It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, April 27, 2024
UK Archaeologists called in after mystery find on Barrhead building site
25th April
A huge mystery stone structure has been discovered on a site where new houses are being constructed in Barrhead.
Archaeology teams are investigating the blonde sandstone circular piece of architecture which was unearthed during a £22.68m project near Aurs Road.
Residents have expressed their shock at the find, which they believe is from the 18th century and was used as part of a freshwater filtration system.
East Renfrewshire Council is now working with specialists to determine if it is of significance and if more structures exist below groun
Colin Cliff, 44, is a resident who lives nearby and said: “A huge blonde sandstone circular structure from the 18th century has been unearthed.
“It was part of Barrhead's first freshwater filtration system, part of Balgray and Gorbals gravitational water system. I believe it was among the first of its kind in the world to provide fresh water.
“If the plans are to remove the structure that would be very sad and costly.
“It should be cleaned and used as a feature wall for the access to Dams to Darnley Park, with a reference to its past use.”
Emma Wolfe, 45, also lives nearby and added: “I think it’s pretty amazing that it has stood the test of time under all the mud.
“Better building work than we get these days.
“A little bit of history is that it used to supply water to the village of Barrhead back in the day.
“It would be great just to be cleaned up, and perhaps have a plaque acknowledging its history and how far we have come.”
An East Renfrewshire Council spokesperson said: "During recent excavation work to facilitate the Aurs Road upgrade and improvement project, a buried structure was uncovered.
“The council has notified the West of Scotland Archaeology Service (WoSAS) and appointed an archaeology team to investigate what this structure is and whether it is of any significance.
“An archaeologist will also oversee further excavations to determine if any other structures exist below ground.
“Once investigations are complete, the council, the archaeology team and WoSAS will work together to agree a way forward."
Research finds pronoun use not only shaped by language but also beliefs
UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
DURHAM, N.H.—Pronouns like ”he” and “she” are at the center of much debate as society tries to shift to using more gender-inclusive pronouns like ‘they’—especially when referring to those with identities that do not fit with traditional pronouns. Research at the University of New Hampshire looked at the use of pronouns in two different languages—including one where all pronouns are identity neutral—and found that people’s use of pronouns reflects not just the language they speak but also their ideologies.
“Most people want to be thoughtful and inclusive and say they are open to using pronouns like “they” and “them” but in reality it can often be hard for some to make the shift,” said April Bailey, assistant professor of psychology and lead author. “We wanted take a closer look at societal attitudes about pronoun use and see if it was connected to the language they speak and their beliefs about identity.”
In their research, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, the researchers asked a series of questions about pronouns to participants from two languages, English and Turkish, that have very different pronoun systems. English pronouns commonly denote binary gender, for example “he”for men and “she” for women. In the Turkish language, pronouns are identity-neutral, for example, “o”can refer to “he”, “she” or “it” depending on the noun it refers to. There are not any specific masculine or feminine pronouns.
In a series of three studies, participants were asked to evaluate different types of real and hypothetical pronouns, including binary gender pronouns, race pronouns and identity-neutral pronouns. The researchers found that both groups generally endorsed the pronouns that were most familiar and common in their respective languages. English-speaking participants mostly endorsed binary gender pronouns, like “he” and “she”. Turkish-speaking participants mostly endorsed identity-neutral pronouns, like “o”.
The researchers also found that participants’ answers reflected specific ideologies so they looked at the social-cognitive process—how people process, store and apply information—to see how that affects the reasoning around pronouns. Among both English and Turkish speaking participants, those who were high in essentialist ideologies about identity—assuming people are inherently and permanently either male or female—also endorsed binary gender pronouns and race pronouns more, showing that ideological beliefs can influence beliefs about pronouns.
“Similar to other function words, like conjunctions, pronouns are some of the
most frequently used words in any language,” said Bailey. “However, unlike those other words, pronouns can encode social information that may shape a person’s beliefs and how they reason about their social world.”
The researchers say there are valid debates on both sides of the issues – why gender pronouns are helpful and also how they can alienate some non-binary individuals. For instance, using “she” can make women more visible when referring to a more male-dominated field. However, those who point to drawbacks feel binary gender pronouns exclude non-binary individuals. They say language can shape how people think and despite recent trends toward using “they” and “them” more often, traditional gender pronouns, like “he” and “she”, are still used more often. The researchers hope their work will shine a light on why many English speakers struggle with using gender neutral pronouns like “they” and ”them” and contribute to theories on how people reason about language and ultimately help inform policy-relevant questions about whether and how to implement language changes for social purposes.
Co-authors on the study include Robin Dembroff, Yale University; Daniel Wodak, University of Pennsylvania; Elif G. Ikizer, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay; and, Andrei Cimpian, New York University.
The University of New Hampshire inspires innovation and transforms lives in our state, nation and world. More than 16,000 students from 49 states and 82 countries engage with an award-winning faculty in top-ranked programs in business, engineering, law, health and human services, liberal arts and the sciences across more than 200 programs of study. A Carnegie Classification R1 institution, UNH partners with NASA, NOAA, NSF, and NIH, and received over $210 million in competitive external funding in FY23 to further explore and define the frontiers of land, sea and space.
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JOURNAL
Journal of Experimental Psychology General
Gender-nonconforming ancient Romans found refuge in community dedicated to goddess Cybele
A Vatican declaration, the "Infinite Dignity," has brought renewed attention to how religions define and interpret gender and gender roles.
Approved by the pope on March 25, 2024, the Vatican declaration asserts the Vatican's opposition to gender-affirming surgery and surrogacy. While noting that people should not be "imprisoned," "tortured" or "killed" because of their sexual orientation, it says that "gender theory" and any sex-change intervention reject God's plan for human life.
The Catholic Church has long emphasized traditional binary views of gender. But in many places, both present and past, individuals have been able to push back against gender norms. Even in the ancient Roman Empire, individuals could transgress traditional conceptions of gender roles in various ways. While Roman notions of femininity and masculinity were strict as regards clothing, for instance, there is evidence to suggest that individuals could and did breach these norms, although they were likely to be met with ridicule or scorn.
As a scholar of Greek and Latin literature, I have studied the "Galli," male followers of the goddess Cybele. Their appearance and behaviors, often considered feminine, were commented on extensively by Roman authors: They were said to curl their hair, smooth their legs with pumice stones and wear fine clothing. They also, but not always, surgically removed their testicles.
Cybele: Mother of the gods
In the philosophical treatise "Hymn to the Mother of the Gods," Julian the Philosopher, the last pagan emperor of the Roman empire, writes about the history of the cult of Cybele. In this treatise, he describes the cult's main figures and how some of its rites were performed.
Often referred to as the Mother of the Gods, Cybele was first worshiped in Anatolia. Her most famous cult site was located at Pessinous, the modern Turkish village of Ballıhisar, about 95 miles southwest of Ankara, where Julian stopped to pay a visit on his journey to Antioch in 362 C.E.
Cybele was known in Greece by around 500 B.C.E. and introduced to Rome sometime between 205 and 204 B.C.E. In Rome, where she came to be recognized as the mother of the state, her worship was incorporated into the official roster of Roman cults, and her temple was built on the Palatine, the political center of Rome.
Cybele's cult gave rise to a group of male followers, or attendants, known as Galli. Among the surviving material evidence related to their existence are sculptures, as well as a Roman burial of an individual Gallus discovered in Northern England.
Attis: Cybele's human companion
A statue from Ostia, Rome's port city, depicts a reclining Attis, Cybele's youthful male human companion.
What is highly unusual about this statue, which is at the Vatican museum, is how the sculptor has draped the clothing to draw attention to Attis' groin and stomach: No discernible genitalia are visible. Attis, at first sight, appears to be a woman.
In their tellings of Cybele's myth, Greek and Roman authors give differing versions for Attis' self-castration. The Roman poet Catullus describes how Cybele puts Attis into a state of frenzy, during which he castrates himself. Immediately afterward, Attis is referred to by female adjectives as she calls to her companions, the Gallae, using the female form instead of the masculine Galli. Catullus' poem highlights the ambiguity in Attis' gender and that of Cybele's attendants.
Material evidence for the Galli
A relief sculpture from Lanuvium, now at the Musei Capitolini in Rome and dated to the second century C.E, is one of the few surviving representations of a Gallus.
This individual is surrounded by objects commonly associated with Cybele's cult, including musical instruments, a box for cult objects and a whip. The sculpted figure is adorned with an elaborate headdress or crown, a torque necklace and a small breastplate, as well as ornate clothing.
Other than signaling the person's connection to Cybele's cult, the objects and adornments also suggest that the person's gender identity is somewhat ambiguous, since Roman men shunned flamboyance and ornaments.
At Cataractonium, a Roman fort in Northern England, a skeleton was uncovered in the necropolis of Bainesse during excavations in 1981-82. Based on the accompanying burial goods, which included a torque anklet, bracelets and a necklace made of a type of gemstone that has been dated to around the third century C.E., archaeologists thought that these were the remains of a woman.
An examination of the bones, however, revealed that the remains were those of a young man—likely in his early twenties. Since Roman men typically did not wear the kind of jewelry found in the grave, archaeologists concluded that the individual may have been a Gallus.
Respect for Galli
Galli were attached to temples, where they formed a community. During processions in Cybele's honor, they would follow behind the cult image and priests, chanting alongside musical instruments they played.
In Rome, they had permission to seek alms from the populace; they would also offer prophetic readings or ecstatic dances in return for payment. It is possible that they enhanced their looks in order to get more money.
Some scholars have argued that their feminine appearance was a way to differentiate themselves from the general public; likewise, that their voluntary castration signaled their renunciation of the world and devotion to Cybele, in imitation of Attis, her companion.
However, it does not seem out of the ordinary to think that some Galli were drawn to Cybele's cult because it offered them a way to escape the strict binary gender system of the Romans. Galli, unlike other men in Rome or its empire, were able to openly present themselves or live as women, regardless of their assigned sex or how they identified.
Catullus' poem and comments by other authors indicate that they perceived the gender of the Galli as differing from Roman concepts of masculinity. However, the Galli were also, reluctantly, respected for the role they played in Cybele's cult. It is thus hard to know who exactly joined their communities and how they saw themselves, and whether the sources describe them accurately.
It is tempting to see the Galli as nonbinary or transgender individuals, even though the Romans did not know or use concepts such as nonbinary or transgender. Still, it is not inconceivable that a number of individuals found in the Galli both a community and an identity that allowed them to express themselves in a way that traditional Roman manhood did not permit.
The Vatican declaration asserts that the female and male binary is fixed and suggests that gender-affirming care "risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception."
Nonetheless, the existence of trans people today, as well as people who defied gender binaries in the past—including the Galli of ancient Rome—shows that it is and was possible to live outside prevailing gender norms. In my view, that makes it clear that it is unjust to impose moral teachings or judgments on how people experience their bodies or themselves.
Diversity and inclusion strategies to be explored at Museums + Heritage Show
25 April 2024
A look at some of the sessions at Museums + Heritage Show 2024 which focus on diversity, inclusion, and accessibility strategies for cultural organisations.
Effective efforts to improve inclusion, both internally and externally, require the continued investment of time, understanding, and the formalisation of new strategies.
At this year’s Museums + Heritage Show, a series of sessions centering on diversity and inclusion will assist organisations in doing just that.
Topics at the free, two day event span the navigation of power dynamics and inequalities across cultural organisations, developing transgender-inclusive policies and programming, modern accessibility measures, and more.
The Museums + Heritage Show is packed with talks from sector leaders, demonstrations from a wealth of exhibitors and plenty of opportunity to catch-up and network with fellow attendees. More than 60 sessions and 90 speakers make up this year’s event.
On the topic of diversity, a session by Pawlet Brookes, MBE, the founder,CEO and Artistic Director of Serendipity Institute for Black Arts and Heritage and Naomi Korn, Founder and CEO of Naomi Korn Associates will examine how copyright and licensing are enacted within the often-complex power dynamics existing between cultural heritage organisations and the third parties with whom they work. It will identify imbalances that might exist and suggest next steps to better support positions on equality, diversity, and inclusion. Copyright and rights management: navigating power dynamics and inequalities across cultural organisations takes place on Wednesday 15 May 2024.
Also taking place on Wednesday is Who Cares? Understanding empathy and trauma in museums, a session led by Sandra Shakespeare from Museum X CIC and filmmaker Ashton John, M.A., who will be screening ‘To whom does this belong?’. The collaborative short film explores Cornish Black History through local archives and museum collections. The pair will discuss their discoveries, the links to slavery and whether those artefacts should be on display at museums.
In Modern accessibility in a Medieval setting, Dr Ashley Fisher, Community Engagement Supervisor and Philip Roebuck, Exhibitions Executive at York Archaeology Attractions will lead a session about changing attitudes towards accessibility through the centuries, and how the latest exhibition at Barley Hall in York combines a medieval setting with modern accessibility measures.
Spencer Clark, Managing Director at ATS and Steve Dering, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Direct Access Consultancy will also explore best practice examples of accessibility, focussion on the heritage sector and how to improve accessibility for those who are D/deaf or hard of hearing, for people with sight impairments and for those with physical needs. In Breaking down barriers: essential accessibility tips for visitor attractions, the speakers will also provide practical advice on how to get started on different budgets.
The Trans-inclusive culture session will explore practical strategies for taking forward trans-inclusion in their organisations. The session will be held by E-J Scott from the Museum of Transology and University of the Arts London, and Suzanne MacLeod, Richard Sandell, Cesare Cuzzola, and Sarah Plumb, from RCMG.
On Wednesday, 15 May, hear from the Museum Detox panellists about how seeking out diverse voices, perspectives, and experiences in leadership positions will help foster innovation, creativity and the building of trust and legitimacy across organisations and the broader community. Towards inclusive governance will be held by Sara Wajid, Co-CEO of Birmingham Museums Trust, Jeannette Plummer Sires, Trustee Board Member of the Council for British Archaeology and Esther Lisk-Carew, Trustee of Portico Library.
On Thursday 16 May, explore the future of museum and heritage learning with GEM (Group for Education in Museums and Heritage Education Trust). Explored in The future of museum & heritage learning will be the sector priorities, support for museum practitioners and insights from GEM’s new research about the needs of the sector with a focus on inclusion and diversity. It will be led by Rachel Tranter MBE, GEM Director, Kara Wescombe Blackman, GEM Consultant and Course Director and Rachel Moss, Freelance Practitioner & GEM Consultant.
An Informal networking session, ‘Learning from the best’ and hosted by GEM will follow the session on Thursday, which is open to anyone interested in responsible for or interested in increasing inclusion within their organisation.
Another of the information networking sessions, ‘A sector for everyone’ will be hosted by Museum Detox and Queer Heritage and Collections Network; a a safe supportive space to chat, network and build connections.
To gain access to these sessions for free, plus more than 50 more at this year’s Museums + Heritage Show in London, simply register for free admission here.
Ancient Maya Royals’ Remains Were Burned in a Public Ceremony to Mark a New Political Regime
Archaeologists discovered charred remains of former rulers tossed “haphazardly” into a tomb in present-day Guatemala, suggesting they had been removed from their original burial sites
April 25, 2024 11:49 a.m. A carved pendant plaque of a human head found at the Ucanal burial site. C. Halperin
In the ancient Maya kingdom of K’anwitznal—a lowland city located in present-day Guatemala—dead royals weren’t always treated with reverence, archaeologists say.
New research, published last week in the journal Antiquity, suggests some former rulers’ treasure-filled tombs were raided and their corpses were burned, with the remains thrown unceremoniously into a new pyramid as part of a symbolic—and likely public—political ritual.
“The finding of the burnt royal human remains was a total surprise,” Christina Halperin, an archaeologist at the University of Montreal and the lead author of the research, tells Art Newspaper’s Garry Shaw. “Although it would not be surprising to find a royal tomb within a temple pyramid, we were not expecting to find a thick deposit of fine soot, carbon, burnt bone and thousands upon thousands of burnt, fire-cracked and spalled ornaments.”
In 2022, Halperin led a team of archaeologists to a temple-pyramid in Ucanal, an archaeological site within the former Maya kingdom. In 800 C.E., the temple’s upper levels would have stood some 150 feet tall. The team excavated various layers of limestone construction blocks until they came upon a burial chamber. While filled with valuable artifacts that signaled royalty—such as a greenstone mask usually buried with rulers—the tomb was arranged unexpectedly
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Archaeologists found more than 1,500 fragments of objects including greenstone ornaments, pendants and diadems at the burial site. C. Halperin
Unlike the burial sites of other Maya royals, this chamber wasn’t designed for people to enter and share offerings. The remains were buried beneath stone materials typical of facade construction, not places of burial. And the items inside—including surviving fragments of human bones, delicate diadems, stones and pendants—were haphazardly strewn.
It soon became clear to Halperin and the team that these royals and their objects had been exhumed from another site, burned and then dumped here. Because of the setup of the room, they concluded the burning had been an act of desecration rather than reverence.
“The burnt remains were deposited haphazardly and with little care,” Halperin tells Newsweek’s Aristos Georgiou. “Unlike cremation burials placed in urns, no effort was made to protect the remains. Construction fill was thrown on top of it, causing bone and ornament fragments to scatter during the process of its burial.”
They counted at least four adult bodies—three were male, and all were likely related—along with more than 10,000 beads made from ocean shells and some 1,500 pieces of jade, obsidian, plaques and mosaics.
More than 10,000 beads and discs made from marine shells were found at the site. C. Halperin
Radiocarbon dating suggests the blaze was hotter than 1,472 degrees Fahrenheit and was set between the years 773 and 881 C.E. The chamber itself did not have any scorch marks, suggesting the burning occurred elsewhere—either in the rulers’ original tombs or in a public place.
But at the time they were burned, the royals had already been dead for decades, archaeologists found, which led them to hypothesize the burning—which was likely part of a rite called och-i k’ak’ t-u-muk-il, which in the Mayan language means “the fire entered his/her tomb”—was an intentional desecration to celebrate a change in regime.
Scholars have already established that around the time of this fire, the Maya military leader Papmalil was ascending into power. It is possible, the team writes, that setting fire to old royals was a symbolic gesture amid a changing society. Under Papmalil, myriad architectural projects—including new canals, homes and a ball court—were pursued, and new alliances with nearby leaders were forged.
In many ways, the researchers write, the 9th century ruler differed greatly from his predecessors. This discovery offers new evidence of how political changes can be preserved in archaeological records.
“The burning of human remains to erase [the memory of a Maya] dynasty, with all its ornaments—I have not seen that before,” Francisco Estrada-Belli, an archaeologist at Tulane University who was not involved in the new research, tells Science.
“To be able to recognize something like this in the complexity of building fill, instead of it being a formal burial, is a technical achievement in itself,” Thomas Garrison, an archaeologist at the University of Texas who did not participate in the study, tells National Geographic’s Tom Metcalfe. “And I think the argument for it being connected to this specific shift in power is very coherent.”
Mining Watch Romania demands in court suspension of exploitation license for Rosia Montana
The environmental activists of the Mining Watch Romania network request that the judges of the Cluj Court of Appeal suspend the mining license of Rosia Montana Gold Corporation (RMGC), in an effort to definitively stop any possible mining operation in area.
"After the decision of the Washington Court, we should have breathed a sigh of relief that Rosia Montana was saved. It's just that RMGC insists on the request to extend the exploitation license. So, if this license is not suspended by the judges, we risk that the Agency National for Mineral Resources extends it again in June 2024. Extending this license could irreparably damage the valuable Roman, medieval and modern archeological remains of the area and could block any rehabilitation initiative due to the conflict between the mining license and UNESCO regulations," Roxana Pencea Bradasan, from Mining Watch, was quoted as saying in a press release.
Through the filed lawsuit, the members of the Mining Watch network are suing both the RMGC and the National Agency for Mineral Resources (ANRM), requesting the court to suspend the administrative documents for license extension issued in 2019 and to block the current license extension procedures no. 47/1999. The file will have its first trial date on May 9, 2024.
"The Mining Watch network shows, in the notification submitted to the court, that the RMGC license must be suspended for two reasons. First of all, because the administrative acts of extension were 'approved' by an incompetent authority, i.e. ANRM. Lack of a Government Decision of approval implies their non-existence. In fact, the challenged administrative documents never entered into force. Secondly, more than 210 days have passed since the extension documents were issued in 2019, and this is an express reason for revocation, provided for in Law No. 85/2003. The license for Rosia Montana was granted to the state company Minvest in 1999. A year later, it was transferred to the private company Rosia Montana Gold Corporation (formerly Euro Gold Resources). The renewal of this license would perpetuate the illegalities, but also the underdevelopment in which the locality of Apuseni is kept, due to the toxic pressures of the mining company," the organization says.
Sacred Spring Unearthed Beneath Roman Ruins in France\
PARIS, FRANCE—According to a Live Sciencereport, near the village of Chamborêt north of the French city of Limoges, archaeologists have uncovered a freshwater spring likely dating to between 4,500 and 6,000 years ago below the remnants of a Roman-era pool. The Roman ruins, which date to the third century A.D., probably formed a landscaped basin surrounded by a wall of granite stones. A team of archaeologists from the French National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP) have also recovered Late Roman pottery sherds, coins, and a ceramic fragment that potentially depicts the face of Medusa or a water deity. Prior to Roman occupation, the earliest evidence of structures at the site includes a rectangular dry-stone building, postholes, sandpits, and what may have been a wood building. Such structures, they believe, were likely part of a home and farm that had been abandoned for several centuries before its revival during the Roman era. An ancient pit found beneath the pool alongside several objects date to the site’s earliest occupation during the Neolithic period. Artifacts from that era include fragments of flint, bricks and tiles singed from a fire, and pieces of a Grand Pressigny dagger—named for another Neolithic site in France. The discoveries, according to the team, offer a glimpse into regional life during Late Antiquity and the transition to the early Middle Ages. For more on the archaeology of Roman Gaul, go to “Off the Grid: Vienne, France.”
Herculaneum papyri unveil more than location of Plato's tomb in Athens
The papyrus was found in the remains of a luxurious ancient Roman villa with an impressive library in Ancient Herculaneum, in southern Italy's Campania region, which had been buried in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. that had also destroyed
"That Plato's tomb was located in his Academy was not something unknown to archaeologists. Diogenes Laertius mentions, in the 3rd century A.D., that Plato was buried at the Academy where he lived for most of his life. So does Pausanius, namely that Plato was, in fact, buried not far from the Academy. What is important is that we have a technology by which people succeeded in reading 1,000 more words than those who had previously read the text on the same papyrus using a different technology," said archaeologist Dr. Kostas Paschalidis, head of the Association of Greek Archaeologists, in statements to the Athens-Macedonian News Agency (ANA) on Wednesday. "Also, that we may live to learn of hitherto unknown texts from the library of Peisonus - the rich owner of the villa - which will be philosophical because he was chiefly interested in philosophy and especially epicurean [philosophy]," added Paschalidis, in response to the news that there had been a new reading of a papyrus containing the writings of Philodemus the Epicurean, found at the "Villa of the Papyri" at Ercolano in Italy, in what used to be ancient Herculaneum. "The papyrus appears to say that Plato's grave was near the Temple of the Muses in his Academy. Olympiodorus the Alexandrian, in his commentary on Plato, is reported to say that, upon reaching Athens, Plato founded a school in the Academy and in part of this a temple for the Muses. In reality, the entire Academy is considered a temple of the Muses, a place of learning, so to speak," Paschalidis noted. For this reason, he added, the archaeologists' association considers that there is a need to protect and supervise every possible project in a zone that has been listed, as is the zone of Akadimia Platonos, that there is a need for staff and that it is hugely significant to respect and provide precautionary protection for such areas.
Deciphered Herculaneum papyrus reveals precise burial place of Plato
Various imaging methods comprised a kind of "bionic eye" to examine charred scroll.
JENNIFER OUELLETTE - 4/25/2024, Enlarge / Imaging setup for a charred ancient papyrus recovered from the ruins of Herculaneum; 30 percent of the text has now been deciphered. CNR – Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche56
Historical accounts vary about how the Greek philosopher Plato died: in bed while listening to a young woman playing the flute; at a wedding feast; or peacefully in his sleep. But the few surviving texts from that period indicate that the philosopher was buried somewhere in the garden of the Academy he founded in Athens. The garden was quite large, but archaeologists have now deciphered a charred ancient papyrus scroll recovered from the ruins of Herculaneum, indicating a more precise burial location: in a private area near a sacred shrine to the Muses, according to Constanza Millani, director of the Institute of Heritage Science at Italy's National Research Council.
As previously reported, the ancient Roman resort town Pompeii wasn't the only city destroyed in the catastrophic 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Several other cities in the area, including the wealthy enclave of Herculaneum, were fried by clouds of hot gas called pyroclastic pulses and flows. But still, some remnants of Roman wealth survived. One palatial residence in Herculaneum—believed to have once belonged to a man named Piso—contained hundreds of priceless written scrolls made from papyrus, singed into carbon by volcanic gas.
The scrolls stayed buried under volcanic mud until they were excavated in the 1700s from a single room that archaeologists believe held the personal working library of an Epicurean philosopher named Philodemus. There may be even more scrolls still buried on the as-yet-unexcavated lower floors of the villa. The few opened fragments helped scholars identify various Greek philosophical texts, including On Nature by Epicurus and several by Philodemus himself, as well as a handful of Latin works. But the more than 600 rolled-up scrolls were so fragile that it was long believed they would never be readable, since even touching them could cause them to crumble.Advertisement
Scientists have brought all manner of cutting-edge tools to bear on deciphering badly damaged ancient texts like the Herculaneum scrolls. For instance, in 2019, German scientists used a combination of physics techniques (synchrotron radiation, infrared spectroscopy, and X-ray fluorescence) to virtually "unfold" an ancient Egyptian papyrus.
Brent Seales' lab at the University of Kentucky has been working on deciphering the Herculaneum scrolls for many years. He employs a different method of "virtually unrolling" damaged scrolls, using digital scanning with micro-computed tomography—a noninvasive technique often used for cancer imaging—with segmentation to digitally create pages, augmented with texturing and flattening techniques. Then they developed software (Volume Cartography) to virtually unroll the scroll.
The older Herculaneum scrolls were written with carbon-based ink (charcoal and water), so one would not get the same fluorescing in the CT scans, but the scans can still capture minute textural differences indicating those areas of papyrus that contained ink compared to the blank areas, and it's possible to train an artificial neural network to do just that.
Enlarge / Infrared and X-ray scanners have deciphered more than 1,000 words of Philodemus' History of the Academy text that were previously illegible. D.P. Pavone
This latest work is under the auspices of the "GreekSchools" project, funded by the European Research Council, which began three years ago and will continue through 2026. This time around, scholars have used infrared, ultraviolet optical imaging, thermal imaging, tomography, and digital optical microscopy as a kind of "bionic eye" to examine Philodemus' History of the Academy scroll, which was also written in carbon-based ink. Nonetheless, they were able to extract over 1,000 words, approximately 30 percent of the scroll's text, revealing new details about Plato's life as well as his place of burial.
Most notably, the historical account of Plato being sold into slavery in his later years after running afoul of the tyrannical Dionysius is usually pegged to around 387 BCE. According to the newly deciphered Philodemus text, however, Plato's enslavement may have occurred as early as 404 BCE or shortly after the death of Socrates in 399 BCE.
"Compared to previous editions, there is now an almost radically changed text, which implies a series of new and concrete facts about various academic philosophers," Graziano Ranocchia, lead researcher on the project, said. "Through the new edition and its contextualization, scholars have arrived at unexpected interdisciplinary deductions for ancient philosophy, Greek biography and literature, and the history of the book.”
Other deciphering efforts are also still underway. For instance, last fall we reported on the use of machine learning to decipher the first letters from a previously unreadable ancient scroll found in an ancient Roman villa at Herculaneum—part of the 2023 Vesuvius Challenge. And earlier this year tech entrepreneur and challenge co-founder Nat Friedman announced via X (formerly Twitter) that they had awarded the grand prize of $700,000 for producing the first readable text.
When the Vesuvius Challenge co-founders started the challenge, they thought there was less than a 30 percent chance of success within the year since, at the time, no one had been able to read actual letters inside of a scroll. However, the crowdsourcing approach proved wildly successful. That said, it's still just 5 percent of a single scroll.
So there is a new challenge for 2024: $100,000 for the first entry that can read 90 percent of the four scrolls scanned thus far. The primary goal is to perfect the auto-segmentation process since doing so manually is both time-consuming and expensive (more than $100 per square centimeter). This will lay the foundation for one day being able to scan and read all 800 scrolls discovered so far, as well as any additional scrolls that are unearthed should the remaining levels of the villa finally be excavated.
JENNIFER OUELLETTEJennifer is a senior reporter at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban.
Archaeologists try to answer new questions about first humans in Southeast Alaska
A team of scientists and Alaska Native community members use an autonomous underwater vehicle to explore the continental shelf west of Prince of Wales Island in southeast Alaska, seeking submerged caves and rock shelters that would have been accessible to early inhabitants of the region. (From NOAA)
A few years ago, a set of 20,000-year-old human footprints in a dry lakebed in New Mexico set scientists reeling. Those fossilized footprints, originally discovered in 2009, called into question what we thought we knew about when people first showed up in North America. Archaeologists thousands of miles away in Alaska felt the scientific impact especially strongly.
A recent paper published in the journal Nature attempts to set a new timeframe of when the first humans might have appeared along the coast of Southeast Alaska, using cave remains and animal fossils from the region.
But it’s just one piece of a much bigger puzzle.
The Nature article caught the attention of Nick Schmuck, an archaeologist with the Alaska Department of Natural Resources. He said how and when people showed up in Alaska and the Americas is a debate that may never be settled in the scientific community.
“It doesn’t take long getting into the literature on this topic to realize that this is really a heated debate,” Schmuck said. “You’ve got folks who are diehards for one idea. You can think about it as paradigms, you know, we all think about a topic in a certain way for a while.”
According to Schmuck, there are many theories in this debate but currently, the most commonly held belief is in the Coastal Migration Theory.
Remember learning about the Bering land bridge in middle school? That’s part of the Coastal Migration Theory, which suggests that after the last Ice Age, early humans migrating from Asia crossed the land bridge between Russia and Alaska in search of food. Then they traveled, either by foot or by boat, down along the coast of Alaska and into the rest of the Americas.
“These people coming into the Americas – doesn’t matter how far back we go – they’re just as capable as you and I. So, they can figure out how to use boats. They were no strangers to rivers and things like that, so, why not the coast?” Schmuck said.
For his own part, Schmuck is a bit of a pluralist. He believes this is one of many potential routes early humans took.
The recent Nature article, “New age constraints for human entry into the Americas on the north Pacific coast” by Martina Steffen, attempts to tighten the parameters of the coastal migration debate. The paper looks at gaps in dates of animal fossils and archaeological sites, including 18 caves and sites in Southeast Alaska.
During the iciest part of the last Ice Age, a massive ice sheet advanced across the western part of the continent and over Prince of Wales Island, the largest island in Southeast. All of that now dry land, buried under thousands of tons of ice. Archaeologists believe that at its peak — known as the “glacial maximum” — about 18,000 years ago, that giant wall of ice would have blocked off any land routes down the coastline. Think of it like a gate that closed for over 1,000 years.
So, the commonly held belief is that people showed up after that, as the glaciers melted from the outside in, revealing land and food to eat.
For Schmuck, it isn’t just the fossil record that supports this post-glacial theory, it’s the spoken record of the descendants of these first people.
“They sound like people coming to an early post-glacial Southeast Alaska,” Schmuck said, describing oral histories. “They talk about coming to a land that’s just a narrow strip of land between the ice and the sea. Like, holy cow! That’s what Southeast Alaska would have been before the trees came in.”
“I think the important thing to remember is that we know that we have been here for at least 12,000 years. We know that from DNA science,” said KaahániRosita Worl, a Lingit anthropologist and president of the Sealaska Heritage Institute.
Worl is a descendant of those first people.
“To me, it affirms our oral traditions that say we’ve been here since time immemorial,” she said.
If the carbon dating was done correctly, and most archaeologists now agree it was, the New Mexico footprints are much older than the signs of human life found in Southeast Alaska. That means the footprints were from someone who was in North America before those giant ice sheets sealed the land shut, which, in turn, means that either the humans that left the New Mexico footprints didn’t cross the Bering land bridge at all or people were here much earlier than Western scientists had thought.
“There had to be another route,” said Worl. “And the coastal route – it opens up and you have resources available that people could live on.”
The footprints changed everything, according to Bryn Letham, an archaeologist at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. And of course, he says, there were skeptics. Some made a plausible argument that the carbon-dating was wrong. But as time went on, that didn’t seem to be the case. The White Sands team kept testing the fossils and every time got the same result: that footprint was from someone 21,000-23,000 years ago.
In a 2024 article for PaleoAmerica, Letham wrote that it was breathtaking, but it also raised an existential question for him and his colleagues: “What have we been spending our careers doing?”
Had they been searching in the wrong places? The wrong times?
The footprints in New Mexico started a race among those studying the Pacific Northwest coast. Most of the geologists and archaeologists are united by a common goal — to find the oldest sites of human occupation.
Currently, the earliest signs of life in Southeast Alaska is Shuká Káa – a human skeleton and set of tools from about 10,300 years ago in a cave on Prince of Wales Island.
It’s possible archaeologists just haven’t found older evidence yet, because of the challenges of searching in the forest-covered region.
“I mean, you’ve been in the Tongass, it’s big trees. It’s hard to see very far ahead of you and it’s hard to imagine what the landscape looked like,” said Nick Schmuck, adding though that the technology is improving. Specifically, a method called LiDAR that can map the earth’s topography using pulsed lasers.
“It takes all the trees off and gives you a new map based on the surface. All of the sudden, beach terraces pop out like you wouldn’t believe. And you can just look at the image and say, ‘Oh, there’s an ancient shoreline right here.’ And you can hike right to it. And boom, there’s your 10,000 year old beach with a 10,000 year old site on it.”
Another factor in Southeast Alaska is what one scientist refers to as almost a tectonic seesaw effect. During that glacial maximum, the massive ice sheet that covered the mainland was so heavy that it literally pushed the land down. That caused the outlying islands and land masses further off the mainland to rise up above sea level, like a seesaw.
What this means for Southeast Alaska is that a lot of the oldest evidence of humans is probably either at the top of a mountain or the bottom of the ocean — which is where Kelly Monteleone, an underwater archaeologist with Sealaska Heritage Institute, comes in.
“There’s this huge, vast area that we haven’t explored yet. And so there’s so much we can find,” Monteleone said.
According to Monetleone, her profession is pretty much the same thing as a regular archaeologist. It just involves some extra work.
“Nothing changes between the terrestrial answer and the underwater answer, we just have a much more complicated step every step of the way,” she laughed.
What Monetleone and her team have found on the seafloor, including a fish weir that would have been at sea level more than 10,000 years ago, changes the “when” of coastal migration.
“I see myself as having the resources to help answer the questions of the Indigenous people of Southeast Alaska. So I have the skills as an underwater archaeologist to go out and look in areas to help them learn about their past,” she said.
As Bryn Letham put it, the current people of the coastal First Nations are the descendants of those first post-glacial humans.
Schmuck agreed, saying that in Southeast Alaska, “we’re talking about the ancestors of people who’ve been here for a really long time.”
He acknowledged that archaeology as a profession hasn’t always been a positive force in that regard.
“We don’t want to get too abstract about the people in the past,” he said. “We don’t want to get back into the old faults of archaeology, where we’re just looking at rocks and forgetting to think about people. These are people’s ancestors.”
Letham, Worl, Schmuck, and Monteleone all point out that the Indigenous peoples along the Northwest Coast are strikingly diverse. There are so many languages and cultures in such a condensed area and they are so isolatedly different from each other that it seems like people would’ve had to have been here a lot longer than other parts of the Americas. In other words, it takes a lot of long, sustained time in one place for entire languages and cultures to develop.
On the northwest Pacific coast, there are dozens in close proximity, each distinctly different from the next, which tells anthropologists that people got to Southeast Alaska after the last Ice Age and stayed, splintering off into tribes and isolate cultures over many thousands of uninterrupted years.
These origins are older than people can generally comprehend, predating known forms of agricultural civilization.
“The concept of time at 12,000 years is not a concept that humans can usually digest,” said Moneteleone. “Time immemorial, the beginning of time: 12,000 years ago, 16,000, 20,000 years ago – those are all the beginning of time.”
And while the rest of the world chases after New Mexico’s footprints, Monteleone says that understanding the history of the people of the Northwest Coast is an archaeological field of study that is still in its infancy.
Get in touch with the author at jack@krbd.org.
Metal Detectorists Unearth Tiny Bronze Portrait of Alexander the Great in Denmark
Researchers think the 1,800-year-old artifact could be linked to a Roman emperor who was “obsessed” with the Macedonian conqueror
The newly discovered bronze disc depicts Alexander the Great with wavy hair and ram horns. M. Petersen, Museum Vestsjælland
A one-inch bronze portrait of Alexander the Great dating to around 200 C.E. has been unearthed on an island in Denmark.
Two metal detectorists, Finn Ibsen and Lars Danielsen, were searching a field outside of Ringsted, a city on the island of Zealand, when Ibsen came across the unusual object.
“I stand and jump on the spot and … wave Lars over,” Ibsen recalls to Kristoffer Koch of the Danish news outlet TV2 Øst, per Google Translate. “He comes running, and we can see that it is unique. It is a face.”
The friends handed the portrait over to Denmark’s Museum West Zealand. Archaeologists aren’t certain about the small disc’s function, but they say it could have been a decoration attached to a shield or sword belt.
Freerk Oldenburger, an archaeologist at the museum, tells Live Science’s Jennifer Nalewicki that the disc is “almost identical” to a silver artifact found several years ago in Jutland, Denmark.
“It’s quite a remarkable piece,” he says. “When it showed up on my desk, I nearly fell out of my chair because it’s almost the exact same portrait as the other, but this one is a little more coarse and is made of cast bronze and not gilded silver.”
Oldenburger called the metal detectorists and explained what he’d pieced together. Ibsen was thrilled to hear more about his discovery. As he tells TV2 Øst, “Being taken 2,000 years back in time gives a huge rush.”
Alexander the Great was an ancient Macedonian king who ruled in the fourth century B.C.E. His empire was one of the largest in the ancient world, spanning multiple continents and stretching from Greece and Egypt to India. According to a statement from Museum West Zealand, researchers recognized the ruler’s visage from the figure’s signature wavy hair and decorative crown of twisted ram horns.
The metal disc was made some 500 years after Alexander’s reign, and researchers speculate that it may be linked to the Roman Empire. According to the museum, Alexander was a “great role model” for Roman leaders—and a particularly influential figure for the emperor Caracalla, who reigned from 198 to 217 C.E.
The disc dates to “around the same time as Caracalla,” Oldenburger tells Live Science. “We know that he was completely obsessed with Alexander the Great and was interested and inspired by him, since he was the greatest conqueror of that time period.”
Caracalla was so consumed with him that he even “dressed with the same style and believed he was Alexander the Great reincarnated,” Oldenburger adds. “Caracalla is also the only emperor of his time to be depicted with a shield containing a portrait of Alexander the Great.”
If the disc is connected to ancient Rome, how did it travel all the way to Denmark? Researchers aren’t sure, but they note that trade routes likely connected the two societies.
“[The bronze disk] shows that even the smallest archaeological objects can hide absolutely incredible stories,” says Oldenburger in the statement. “This is a unique find in Scandinavia with connections to one of the most famous personalities in world history.”
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