The History Blog

An underwater excavation at Kekova island on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey has uncovered amphorae between 4,400 to 4,700 years old, dating back to the Early Bronze Age. Maritime archaeologists believe this is the surviving cargo of the world’s oldest shipwreck.

The wooden ship has not survived in the warm waters of the Mediterranean, but 30 of the large storage containers that held its cargo have. Some of them still contain traces of what was inside of them. The pattern of spread indicates the ship was about 10 meters (33 feet) long. Three stone anchors were also found.

Analysis of the clay in the amphorae revealed that they were manufactured in the Jordan Valley. Comparable examples have been found in Egypt, Troy and Crete, artifacts of the impressive range of the trade networks in the eastern Mediterranean.

One of the amphorae is notable for its design. The vessel has nine markings and two holes on its body. Archaeologists hypothesize that it may have been used to make cheese or churn butter. If that’s true, it suggests sailors may have made food on board ship, not just transported the finished consumer goods.

Dr Karin Sowada, an archaeologist from Macquarie University, Australia, examined the amphorae after they were recovered. Some were intact and she was surprised to see they still contained a viscous, glossy residue.

“I looked inside and nearly fainted. I could not believe how much [residue] was visible. It wasn’t just like spots…. a lot of this material was still remaining,” she said.

The team is now working to find out exactly what was being carried in the amphorae.

“It could be olive oil, it could be wine, it could be tree resins,” Sowada said.

“It’s possible that [the residue] could actually be the result of reuse of the jars. I mean, these jars are huge – they’re not things that you just ship away and then never see again. People would have emptied these jars on arrival and potentially used them for many, many, many years.”

The artifacts that have been recovered from the wreck site are now being studies and conserved. They will eventually be put on display at the new Mediterranean Underwater Archaeology Museum in Antalya which is scheduled to open to the public over the next few months.

A farmer in the Nile Delta found an inscribed granite block when digging land in front of his home which led to the discovery two heads of Ramesses II from colossal statues.

The farmer uncovered the pink granite block with hieroglyphic inscriptions at his property in Behbeit El Hagar, in the Gharbia Governorate. He reported the find and after local heritage officials confirmed it was of archaeological significance, Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities arranged an emergency excavation.

The first artifact unearthed was a colossal head of Ramesses II. The pharaoh wears the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, but explicit confirmation of his identity came from a fragment of the dorsal pillar which was inscribed with the pharaoh’s Horus name “Horus Ka Nakht Mery Maat.” The head is 5.25 feet high, which suggests the full statue was approximately 28 feet high.

The second major discovery was a royal statue head and torso approximately 8 feet high. The pharaoh wears the traditional royal nemes headdress (the striped head cloth with front flaps and a long pony tail), symbol of pharaonic power. It is missing the legs and base and no fragments from the statue were found, but the faces of the two statues are very similar. Another block of pink granite found nearby is inscribed with hieroglyphic inscriptions naming Ramesses II as King of Upper and Lower Egypt and Son of Ra.

The finds are still being studied, and excavations are continuing. Archaeologists say further work could help establish how the statues relate to one another and to the site’s ancient buildings.

Behbeit El Hagar is already known for the remains of a major temple dedicated to Isis, as well as granite architectural blocks. The new discoveries add to evidence of the area’s importance in ancient Egypt, and began with one resident choosing to report a stone rather than leave it unnoticed.

Two rare deer antler axes dating to the Bronze Age have been unearthed outside Löddeköpinge in Skåne, Sweden. Similar finds have been made in Denmark, where 155 Bronze Age axes have been found mostly as deposits in wetlands and bogs, but only a handful are known from Sweden.

The antler axes were found in excavation pits that have been preliminarily dated to between 1700 and 500 A.D. One of them is heavily worn with broken pieces, but the other is in good enough condition to make it immediately clear that it was worked and designed. It has a pierced hole in the center where a wooden shaft went through and a carved, ground-down cutting edge.

While deer antler axes were common in Sweden during the Mesolithic era (ca. 10,000–4000 B.C.), they disappear from the archaeological record during the Neolithic period as nascent farming settlements developed new tools and used different materials. They reemerged in an altered form in the Bronze Age. It’s not clear what their function was, but researchers at the Lejre experimental archaeology center in Denmark with newly manufactured deer antler axes found that they are extremely effective at cutting down trees, chopping dry wood and splitting wood.

Archaeologists also hypothesize that Bronze Age antler axes in Denmark had ritual or ceremonial purposes. Of the 155 known examples in Denmark, 59 of them were decorated with motifs including dotted circles, wheel crosses and spirals. It’s possible the ornamented examples had symbolic meaning beyond the practical use of the tool.

A rare surviving iron window grill has been unearthed at the ancient Roman site of Augusta Raurica six miles east of Basel, Switzerland. It is made of five iron bars connected top and bottom by two flat iron strips that provide stability. And the end of the horizontal strips are rings that were probably used to mount the grill to the wooden window frame.

It was discovered 170 cm (67 inches) under the surface during the excavation of a collapsed masonry wall. It is broken into two pieces: three vertical bars and one shorter crossbar on one section, two vertical bars, one long crossbar and one short one on the other section. Two of the original nails used to install it in the window opening survive.

The purpose and age of the structure the wall belonged to are still unknown at this time, but it must have been an outer wall because Roman buildings had very few, small windows only on the outside. Any natural light in the interior of the structure came from open roofs over inner peristyle gardens, courtyards and atria. The windows had grills in them to prevent unwanted visitors from breaking in.

Pane glass was invented in the 1st century A.D., but it was very expensive, so most windows were closed by wooden shutters, or lapis specularis, a thin, translucent layer of selenitic gypsum found in mines in Spain, Sicily, Asia Minor and North Africa. It was lightweight, readily available, came in sheets as much as five feet wide and just as capable of keeping out the elements as glass.

The grill has been recovered from the site and transferred to the collections storeroom of the Augusta Raurica site. Archaeologists will study, document and conserve it there.