Italian archaeologists claim to have found a stone enclosure which once protected the legendary 'Golden Bough'. In Roman mythology, the bough was a tree branch with golden leaves that enabled the Trojan hero Aeneas to travel through the underworld safely. They discovered the remains while excavating religious sanctuary built in honour of the goddess Diana near an ancient volcanic lake in the Alban Hills, 20 miles south of Rome (Italy).
They believe the enclosure protected a huge Cypress or oak tree which was sacred to the Latins, a powerful tribe which ruled the region before the rise of the Roman Empire. The tree was central to the myth of Aeneas, but in a second, more historically credible legend, the Latins believed it symbolised the power of their priest-king.
The discovery was made near the town of Nemi by a team led by Filippo Coarelli, a recently retired professor of archaeology at Perugia University. After months of excavations in the volcanic soil, they unearthed the remains of a stone enclosure. Shards of pottery surrounding the site date it to the mid to late Bronze Age, between the 12th and 13th centuries BCE.
"We found many, many pottery pieces of a votive or ritual nature," said Prof Coarelli. "The location also tells us that it must have been a sacred structure. We spent months excavating, during which we had to cut into enormous blocks of lava." The stone enclosure is in the middle of an area which contains the ruins of an immense sanctuary dedicated to Diana, the goddess of hunting, along with the remains of terracing, fountains, cisterns and a nymphaeum.
"It's an intriguing discovery and adds evidence to the fact that this was an extraordinarily important sanctuary," said Prof Christopher Smith, the head of the British School at Rome, an archaeological institute. "We know that trees were grown in containers at temple sites. The Latins gathered here to worship right up until the founding of the Roman republic in 509 BCE." The story about the golden bough and Aeneas, who is said to have journeyed from Troy to Italy to found the city of Rome, was documented by Virgil in his epic, the Aeneid.
Source: Telegraph.co.uk (18 February 2010)
An Italian scientist has developed a method for absolute dating of rock art applied to the sites on marble outcrops surfaces in the Apuane mountain chains in the north-west of Tuscany (Italy). Probably these carvings are not of prehistoric origin, but they date from historical times instead - and the new method seems to confirm this.
The mathematical technique used by Paolo Emilio Bagnoli is the so-called Montecarlo method which consists of the study of the macroscopic properties of a granular system starting from the continuous repetition of microscopic stochastic events whose probability laws is supposed to be known. These laws were related to the speeds of the various erosion mechanisms for limestone. By using the above described procedure, it was possible to observe the time evolution of the cross-section of the engravings subjected to natural erosion processes (freeze-thaw, chemical dissolution) in a time range spanning about 2000 years and to evaluate the trend behaviours of both depth and width of the small moat.
This procedure allowed to study the evolutions of both depth and width, to write analytical formulas of the average trend behaviors which can be inverted in order to yield the elapsed time from the engraving execution. This is only the beginning phase of the research but the first experimental data gathered from the so-called 'Billhook Step' (Mount Gabberi, Camaiore , Lucca) seems to be encouraging. Beside the uncertainty of the input data required by the
mathematical analysis, Paolo Emilio Bagnoli believes that the new method is very promising for obtaining reliable absolute dates for rock art, at least on limestone rocks, horizontal flat surfaces, open air exposure and figures traced in contour.
A copy of the original study can be downloaded from www2.ing.unipi.it/~a005962/rupestre/Valcamonica.pdf
Source: Rock Art Mailing List
Archaeologists at the University of Bradford will be leading an exploration into how prehistoric people made their living in Italy at the end of the Ice Age. The research aims to find out how hunter-gatherers in Mediterranean Europe survived before farming became widespread and why the transition to agriculture was a smooth one.
Researchers will use high-precision dating to accurately age occupation layers in archaeological cave sites and identify which animals were being hunted by the prehistoric people by studying bones found at sites. The team will also use isotope analyses to identify if the hunted animals migrated seasonally. Lead researcher Dr Randolph Donahue said: "This project brings together cutting edge scientific analyses and traditional archaeological approaches for understanding in the past. It will assist us in explaining how and why people shifted smoothly towards adopting agriculture in Mediterranean Europe following its introduction from the Near East."
The work will include a study of the production and use of stone tools discarded at the sites to understand how prehistoric people were using the caves. The results of these combined methods will evaluate which of two theories best explains the food procurement strategies of hunter-gatherers in Mediterranean Europe during the end of the Ice Age. The first theory suggests prehistoric people followed herds of animals year round in order to hunt them for food while the second theory suggests people moved around the landscape far less by relying far more heavily on small animals, fish and plants.
The project involves more than 20 researchers at ten universities and research centres in the UK, Italy and Germany.
Source: Telegraph & Argus (24 August 2009), Irish Sun (25 August 2009)
Italy's police squad for art says an ancient warrior's skeleton has been found floating in a tomb filled with sea water on a beach near Rome (Italy). The bones are believed to date from between 2,000 BCE to 3,000 BCE.
Carabinieri art squad official Raffaele Mancino said that the warrior was likely killed by an arrow that was found among his ribs. He says there was also a hole in the back of the skull. The warrior is nicknamed 'Nello' after the archaeologist who found him in May as art hunters were making a routine check of the region's archaeological areas. The bones were found along with six vases and two daggers. Mancino says the tomb could be part of a wider necropolis lying just a few steps from the sea.
The tomb, hidden in the bushes on a public beach in Nettuno, about 65km south of Rome, was excavated in less than one day to preserve it from sea water erosion, Mancino said. Part of it has already been damaged. The warrior's bones will be examined and eventually put on display, officials said. The beach remains open, though the area of the discovery has been cordoned off.
Sources: Associated Press (31 July 2009), World News Australia
The 57 tattoos sported by Oetzi, the 5300-year-old iceman mummy found in Italy, were made from fireplace soot that contained glittering, colorful precious stone crystals, according to an upcoming study in the Journal of Archaeological Science. The determination supports prior research that the tattoos were associated with acupuncture treatments for chronic ailments suffered by the iceman, whose frozen body was found remarkably well preserved in the Similaun Glacier of the Alps in 1991.
The findings also suggest how prehistoric people were tattooed in the days before commercial inks and electric tattooing machines. "I can imagine that they used some pointed material, maybe thorns, and dipped it into the soot and then pierced into the skin, or made scars and put the soot into the wound after insertion, allowing the wound to heal so that the colored material stayed there," lead author Maria Anna Pabst said. Using optical microscopy and various powerful electron microscopy techniques, Pabst, a professor in the Institute of Cell Biology at the Medical University of Graz, and her colleagues analyzed several of Otzi's tattoos. Magnification of the skin designs revealed the tattoos consisted of soot, likely raked out of a fireplace, along with different silicate crystals, such as quartz and almandine, a type of purple garnet.
"As there are only a few tiny crystals between the soot particles, I think that when the ancients took the soot from the stones of the fireplace, they got some crystals," Pabst said, explaining that the crystals likely were just naturally in either the dirt or the fireplace structure itself, and not intentionally added for their sparkle, color and value. "The tattoos have a dark blue color, deriving from the soot," she added. "There are groups of one, two, three, four and seven tattoo lines parallel to the longitudinal axis of the body, and so they're parallel to Chinese acupuncture meridians." The cross-shaped tattoo on his knee, and another one on his left ankle, also lay over Chinese acupuncture 'trigger points,' the researchers believe. Strengthening their argument is the fact that the soot-made markings are located on parts of the iceman's body not typical for tattoo displays, diminishing the notion that they served a more ornamental, aesthetic function.
Prior research shows Oetzi did suffer from a variety of ailments that might have benefited from acupuncture. These included a bad back, degeneration of the hip, knee and ankle, and 'severe abdominal disorders,' primarily caused by whip worm, an intestinal parasite that can cause diarrhea. Before the more recent studies on this mummy, historians believed the earliest acupuncture took place in China around 3,000 years ago. Since the iceman is much older, Pabst and her colleagues now think this therapeutic technique may have been independently discovered by many different prehistoric European and Asian cultures.
Frank Bahr, president of the German Academy of Acupuncture, first made the tattoo-acupuncture connection on the iceman after studying a drawing of the tattoos and their placement on Oetzi's body. "The most interesting thing about the whole iceman story is that even today I would treat a patient with about 90 percent of the same points as the tattoos on the iceman, if this patient were to have the same diseases," Bahr said.
Source: Discovery News (17 July 2009)
The current population of Tuscany is not descended from the Etruscans, the people that lived in the region during the Bronze Age, a new Italian study has shown. Researchers at the universities of Florence, Ferrara, Pisa, Venice and Parma discovered the genealogical discontinuity by testing samples of mitochondrial DNA from remains of Etruscans and people who lived in the Middle Age as well as from people living in the region today. While there was a clear genetic link between Medieval Tuscans and the current population, the relationship between modern Tuscans and their Bronze Age ancestors could not be proven, the study showed.
"Some people have hypothesised that the most ancient DNA sequences, those from the Etruscan era, could contain errors or have been contaminated but tests conducted with new methods exclude this," said David Caramelli of Florence University and Guido Barbujani of Ferrara University. "The most simple explanation is that the structure of the Tuscan population underwent important demographic changes in the first millennium before Christ," they said. "Immigration and forced migration have diluted the Etruscan genetic inheritance so much as to make it difficult to recognise".
The scientific data does not necessarily mean that the Etruscans died out, the researchers said. Teams from Florence and Ferrara universities are working to identify whether traces of the Etruscans' genetic inheritance may still exist in people living in isolated locations in the region.
The Etruscans lived mainly between the rivers Tiber and Arno in modern-day Umbria, Lazio and Tuscany, in the first millennium BC. By the sixth century BC they had become the dominant force in central Italy, but repeated attacks from Gauls and Syracusans later forced them into an alliance with the embryonic Roman state, which gradually absorbed Etruscan civilization.
Sources: ANSA, Times of the Internet (3 July 2009)
Last week's powerful earthquake in the central Italian Abruzzo regional capital L'Aquila has unearthed prehistoric dwellings there. Some of the vaulted caves measure up to five metres in height, according to Italian geologist Gianluca Ferretti. "We are exploring them," said Ferretti, who teaches geology at L'Aquila's university.
One the biggest caves is located near L'Aquila's bus terminal, in via di Collemaggio. The caves date back 15,000 years, according to geologists. "Some of the caves were hollowed out by the first shepherds to inhabit the area, who would also use them as shelters for their animals," said Ferretti's colleague, Antonio Moretti. But while they represent a fascinating archaeological find, the caves' emergence has worried geologists. "It shows the fragility of the sediment on which the area is built," said Ferretti.
The magnitude 6.3 quake recently destroyed or seriously damaged several thousand buildings in L'Aquila and surrounding villages, killing 295 people and leaving 55,000 homeless.
A Stone Age warrior frozen in an icy tomb for 5,300 years can now be viewed in astonishing detail thanks to a new website. The Iceman photoscan project took 150,000 high definition images of the perfectly preserved mummy from 12 different angles, which the researchers loaded onto the new website www.icemanphotoscan.eu. This allows users to zoom into details that are just millimetres wide from the comfort of their living room. They can also view the mummy in 3D and see its distinctive tattoos in both white and UV light.
"This website allows an in-depth virtual contact with the mummy without compromising its sensitive preservation conditions," Preservation Project Manager Marco Samadelli said. "It is an opportunity for the wider public to discover and study a cultural heritage, unique to the world."
Nicknamed Oetzi, the prehistoric hunter is complete with fur and grass robes, leather shoes and bow and arrow. Oetzi is kept in a specially built museum in Bolzano, Italy. Visitors view the mummy through portholes into a specially refrigerated room. "The current preservation conditions of the mummy prevent the wider public from getting close to it," researchers from the European Academy Bozen said. The intuitive zoom function lets users close in on interesting details such as Otzi's numerous tattoos. Some scientists have speculated the marks indicate a form of acupuncture The project also created 3D images of the mummy, but users will need their own 3D glasses to get the effect
Source: Mail Online (6 March 2009)
New investigations by an LMU research team working together with a Bolzano colleague reconstructed the chronology of the injuries that Oetzi, the glacier man found in Italy in 1991 and preserved as a frozen mummy, received in his last days. It turns out, for example, that he did in fact only survive the arrow wound in his back for a very short time - a few minutes to a number of hours, but no more - and also definitely received a blow to the back with a blunt object only shortly before his death. In contrast, the cut wound on his hand is some days older.
"We are now able to make the first assertions as to the age and chronology of the injuries," reports Professor Andreas Nerlich, who led the study. "It is now clear that Oetzi endured at least two injuring events in his last days, which may imply two separate attacks."
It is the oldest ice mummy ever found. Oetzi, the man from the Neolithic Age, is giving science critical information about life more than 5000 years ago, not least from his equipment. His copper axe, for example, reveals that metalworking was already much more advanced in that era than was previously assumed. Yet Oetzi's body, too, gives us many details as to his diet, state of health - and not least to his murder.
"Some time ago, we detected a deep cut wound on Oetzi's hand that he must have survived for at least a couple of days," says Nerlich, head of the Institute of Pathology at Municipal Hospital Munich-Bogenhausen and member of the Medical Faculty of LMU. "Another team at about the same time found an arrow tip in Oetzi's left armpit. The shaft of the arrow was missing, but there is an entry wound on the back." It is probable, in that case, that the man died of internal bleeding because the arrow hit a main artery. What was unclear, however, was the age and exact chronology of the injuries.
Now, Nerlich has reconstructed the missing chronology while working together with LMU forensic scientist Dr. Oliver Peschel and Dr. Eduard Egarter-Vigl, head of the Institute for Pathology in Bolzano. According to the new information, Oetzi did in fact only survive the arrow wound for a very short period of time, of no more than a few hours. A few centimeters below the entry wound they detected an additional small discoloration of the skin, which was probably caused by a blow from a blunt object. In both cases, the researchers managed to detect very briefly survived, yet unequivocally fatal bleeding. Above the spine are more discolorations that are not associated with bleeding. They probably occurred after the man's death, due to his interment, for example.
"Oetzi had only shortly survived the arrow wound and the blow on the back," Nerlich summarizes. "At least a couple of days before his death, however, he sustained a severe cut wound on his right hand. Over several days, then, Oetzi suffered at least two injuring events - which could point towards two separate attacks."
Sources: Ludwig Maximilian Universitat München, The Earth Times (28 January 2009)
More than 120 findings dating back from 4th and 3rd century BCE have been recovered on the fields around San Severo (Foggia, Italy) by Guardia di Finanza (Revenue) officers who caught in the act four 'tombaroli'. The officers also found a series of tombs, one of them containing the human remains of an ancient Dauno warrior. An important discovery, according to Giovanna Pacilio, archaeologist of the Soprintendenza ai Beni Archeologici della Puglia, mainly because the findings were found still inside the tombs.
The Revenue officers found two 'grotticella' (small cave) tombs connected through some 'dromos' (aisles). The ancient skeleton was buried in fetal position and the presence of a great deal of dromos may indicate that in the same area many other tombs are still to be discovered. In fact, in one of the side aisles archaeololgists located two other tombs: one is covered by a rock slab, and the other by a large tile. Inside the latter tomb the experts found the skeleton of a child.
Source: Paese Nuovo (14 January 2009)