ARCHAEOLOGY
uncovers extensive Bronze Age trade routes, long-lived unicorms and ancient sex
BRONZE AGE TRADE
At the opening of the Nordic Bronze Age (2000-1700 BC), the availability of tin and copper in Scandinavia increased dramatically. Analysis of 210 Bronze
Age artefact samples from Denmark, representing almost half of all known existing Danish metal objects from this period, reveals imports of both raw metals and crafted objects from the British Isles and across the Baltic Sea from the east. Isotopic signatures and high tin contents with relatively pure copper in many of the British-style axes contrasts with an unexpected predominance of Slovakian copper. Metal recycling was common: Nordic smiths repeatedly hacked up imported and local metal objects to recast them for new local products. Metal mixing in this early period is distinct from the alloying of copper with tin to create highquality bronze, though there is evidence of rather pure copper from the eastern Alps beginning to be used this early. EurekAlert! 24 July, via Archaeo News, 27 Aug 2019.
Stunning glass beads found in Danish Bronze Age burials dating to 3,400 years ago turn out to have come from Egypt and the Middle East, indicating that there were established trade routes between Nordic Europe and the Levant at that early date. Twenty-three of the glass beads were cobalt blue, a rare colour in ancient times. “Lapis lazuli was the most precious gemstone in the Nordic Late Bronze Age,” said Danish archaeologist Jeanette Varberg. “Blue glass was the next best thing.” One of the blue beads was found with a Bronze Age woman buried in Olby, Denmark, in a hollowed oak coffin wearing a sun disc, a smart string skirt decorated with small bronze tubes, and an arm bracelet made of amber (fossilized tree resin) beads. Another blue bead was found in a necklace together with four pieces of amber, in the burial of another woman.
Glass and amber shared symbolic or magical values that made it beneficial to carry them together. According to Greek mythology, amber was the tears of the daughters of the Sun god Helios – or, according to Apollonius of Rhodes, the tears shed by the Sun god Apollo when he was visiting the land of the Hyperboreans (ancient Scandinavians) and heard about the death of his son. Generally, blue was associated with the heavens and with sea, lakes and rivers. In Ancient Egypt, blue was more specifically associated with life and rebirth, and represented (the fertility of) the Nile, the heavens, and also the primaeval waters from which the Sun, Ra, was created. Thus, in Egypt blue was related to creation myths and the re-birth of the Sun every morning.
The blue beads found in Denmark were analysed using plasma-spectrometry, which enables comparison of trace elements. This showed that they originated from the same glass workshop in Amarna in Egypt that adorned King Tutankhamun at his funeral in 1323 BC. The pharaoh’s golden death mask contains stripes of blue glass in the headdress, as well as in the inlay of his false beard. It seems that Egypt and Denmark traded the luxury glass beads for amber, which was associated with the Sun God, both in ancient Egypt and the Nordic areas. Altogether 271 glass beads have been found at 51 burials sites in Denmark, the majority of which originated from Nippur, Mesopotamia, about 30 miles (50km) southeast of Baghdad.
Nordic amber has been found as far south as Mycenae in Greece and at Qatna, near Homs in Syria. Together with other
finds such as Cypriot copper found in Sweden, the picture of an elaborate trade system emerges. Nordic amber beads as well as beads made of Egyptian glass and copper ingots formed part of the cargo of the Bronze Age ship wrecked at Uluburun, found in 1982 about six miles (9.7km) miles southeast of Kaş, in south-western Turkey. However, the glass exchange almost stops around 1177 BC – probably due to attacks by the Sea Peoples. After that date, fewer glass beads seem to have reached the north. However, new workshops arose in Italy’s Po Valley, where they turned glass into glass beads and processed Nordic amber from natural lumps into finished gems. haaretz.com, 9 Mar 2019.
Twenty-three tin ingots from shipwrecks off the coast of Israel date from about the 13th century BC. Tin was a prerequisite for making bronze swords and armour. Analysis of the 10-15kg (22-33lb) ingots by researchers in Mannheim, Germany, indicates that they weren’t from central Asia as assumed, but from Cornwall and Devon – possibly the Carnmenellis area of west Cornwall. The researchers speculate that this trade was initiated before the Phoenicians by the Mycenaean Greeks, who rose to prominence around 1430 BC. “Unlike the Minoans,” they write in the journal Plos One, “the Mycenaeans sailed west and established trading ports… which served as gateways to new trading routes to Britain and the European interior.” The researchers also examined a tin ingot of the period from Crete and others from a shipwreck off Turkey. The metal in these appeared to derive from Afghanistan and Sardinia, respectively, indicating that there were a number of different tin routes. Times, 19 Sept 2019.
TAX EVASION IN THE 11TH CENTURY
Last January, metal detectorists Adam Staples and Lisa Grace unearthed a hoard of 2,528 silver pennies from the time of the Norman Conquest, retrieved from a field in Chew Valley, Somerset, over four hours during a thunderstorm. Pennies were the only denomination minted at the time. First reports (D.Mail & D.Mirror) said there were 2,571 coins; the BBC states the hoard includes 1,236 Harold II pennies and 1,310 William I pennies and some fragments. The hoard would have been enough to buy 500 sheep in 1067-68. Three of the coins are “mules”, a combination of two types of coin, essentially an early form of tax evasion by moneyers (dodging the fees for new dies). If caught, the miscreants risked losing a hand. These mules have designs and legends (inscriptions) that relate to both monarchs. There are also previously unrecorded mints for both kings’ coins (like Bath for Harold).
The hoard (of 2,528 or 2,546 or 2,571 coins) is likely to have been buried by a wealthy landowner not long after the Battle of Hastings. It is the largest Norman treasure hoard found since a lead chest containing 8,000-9,000 silver pennies of William I and William II was unearthed in Beaworth, Hampshire, in 1833. The Somerset hoard contains double the number of Harold’s coins than all previous finds combined. These were never numerous as Harold reigned for only nine months. D.Mail, D.Mirror, 26 Aug; D.Telegraph, 29 Aug 2019.
‘UNICORN’ LIVED WITH HUMANS
The ‘Siberian unicorn’, a species of single-horned rhino once thought to have gone extinct 100,000 years ago, actually survived for another 65,000 years. The 3.5-ton Elasmotherium sibiricum eventually disappeared during the megafaunal extinction, when the woolly mammoth and sabre-toothed cat also died out. Carbon-dating of 23 skulls in European collections showed that some were as recent as 35,000 BP. There is no evidence that humans hunted these beasts; their extinction is attributed to changes in climate and the rhinos’ solitary grazing habits. D.Mail, 27 Nov 2018.
STONE’S THROES OF PASSION
The world’s earliest known depiction of a couple getting their rocks off toured the country this summer as part of an exhibition exploring LGBTQ history. The 4in (10cm) calcite cobble sculpture known as the Ain Sakhri Lovers, showing two figures having face-to-face sex in a sitting position, dates to about 9000 BC. The carved pebble was discovered in a cave near Bethlehem in 1933, and was made by the Natufians, among the first people to domesticate sheep and goats. It has been ingeniously carved so that, whichever way you look at it, the shape of the figurine is phallic but the genders of the couple are not revealed. The British Museum purchased it in 1958, and it features in Neil MacGregor’s A History of the World in 100 Objects (2010, pp.37-42). Sun, 26 June; Metro, 27 June 2019.