot of key concepts of Maya cosmology in
one place,” says archaeologist David Stuart of the University
of Texas at Austin. “We’re looking at a system of iconography
that’s already quite developed and quite old by 100 B.C.”
The chamber’s destruction initially obscured the narrative’s
beginning and end. According to Skidmore College archaeolo-
gist and National Geographic Explorer Heather Hurst, who
codirects the San Bartolo Project with her colleague Boris
Beltrán, also of Skidmore College, the destruction was not
simply part of the building’s renovation. It was also part of a
ritual that commemorated the end of one cycle of time and
the beginning of another. Since painting the chamber had
imbued it with supernatural significance, destroying some of
the murals to clear the way for the renewed temple without
acknowledging and managing the paintings’ power could have
meant angering supernatural beings. “You can’t just bury it,”
says Hurst. “As the new temple is built, you are honoring the
temple that came before it.”
Not all the fragments from the destroyed murals were
removed from the chamber during this ritual. About 3,400 of
them remained piled on the floor. It took 10 years, beginning
in 2002, to excavate and col-
lect them all. It took another
six years for the team to reas-
semble them under the watch-
ful eye of the University of
New Mexico’s Angelyn Bass,
who has been the project’s
principal conservator since
the first mural fragments were
collected. This painstaking
process involved fitting the
plaster fragments together
like jigsaw puzzle pieces and
studying them using X-ray
fluorescence, a technique that
allows the researchers to iden-
tify subtle variations in the
amount of the element bari-
um in the plaster. They used This reconstructed partial image from a destroyed mural at San Bartolo shows two creator gods
this information to match sitting inside a four-lobed shape that represents a cave in the underworld. Between them is a
pieces with similar chemi- gourd marked with glyphs that read “blood of humanity.”
34
cal compositions. The reassembled
MEXICO
fragments are now on display at the
National Museum of Archaeology and
BELIZE Ethnology in Guatemala City.
GUATEMALA
By the end of the process, the team
had reassembled enough painted frag-
ments from the beginning and end
of the murals’ narrative to more fully
10 miles
re-create the experience of viewing the
murals as they appeared 2,000 years
ago. “You would have entered the room and been immersed
in a series of stories,” says Hurst. She believes the painted
chamber may have been a place where young initiates to the
priesthood learned how the cosmos was created.
Stuart sees the murals as a creation story in four acts that
not only lays out humanity’s place in the universe, but also
establishes the basis for the rulership of the ajaw, or king,
and the proper way to make sacrificial offerings to the gods.
Reassembling the mural fragments has allowed Stuart, Hurst,
and their colleague Karl Taube of the University of Califor-
nia, Riverside, to glimpse a creation narrative that is at once
familiar from the Popol Vuh and features previously unknown
or obscure Maya deities and religious concepts. These four
scenes, each of which seems to be linked to one of the first
four days of a ritual calendar, function as a sort of picture book
that expresses ancient Maya ideas about community and the
role of humanity in the cosmos.
I: CREATION OF THE WORLD
T
HE CENTER OF THE FIRST scene is a fragmentary image
from the demolished east wall that depicts a four-lobed
shape representing a cave. As reconstructed by the
team, this section of the mural shows two humanlike creator
gods seated within the cave and implies that the gods are in
ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2021
 tolo, are shown bringing gifts
out of the Flower Mountain
and presenting them to the
maize god. The god in turn
distributes them to the other
people in the scene. One of
the couples kneels before the
god. The woman holds a bas-
ket containing tamales, while,
in front of her, the kneeling
man holds a gourd full of
water above his head. On the
other side of the maize god,
another ancestral couple hold
bundles that were taken from
the cave, which Taube believes
may contain sacred books.
When viewed as a whole,
this first scene shows the con-
ditions being created for the
In this intact mural from San Bartolo, a woman kneels in front of a cave mouth in the supernatural birth of humanity and Maya
paradise called Flower Mountain. She holds a pot containing tamales, a gift she has brought for
the maize god, who is emerging from the cave.
society. The creator gods have
made the blood from which
the underworld. Between the two gods is a gourd marked with humanity will be born, and the ancestors have emerged from
glyphs that say the gourd holds “the blood of humanity.” To the the underworld to bring forth maize and water, which form
right of the cave is an image of the rain god Chahk sitting on the basis of Maya life and community.
a temple platform and receiving an offering of tamales from a
hand that Hurst believes may belong to the maize god’s wife. II: BIRTH OF HUMANITY
Tamales were a common Maya offering that evoked maize as

A
one of the foundations of life. T THE CENTER OF THE second scene, an image depicts
The rest of the scene continues on the intact north wall, Earth as a turtle floating in primordial waters, reflect-
where the mural depicts the mountain god known as Witz, ing the ancient Maya belief that they lived on the
whose gaping mouth also represents a cave. Animals, includ- back of a turtle swimming in the ocean. Inside the image of
ing a jaguar, an iguana, snakes,
and birds, emerge between
flowers and other plants sur-
rounding Witz’s mouth. This
imagery suggests that the
cave is an opening into a
supernatural paradise known
as the Flower Mountain, a
sacred place in the cosmology
of many cultures throughout
Mesoamerica. For the Maya,
the Flower Mountain was a
place of creation. The sun god
emerged from the mountain
each morning, while the maize
god emerged once a year. It
was also where, in a distant
time, the ancestors of the
Maya originated.
In this scene, four human
couples, who may have been
the founders of lineages of This intact mural from San Bartolo shows an unidentified god watching infants burst out of a
families who lived in San Bar- gourd, symbolizing the birth of humanity.

archaeology.org 35
the turtle, the maize god dances and plays a turtle-shell drum.
Immediately to the right of Turtle Earth, a human ruler is
shown being enthroned. To the right of the throne, two sets
of infant twins burst out of a gourd, which may be the same
one that holds the blood of humanity in the first scene. A
fifth child emerges from the gourd with arms raised. “With
that exploding gourd and the infants, now we’re looking at
the birth of humanity,” says Stuart.
To the left of this scene, a series of partially intact images
shows the maize god’s enthronement as a mythical ruler,
and his birth, death, and rebirth. This image of the god’s
enthronement establishes a basis for Maya rulership. The
researchers believe the scene would have impressed on
ancient Maya viewers that the rulers of San Bartolo received
their authority from the maize god.
III: WORSHIPPING THE GODS
T
HE NEXT SCENE is the best preserved of the narrative.
It shows four young men standing and offering sacri-
fices in front of supernatural trees that anchor Earth
at its four cardinal directions. At the top of each tree sits a
monstrous bird scholars have named the Principal Bird Deity.
According to Taube, the bird deity has a dual nature—it is
associated with creation and the sun but also with darkness.
The tree closest to the center of the scene has the twisted
trunk of a gourd tree. The bird deity is shown descending
from heaven to land in it.
All four of the young men making sacrifices, says Taube,
are depictions of Hunahpu, one of the mythical hero twins
who are the protagonists of many Maya stories. In three of
In this intact mural from San Bartolo, a mythical hero named Hunahpu makes a sacrificial
offering of his own blood. An image to the left of Hunahpu depicts a supernatural tree; to
his right is an image of a turkey being offered as a sacrifice.
36
the images, Hunahpu is shown carrying animals that he has
hunted, which he offers as a sacrifice. The three animals are a
fish representing the underworld, a deer representing Earth,
and a turkey representing the sky. In the fourth depiction of
the hero, Hunahpu has sacrificed aromatic flowers. In each
of the four images he is shown impaling his genitals as an act
of ritual bloodletting. Hurst says this scene, on the chamber’s
west wall, establishes the basis for the Maya’s negotiations with
supernatural powers through sacrifice.
IV: ENTERING THE UNDERWORLD
T
HE LAST SCENE is from the destroyed south wall and has
been entirely reconstructed from fragments. It takes
viewers into the underworld and though it is the least
complete scene, it has several identifiable figures. The most
complete image depicts an aspect of the sun god known as the
solar eagle, according to Stuart and Taube. The deity has the
glyph for “sun” painted on his cheek. Above the sun god is a
depiction of an obscure god named Wak Tok. Stuart believes
that Wak Tok is related to the rain god Chahk, but very little
is known about the deity. There is only one other reference to
Wak Tok, which dates to A.D. 700 and was found on a stone
panel at the site of Palenque in southern Mexico. “We are
missing much of this mythical religious knowledge,” Stuart
says, adding that it was probably kept in books that have not
survived. “We just happen to see little pieces of this lost world,
and Wak Tok Chahk is a great example of a Maya deity who
was important enough to be in the murals, yet there are only
two mentions of him anywhere in the Maya region.”
Two figures stand behind the sun god. One is a depiction
of an unknown male deity who has
star markings on his legs, indicat-
ing that he has some connection
to the night. The other wears a
headdress made of a bloody femur
and an eyeball that sprays blood.
Taube has identified this grim
individual as the god Akan. “He
is the god of alcohol and drunk-
enness,” says Taube. “He’s also
a very unpleasant death god.” A
long curving forelock of hair, one
of the identifying marks of the
maize god, also features on Akan’s
headdress. Taube believes these
different iconographic elements
suggest that the figure of Akan also
represents the dead maize god,
whom the Maya imbibed in the
form of maize beer. The maize god
is a central cultural hero in Maya
stories. He sets the world in order,
says Taube, and even in death he
provides something. “When you
drink fermented maize beer,” he
ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2021

This reconstructed partial image from a destroyed mural at San Bartolo shows
the dead maize god kneeling before a platform on which an eagle deity who
represents the sun stands. The figure at the upper right is an unidentified deity.
says, “you’re drinking the rotting maize god.”
Stuart says that while the meaning of the fourth scene
remains elusive, it seems to abound in images of death. He
points out that the fourth day in the ritual calendar is Ak’bal,
which means “darkness,” ending the narrative in the same
supernatural space where the first scene begins.
T
HE CHAMBER AT THE BASE of the Pyramid
of the Paintings isn’t the only space
in the building that was furnished
with such rich visual narratives. During the
same construction phase in which the lower
chamber was built, another chamber was
constructed at the top of the temple. Its
interior was once decorated with its own
finely painted murals. The archaeologists
have named this chamber Ixim, which is one
of the Maya’s words for maize.
These murals feature blue-green, dark green,
brown, and purple pigments in addition to the
lower chamber’s simpler color palette. They also have a large
number of hieroglyphic inscriptions. The style of some of
the motifs in these murals is identical to that of those in the
lower mural chamber, but they are painted with a much finer
hand. These paintings were also destroyed in the same ritual
during which the murals of the lower chamber were smashed.
About 3,200 mural fragments have been recovered from the
archaeology.org
Ixim chamber, and they are now being pieced
together. The overall narrative told in the mural
is still unclear, but facets of the story have
begun to emerge. According to Taube, some
of these murals reference mountains in distant
places. One fragment depicts a pine tree, which
is not native to the Petén rain forest. Some of
the other fragments show the mountain god
Witz devouring blood, which Taube says indi-
cates that Maya artists may have been marking
the mountains as a place of sacrifice.
The Ixim chamber’s location at the top of
the pyramid made it difficult to access. This
suggests that the paintings were viewed mainly
by a specialized group of royalty and fully initi-
ated priests, unlike the creation mural at ground
level, which would have been more easily viewed
by initiates or lower-ranking members of society.
“Public art was a way for rulers to promote
ideology and community building,” says Hurst.
The lower chamber’s creation story likely func-
tioned in this way, as a means for the people of
San Bartolo to learn about their shared history
and beliefs. By contrast, the Ixim chamber
displays private art, which featured stories and
ritual knowledge that would have only been
passed on to specialized initiates. “The Ixim
chamber is where they really did the business,”
says Taube. “The most important rituals were
not public.” San Bartolo’s high-ranking citizens would have
considered the Ixim chamber a house for the gods and would
likely have stored sacred regalia and books there.
Comparing the murals of the lower chamber with those of
the Ixim chamber will eventually allow researchers to explore
the differences in the public and private messages sent
A fragment from a destroyed mural in the
Ixim chamber in San Bartolo’s Pyramid of
Paintings depicts leaves.
by San Bartolo’s rulers. “The Ixim chamber
is another set of murals that could have a
revolutionary impact on our understanding
of Maya religion and politics,” says Hurst. It’s
likely that the Ixim chamber murals told stories
that the Maya understood on many different levels,
much like the narrative in the lower chamber. The
people of San Bartolo probably understood that the
different stories the murals told were much greater
than the sum of their parts. For instance, says Stuart, once
viewed all together, the murals of the lower chamber seem
to follow a cycle of solar movement. “Sun emergence, zenith,
sunset, nadir,” says Stuart. “It’s like they’re grafting a grand
narrative onto that cycle. It’s a perpetual story.” Q
Zach Zorich is a contributing editor at Archaeology.
37
 ITALIAN An artificial pool constructed of
sturdy wood beams on a hilltop
near the town of Noceto on
northern Italy’s Po Plain has been

MASTER
dated to around 1450 B.C.

BUILDERS A 3,500-year-old ritual pool

reflects a little-known culture’s
agrarian prowess
By D W

O
N A HILLTOP AT THE EDGE of the town of
Noceto on northern Italy’s Po Plain, a 2004
construction project had gotten just a few
feet into the ground when a wooden struc-
ture began to emerge. A team of archaeolo-
gists led by Mauro Cremaschi and Maria
Bernabò Brea was called in to investigate. “At the beginning,
we thought it was probably some sort of residential building,”
says team member Andrea Zerboni, a geoarchaeologist at the
University of Milan. “But soon after we started the excavation,
we noticed that the sediments inside the structure weren’t
related to domestic activity.” Rather than material such as ash
and charcoal, typically found where people lived or worked,
the structure was filled with natural sediments of the sort that
would be found in a lake. The structure they were excavating
was not a building at all, the researchers realized—it was an
artificial pool. What they have learned about this pool in the
years since has provided surprising new insights into the social
organization and ritual practices of a culture that thrived in this
fertile region for centuries during the second millennium B.C.
before disappearing. “The Noceto pool is unique in Italy—it’s
unique in the world,” says Zerboni. “Building such a structure
implies very careful planning, coordinating the work of many
people, and a very clear architectural plan. We don’t expect to
find such majestic structures from prehistory.”
When they reached the bottom of the pool after several
years of careful work, the archaeologists marveled at the feat
of ancient engineering before them. Twenty-six wooden poles
were arranged vertically to form a tank measuring roughly 40
feet long, 23 feet wide, and at least 16 feet deep. More than
240 interlocking boards lined the pool’s earthen walls and were
held in place by the poles. The poles, in turn, were pressed
against the walls by two networks of horizontal beams that
crossed the pool perpendicular to each other. And, for good

38 ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2021

archaeology.org 39
 Alps
Milan
IT
A
LY
Po River
Noceto
Apennine Mountains
0 50 100 miles
measure, a pair of long beams were arranged diagonally to but-
tress the four corner poles. As the researchers would learn, the
pool’s builders had good reason to take extra care to ensure the
soundness of their design. “When we arrived at the bottom, we
said, ‘OK, our job is done, we have finished the excavation,’”
says Zerboni. “But we dug a few more trenches just to check
what was below the tank, and we found evidence of another
wood structure.” This turned out to be an earlier attempt at
building a somewhat larger tank, which had collapsed before
it was completed. It’s unclear whether the earlier design sim-
ply couldn’t withstand the pressure of the earthen walls or
whether one of the area’s frequent earthquakes contributed to
its demise. In any case, the upper tank, whose design included
additional supports, held strong for millennia.
The team found no indication that the pool had served any
practical purpose. There was no sign of a mechanism for chan-
neling water in or out, and the fine-grained sediments had accu-
mulated slowly at the pool’s bottom without the sort of regular
disturbance that would have occurred if it had served as a reser-
voir. Their excavations did, however, uncover an extensive array
of material in the pool. The finds include around 150 complete
vases and 25 miniature vessels, which pottery experts dated to
this region’s Middle Bronze Age (ca. 1600–1300 B.C.). Zerboni
notes that the pottery found in the pool is of a type that would
have been highly valued and used only for special occasions.
The excavators also uncovered seven small clay votive figurines
depicting horses, pigs, cows, and, in one instance, an anthropo-
morphic figure. Similar examples from the period in Europe
are known, but are quite rare, says Zerboni. A large number
A number of clay votive figurines were found in
the pool, including, from left to right, a cow, an
anthropomorphic figure, and a pig.
40
This fragmentary wooden plow is among the hundreds of
farming tools unearthed in the Noceto pool.
of animal remains were unearthed as well, primarily deer antlers,
but also a complete skeleton of a baby pig. There were spindles,
numerous baskets, and several large blocks of wood, as well as
hundreds of wooden farming tools, including four whole and
fragmentary plows. These items had all been carefully deposited
in the pool in distinct layers, as if during multiple events. “From
this evidence, and from the greatness of the structure, we started
thinking it was related to some sort of ritual,” says Zerboni. “The
Noceto pool was probably built to celebrate something.”
D
URING THE MIDDLE BRONZE AGE, farmers belonging
to a culture known as the Terramare settled the Po
Plain, which is bordered by the Alps to the north and
west, the Apennine Mountains to the south, and the Adriatic
Sea to the east. The Terramare completely cleared the area’s
forests and intensively cultivated the land. The landscape
proved bountiful, producing bumper crops of wheat, barley,
and other cereals, and supporting plentiful herds of livestock
including sheep, goats, and pigs. To further their agricultural
endeavors, the Terramare embarked on extensive irrigation
projects. They located their settlements along the Po River
and its tributaries, and dug a large number of wells. These
settlements were surrounded by moats, which were at once
defensive features and additional sources of water. The
Terramare built their houses on wood piles, using timber
harvested from the rapidly depleting forests.
Over time, the remains of Terramare villages grew into
mounds that became stores of rich organic material. This
phenomenon is the source of the culture’s name—from
terra marna, which means “rich land” in the local
Emilian dialect. In the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, the decayed contents of many of these
mounds were used to fertilize the fields of the Po
ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2021

A well-preserved millennia-old woven basket is among the
items discovered in the pool.
Plain, which continues to be one of the most agriculturally
productive regions in Europe. Such was the fate of the mound
containing the remains of the Terramare village closest to the
Noceto pool, which lay just a few hundred yards away.
T
O DETERMINE WHEN EXACTLY the tanks were built, the
University of Milan team recently collaborated with
Sturt Manning, an archaeologist and dendrochronology
expert at Cornell University. The tanks were built primarily from
oak, which meant that conventional dendrochronology was not
an option—there is not a continuous securely dated sequence of
oak tree-ring records that goes back as far as the Middle Bronze
Age in northern Italy. Instead, Manning used a technique called
tree-ring radiocarbon wiggle matching. This involved measuring
the amount of radioactive carbon in samples drawn from a
number of rings in wood from the tanks. Given that the baseline
amount of radiocarbon in the atmosphere fluctuates over time
based on factors such as the level of sunspot activity, the amount
of radiocarbon in a sequence of tree rings does not decline at a
steady rate that corresponds to the rings’ ages. Instead, a graph
of the rings’ radiocarbon content includes a series of “wiggles,”
or fluctuations in the amount of radiocarbon. By
comparing these wiggles with measurements of
radiocarbon in trees whose precise ages are known,
Manning was able to estimate the age of the wood
from the tanks. The presence of the tree ring
immediately below the bark in one case along with
two groupings of “sapwood rings,” which are close
to the bark, helped establish that the timber used
to build the tanks was felled at two different points.
According to the results, the lower tank was built
around 1444 B.C. and the upper tank was built about 12
years later, around 1432 B.C. There is some uncertainty in
This wooden implement, which was used to poke holes in
soil before planting seeds, was recovered from the pool.
archaeology.org
the measurement of radiocarbon levels, but both estimates are
thought to be accurate to within around four years.
This technique gave the team a far more precise date than had
been possible using pottery styles or conventional radiocarbon
dating. It placed the pool’s construction very close to a time when
a major shift in the Terramare culture occurred. Around 1450 B.C.,
the number of Terramare settlements increased and some grew
much larger. The overall population also increased and people
exploited the land more aggressively. There are indications that
what had been a relatively egalitarian society grew more hierarchi-
cal at this point. To Zerboni, the pool and the items deposited
in it were likely intended to represent many of the elements
contributing to the culture’s success. These included wood, which
they used to build their villages; farming tools, which they used
to work the land; and water, which they used to nourish crops.
“These were probably offerings to a divinity or to nature to show
how grateful they were,” Zerboni says. “The pool was a sort of
monument intended to celebrate the agriculture and the natural
resources that supported their community.”
Manning believes that the process of building the pool may
have helped fortify the hierarchy that appears to have developed
as the Terramare population exploded. “You might speculate
that this is the sort of group building and regional collective
activity that an ambitious ruler or priest might engage in to link
together a community or even a couple of communities,” he says.
“Creating the thing means people have to gather together, work
together, create a common purpose, and then it becomes a sort
of venue to come and visit afterwards.” Those members of the
community who climbed the hill to gaze into the pool’s waters
might have been rewarded with a transcendent experience. “You
could almost see this as a mirror in which you would have been
both looking at the reflection of the world around you, but also
looking through it to see some form of netherworld or under-
world,” Manning says. “I wonder if this wasn’t symbolic of con-
nections between the divine and the earthly for these people.”
Around 1150 B.C., the Terramare culture collapsed, and all
their settlements on the Po Plain were abandoned. This was
most likely a result of a strain on resources due to increasing
population, exacerbated by declining rainfall. According to
Zerboni, the Terramare likely moved to the Apennines or the
southern edge of the Alps. The plain was resettled around
200 years later, and, when people
returned, they once again
cultivated the region, employ-
ing Terramare tools and tech-
niques, which continued to be used until quite recently.
Among the tools excavated in the Noceto pool, Zerboni, who
himself grew up on the Po Plain, recognized a small piece of
bent wood used to poke holes in the soil in which farmers
would then plant seeds. “I remember my grandfather used the
same tool to cultivate his garden,” he says. “In the Noceto pool,
we have the roots of the traditional culture of the Po Plain,
which probably dates back almost 3,500 years.” Q
Daniel Weiss is executive editor at Archaeology.
To see additional images, go to archaeology.org/noceto.
41
T
HE SUN SHINES NEARLY 300 days a year over
southern New Mexico’s Tularosa Basin,
where bright white sand ripples across the
desert. Here, in White Sands National Park,
the world’s largest gypsum dunes abut the
dried-up bed of prehistoric Lake Otero,
which once covered 1,600 square miles. In the summer, park
temperatures can reach 110°F. One’s eyes sting in the intense
sunlight. It was just such a sunny day in May 2021 when Bon-
GHOST
OF WHITE
42
nie Leno and Kim Charlie, sisters from Acoma Pueblo, about
175 miles north, found the fossilized tracks of a giant ground
sloth and two humans, all of whom lived at least 10,000 years
ago, at the close of the Pleistocene Epoch.
Leno and Charlie didn’t expect to uncover a piece of late
Pleistocene history at the park, but there they were, the
kidney-shaped footprints of a 10-foot-tall, 2,000-pound long-
extinct mammal and the imprints of human toes—evidence of
two species that coexisted thousands of years ago. “I was down
ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2021
on the ground, brushing everything off,” says Leno, recalling
the adult human footprint she found not far below the surface.
“I was ecstatic.” Just inches away, she spotted the giant sloth
track. “There were a lot of prints in that area,” says Charlie,
who uncovered the tiny footprint of a child nearby.
Charlie is a member of the Acoma Tribal Historic Preserva-
tion Office (THPO) board and participates in a consultation
program with the National Park Service. Any time park employ-
ees conduct studies that might affect a Native cultural site,
TRACKS
SANDS
Scientists are uncovering fossilized footprints in
the New Mexico desert that show how humans
and Ice Age animals shared the landscape
By K C
archaeology.org
pueblos and tribes affiliated with that site are asked to consult
on the research and preservation. Acoma is one of six Native
groups currently studying and protecting the park’s prehistoric
trackways, says David Bustos, White Sands’ resource program
manager. He invited Charlie to accompany scientists and park
staff on one of the first field trips to the park since the pandemic
began in 2020. She in turn asked Leno, an Acoma cultural moni-
tor who works with the THPO to study and assess archaeologi-
cal sites in culturally sensitive areas. It’s a role that the sisters say
The gypsum dunes of White Sands National
Park in New Mexico’s Tularosa Basin are
adjacent to the site of a dry ancient lakebed
where scientists have discovered human
and animal trackways dating to between
15,500 and 10,000 years ago.
43

Acoma Pueblo tribal members Kim Charlie (left) and Bonnie Leno (right) are among
the Native people consulting with researchers working in White Sands National Park.
is akin to retracing their ancestral footsteps.
No one knows who the early human trackmakers were or
whether they were genetically related to Native groups in the
region today. But for Leno and Charlie, there’s no denying their
sense of connection to these trackways. “Even though it’s been
thousands of years,” Charlie says, the tracks “are still a part
of us.” Her people have centuries-old roots in this Southwest
landscape. Acoma Pueblo is one of the oldest continually occu-
tracks are the best direct evidence of late
Pleistocene interactions between humans and
megafauna found anywhere in the world, and
it seems likely they were made by two hunters
confronting their prey, though whether they
or the sloth prevailed isn’t clear.
But that’s just one finding. White Sands
has the world’s largest collection of fossilized
Ice Age footprints, numbering in the hun-
dreds of thousands. “Each of these trackways
will have its own story to tell,” says Cornell
University archaeologist Tommy Urban, who
has worked with a multidisciplinary team of
archaeologists, geographers, geologists, envi-
ronmental scientists, and tribal members to
find and record scores of White Sands track-
ways. The geological makeup of the area has
led to the preservation of prints from not just
sloths and humans of all ages, but also mam-
moths, bison, camels, dire wolves, and saber-
toothed cats. And from those ancient steps,
scientists are able to discern an array of mammalian behaviors.
“This gives us a rare window into a world that’s mostly lost to
time and beyond our current reach,” Urban says. The length
and breadth of the trackways at White Sands open a range of
questions about early hunting practices, the lives of Ice Age
species, and what the world was like when humans and Pleis-
tocene megafauna shared this landscape.

pied communities on the continent, founded atop a sandstone
bluff around A.D. 1150. But the history of the people of Acoma
Pueblo is even older. Charlie says she grew up learning stories
about a long migration that took Acoma ancestors from the
far north of what is now the United States south into Mexico.
“We did a lot of traveling,” she says, pointing out that her
ancestors traded with people across the region, and possibly
around White Sands. And the Acoma are not alone in their
connection to this vast open landscape, which features in many
Native oral histories. “Our tribal partners have stories about
the ‘white sands’ and coming down for hunting parties,” says
White Sands archaeologist Clare Connelly.
UT
T
ODAY THE WHITE SANDS landscape, with its crests of
glimmering dunes, forms a panorama of snow-white
land in a summer broil. There are no trees, save for
a few solitary invasive species that suck all moisture from
the dunes. Miles of undulating sands give way to the crisp,
flat surface of the dried-up ancient Lake Otero, dotted with
iodine bush, a desert shrub adapted to sandy, salty, alkaline
soils. To the east and west of the park, a heat haze distorts
the peaks of towering mountains; to the north is White
Sands Missile Range, the U.S. Army’s largest land-based
open-air testing site. But the ancient trackways know no
modern borders—footprints crisscross both
CO sides of the fence dividing the national park

I
N 2017, RESEARCHERS HAD discovered
possible evidence of just such an ancient
hunting party: a trackway of human
footprints directly inside the tracks of a giant
ground sloth. Every indication suggests one
person followed quickly behind the sloth.
Their tracks were left in precisely the same
ground conditions. The person matched
the sloth’s stride—which was much longer
than a comfortable human stride—for more
than 10 paces until the sloth, it seems, rose
on its hind limbs and flailed in defense.
Meanwhile, a second person approached 0
the animal on tiptoe from the side. The
from the missile range.
AZ NM
Acoma
At the time the tracks were made, research-
Pueblo ers think Lake Otero had already begun to
TX
MEXICO
evaporate and a series of small seasonal bod-
ies of water covered the area. “Many of the
footprints actually have layers of algae, which
would have required moisture to grow,” Urban
says. People and beasts slipped and slid across
a Basin a muddy surface, evidenced in the tracks they
Tularos
left behind. As the water evaporated over
White Sands National Park
time, it formed a playa—the flat bottom of a
desert basin that occasionally fills with water.
50 100 miles About 15 years ago, a rare flood filled
the playa with so much water that waves

44 ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2021


A human footprint left inside a giant sloth’s footprint was
discovered at White Sands National Park. The human was
likely stalking the sloth.
beat against the ancient shoreline and eroded its sediments,
exposing trackways never before seen. Not long after that,
Bustos began finding prints left by mammoths on the shore-
line as well as elongated prints he thought might be human.
As time passed, he and other researchers found more and
more animal and human trackways, some of which extend
for miles. So many footprints emerged that park staff sought
guidance from Matthew Bennett, a Bournemouth University
environmental and geographical scientist who studies fossil
footprints. In 2017, Bennett visited the park and confirmed
the presence of human and animal tracks. He has since made
10 trips to the park, and has no doubt that White Sands is
one of the world’s most significant track sites, with tens of
thousands of trackways. By comparison, Laetoli, the Tanza-
nian site with the world’s oldest-known hominin footprints,
extends about 88 feet and contains fewer than 100 tracks.
Bennett suspects that many
such sites could exist in other
gypsum playas in the Tularosa
Basin and throughout the South-
west. “Put the clock forward ten
years,” he says, “and I think White
Sands will be seen as the dawn of
opening up a new archive on the
archaeology and paleontology of
the southwestern United States.”
By analyzing the shape, size,
and appearance of each track,
Bennett and his colleagues
deduced a variety of ancient
behaviors. For example, the team
recently found a human pathway
that goes out and back, extending
David Bustos, resource program
manager at White Sands National
Park, photographs prints left by
two people who interacted with—
and possibly hunted—a giant sloth.
archaeology.org
nearly a mile. Based on footprint size, scientists believe it
was made by a woman or adolescent male, accompanied by
a toddler on the outward journey. Between the outbound and
return legs of the trip, a giant ground sloth and a mammoth
crossed the pathway. The mammoth walked in a straight line,
leaving no evidence of having noticed, or cared, that humans
were in the vicinity. But the sloth behaved differently. Varia-
tions in the animal’s footprints appear to show that it stood
on its hind legs and spun around, possibly catching a whiff
of danger before dropping to all fours and rambling off in a
different direction.
The researchers concluded that the chaperone on the
excursion at times carried the toddler, shifting the child from
hip to hip. This subtle change in behavior is reflected in the
alternating shape of the footprints, which broaden with added
weight to form a banana shape created by the outward rotation
of the older person’s foot. They can also tell this was a speedy
trip, completed at a pace of 5.5 feet per second through slick
mud—far faster than that of a person walking at a comfort-
able pace of four feet per second over dry, flat land. They
determined this by creating a mosaic of aerial images of a large
section of the trackway, encompassing hundreds of prints. This
allowed them to calculate the people’s average stride lengths.
Researchers don’t know the purpose of the trek, or why it was
made so quickly, except to note that the dangerous beasts of
the Ice Age world would have given people plenty of reasons
to hurry, especially with a child in tow.
Urban says the team can’t know for sure what culture the
pair belonged to or when exactly they lived. “We’re dating
them on the basis of the coexistence with the animals,” he
says, “which have known extinction dates.” The team believes
the tracks were likely made between 15,500 and 10,000 years
ago. This period overlaps with the widespread North Ameri-
can Clovis culture, as well as the later Folsom tradition. Both
45

Bustos unearths a footprint at White Sands National Park.
peoples were hunter-gatherers who lived in small groups and
are known today for their distinctive tools. Characteristic
flaked Clovis spearpoints have been found with the bones of
megafauna such as mammoth, and smaller worked Folsom
points are often associated with bison kill sites. Although sci-
entists haven’t drawn conclusions about who the White Sands
people were, their tracks indicate they definitely followed,
stalked, harassed, and possibly hunted big game.
The footprints tell other tales, too. Bennett says he and
the team have uncovered evidence of many children jumping,
skipping, and sloshing in the mud, their horseplay preserved in
time. As a father himself, these findings spark his imagination.
“Every kid loves to jump in a puddle,” he says. “Prehistoric
children were no different.”
Footprints (above left) at White Sands National Park were left by a woman or adolescent male accompanied by a child, whose
footprints are shown above right. Analysis of the tracks shows that the child was occasionally carried during the journey.
46
E
ACH DAY IN THE FIELD is different for the research team,
partly because weather conditions have to be just right
in order to discern the tracks—too wet or too dry, and
nothing is visible. For this reason, the White Sands prints are
often called ghost tracks. “They can be very clear on the surface
one day, and then another day, you can barely see anything,”
Bennett says. “They’re quite mercurial.” That makes the work
of identifying the trackways even more challenging. “It’s hard to
orient yourself,” says
Connelly, “because the
Sloth site is never the same.”
Human
An image created by
a ground-penetrating
radar survey
conducted at White
Mammoth Sands National Park
shows tracks left by a
sloth, a human, and a
mammoth.
Not only are the tracks difficult to identify, but one by
one, the White Sands archive of Pleistocene life is steadily
disappearing. Wind erodes the fine surface that covers the
footprints and, once exposed, they quickly vanish. “We’re not
sure if it’s climate change, or what’s happening,” Bustos says.
“We’re losing them.”
The team is documenting trackways as rapidly as they can,
using an array of tools to locate new prints and quickly gather
information from those already identified. While erosion
constantly exposes new trackways, the team also searches for
those that are less visible. Urban has spent most of his time in
the park conducting geophysical surveys using magnetometry
and ground-penetrating radar, which allow researchers to cre-
ate images of tracks that lie below the surface. The team then
uses traditional tools to carefully remove sediments and expose
the prints and record them. They make plaster casts and 3-D
ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2021
models of some of the tracks, though there are far too many
to record them all in this way.
All around the playa, in every direction, the paths of crea-
tures from the past preserve very specific moments. Humans
ran on the balls of their feet. Families of all species—people,
mammoths, camels—traveled together. There is also other
evidence of ancient life lying on the surface. When Leno and
Charlie visited, they immediately spotted what they thought
was a grinding stone resembling those still used to smash
corn or make jerky at Acoma today. “I’ve walked by here like
forty times and I haven’t seen that,” says Bustos. “We’ve had
geologists look at these rocks and tell us, ‘Oh no, they’re here
naturally,’” adds Connelly. No one else had identified what
Leno and Charlie saw.
The two sisters say that when they visit a cultural site, they
think of how their people live today, how their grandparents
lived, and how the Ice Age trackmakers might have done
things, too. “What were the women doing?” Charlie always
National Park Service researcher Patrick Martinez surveys
the landscape at White Sands National Park, where wind
continually exposes and erodes human and animal prints.
asks. When they look across White Sands, they think it must
have been a hunting ground with nearby campsites where
the community gathered. “You see the footprints, you see
children’s footprints,” Charlie says. “So you’ve got to think…”
Leno finishes her sister’s thought: “…that was family.”
The team is further scouring the area, searching for the
remains of hearths or other clues to how people lived, camped,
and hunted in the area. They’ve also found perplexing grooves
in the ground that might be related to the human tracks.
“We’re not sure exactly what’s going on,” Connelly says, but
the team suspects the people dragged something on a large
stick. “We only see these where we see human footprints, so
we just call them drag structures,” she adds.
After examining the grooves, Charlie and Leno think these
abrasions could be additional evidence of hunting. “You take
down the mammoth, there’s no way you’re going to carry that
big carcass on your back and take it home,” Charlie says. Per-
archaeology.org
haps, say the sisters, the marks were left by sleighs that hunters
used to haul the meat of especially large prey.
For Charlie and Leno, it’s not enough to have such insights
into the trackways; it’s also important to honor the ancient
Tracks left by a mammoth between 15,500 and 10,000 years
ago were recently identified at White Sands National Park.
people who left them. When the Acoma people visit a cul-
tural site, they always ask permission from the spirits of those
who passed, akin to asking permission to enter somebody’s
home, explains Leno. “If they want to let you know some-
thing, find something, they will,” she says. “They will show
you,” adds Charlie.
The sisters count themselves lucky to have seen these foot-
prints, which appear and disappear so quickly. Most people
will never have that opportunity. The National Park Service
is creating replicas of the trackways for visitors to view and
touch, but the experience isn’t the same as being under that
blazing sun, in the precise locations where so many thousands
of people and animals made their marks ages ago. “I wish we
could keep those tracks intact for everybody to see,” Charlie
says, but she accepts that she has no control over their survival.
“That’s really up to Mother Nature.” Q
Karen Coates is a contributing editor at Archaeology.
47
 GAUL’S UNIVERSITY
New excavations have revealed the wealth and
prestige of an ancient center of learning
By J A. L

An aerial view of the Saint-Pierre-l’Estrier

neighborhood of Autun in east-central
France shows newly excavated burials.

T
HE ROMAN ORATOR AND rhetorician Eumen-
ius delivered a speech to the Roman governor
of Gallia Lugdunensis in A.D. 298 advocating
for the restoration of the famous schools
called the Maeniana in the city of Augusto-
dunum, at the center of the province. At the
time of Eumenius’ speech, the once-thriving city had fallen on
hard times. In A.D. 269, its residents had taken sides against
Victorinus, the emperor of the ill-fated breakaway state now
known as the Gallic Empire (ca. 269–271 a.d.), and the city
was besieged for seven months. Access to the high level of cul-
ture and education that had been central to Augustodunum’s
identity fell victim to a combination of circumstances, perhaps
including damage to the Maeniana, funding diverted to the

48 ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2021

TOWN
conflict, or a diminished student population.
Augustodunum (modern Autun) had been founded around
13 B.C. by the emperor Augustus (r. 27 B.C.–A.D. 14) as a new
capital for the Aedui, a Celtic tribe that was—mostly—allied
with the Romans. By 121 B.C., the tribe had been awarded the
title of “brothers and kinsmen of Rome.” The Aedui largely
supported Julius Caesar in his campaigns in Gaul, with the
archaeology.org
exception of a brief defection in 52 B.C. when they joined an
unsuccessful rebellion led by Vercingetorix, the doomed chief
of the Arverni tribe. The capital of the Aedui had been located
at the settlement of Bibracte, but when the tribe became a
civitas foederata, or allied community, of Rome, it was moved
15 miles east to its new location. It was given a name that com-
bined its Roman and Gallic identities: Augusto- for Augustus,
49

Bibracte Augustodunum
(Autun)
FRANCE
Lugdunum nnel
lish
Cha
(Lyon) Eng
FRANCE
0 50 100 miles
and -dunum, the Celtic word for “hill,” “fort,” or “walled town.”
From the start, Augustodunum was a city with a status and
appearance befitting the prestige of the Aedui and their Roman
governors. The provincial capital city of Lugdunum (modern
Lyon), a little over 100 miles south, was its only superior in
architectural splendor, economic prominence, and population
in the region. “Augustodunum was one of the most important
cities in Gaul,” says archaeologist Carole Fossurier of France’s
National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research
(INRAP). For most of the nearly three centuries preceding
Eumenius’ oration, it was a thriving university town and one of
the most Romanized in Gaul. It was encircled by a stout 4.5-
mile city wall that enclosed an area of about 500 acres, with
straight Roman streets laid out on a grid plan. It was also home
to Gaul’s largest theater, an amphitheater, shops, manufactur-
ing quarters, public baths, luxuriously decorated residences, a
forum, numerous temples, and, eventually, places for Christian
worship. The city was traversed by a major Roman road built
by Augustus’ son-in-law Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa for military
use and to encourage trade by connecting the province to the
English Channel. Under the emperor Claudius (r. A.D. 41–54),
who was born in Lugdunum, the Aedui became the first Gal-
lic tribe whose members were allowed to serve as senators in
Rome. In Augustodunum, writes the first- and second-century
A.D. Roman historian Tacitus, “the noblest youth of Gaul
devoted themselves to a liberal education.”
A
FTER THE SIEGE BY Victorinus that damaged the city,
the emperor Constantius I (r. A.D. 293–306) became
Augustodunum’s benefactor. He promised to restore
the city to its former status and appearance, an effort that
was continued by his son, the emperor Constantine I (r. A.D.
306–337). “Augustodunum wanted to be a provincial capital,”
says University of Kent archaeologist Luke Lavan, “and to
become one, it competed with other provincial centers in Gaul
for the emperor’s patronage.”
50
Christianity was well established in Augustodunum by the
early fourth century A.D. In A.D. 313, its first recorded bishop,
Reticius, was honored with an invitation to Rome to help
resolve the schism in the church caused by the Donatists,
a North African sect of Christians. One of Gaul’s oldest
Christian inscriptions was found in a city cemetery in 1839.
According to INRAP archaeologist Michel Kasprzyk, it dates
to the late third or early fourth century A.D. The document’s
Greek text, he explains, includes the name of a Christian man,
Pektorios, and an acrostic of the Greek word ichthys, or fish,
an early Christian symbol of Christ.
Another rare text included in a set of panegyrics called the
Laudes Domini dates from A.D. 290 to the 310s and describes the
city’s appearance in antiquity. This collection of speeches was
made by delegates from Augustodunum to the imperial court at
Augusta Treverorum (modern Trier). From about A.D. 250 to the
middle of the next century, Trier was one of the largest cities in
the empire and served as a residence for the Roman emperor.
The texts mention many monuments in Augustodunum, some
rebuilt after the crisis of the late third century A.D., including
A set of pins was found at the feet of the deceased in the
burial ground’s largest sarcophagus. They are the only known
Roman pins of this style made of amber.
baths, aqueducts, houses, and the schools of the Maeniana. One
describes a visit to Augustodunum by Constantine at the end
of A.D. 310 during which he was shown “all the statues of their
gods,” a clear indication, says Kasprzyk, that the city was both
pagan and Christian at the time.
A
RCHAEOLOGISTS HAVE EXPLORED Autun periodically for
decades. Still, very little of Augustodunum—perhaps
only 3 to 4 percent—has been investigated, and only
through small surveys, limited excavations, and sometimes acci-
dental discoveries. Researchers have unearthed the remnants of
ancient structures, including possibly the Maeniana, as well as
aqueducts, marble sculptures, and finely crafted mosaics that
once covered the floors of the city’s wealthiest residents’ homes.
Some of these mosaics depict scenes from Greek mythology,
such as the story of the hero Bellerophon, who killed the mythi-
cal beast the Chimera. Others include portraits and sayings of
Greek philosophers. These are testaments to the influence of
Greco-Roman high culture in Augustodunum and to its well-
educated citizenry. Part of Augustodunum’s fourth-century A.D.
church was excavated in the 1970s, and several acres of one its
largest ancient cemeteries were dug in 2004.
ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2021
 A selection of the valuable artifacts unearthed in
the Saint-Pierre-l’Estrier cemetery (clockwise from
top left): A long-necked glass bottle; an olive-
shaped blue glass bead; amber pins and jet pins; a
dyed textile fragment with gold threads; a gold hair
ornament; a copper-alloy belt buckle shaped like an
amphora; a pair of gold earrings; a gold and garnet
ring; and a pair of jet bracelets
archaeology.org 51
 In 2020, INRAP archae- are no clear signs of Christian-
ologists Fossurier and Nicolas ity, as the grave goods, mainly
Tisserand led an excavation, ceramics, also occur in ‘pagan’
which they have since com- graves,” says Kasprzyk. “The
pleted, in an area of Autun main question regarding these
known as Saint-Pierre-l’Estrier. early graves is are they already
There they uncovered new evi- Christian, since we know that
dence of the lives and deaths of Saint-Pierre is Augustodun-
Augustodunum’s residents. On um’s main Christian cemetery
the site where a house was being from the fourth to sixth cen-
built, they made a spectacular turies, or is this cemetery a
discovery—a necropolis con- ‘pagan’ cemetery in the third
taining more than 250 burials century and later ‘Christian-
dating to the third through fifth ized’?” Both Kasprzyk and
centuries A.D. The graves rep- Lavan raise the question of
resent a variety of religions and whether grave goods are reli-
economic statuses and contain able indicators of religious
some of the most valuable arti- An extraordinarily rare Roman cage cup decorated with the affiliation. “People at this
facts from the Roman world. saying vivas feliciter, or “live happily.” These luxury Roman cups time don’t show their identity
Among the types of burial feature deep relief work that may have been carved into blown through their jewelry or cloth-
the team discovered were glass. This example is 4.7 inches tall and 6.3 inches wide. ing,” Lavan says, “but there
several mausoleums, a tiled tomb, a wooden building, six was a secular value system and a strong civic and secular culture
sandstone sarcophaguses, and at least 15 lead coffins. Some of of wearing social displays of rank.”
the dead were interred with extremely high-quality objects, Nevertheless, the necropolis provides scholars with a wide-
among them some of the rarest to be found in Roman Gaul. ranging opportunity to learn about the burial practices used in
Although some graves almost certainly belonged to members Augustodunum at the time. “The diversity of burial methods
of Augustodunum’s early Christian community, researchers probably illustrates the diversity of the society in this period,”
have not been able to definitively establish the religious affili- says Fossurier. “People whose status seems to have differed
ations, or even the names, of any of the deceased—very few were interred side by side in the necropolis, and the variety of
of the funerary containers are inscribed. Some are marked funerary containers and accompanying goods indicates that
with “X”s, which Tisserand explains were used to indicate the cemetery was used for common people as well as the high-
the position of the body inside—a single mark for the head status rich or the very rich. We also know that men, women,
and two for the feet—so that once the coffins were closed, and children were buried there.”
the heads could be oriented to the west, as was customary. In the largest sarcophagus, which was deeply buried and
“This is simply a question of practical and not religious sealed with iron spikes, the team found a gold hair ornament, a
marks,” says Tisserand. gold ring with a garnet, and a collection of pins made of amber.
The necropolis’ earliest burials seem to date to between A.D. These pins, says Tisserand, are similar to examples made from
200 and 250, and it was fully in use by the 270s. It eventually other materials, but are the only known pins of this style carved
became the city’s main cemetery. “For the earliest graves there from amber in the Roman world. Other burials contained pins

52 ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2021

Left to right: One of the cemetery’s large stone
sarcophaguses after opening; two lead coffins; and a tomb
constructed from ceramic tiles
and bracelets made of jet, a blue glass bead, coins, several glass
and ceramic vessels, a child’s pair of gold earrings, and a copper-
alloy belt buckle shaped like an amphora. The archaeologists also
discovered dyed textile fragments, some of which were woven
with gold threads. The pigment, characteristic of very wealthy
burials of the period in the region, was extracted from the glands
of murex snails from the Mediterranean.
A tremendous surprise awaited the team in a sarcophagus
belonging to one of Augustodunum’s richest citizens. In it they
discovered an example of one of the most luxurious artifacts
from the Roman world—a type of late Roman glass vessel
known as a cage cup, of which very few examples survive. These
cups have intricate three-dimensional openwork designs in deep
relief, usually geometric and much less frequently figural. “Cage
cups are incredibly rare,” says ancient glass expert Carolyn Nee-
dell of the Chrysler Museum. “You almost never see them,
and never in the ground.” In fact, the vessel found at
Augustodunum is among the 10 best-preserved
examples of Roman cage glass and the first
complete vessel found in Gaul.
The cage cup from Augustodunum
represents the pinnacle of Roman
glassmaking. “What makes this
cup extraordinary is the manufac-
turing technique,” says Tisserand.
“It was probably carved from a
single block of blown glass using
techniques similar to those used
by goldsmiths.” In fact, says Nee-
dell, cage cups are so difficult to
make that scholars still debate how
Roman glassmakers accomplished it.
A view of the Roman cage cup after cleaning,
before recent reassembly
archaeology.org
The Augustodunum cup must have been extraordinarily valu-
able. By way of comparison, says Tisserand, one of the last
cage cups discovered was unearthed at the city of Taranes in
what is now the Republic of North Macedonia in the 1970s.
That cup was found along with a gold fibula, or clasp, inscribed
with the name of the emperor Maximian (r. A.D. 286–305),
an indication of its tremendous value. The inscription on the
Augustodunum cage cup reads VIVAS FELICITER, or “live
happily.” The vessel is currently being restored at the Romano-
Germanic Central Museum in Mainz, Germany.
E
UMENIUS WAS BORN IN Augustodunum to a family of
educators—his grandfather came to Gaul from Athens
and was a teacher of rhetoric. It is likely Eumenius
attended the Maeniana, where he perfected the skills that led
him to a career as Constantius’ private secretary, a position
in which he was responsible for answering all petitions on
the emperor’s behalf. In his A.D. 298 speech, Eumenius
praised Constantius—no doubt to secure his patronage
of Augustodunum and funds for its restoration. He
pledged to donate half of the enormous salary of
60,000 sesterces the emperor had awarded
him as the schools’ newly appointed
head—twice what he had earned as
his secretary—for the effort. This
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INRAP team date to after the
late third-century siege, and the
extraordinary grave goods likely
provide evidence of the city’s
recovery and its return to the
thriving center of learned culture
it had once been. Q
Jarrett A. Lobell is editor in chief at
Archaeology.
53
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 Christiansborg Castle,
constructed in 1661 as a Danish
transatlantic slave trade fortress
and renovated throughout the
centuries, can be seen from Osu
Beach in Accra, Ghana.

LETTER FROM GHANA

LIFE OUTSIDE THE CASTLE

At Christiansborg Castle, a community that embodied
the complexity of the transatlantic slave trade is being
uncovered by descendants of those who created it
by Marley Brown

long a stretch of the West now the city of Accra, Ghana, where women they married, and the children

A African coast known to Euro-

pean explorers and traders
as “White Man’s Grave” due to its
association with death from malaria,
yellow fever, dengue, and heat exhaus-
tion, Danish soldiers and merchants
built a fortified structure called
Christiansborg Castle in 1661. The
building survives to this day in what is
it is known as Osu Castle, after the
district in which it stands. Since 2014,
archaeologists led by Christiansborg
Archaeological Heritage Project direc-
tor Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann have
been working at the castle. They have
uncovered evidence of a Euro-African
community made up of European
men who worked at the castle, African
of their unions. The primary business
in which this community was engaged
was the transatlantic slave trade. With
only a few brief interludes, from the
construction of the fort until 1803,
when Denmark began to enforce its
abolition of that trade, an estimated
tens of thousands of enslaved people
were held in Christiansborg Castle’s

archaeology.org 55
LETTER FROM GHANA
Excavations at Christiansborg Castle are revealing the foundations of a structure associated with a Euro-African settlement dating to
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Many team members are Danish-Ga descendants of the original Euro-African community.
dungeons before being taken to the
Danish West Indies, which included
the Caribbean islands of Saint Croix,
Saint John, and Saint Thomas. At
least 100,000 captives were
transported during the Danish
transatlantic slave trade.
Europeans began formally
trading with West African
peoples in the last quarter of
the fifteenth century, nearly 200
years prior to the construction of
Christiansborg Castle. The Portu-
guese built Elmina Castle, the first
permanent European trading post in
West Africa, on the same stretch of
coast as Christiansborg Castle, some
85 miles west, in 1482. Over the next
300 years, European nations, including
Portugal, the Netherlands, England,
France, Spain, Sweden, and Denmark,
constructed around 80 castles, forts,
and trading lodges within the borders
56
of modern Ghana alone. This terri- which stretched from roughly modern
tory represents a fraction of the entire Senegal to modern Gabon.
region of West Africa where Euro- In the late fifteenth century,
peans traded with African groups Europeans encountered a diverse
and acquired captives, a massive and ancient sociopolitical landscape
area Europeans called Guinea, in West Africa. “You are looking at
a region that had developed a very
TOGO NIGERIA
BENIN
sophisticated organizational network
Lagos
GHANA
Lomé
of cities, kingdoms, emerging states,
IVORY COAST
Porto-Novo and full-fledged states,” says archaeolo-
gist Akin Ogundiran of the University
Abidjan
Elmina Castle of North Carolina at Charlotte. “Peo-
ple had extensive political structures,
and the region was thriving and bus-
tling politically.” West Africans were
Accra accustomed to interacting, and even
Osu intermarrying, with people who looked
Christiansborg Castle
different from them and spoke dif-
(Osu Castle) ferent languages, including Arabs and
Berbers. “The only difference is that
Europeans were coming across the
0 1 2 miles
ocean instead of across the Sahara,”
says Ogundiran.
ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2021
 Archaeologists
work at the site
of the Kephali in
Sissi on Crete.

Archaeological
Inutitute of America

The Charles Eliot Norton Society

honors friends of archaeology
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WITH THE AIA &
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LETTER FROM GHANA

children of Danish men and African

women formed complex personal
identities, sometimes traveling to
Copenhagen to be educated and often
working for Danish interests at Chris-
tiansborg Castle while still maintaining
a strong connection to the local Ga
community. The design of the castle,
with its cannons facing both out to sea
and toward the interior, is evidence of
the violent atmosphere of the time.
Competition for supremacy in the
transatlantic slave trade raged among
European nations.

An eighteenth-century illustration of Christiansborg Castle shows both European- n their seven years of digging,
and West African–style buildings. Sailing ships wait in the harbor, possibly to
transport enslaved people to the Americas.

In the mid-seventeenth century, contrary to the misperception that

I Engmann’s team has worked to
uncover the large precolonial
settlement in the present-day
the Ga people of Ghana lived in and Africans consumed any and all prod- garden area inside the castle walls.
controlled the area where the Danes ucts the Europeans brought, European “Unlike in the Americas, when we
built Christiansborg Castle. However, traders often shipped in goods that say ‘precolonial,’ we mean before the
not unlike much of Europe during the local people actually did not need or British colonial period—not before
period, land regularly changed hands want. Fashions for textiles in particular contact with Europeans,” Engmann
through warfare and intermarriage changed rapidly. Wares would regularly says. “I have to remind people that
intended to solidify political alliances. be stored indefinitely as dead trade or the colonial period in Ghana is
The Ga’s rival for political supremacy otherwise go unsold. when the British were here.” The
in the region around Christiansborg At Christiansborg Castle, the Danish settlement site dates to the
at the time was a group called the Danes created a cosmopolitan settle- seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Akwamu. “The Akwamu and other ment, where Euro-African families fur- During that period, up until the
ethnic groups also sent royalty and nished their homes with goods from British established their colony, in
emissaries to the coast because Euro- Europe, Asia, the Americas, and across 1874, the region was under the control
peans were there,” says Engmann. the African continent. Contemporane- of various African powers. Ghana
“They, too, wanted access to trade.” ous written accounts suggest that the gained its independence in 1957.
Christiansborg’s Euro-African
community, Engmann and her team
are discovering, reflects a system of
trade and cross-cultural exchange that
had matured along the coast of West
Africa by the seventeenth century.
When Europeans first arrived, they
brought objects that appealed to West
African elites, including silk and satin
textiles, glass beads, carpets, and ban-
gle bracelets. Later, they introduced
flintlock muskets and products from
plantations in the Americas, includ-
ing tobacco and rum. These goods
became highly sought after and could
be traded for large numbers of captive Numerous fragments of pipe bowls and stems, including these examples with
Africans. However, Engmann says, molded relief decoration, have been uncovered in the Euro-African settlement.

58 ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2021

“Europeans could not build trading
fortifications without permission
from local warlords and chiefs, to
whom they had to pay rent and from
whom they sought help when they
were in conflict with other European
powers,” says Engmann. “When the
Dutch, Portuguese, English, Danish,
or whomever did not do what local
rulers wanted, those rulers could
easily stop the flow of trade provisions
and valuable commodities such as
gold, ivory, and captives coming in.”
The Danes purchased the land to
build Christiansborg Castle from the
paramount chief of the Ga people,
Chief Okaikoi, for the sum of 3,200
gold florins.
The Danes faced an unforgiving,
dangerous environment. “They were
small players facing up against the
Dutch and the English in particular,”
Engmann says. “When you read
historical accounts, various governors
are always complaining that they’re
being sent the wrong goods to trade,
that there aren’t enough men, that
there isn’t enough money. Especially
in the early days, they’re dropping like
flies, they’re dying in large numbers,
because they aren’t protected against
local diseases, their diet is quite
poor, and there’s rampant alcohol
consumption.”
Men who established relationships
with local women fared better and
likely lived much longer than those
who did not. “In the beginning,
when the Danish first arrived, they
had a law against establishing such
relationships,” Engmann says. “But,
over time, this changed because they
realized that those relationships
brought certain advantages.” Upon
quitting their posts in Africa, some
Danish men left their African wives
and mixed-race children behind,
but others brought their children to
Denmark to be educated. According
to historian Sandra Greene of Cornell
University, local Ga people would have
had their own reasons for arranging
relationships with Danish men. “Very
often marriages weren’t individually
decided,” she says. “A political leader
who wanted to make an alliance and
establish good relationships, even with
an individual trader, might marry off a
daughter to seal that relationship.”
On occasion, business-minded Ga
women sought out relationships with
Danish men who could give them
access to goods and commodities

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LETTER FROM GHANA
that they would not have been able to
acquire otherwise. Intermarriage could
also be a useful tool for the Ga to exert
social control. “Europeans in West Afri-
ca during [the precolonial] period were
not settlers, they were tenants, and
those Ga families who
decided to give their
daughters to these
European men were
being strategic,” says
Ogundiran. “When you
have visitors who have
certain kinds of power
A mix of ceramics, including locally made earthenware (top) and Chinese porcelain and
English transfer-printed pearlware (above), has been discovered at the site.
and knowledge that you don’t have, but
you want to acquire, intermarriage is an
effective way of bridging that gap, and
also of domesticating outsiders, keeping
a close eye on them.”
uropeans first traded with West
E Africans directly offshore,
from their ships, before
building simple trading lodges. As
they were made from adobe, these
structures are difficult to identify
in the archaeological record. Later
came the heavily fortified castles
60
that allowed Europeans to establish a
permanent commercial presence on
the coast. The greatest concentration
of these outposts was along the coast
of what is now Ghana. Among them
was Christiansborg Castle, which, in
the late seventeenth
and eighteenth
centuries, contained
a courtyard, a
chapel, a school
for educating
the children of
European men
and African women, a warehouse,
storerooms, residential quarters,
dungeons, and a bell tower.
Contemporaneous records show
that among the personnel were a
governor, a bookkeeper, a physician, a
chaplain, a full garrison of Danish and
Euro-African soldiers, and enslaved
Africans who worked inside the
castle, but lived outside.
Engmann and her team have dis-
covered that Danish men and their
Ga wives established a community
that reflected the interconnectedness
ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2021
of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-
century mercantile world. “We know
that many Danish men traded on their
own private accounts,” says Engmann,
“including trading captive Africans,
to supplement their salary.” She says
it’s difficult to establish through the
archaeological record alone which
objects were used by the Danes, Afri-
cans, or Euro-Africans in particular
because everybody used objects made
both locally and abroad. “They had
European-made wardrobes, they had
writing desks, pots, pans, Chinese
porcelain, and Danish ceramics and
pipes,” Engmann says. “But we can’t
say it was just Danes that used them.”
The team has uncovered the foun-
dations of several houses that were
part of the settlement, including those
of what is thought to be a kitchen
containing charcoal and three stones
for balancing a cooking pot. They’ve
also discovered what are commonly
called African trade beads, which were
manufactured in Italy and Holland,
and cowrie shells used as currency. A
large assemblage of ceramics found at
the site includes Chinese porcelain, as
well as English, Dutch, and local pot-
tery. The team has uncovered an abun-
dance of Dutch, German, English, and
Danish pipe bowl and stem fragments,
as well as some local African smok-
ing pipes, evidence that tobacco was
widely consumed at the castle. These
artifacts speak to the importance of
trade in imported tobacco, particularly
from Brazil, in the area at the time.
“As soon as the slave trade really
took off in the early seventeenth
century, the materials from the
tropical world coming in—tobacco,
rum, aguardiente, and other kinds
of alcohol—began to change the
landscape of commerce in West
Africa,” says Ogundiran. In the
late seventeenth and particularly
the eighteenth century, a number
(continued on page 63)
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and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt/Thomas Koiki,
Courtesy of Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum
and Zanjan Cultural Heritage Centre, Archaeological
Museum of Zanjan/N. Tehrani, Courtesy Jinan
Institute of Archaeology, Courtesy Pedro Saura,
© MOLA; 4—Azoor Photo Collection/Alamy
Stock Photo; 6—Bureau of Land Management;
9—© MOLA (3); 10—Courtesy Pedro Saura;
12—Cultural Heritage Administration (4);
14—© State Office for Heritage Management
and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt/Thomas Koiki,
© State Office for Heritage Management and
Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt/Friederike Hertel (2),
John Channing; 15—Courtesy Jinan Institute of
Archaeology (2); 16—Courtesy Lesley Gregoricka
(2), Antonio Calandriello and Giuseppe D’Acunto
(Università Iuav di Venezia); 17—Courtesy of
Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum and Zanjan
Cultural Heritage Centre, Archaeological Museum of
Zanjan/N. Tehrani (2); 18—Chapter of Canterbury
Cathedral, Jason Urbanus, Wei Gao; 19—Courtesy
The Euphrates Salvage Project; 20—Durk Talsma/
Alamy Stock Photo, imageBROKER/Alamy Stock
Photo; 22—(clockwise from top left) Daryl Marshke/
Michigan Photography, Department of Archaeology,
University of Reading, Universidad de Murcia,
Standen,V.G. et al., INAH/Sergio Gómez-Chávez;
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Wikimedia Commons, Leping Jiang, Christoph
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24-25—Waj/Shuttertock; 26—Kenneth Garrett;
27—Kenneth Garrett (2); 28—INTERFOTO/
Alamy Stock Photo, © The Trustees of the British
Museum; 29—Courtesy Solange Ashby (2);
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Solange Ashby (2); 32—Photo by Heather Hurst;
33—Digital image by Heather Hurst; 34—Digital
image and illustration by Heather Hurst; 35 Kenneth
Garrett (2); 35—Kenneth Garrett; 36—Digital
image and illustration by Heather Hurst, Digital
image by Heather Hurst; 38-39—Ministero della
Cultura; 40—Ministero della Cultura (4); 41—
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(2); 68—Roberto Ceccacci
61
 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE OF AMERICA
UNcOVERING
PYLOS
In 1939, an archaeological team led
by University of Cincinnati professor
Carl Blegen unearthed the first traces
of what would soon be recognized as
the ancient Greek city of Pylos and the
fabled Palace of Nestor. Celebrated as
one of the greatest discoveries of its
time, it would forever change the study
of Aegean prehistory. The -,100-year-
old ruins are the best-preserved
The AIA has created Uncovering Pylos,
a special publication highlighting the history
and archaeology of this ancient site.
To receive your copy of Uncovering Pylos,
make a $25 donation to the Annual Fund.
Go to archaeological.org/donate
Or, please send a check, payable to:
The Archaeological Institute of America
Attn: Development Department
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MA 02108
The AIA thanks Richard C. MacDonald for his generous support of the Uncovering Pylos Project.
Mycenaean palace complex ever exca-
vated in Greece, and the hundreds of
inscribed Linear B tablets found there
have provided archaeologists with a
unique window into how these Bronze
Age centers functioned.
Almost eight decades later, the
legendary site continues to reveal its
incredible hidden treasures. Additional
discoveries in 1015 and 1017 would
once again indelibly change the field of
Aegean Bronze Age archaeology: the
grave of the so-called Griffin Warrior
and two monumental tholos tombs.
The burials contained a trove of finely
crafted objects that have provided even
more new information about the people
who lived and died in Pylos thousands
of years ago. These new discoveries
continue to prove what an exceptional
place ancient Pylos once was, and
that, although the site has been inves-
tigated by archaeologists for more
than three-quarters of a century, there
is still much to be learned today while
uncovering Pylos.
LETTER FROM GHANA

(continued from page 60) human beings to trade. People pawned

of groups in the region began to
aggressively expand their territory.
“At this time, for instance, the Asante
Empire expanded northwards and
southwards, producing many prisoners
of war, many of whom became captives
for the slave trade,” Greene says.
Europeans did not necessarily incite
local political disputes, but they did
provide weapons that helped fuel
them and then purchased prisoners of
war taken during the armed conflicts
that ravaged the region. “There was
a lot of political turbulence because
of the transatlantic slave trade,” says
Engmann. “Not to say that everyone
was living harmoniously before,
because they were not, but a lot of
fighting, kidnapping, and abduction
was due to a constant European
demand for humans.”
Pawning was another way that
some Africans and Europeans acquired
family members, and sometimes
themselves, as collateral in order to
obtain imported items. Once they had
sold the goods, they would pay the
brokers and reclaim those who had
been pawned or free themselves. The
Danes, however, were careful to avoid
trading in pawned people because they
needed to maintain good relationships
with the Ga.
Archaeological evidence for the
experience of enslaved people within
the castle is spare, often limited
to the remains of spaces, such as
Christiansborg’s dungeon cells, in
which people were kept for days,
weeks, or even months before being
transferred to slave ships bound for
the West Indies. Under the castle,
Engmann’s team has identified the
entrance to a tunnel leading to Richter
House, a nearby residence once
owned by a successful Danish-Ga slave
trader. The tunnel, Engmann says,
was designed so that captive Africans

Huge numbers of cowrie shells (above) were imported from across the Indian Ocean to
West Africa by Europeans, where they were used for currency. Europeans also produced
glass beads called African trade beads (top) in Italy and Holland to exchange with Afri-
cans, along with other luxury goods such as silk textiles, gold bracelets, and carpets.

archaeology.org 63
LETTER FROM GHANA
could be transported from the slave
trader’s house directly onto ships
without giving them an opportunity to
escape or drawing unwanted attention
from neighbors. Slavery was not just
limited to the confines of the fortress
itself. “Many of the people who were
E of Danish-Ga descendants
growing the crops and selling them
in the markets were also enslaved,”
Greene says. “They just belonged to
local people, instead of being sold
to Europeans for export.” Captives
bound for the Americas faced a rapid
transition from political prisoner to
enslaved person. “When an individual
arrives in the dungeon, they are still
a political prisoner, but then that
individual goes through the conversion
to Atlantic slavery,” says Ogundiran.
“In that space, the material component
A sentry post door at Christiansborg Castle was
designed not only to defend against attack, but also
to offer captive Africans bound for the Americas little
chance of escape from its dungeons.
64
of an individual’s personality, of an
individual’s life, is stripped away.”
ngmann’s team is made up
of people who worked in the
castle and lived close by from the
seventeenth through the nineteenth
centuries. Some of their ancestors
may have built the very settlement
the team is excavating. The project,
Engmann explains, is a collaborative
effort, uncommon in that researchers
are conducting excavations of one
of their own ancestral communities.
This allows them not only to learn
about their history, it also provides the
opportunity to reframe narratives of
Christiansborg Castle and the Danish-
Ga settlement that were written from
a Eurocentric perspective
During a festival, Nii Djamlodja VI,
and left out the voices of (right), whose title is Osu Alata Chief
local people. Within the Fisherman, and a community member
project, local knowledge (left) offer a libation to their ancestors
is valued, and oral history in front of a plaque bearing the name
of Carl Gustav Engmann, governor of
is given equal weight
Christiansborg Castle from 1752 to 1757.
alongside the written
record. Osu, from whom Engmann is also
Engmann has a descended. “My experience is much
particularly personal like many other experiences of Danish-
connection to Ga people,” Engmann says. “We know
Christiansborg Castle. we have this heritage and ancestry, and
After taking the advice we know we have our surnames, but we
of an aunt, she visited don’t often talk about it publicly.”
the castle, where she Plans are in place to develop
confirmed that she is not Christiansborg Castle into a museum
the descendant of a Danish where Engmann hopes that artifacts
missionary, as she had uncovered during the excavations can
previously been told, but of be displayed and community members
a man named Carl Gustav can continue to learn about their
Engmann, who was the past. Team member and Danish-Ga
governor of Christiansborg descendant Godfred Wulff-Cochrane
Castle from 1752 to 1757 echoes this sentiment. “There is also
and who later worked a saying,” he says, “that if you don’t
for the Danish king in know your past, you don’t know where
slave trading operations. you are going. So, for me to know my
During his time in Ghana, past, it gives me the assurance that I
the governor married a am going somewhere.” Q
woman named Ashiokai
Ahinaekwa, the daughter Marley Brown is associate editor at
of Chief Ahinaekwa of Archaeology.
ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2021
DISPATCHES
archaeological.org
FROM THE AIA
EXCAVATE EDUCATE ADVOCATE

As we approach the end of the year, the AIA remains in high gear. September saw the start of the 126th season of our
Lecture Program. We celebrated International Archaeology Day in October. Currently, we are promoting our grants
and fellowships in advance of the November application deadlines and, of course, we are getting ready for the Annual
Meeting in January. To stay up to date on all that is happening at the AIA, be sure to visit archaeological.org frequently.

UPCOMING ANNUAL MEETING IN SAN FRANCISCO

Planning is well underway for the 123rd Joint
AIA-SCS Annual Meeting, which will be
held at the Hilton Union Square in San Fran-
cisco—and also online—from January 5 to 8,
2022. The Annual Meeting is an opportunity
for thousands of scholars to come together
to share the results of their research and to
learn about the latest findings in archaeology,
classics, and philology. In addition to a pro-
gram that features more than 400 academic
presentations, the event includes business and
committee meetings and networking opportu-
nities for professionals.
In 2021, the Annual Meeting was fully
virtual. The 2022 meeting will be our first
hybrid conference—attendees and speakers
will have the option to participate in person
in San Francisco or remotely. This is an
ambitious undertaking. Some elements of
the conference may not easily translate to
a hybrid model, but our aim is to make the
upcoming meeting the most accessible one
we have ever held. Please check the meeting
website at archaeological.org/annualmeeting
for updates on registration, hotel reservations,
online access, and programs.

SUPPORT THE AIA INTERNATIONAL ARCHAEOLOGY DAY EMERGES

THROUGH YOUR International Archaeology Day (IAD) is an
annual global celebration of archaeology
MEMBERSHIP AND coordinated by the AIA along with hundreds
Like we did for 2020’s entirely virtual
IAD, we once again focused our efforts on
supporting online programs. We continued

GENEROSITY of collaborating organizations (COs) from

All AIA programs are supported
by AIA members and our donors.
Become an AIA member today at
archaeological.org/join.
The Institute’s commitment
to excavation, education, and
advocacy is made possible by
the generosity of our donors.
Support our mission by making a
gift online at archaeological.org/
donate or by texting “GIVE” to
833-965-2840.
around the world. While IAD officially
takes place every year on the third Saturday
in October, events are held throughout the
month. IAD is the AIA’s largest international
outreach program, and hundreds of thousands
of people have participated in IAD events and
activities in recent years.
This year, IAD cautiously navigated
the pandemic with a mix of in-person and
virtual programming. In areas where it was
possible, COs held in-person events, while
others remained online. “Hybrid” was the new
buzzword as even organizations that hosted in-
person events tried to include virtual audiences.
to hold listening sessions with our COs and
regularly communicated with them through a
digital newsletter. We built on 2020’s successful
Tweetathon and Artifact of the Day social
media programs and introduced an online
scavenger hunt. IAD 2021 provided many
opportunities for us to connect with our
COs and with the public. We hope you were
able to join in some of the IAD celebrations.
We will have a more complete report on
IAD 2021 in the next issue of “Dispatches.”
In the meantime, you can find out more at
archaeologyday.org.
Start planning for next year now: IAD 2022
is Saturday, October 15!

65
 DISPATCHES
FROM THE AIA
EXCAVATE EDUCATE ADVOCATE

OPPORTUNITIES TO HEAR AIA GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS

FROM ARCHAEOLOGISTS Each year the AIA awards between
$120,000 and $250,000 in grants,
The AIA organizes programs and activities that inform and fellowships, and scholarships. AIA
educate the public. Our Lecture Program is our longest-running grants support excavation, research,
outreach program. The program’s 126th year runs from September publication, and site preservation.
2021 through April 2022, and over the season, leading scholars Application deadlines for most of our
will present more than 200 lectures on a wide range of current funding programs are in November.
archaeological topics. Lectures are hosted by AIA societies Visit archaeological.org/grants for
throughout the United States and Canada, and all are free and 2020 AIA grant winner a full list of our grants, application
Jan Simek
open to the public. Please note that we have been adjusting lecture requirements, and deadlines.
schedules in response to the pandemic and it is likely that many
lectures will be held online. Details and updates can be found at
archaeological.org/lectures. AIA AT THE EAA
In addition to the Lecture Program, we organize and host a As it did in 2020, our sister organization, the European Association
variety of other talks and presentations each year. In June, we of Archaeologists (EAA) held its 2021 annual meeting virtually.
wrapped up our very successful first season of Archaeology The AIA has been participating in the EAA meeting for more
Abridged. This free online program featured short lectures followed than 10 years. This year, our representatives co-organized a session
by Q&A sessions with the speakers. Thousands of people from titled “Creativity and Resourcefulness in an Online World: How
around the world attended the presentations. Last season’s topics Archaeologists and Heritage Educators Overcame the Pandemic
included Ötzi the Iceman, New World foods that changed European and Reached the Public in New Ways.” The session focused on
lifestyles, Roman soldiers and the Roman frontier in Britain, Greek public outreach during the pandemic and on the new and different
pottery and wine drinking, and the discovery and interpretation approaches organizations took to communicate with the public,
of Sutton Hoo—the incredible Anglo-Saxon ship burial recently maintain their membership, and reach new audiences. The AIA
featured in the movie The Dig. You can watch recordings of these contributed two papers to the session: “Community and Networks
talks at archaeological.org/archaeology-abridged-webinars/. in a Digital Age: Coming Together to Learn New Ways to Present
The second season of Archaeology Abridged started in Public Programs During a Pandemic” and “A Global Event During
September with “The Secrets of an Ancient Indian City” and a Pandemic: Celebrating International Archaeology Day Through
was followed in October by “Indian Cuisine, Past and Present.” Online Activities and Content.”
Both talks were presented by Monica Smith, an archaeologist
who describes herself as “an ancient economic historian who
utilizes archaeological data to analyze the collective effects of AIA 2022 CALENDAR NOW AVAILABLE
routine activities through the study of food, ordinary goods, and It’s back in time for
architecture.” Stay tuned for announcements of future Archaeology the holidays! “A Year
Abridged talks. of Archaeology” is
In August, we presented a special online lecture by renowned now available. Once
author of historical fiction Steven Saylor. Saylor spoke about his again, the calendar
new book, Dominus, about 30 years of writing fiction set in ancient features stunning
Rome, and about frequently drawing inspiration from archaeological archaeological images
publications and exhibits. Saylor’s books include the long-running from around the world
Roma Sub Rosa series, which features an ancient Roman private that were submitted
investigator, Gordianus the Finder. Dominus completes a trilogy to the AIA’s annual photo contest. It makes a wonderful gift
that began with the New York Times best-selling novel Roma and its for the archaeology enthusiasts in your life—and the proceeds
follow-up, Empire. The trilogy follows the fortunes of a family from support AIA programs that are helping to protect and preserve
prehistoric Rome to the reign of Constantine the Great. more than two dozen sites around the world. Buy yours today at
To learn more about AIA lectures and other events, visit archaeological.org/calendar.
archaeological.org.

66
AIATours.org
Archaeology-focused tours, for all levels of interest...

2022 AIA LAND Tours

Absolute Egypt
Trave
Departure
l
January 12
# Days
17
# Guests
19
AIA Lecturer/Host
Peter Brand
Absolute Egypt January 18 17 19 Stephen Harvey
Maya Pyramids & Temples of Yucatan January 29 9 12 Ben Thomas
Egypt Revisited February 12 19 19 Stephen Harvey
Morocco: From the Desert to the Sea March 1 15 12 Trevor Marchand
Israel: Treasures of the Holy Land March 5 12 19 Jodi Magness
Decorated Caves of the Pyrenees & the Rhone Valley April 21 11 20 Ian Tattersall
Minoan Crete & the Cycladic Islands May 1 15 19 Gerry Schaus
From Stonehenge to Carnac May 10 12 14 Paul Bahn
Iran: The Ancient Land of Persia May 10 19 19 Alexander Nagel
The Legacy of Ancient Greece: Athens, Delphi & the Peloponnese May 18 13 19 Gerry Schaus
The Silk Road: Empires of Central Asia May 22 17 12 Aleksandr Naymark
Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way June 5 15 TBA Stephen Mandal
Human Origins in Tanzania June 28 19 19 William Harcourt-Smith
Hiking Scotland’s Highlands & Isle of Lewis July 8 11 15 Mary MacLeod Rivett
Hiking Scotland’s Orkney & Shetland Isles July 18 11 15 Val Turner
Human Origins in South Africa September 4 15 19 William Harcourt-Smith
France: The Reach of the Romans September 10 12 12 Patrick Hunt
Croatia: Prehistory to the Present September 11 12 19 Andrew Moore
Sicily: Archaeology, Art & Cuisine September 13 12 19 Gerry Schaus
Prehistoric Cave Art of Spain & France September 21 13 20 Paul Bahn
Oman: Crossroads of the Indian Ocean & Arabian Gulf October 9 14 TBA Trevor Marchand
Origins of Humans & Wine: Azerbaijan, Georgia & Armenia October 9 19 14 Ian Tattersall
The Best of Ancient Peru October 10 15 15 Jo Burkholder
The Legacy of the Etruscans October 12 12 19 Lisa Pieraccini
The Legacy of Ancient Rome October 13 12 19 Ingrid Rowland
Tunisia: Phoenicians to Romans, Mosaics to Mosques October 13 11 12 Nejib ben Lazreg

2022 Co-Sponsored, Small-Ship Cruises Departure # Days # Cabins AIA Lecturer/Host

Treasures of the Arabian Gulf January 27 11 92 Trevor Marchand
Expedition to Antarctica January 27 13 79 James Delgado
Greece & Magna Graecia: Athens to Southern Italy and Sicily April 27 13 24 Kathleen Lynch
Springtime in Provence May 18 9 70 Michael Hoff
Voyage from Palermo to Venice May 21 11 24 Ivančica Schrunk
Sicily: A Circumnavigation aboard Sea Cloud II June 4 10 47 Laetitia La Follette
Alaska to Russia: Beyond the Bering Strait July 2 18 79 Ted Goebel
Voyage to the Lands of Gods & Heroes: A Family Learning Adventure July 4 13 24 Candace Weddle Livingston
Cruising the Baltic Sea August 9 11 57 Elizabeth Pierce
In Search of Homer: A Voyage to the World of the Iliad & the Odyssey September 9 13 24 John Bennet
Voyage on the Black Sea September 22 12 59 James Delgado
Ancient Wonders of the Turkish Coast October 1 11 59 Brian Rose
Cruising the Mekong River: Vietnam & Cambodia October 17 14 14 Joyce White
From Prehistory to the Roman Period in Greece October 22 13 24 Cynthia Shelmerdine

Call 800-748-6262 or email aia@studytours.org for questions, reservations, and availability.

Travel • Support • Learn

Request detailed brochures for all AIA Tours: 800-748-6262 | aia@studytours.org | www.aiatours.org
*Itineraries, lecturers, and tour dates are subject to change Pula Amphitheater, Croatia
ARTIFACT BY JARRETT A. LOBELL

WHAT IS IT
housands of tablets in multiple languages spanning millennia confirm that ancient

T
Flask
Near Eastern scribes were tireless record keepers. But errors were bound to happen. CULTURE
Middle Bronze Age
Scholars have recently become aware of a type of vessel called an aluārum in DATE

texts from central Turkey dating to the nineteenth century B.C. More than 200 ca. 1650 B.C.
MATERIAL
years later, inscribed tablets from cities far to the south near Babylon refer to a type of vessel Clay
FOUND
called an “alluharum” pot, which was thought by modern scholars to hold a white dye known
by that name. But according to historian Seth Richardson of the University of Chicago, the
Babylonian scribes were actually misspelling alu)rum, the name of the flasks, which sounded Ankara
TURKEY

similar to their word for dye. “It evokes a picture of Babylonian scribes sitting on the docks Zincirli

with boatmen coming down the Euphrates River transporting hundreds of these jars,” says
Richardson. “The scribes don’t know how to spell the word they’re saying, so they just use
DIMENSIONS
the spelling for a word they know.” The Babylonian vessels mistakenly thought by scholars to 14 inches tall, 12.8 inches
in diameter, volume of
hold dye were in fact full of wine. 3 gallons
Alu)rum flasks such as this pot unearthed at the city of Zincirli
in modern Turkey are found at Middle Bronze Age (ca. 2000–1600
B.C.) sites across the Near East. Their identification as vessels used
to transport and store prized wine changes how scholars
understand the region’s economy. “It’s giving us insight
into the complexity of long-distance trade in the
seventeenth century B.C., a time that is not
well known in this region,” says archaeologist
Kathryn Morgan of Duke University and
assistant director of the Chicago-Tübingen
Expedition to Zincirli. This network
extended from modern Iraq to central
Anatolia, a distance of more than 800 miles
along which merchants transported not only
wine, but also other commodities including
scented and flavored oils.

68 ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2021

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