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

Archaeologists discover, virtually recreate Roman gladiator school in Austria

The archaeologists made a digital reconstruction model of the Roman school for gladiators.

A team of archaeologists say they have discovered the almost complete remains of a Roman gladiator school on the banks of the Danube River in Austria and virtually recreated the site.

The so-called ludus "is on a scale to rival the famous ludus magnus, the gladiatorial school behind the Coliseum in Rome," the archaeologists said in a statement.

The team, announcing their findings in the journal Antiquity, say the "spectacular" find at Carnuntum was mapped and virtually reconstructed using non-invasive techniques such as aerial surveys, electromagnetic induction and ground-penetrating radar.

"The resulting archaeological maps and plans of individual buildings, streets and Roman infrastructure allow the virtual reconstruction of the city layout and the development of ancient land and townscapes in two and three dimensions," they said.

"Although some 100 ludi are thought to have existed in the Roman Empire, almost all have been destroyed or built over," the Austrian, Belgian and German team said.

Excavations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries revealed many elements of the Carnuntum complex including a legionary fortress and town, but the ludus was only discovered in 2011.

Carnuntum was the capital of Upper Pannonia in Roman times and a major trading centre for amber.
Its archaeological park contains the ruins of amphitheatres, Roman baths and the remains of a monumental arch known as Heidentor.

AFP

800,000-year-old footprints found in Norfolk, Britain; oldest ancient human footprints found outside Africa

Footprints left by ancient humans 800,000 years ago have been found in Britain, the earliest evidence of such markings outside Africa.

Researchers discovered the footprints, which were left by both adults and children, in ancient estuary mud at Happisburgh in Norfolk in eastern England.

The only older footprints found so far are at Laetoli in Tanzania, at about 3.5 million years old, and at Ileret and Koobi Fora in Kenya at about 1.5 million years, researchers said.

"This is an extraordinarily rare discovery," Nick Ashton of the British Museum, who led the research team, said.

The find came at an archaeological site that has yielded several previous discoveries of stone tools and fossil bones, including mammoth remains.

The researchers found the prints at low tide when waves washed away much of the beach sand to expose the silt below.

"At first we weren't sure what we were seeing but as we removed any remaining beach sand and sponged off the seawater, it was clear that the hollows resembled prints, perhaps human footprints, and that we needed to record the surface as quickly as possible before the sea eroded it away," Dr Ashton said.

The group of early humans that left the footprints appeared to have consisted of at least one male and several smaller people believed to be females and youngsters, the researchers said.

"They are clearly a family group rather than a hunting party," Dr Ashton said.

Footprint owners estimated to be about as tall as modern humans

Analysis of the prints found that they were from a "range of adult and juvenile foot sizes" equating to modern shoe sizes of up to British 7 or 8.

The researchers estimated that the height of the ancient humans who left the prints varied from about 0.9 metres to over 1.7 metres, not far off the height of modern humans.

They were dated at 800,000 years old partly on the basis of the site's geological position beneath glacial deposits, but also because the fossils there come from now-extinct types of mammoth and horse and early forms of vole that were alive at that time.

But the question of exactly what type of ancient humans left their footprints in the sands of time remains a mystery.

They may have been related to people of a similar period in history found in Atapuerca in Spain, assigned to the species Homo antecessor, or Pioneer Man, said Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum.

"These people were of a similar height to ourselves and were fully bipedal," he said.
Homo antecessor apparently became extinct in Europe 600,000 years ago and was perhaps replaced by the species Homo heidelbergensis, followed by the Neanderthals from about 400,000 years ago, and eventually modern humans some 40,000 years ago.

AFP

New England's 'Lost' Archaeological Sites Rediscovered

Examinations of airborne scans, using light detection and ranging (LiDAR), of three New England towns have revealed networks of old stone walls, building foundations, old roads, dams and other features. Here, an abandoned farmstead in Preston, Conn., is hidden from view in this 2012 aerial photograph and only visible in the LiDAR scan of the area from 2010 (right). Credit: (aerial) Connecticut Environmental Conditions Online (CTECO); (LiDAR) 2010 USDA NRCS

By Wynne Parry, LiveScience Contributor   |   January 16, 2014 02:46pm ET

Take a walk in the New England woods, and you may stumble upon the overgrown remains of a building's foundation or the stacked stones of a wall. Now, researchers have begun uncovering these relics from the air.

Examinations of airborne scans of three New England towns revealed networks of old stone walls, building foundations, old roads, dams and other features, many of which long were forgotten. These features speak to a history that Katharine Johnson, an archaeologist and study researcher, wants to see elucidated.

She and others know the story in broad strokes: After European settlers arrived in the 17th century, thousands of acres of forest were cleared to make way for much more intensive agriculture than that practiced by indigenous people. In the 19th century, people began leaving for industrial towns, allowing the forests to overtake their former farms.

"I think there is a general idea of what was happening, but it is not as well understood as it could be," Johnson, a doctoral student at the University of Connecticut, told LiveScience. [See the Aerial Images of 'Lost' Archaeological Sites in New England]

New Englanders have long known about these relics of the agricultural past. But Johnson and William Ouimet, her adviser and co-author, harnessed a new way to look for them, one that has proved useful in other places.

They looked at publicly available data collected by using a remote-sensing technology known as light detection and ranging (LiDAR). These scans map the surface below using laser pulses, and they make it possible for researchers to look below tree cover. LiDAR has increasingly been used in archaeology of late, with researchers, aided by the technology, finding the ancient capital of the Khmer Empire, Angkor, was even more massive than previously thought. LiDAR has also revealed a lost city beneath the Cambodian jungle (near Angkor) as well as evidence of Ciudad Blanca, a never-confirmed legendary metropolis, hidden by Honduran rain forests.

In the new study, Johnson and Ouimet focused on parts of three rural towns: Ashford, Conn.; Tiverton, R.I.; and Westport, Mass. In the scans, stone walls showed up as thin linear ridges, forming enclosures that were likely once fields, lining old thoroughfares, and clustering around the foundations at the heart of old farmsteads.

The LiDAR also picks up on modern features, leading to potential confusion. Old building foundations can resemble modern swimming pools, for example. To verify what they see in LiDAR data, Johnson and Ouimet have been visiting sites.

This new information is best used in combination with historical documents, Johnson said.
"On a historical map, you might see just one dot, and a person's name representing a farmstead, but if you compare that with the LiDAR you might see all of the buildings, in addition to the layout, and the fields, and the road leading to it," she said.

Sometimes the past lives on in the modern landscape. Many stone walls that showed up in the scans of Westport, Mass., delineated property lines, both in modern times and on a map from 1712, she said.

This research will be detailed in the March issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science, and is now available online.

Follow LiveScience @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.

Discovery of “Otzi the Iceman” (1991)

Brown-eyed, bearded, furrow faced, and tired: this is how Ötzi the Iceman might have looked, according to the latest reconstruction based on 20 years of research and investigations.

Realized by two Dutch experts, Alfons and Adrie Kennis, the model was produced with the latest in forensic mapping technology that uses three-dimensional images of the mummy's skull as well as infrared and tomographic images.


In 1991 two hikers discovered the frozen body of a Bronze Age man in glacier ice in the Similaun Pass in the Tyrol Alps between Austria and Italy. Modern archaeological and biological forensic techniques have provided a wealth of information about the life and death of this mummified 5,000-yearold person.

"Otzi the Iceman," "Similaun man," or just "Iceman" was discovered by chance. At first the hikers and authorities thought he was of very recent provenance, but this serendipitous find turned out to be the oldest complete human body ever found. Over the next few years, although now carefully preserved at the University of Innsbruck's Institute of Prehistory and Early History, the Iceman was examined by numerous international scientific experts, for twenty-minute intervals, each adding their expertise, building up as complete a picture of his life and death during the Bronze Age as evidence allowed.

The Iceman was discovered at an altitude of 3,200 meters, making him not only the oldest body to be found in Europe, but also the highest prehistoric find as well. His body had been air dried before being enveloped by the glacier about 5,300 years ago. He was between thirty and forty years old, based on dental evidence, and he was 156-160 centimeters (5 feet 2 inches) high. His brain, muscles, heart, liver, and digestive organs were in good condition, although his lungs were blackened-probably from smoke from open fires. Eight of his ribs had been fractured, some of these had healed and others were healing when he died. Tattoos were found on both sides of his lower spine and on his left calf and right ankle, comprising two-centimeter-long parallel vertical blue lines. On his inner knee there was a tattoo of a blue cross. Most of his fingernails, except one, had dropped off. Analysis of the remaining one indicated that he had used his hands to work, and that he had also been ill, based on reduced nail growth, at four, three-, and two-month intervals before his death. DNA analysis of his tissue confirmed that he was of central or northern European origin.

The Iceman died with a variety of clothing and other possessions made from organic materials that usually do not survive. In this case, because they had been frozen, they had been preserved. These were the everyday belongings of a man from the late Stone Age, which, until now, had been the subject of speculation and ethnographic analogy. The Iceman's clothing, comprising pouch, loincloth, and leggings, were made from eight different species of animal, were carefully stitched together with sinew, and had been repaired. His coat was deerskin, his hat was bearskin, his calfskin shoes were filled with grass for warmth, and he had an outer cloak of woven grass or reeds. This latter garment was similar to those recorded as being worn by local people as late as the nineteenth century. His clothing did not belong to someone of high social status-evidence that the Iceman was probably a farmer and a shepherd.

The Iceman's equipment is the earliest of its kind to be found in Europe and comprised over 70 artifacts. He carried a small, 9.5-centimeter copper ax, with a yew wood haft and leather binding. He also had an unfinished yew bow, with 14 arrows in a deerskin quiver, only two of which were ready to use, with flint tips and feather fletching. Other artifacts found with the Iceman included a flint knife with a wooden handle and grass string sheath; a hazel and larch wood frame of what was probably a rucksack; a lime wood handle with a sharpened antler tip inserted into one end; a retouching tool for flint scraping; two birch bark containers; a small marble disc on a leather thong; a piece of net; two types of fungus-one a tinder fungus, and the other, on a leather thong, may have been medicinal; other flints, such as a scrapers and awls, and one for making fires; and small quantities of antlers and bones for sharpening into points. Iceman had used a surprisingly large variety of different plants to manufacture his kit. Food evidence included a sloe (a kind of plum) berry, fragments of meat bone from the vertebrae of an ibex, and some cereal grains.

Radiocarbon dates confirmed that Iceman died 5,200 years ago (ca. 3200 BC) at the beginning of the European Bronze Age. The wide variety of wood and animal species used by the Iceman in his tool kit and clothing is impressive. So too are his techniques for working wood, flint, leather, and grasses. In fact, the archaeological evidence revealed more about the Bronze Age world than just the body. However, all of this evidence, and the evidence from his body, particularly his age, diet, diseases, and genetics, greatly enhanced our understanding of the early Bronze Age in Europe. And all of this from a chance discovery that could have disappeared back into the snow again without ever being found.

Further Reading Bortenschlager, S., and K. Oeggl, eds. 2000. The Iceman and his natural environment: Palaeo-botanical results. Vienna, Austria: Springer. Dubowski, M. 1998. Ice mummy: The discovery of a 5,000-year-old man. New York: Random House. Fowler, B. 2001. Iceman: Uncovering the life and times of a prehistoric man found in an alpine glacier. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Climate change - Historicial Fact

The climate of England has been characterized as generally damp and relatively sunless but, as every native knows, the weather is as various as the land. In the south-east the summers are warm and the winters are cold, while in the north-west the winters are mild and the summers are cool. In the north-west four and a half hours of sunshine light up an average July day, while on the south coast six and a half hours can be anticipated; the western seaboard attracts 40 per cent more rainfall than the eastern. The predominant wind of autumn and of winter is from the south-west; in the spring it is the east. This was the weather that created a land of damp forests of oak and ash, of marshes and heath wrapped in mist. In the north and the west lay the moors and the mountains, where the soil was thin. This was the land of pasture rather than of crops, and the local farmers grew only as much corn as they needed for themselves. The south and east were the lowlands, with gradual undulations in the rich earth; this was ground as fit for corn as for cattle. It was the territory of ‘mixed farming’.

In the history of England these patterns of climate are of the utmost importance; if there is a drop in temperature of two degrees, as in the period from 500 to 300 BC, the prospect of adequate harvests in the north is noticeably curtailed. A difference of one degree made a failure of the harvest seven times more likely. In this period, then, we see the abandonment of upland farms and settlements. The southern land was warmer, and more stable; it was the home of the plentiful harvest, and the general dampness meant that crops could even be grown on lighter soils where sand and chalk prevailed. It is a general truth, therefore, that in the south-east the land was devoted to wheat whereas in the north it was given over to oats. But important regional variations were still found. Oxfordshire and north-east Suffolk grew wheat, whereas Norfolk grew more rye. Oats were the main crop in Lancashire, while rye was dominant in Yorkshire. Wheat and barley shared the ascendancy in Wiltshire whereas, in the rainier country west of that shire, barley predominated.

The people of the south were wealthier if not healthier than their counterparts in the north. So the climate is active in human history. It may also be that the drier east creates human communities different from those of the rainier west; marked contrasts of social systems in the first millennium BC are in fact evident, with small centres of lordly power in the west and more scattered settlements in the east. The isolated farmhouse and the small hamlet were characteristic of the north and west; the village and the manorial system of common cultivation were more usual in the south and east.

At the time of the Roman occupation the weather was warmer than at any period in subsequent history, but this was succeeded by colder and wetter conditions by the end of the fourth century. For ten years, beginning in AD 536, there was a very low level of sunlight; this would have been a time of dearth and famine, hitherto unrecorded. It might also be noted that Alfred was credited with the invention of a clock that allowed him to tell the time when the prevailing fogs obscured the sun.

The climate of 1009 and 1010 was recorded by a Benedictine monk, Byrhtferth, who dwelled in East Anglia; the winter lasted from 7 November to 6 February, being cold and moist; the spring from 7 February to 8 May was moist and hot; summer from 9 May to 6 August was hot and dry; autumn from 7 August to 6 November was dry and cold. He was only one of the clerics who kept a detailed record of the conditions of the weather.

The eleventh and twelve centuries were in fact warmer than those immediately preceding them, but a deterioration of climate took place in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; the annals of these later centuries also mention the increasing incidence of floods and droughts, suggesting greater instability. Hard frosts lasted into spring, and violent gales brought down the trees of the forests. The Thames froze in the winter of 1309–10, and the years 1315 and 1316 were marked by endless rain. The harvests failed, and the dead were buried in common graves. It was a time of epidemic disease. Crime rates rose proportionately.

The increase of rainfall, in the fourteenth century, is marked by the construction of drainage ditches and house platforms; church floors were raised, and the lower halves of some villages were deserted. The carpenter in Chaucer’s ‘The Miller’s Tale’ reveals an obsessive fear of another Great Flood covering the earth. The extraordinary wind of 14 January 1362 was widely believed to be a harbinger of the Day of Judgment. In the medieval period the weather is the lord of all. Outer weather creates inner weather. It would be possible to write the history of England as the history of the English climate.

PREHISTORIC WEAPONS

The enemy attacks! Full-blown battles were fought at the time of the Tollund Man. More illustrations. © Niels Bach

Among the earliest and most widespread of man's weapons is the spear. Originally it was merely a wooden pole with one end sharpened with a stone or piece of bone, but once palaeolithic man had discovered fire, some 500,000 years ago, charring was also used to harden and sharpen the tip. The next stage was to insert pieces of stone or bone in order to reinforce the point, and then to fit a stone head. From a very early period there were two types of spear, thrusting and throwing. The throwing spear, or javelin, tended to be lighter and in order to increase its range a device called the spear thrower was introduced. This acted as a lever and was a piece of shaped wood, bone or horn with a hook or recess into which the end of the spear fitted. 

Two of man's other original weapons are the club and the axe. The club was originally made of hardwood, the head being larger than the handle. Like the tip of the spear, the head was then reinforced with stone. The original axe was made entirely of stone, simply an almond-shaped head sharpened by flaking. In about 3500 BC the wooden haft or handle was introduced, being attached to the stone head by means of bent wood, horn sockets, lashing and gum. Then, during the neolithic or New Stone Age era, 7000-2000 BC, the art of grinding, polishing and drilling of stone was developed, which radically increased the effectiveness of the axe, both as a tool and as a weapon of war. The head was now often fitted to the handle by means of a circular hole drilled through it, known as the `eye'. 

Perhaps surprisingly, the bow was already in existence around 15000 BC. It was first developed by the Mediterranean civilizations, and was taken up in northern Europe during the ninth millennium. From the start, yew, because of its good tensile characteristics, was the preferred wood, although in colder climates, where yew did not grow, elm and occasionally pine were used. Most bows were man-sized, and by the third millennium the composite bow, strengthened with horn and sinews, was in use in some regions. The string was normally made with plaited leather strips. Stone arrowheads were used, and the arrow itself was straightened by passing it through a hole drilled in bone or horn. In order to obtain arrows of standard size-important in terms of accuracy-they were shaved by means of a hollow tube cut as grooves in a split stone. The other basic weapon was the slingshot, a spherically shaped stone which was projected from a leather sling, which the firer whirled above his head in a circular motion in order to impart increased velocity to the stone.

Late Ice Age hunting technology

Knecht's (1994) study of the evolution of Upper Palaeolithic projectile points has shown in detail how people adapted to the ice age environment and to the animals available for hunting. It has also demonstrated advanced conceptual abilities among these people and an acute awareness of the physical properties of the raw materials that were available. Knecht was able to illustrate technological progress towards more efficient, flexible spears. Another major consideration in the gradual changes in material and design was the ease of repair whilst away from camp. She also carried out experiments using a goat carcass to test the velocity and efficiency of the spearpoints as hunting weapons. Her findings corroborate those from Stellmoor. Flint points propelled by bow, spear-thrower or unaided human muscles were formidable weapons, capable of penetrating animal tissue and bone. The hunting of large, dangerous prey could be carried out effectively and more safely from a distance.

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