Digs & Discoveries
By LING XIN
Thursday, February 11, 2021
For thousands of years, Chinese emperors ensured good harvests for their people by practicing a state religion centered on the worship of a supreme God of Heaven. Archaeologists have identified many imperial temples associated with this tradition, but, until recently, where the emperors of the Northern Wei Dynasty (A.D. 386–535) conducted rituals was unknown. Originally nomadic tribal leaders, the Northern Wei emperors came to rule much of northern China. Now, a team led by archaeologist Wenping Zhang of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region’s Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology has unearthed a temple complex where they believe four Northern Wei emperors made regular offerings to the God of Heaven in the late fifth century A.D.
Located in the Yin mountain range north of Hohhot, Inner Mongolia’s capital city, the temple site was first discovered in the 1980s, but its significance was overlooked. “It was assumed to be either a temporary imperial palace or a beacon tower that was part of the Great Wall,” says Zhang. While reviewing aerial photos of the site taken during winter, Zhang noticed that its circular shape, which was outlined by the snow, bore a striking resemblance to that of the thirteenth-century Temple of Heaven in Beijing. While Zhang’s excavation shows that Northern Wei emperors adopted many of the trappings of Chinese religious tradition, faunal remains unearthed at the site indicate that Northern Wei rituals also involved sacrificing sheep and horses, a common nomadic practice.
By JASON URBANUS
Thursday, February 11, 2021
Henry VIII’s jousting yard on the former grounds of Greenwich Palace has been located using ground-penetrating radar. Jousting was one of Henry’s (r. 1509–1547) favorite pastimes, so he ordered a custom-built tiltyard to be constructed at his beloved residence, where he often entertained and held tournaments. However, the game ground’s precise location was lost when Greenwich Palace was torn down in the mid-seventeenth century. A research team led by the University of Greenwich’s Simon Withers knew the yard was somewhere on the property of the National Maritime Museum. They were able to pinpoint its exact location by identifying the foundations of a tower from which courtiers viewed the jousting competitions. “The tiltyard is shown in contemporary paintings to have two large octagonal brick towers,” says Withers. “On our second day, we saw an octagonal shadow some distance from where it should have been, which was unbelievably unexpected and exciting. [Its shape] was the defining factor in confirming the find.”
The tiltyard was the site of a pivotal event in the king’s life, when, in January 1536, he was knocked unconscious and nearly died during a joust. Historians believe the head trauma Henry suffered may have left the mercurial Tudor monarch with permanent brain damage, contributing to his increasingly erratic behavior later in life. Just four months after the accident, Henry ordered the beheading of his wife, Anne Boleyn, as punishment for possibly spurious charges of infidelity and treason.
By MATTHEW BRUNWASSER
Thursday, February 11, 2021
A chunk of a high-quality marble gravestone unearthed in an ancient dump at the Roman settlement of Almus in northwestern Bulgaria tells the unusual and sad story of a high-ranking Roman legionary. According to the surviving five lines of a Latin inscription on the gravestone, which dates to the first century A.D., the soldier served 44 years in the Roman army, much longer than the usual 25-year term of service. The inscription records that the tombstone was created by the soldier’s freed slave, most likely in gratitude for having been granted his freedom along with the inheritance of his former owner’s property.
Valeri Stoichkov, an archaeologist at the Historical Museum of Lom, says the fragment contains the earliest inscription in the region to have been discovered in situ. Judging from other materials found in the trash heap, which dates to the fourth century A.D., the stone was most likely reused as building material in the late third or early fourth century.
By MARLEY BROWN
Thursday, February 11, 2021
Sometime in the first few centuries A.D., Ancestral Puebloans in the American Southwest began to raise a specific breed of turkey for its feathers, from which they made robes and blankets. This variety of turkey, distinguishable from local wild populations by a mitochondrial haplotype, or set of genes inherited from the mother, may have arrived in the region via trade and may already have been domesticated. “These blankets begin to be produced in the Four Corners region right around the same time this distinctive mitochondrial haplotype appears,” says archaeologist Bill Lipe of Washington State University, who led a team that analyzed surviving fragments of a turkey feather blanket dating to the early 1200s. “One of the reasons for keeping these turkeys may have been that they were more amenable to being managed by humans than the local birds.” The researchers determined that some 11,500 feathers had been wrapped into a framework of nearly 200 yards of yucca fiber cord to make the blanket. According to Lipe, there is little evidence that turkeys were widely consumed as food until a human population surge and consequent overhunting in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries depleted the region’s supply of wild game, especially deer.
By BENJAMIN LEONARD
Thursday, February 11, 2021
In the fall of 2020, archaeologists unearthed 59 wooden mummy coffins from burial shafts at Egypt’s Saqqara necropolis (“Top 10 Discoveries of 2020"). Since then, continued investigations at the site have added to the still-growing tally. A total of more than 100 painted coffins, most dating to between 712 and 30 B.C., have emerged from the shafts—so far. Among the objects interred alongside the deceased were 40 statues of Saqqara’s patron deity, Ptah-Sokar, 20 wooden boxes decorated with images of the god Horus, and a variety of gilded death masks, amulets, and ushabti figurines.
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Neanderthal burial practices, Mexican marigold, Levantine bananas, and defending a Phoenician colony
Ancient athletic accoutrements
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