Por-Bazhyn

Por-Bazhyn from the air (looking northwest) before excavation in 2007.

3-D reconstruction drawing of Por-Bazhyn based on excavation results 2007/8 (by R.A. Vafeev)

 Vajnstejn's plan of the site (updated 2007 for the Por-Bajin Fortress Foundation)

Por-Bazhyn (Por-Bajin, Por-Bazhyng,) is the name of a ruined structure on a lake island high in the mountains of southern Tuva (Russian Federation). The name Por-Bazhyn translates from the Tuvan language as "clay house". Excavations suggest that it was built as an Uyghur palace in the 8th century AD, converted into a Manichaean monastery soon after, abandoned after a short occupation, and finally destroyed by an earthquake and subsequent fire. Its construction methods show that Por-Bazhyn was built within the Tang Chinese architectural tradition.

Por-Bazhyn is a 1,300-year-old structure of 7 acres that takes up most of the small island on which it sits. Containing a maze of over 30 buildings, its high outer walls sit only 30 kilometers (20 mi) from the border with Mongolia. But over a century since its discovery, archaeologists are no closer to understanding who built this structure or why.

At first, researchers thought Por-Bazhyn was an ancient fortress of the Uighur Empire, nomads who ruled southern Siberia and Mongolia from 742–848. It’s constructed with a Chinese architectural style from that time. However, it’s so out of the way of trade routes and other settlements that competing theories eventually arose. Maybe it was a monastery, a summer palace, a memorial for a ruler, or an observatory for the stars. Evidence is accumulating that a Buddhist monastery was at the center of the complex, although only a few artifacts have been unearthed.

The complex does not appear to have been inhabited for long. Archaeologists found indications of earthquakes that may have caused a fire that burned some of the original site. However, the fire appears to have occurred after the island was abandoned for reasons unknown.

LINK

Iron Age warriors point to glories of Gaul

French archaeologist Cecile Paresys stands next to the bones of two Gauls.

On a muddy field between a motorway and a meander of the Seine south-east of Paris, French archaeologists have uncovered an Iron Age graveyard they believe will shed light on the great yet enigmatic civilisation of Gaul.

The site, earmarked for a warehouse project on the outskirts of Troyes, has yielded a stunning array of finds, including five Celtic warriors whose weapons and adornments attest to membership of a powerful but long-lost elite.

Archaeologist Emilie Millet recently crouched at one of 14 burial sites that have been uncovered in the past few weeks after a nine-year excavation of the 260-hectare site.

At her feet were the remains of a tall warrior, complete with a 70-centimetre iron sword still in its scabbard.

"I have never seen anything like it," she said, gazing at a metal-framed shield whose wood-and-leather core has long rotted away.

Buried next to the warriors are several women, whose jewellery - twisted-metal necklaces known as torcs, and large bronze brooches decorated with precious coral - also speak of high status.

In one grave, a woman was buried next to a man, separated by a layer of soil.

"This graveyard is exceptional in more ways than one," said the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap), which excavates sites of potential interest before the bulldozers are allowed in.

The jewellery suggests the dead were buried between 325 and 260 BC, in a period known as La Tene.
Another clue may come from analysis of the scabbards, whose decoration changed according to military fashion.

Designs in this period typically had two open-mouthed dragons facing each other, with their bodies curled.

La Tene, whose name comes from an archaeological site in Switzerland, ran from about the 5th century BC to the first century AD, marking the glory years of the Celts.

During this time, the Celts expanded from their core territory in central Europe to as far afield as northern Scotland and the Atlantic coast of Spain.

They clashed with the emerging Roman empire, whose writers recorded the invaders as pale-skinned savages, dressed in breeches with bleached hair, who cut off their enemies' heads, preserving those of high rank in cedar oil.

The barbarian image, though, has been dispelled by historical research in recent decades.

It has laid bare a complex civilisation that had a mastery of metal and a trading system which spanned Europe and generated great wealth.

The find at Bucheres raises several questions, for there has never been any trace of major Celtic settlement in the neighbourhood.

The graves were uncovered at a depth of about two metres but if they had any external markers, none remain.

An earlier civilisation, from the Bronze Age, left a line of burial mounds nearby, "which would have been visible for miles around," said Inrap archaeologist Cecile Paresys.

Just as intriguing, the excavation has yet to find any pottery or evidence of food, which were often added to Iron Age burials to sustain the dead in the spirit world.

No remains of children have been found, although this absence is common to Celtic necropolises - something that anthropologists are at a loss to explain.

Years of patient forensic work lie ahead to tease out clues about how these people lived and died. In the meantime, the remains are being recorded where they lie before being gently prised from the earth and preserved.

AFP

THE VIKINGS' FAVORITE TARGETS

Early Viking raids followed a similar pattern: their preferred victims were monasteries along the coast, places where two or three ships full of raiders were enough to carry off all the valuables and get away before local fighting men arrived.

Ireland's rich deposits of gold, silver, and copper have been mined since ancient times. Precious and semi-precious stones were also found on the island—emeralds, sapphires, amethysts, topaz, freshwater pearls, and "Kerry diamonds." And the Irish have a long tradition, dating at least to 2000 B.C, of producing metalwork of very high quality.

These native materials and skills combined with religious devotion to make the monasteries and convents of Ireland the richest in the British Isles and, as a result, the favorite targets of Viking raiders.

A chronicler in Munster bewailed the "immense floods and countless sea-vomitings of ships and boats and fleets so that there was not a harbor nor a land port nor a dun nor a fortress nor a fastness in all Munster without floods of Danes and pirates." The chronicler went on to report how the Vikings "ravaged [Munster's] chieftainries and her privileged churches and her sanctuaries, and they rent her shrines and her reliquaries and her books."

Archaeologists have discovered many sublime examples of Irish metalwork, stripped from holy places, in Viking graves throughout Scandinavia. How many other comparable works were melted down or lost?

Books were the sole Irish treasure that the Vikings did not prize. Once a book's gold or silver covers had been pried off, the Vikings had no further interest in it. They tossed books into fires, trampled them under foot, or dumped them in the sea or a nearby lake, causing Irish monks to lament the "drowning" of their precious manuscripts.

As the pillage, destruction, and slaughter spread across the country, some Irish monks gathered up their books and fled to the Continent. Many joined monastic communities in France, Germany, Belgium, or the Netherlands, or offered their services as teachers at the schools founded 20 or 30 years earlier by Charlemagne. Other monks chose the missionary life, carrying Christianity to remote corners of Austria and Switzerland. Irish monks had always been wanderers, but this exodus from Ireland was different.

There was a genuine sense among the monks of Ireland that their civilization was on the edge of extinction. If Irish sanctity and scholarship and artistry were to survive, they believed, it would have to be in foreign lands.

LITTLE WOODBURY

Reconstruction of an Iron Age farmstead of Little Woodbury type. Outside the central hut are various farming activities, as well as hay-drying racks, grain storage pits, raised granaries and beehives. A disused quarrying hollow makes a sheltered workplace. (Tracey Croft)

Normal Iron Age houses were circular and varied in size, with diameters from 15 m. at Little Woodbury (Hut 1) to 10 m. (11 yd) at Shearplace Hill. The Little Woodbury house would have had a conical thatched roof supported on two concentric rings of posts. The outer ring of posts seems also to have supported the walls of the house, the gaps between them being filled with wattle work daubed with clay. On the eastern side of the structure a series of posts formed an entrance porch into the building, probably contrived to house double doors which would alleviate draughts that might prove disastrous in a structure with a central hearth. No obvious provision was made to allow smoke to escape, and it may well have percolated through the thatch, incidentally killing insects and helping to ‘proof’ the thatch, or filtered out through the doorway. Excavation of Little Woodbury in 1938–9 showed that the house timbers had all been replaced twice, and that it may have been occupied for at least 100 years. A second circular house was constructed about 12 m. (13 yd) east of the first. A single ring of posts 10 m. (11 yd) in diameter formed the outer wall, with a porch again on the eastern side. It is not clear if the second hut replaced the first, was contemporary with one of its phases, or merely stood as a stable or store.

With its central fire ablaze and the doors closed life in a round house must have been remarkably comfortable. Each was spacious, with extra room in the rafters for shelves and sleeping platforms for the children. Furs and woollen rugs would have provided warm coverings for wooden benches and beds. Lighting came mainly from the fire, though rush spills or even candles may have been used. A bronze cauldron, perhaps constantly on the boil, hung over the hearth, providing a smell of food that pervaded the whole room and mingled with acrid wood smoke that made the eyes smart and with the stench from the open drain. On shelves around the house jars of various sizes contained food for the household’s consumption whilst wooden barrels and tubs held mead and water. Pans contained milk, some of it in the process of being turned to cheese. Salted meat hung from the rafters. On one side stood a quern with freshly ground flour lying beside it; elsewhere a loom was hung with a half finished blanket. Dogs lazed by the fire, ready to scavenge whenever possible. During the winter cattle probably shared part of the same house, their body heat helping to warm the building.

Outside the Little Woodbury huts a yard was enclosed by a wooden palisade, which was in use long enough to need renewing at least once. Later the palisade was replaced by a ditch 3.4 m. (3.7 yd) wide and 2 m. (2.2 yd) deep, with a bank on its inside, enclosing an oval area of 1.6 ha. (4 acres). Neither the palisade nor the ditch could be seen as defensive and we must assume that they served mainly to keep wild animals out and domestic animals and small children in. Within the palisaded enclosure many post holes were excavated, some of which were either in pairs or groups of four. The excavator, Gerhard Bersu, suggested most plausibly that the paired post holes, usually between 2.0 m. and 2.5 m. (2.2–2.7 yd) apart, once held drying racks for ears of seed corn or hay. The groups of four post holes, arranged at the corners of approximately 2 m. (2.2 yd) squares, may have supported granaries.

An extensive area on the west of the site was occupied by a shallow hollow measuring some 70 m. by 15 m. (76.5 yd×16 yd) scooped out of the chalk. Dr Bersu interpreted this as a working place where threshing and parching of the corn may have taken place, but it was more probably just an old quarry. In addition, other domestic chores such as spinning and weaving, basketry and food preparation may have gone on there, or in various smaller hollows, accompanied by the daily chatter of a large family. Traces of corn drying ovens made of cob or clay were found around the enclosure. A number of post holes may relate to unidentified farm structures such as sties, byres, pens and beehives.

At a later date, perhaps contemporary with the digging of the enclosure ditch, more than 190 storage pits gradually appeared at the site. Varying in shape from cylindrical to beehive, they also varied in depth but averaged about 2 m. (2.2 yd). Dug into the solid chalk, they acted as silos for the storage of grain and would each have held about 40 bushels (14.6 cu.m.). The pits were filled with grain in the autumn and the tops were sealed with clay. The seeds which touched the damp sides of the pit began to germinate and as they did so they used up oxygen and gave off carbon dioxide which created a sterile, airtight atmosphere. Such conditions kept the rest of the grain in excellent condition. When the silos were eventually opened the majority of the grain was removed, perhaps leaving only the germinated seeds around the sides and on the bottom to be destroyed by burning in the pit. Discarded pits were filled up with rubbish or used as latrines. Some shallower pits seem to have been lined with clay and were used for water storage, possibly collected from the hut roof.

Animal bones from the excavations show that small oxen (bos longifrons), sheep or goats and a few pigs had been kept at the farmstead and were eventually butchered. Small horses and a dog had also been kept for a time. The former would have been used primarily as draught animals, but were also ridden at this time, sometimes by warriors. It is often observed that trousers were introduced during the Iron Age to make riding easier. Worn tight at the ankles, they were decorated with check and stripe patterns which may have been ancestral to the tartan series.

Clearly the growing of corn was a primary occupation at Little Woodbury and outside the enclosure there must have been a whole series of squarish fields from which the corn was harvested with small iron sickles. Traces of these fields can still be seen on aerial photographs. Once it was realized that farmyard manure scattered on the land, or deposited there by grazing animals, increased its fertility, it is probable that a two-field system of rotation was introduced. It has been suggested that in the Iron Age a corn yield of about 10 bushels (36 cu.m.) per acre might be expected. Consequently about 1.5 ha. (4 acres) of corn would be required to fill an average storage pit. Fragments of numerous saddle querns were found inside the enclosure at Little Woodbury, as well as the upper stone of a newer, rotary, beehive quern, which had once revolved upon a lower stone that could not be found.

Little Woodbury has been described at length since it represents a common pattern of farming settlment on the chalk hills of southern England, though others often differ in size and shape. At Ardleigh (Essex) the enclosure was much smaller, only 20 m. by 30 m. (22 yd×33 yd), but at Hog Cliff Hill in Dorset it covered some 14 ha. (34.6 acres). Similar to Little Woodbury and completely excavated in 1972 was a 1.2 ha. (3 acre) enclosure at Gussage All Saints in Dorset, which has been shown on the evidence of its pottery to have developed in three stages between the fifth century BC and the first AD. The enclosure ditch was very roughly circular in plan with an external bank which may have been capped by a fence or thorn hedge. The main entrance on the east was closed by a strong gate of timber construction. Leading out from the enclosure during stage 2 were two arcs of ditch and bank known to archaeologists as antennae, which formed an impressive, funnel-like feature on either side of the entrance. It may have served as a symbol of the status of the farmstead, as well as being functional and guiding animals towards the gate. A similar feature is known from Little Woodbury but was not investigated in detail.

Owing to deep ploughing most traces of houses at Gussage had been destroyed. During stage 1 it was possible to recognize about a dozen four-post structures, 128 storage pits and half a dozen working hollows. One hut foundation survived from stage 2 together with more storage pits on the north side of the enclosure, whose ditch had by then been enlarged. The final settlement that spanned the last years BC and the first AD was more dispersed, with small internal enclosures as well as 184 storage pits.

The economy of Gussage was clearly arable and there was evidence for a gradual transition from growing barley to wheat during the life of the site. Iron tips from plough ards were found, as well as an ox goad. Livestock included sheep kept for wool and milk rather than meat, cattle and a few goats and pigs, more than 40 horses and about 30 dogs. The remains of red and roe deer show that they were hunted, and domestic geese, ducks and fowls were kept. Considerable debris from bronze and iron working shows that the Gussage folk were metallurgists as well as farmers and specialized at some point in the casting of bronze harness and chariot fittings.

LINK

LINK

LATE IRON AGE SETTLEMENTS

A view along the north-west corner of the ditches of the earliest farmstead enclosure at Odell (Beds) looking west. (Beds C.C.)

Alongside the great oppida of the south and east were the open villages and farmsteads of late Iron Age Britain. Many of these have been destroyed by gravel working in the fertile valleys of rivers such as the Thames, Nene and Great Ouse. Typical of such sites is Claydon Pike, Lechlade (Glos) where the Oxford Archaeological Unit uncovered an extensive late Iron Age complex of irregular tracks and enclosures, with circular houses, barns and storage pits which continued in use into the first century AD. About AD 70 the whole area was reorganized along more formal, Romano-British lines with rectangular enclosures and straight roads, in the midst of which a shrine was set up.

At Odell in Bedfordshire a farmstead was found consisting of two circular wooden houses in an enclosure, approached by a broad droveway and set amongst rectangular fields. Water was obtained from ponds and wells. Evidence for mixed farming was provided by the bones of cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and domestic fowls, and the presence of drying pits, silos and querns, together with the discovery of a wooden crook-ard type of plough. Wooden ards (ploughs without mould boards) were in use throughout the Iron Age. Many continued to have stone shares as they had done in the Bronze Age, but iron foreshares became fashionable, were more efficient and lasted much longer.