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)
Sunday, July 07, 2024
6th Century Anglo-Saxon Warriors May Have Fought in Northern Syria
Researchers have suggested compelling evidence that Anglo-Saxon warriors from late sixth-century Britain participated in Byzantine military campaigns in the eastern Mediterranean and northern Syria.
The findings, supported by artifacts from prominent Anglo-Saxon burial sites (Sutton Hoo, Taplow, and Prittlewell, among other sites), suggest a previously unrecognized international dimension to their history.
Dr. St John Simpson, a senior curator at the British Museum, said there was compelling evidence that Anglo-Saxon princes also fought for the Byzantine Empire in the eastern Mediterranean against the Iranian Sassanids, due to items found at burial sites in Sutton Hoo, Taplow, and Prittlewell in England.
“The pearl roundel on the Prittlewell flagon is unique and puts its iconography firmly within a Sasanian design language, suggesting that it was made farther east, in a Sasanian workshop,” Simpson said, according to The Guardian.
Dr. Simpson has worked closely with Oxford University medieval historian Helen Gittos to carefully examine the unusual objects unearthed at Sutton Hoo, Taplow, and Prittlewell. They have come to the conclusion that the eastern Mediterranean and northern Syria are most likely the origins of these artifacts. These artifacts suggest that Anglo-Saxon warriors had been involved in Byzantine military campaigns against the Sasanian Empire, a powerful Iranian dynasty controlling vast territories.
Simpson said, according to The Guardian, “The eastern connections of the warrior tunics at Prittlewell and Taplow, coupled with the design of the shoulder clasps from Sutton Hoo, strengthen the idea that these individuals returned from Syria aligned even more closely with the late antique fashions of Byzantine-Sasanian elite warrior society.”
Anglo-Saxon Shoulder-Clasp from Sutton Hoo ship burial, (c. AD 560/70-610). Photo: British Museum
Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of a man at Taplow in Buckinghamshire who was dressed in an unusual and distinctive Eurasian-style riding jacket. In the meantime, a copper flagon bearing a unique pearl roundel picturing St. Sergius in a Sasanian-style roundel was discovered in the Prittlewell burial chamber in Essex. This iconography suggests that the flagon was made in a Sasanian workshop and firmly situates it within a Sasanian design language.
After centuries of Roman rule, the early Anglo-Saxon period of English history was generally seen as a violent, insular, and relatively backward time.
Simpson said that the number of items found at the burial sites, including the armor of Eurasian design, flies in the face of the “simplistic” view that non-local goods found on the isles arrived via trade and could help us rethink life in Anglo-Saxon England.
“These finds put the Anglo-Saxon princes and their followers center-stage in one of the last great wars of late antiquity. It takes them out of insular England into the plains of Syria and Iraq in a world of conflict and competition between the Byzantines and the Sasanians and gave those Anglo-Saxons literally a taste for something much more global than they probably could have imagined,” Simpson said.
Anglo-Saxon Sword Belt End Ornament from Sutton Hoo Burial, 625-630 AD. Photo: Gary Todd
The discovery of bitumen lumps at Sutton Hoo, which were previously thought to be related to the ship’s caulking, was another fascinating discovery. However scientific examination has revealed that these bitumen lumps came from a particular source in northeastern Syria. The Sasanians believed bitumen had therapeutic benefits and used it to line their ceramic vessels.
Simpson suggested, “I think that’s another item that’s been brought back with perceived or real curative power by superstitious warriors who’ve possibly even converted to Christianity on effectively Byzantine crusades against the Sasanians.”
The evidence gathered by Simpson and Gittos points to Anglo-Saxon warriors serving under Byzantine emperors Tiberius II and Maurice, who recorded in his military handbook that “Britons” were skilled fighters in wooded areas.
The Byzantines, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, ruled a vast territory in southeastern Europe and northwestern Asia until their defeat by Muslim Arabs and later Ottoman armies.
A reconstruction drawing of the Prittlewell princely burial chamber. Photo: MOLA
This involvement likely stemmed from a combination of adventure and the prospect of pay, as the Byzantines were known to recruit mercenaries from across Western Europe to bolster their mobile armies. They frequently hired mercenaries from elsewhere in Europe to handle waves of attacks from Sassanid and other forces, with potentially rich rewards for foreign fighters.
Gittos, a fellow and tutor in medieval history at the University of Oxford, said: “This opens up a startlingly new view on to early medieval British history.” The discoveries suggest that the Anglo-Saxon elite were not only aware of but actively participated in the broader geopolitical and military conflicts of their time, far beyond the shores of Britain.
Cover Photo: Bayeux Tapestry. Anglo-Saxon shield wall against Norman cavalry in the Battle of Hastings. Photo: Gabriel Seah
A hoard of Roman gold coins found below the floor of a Roman house in Corbridge, UK
World History Archive/Alamy
After the Romans conquered Britain in AD 43, the technologies and laws they introduced led to centuries of economic growth of a kind once thought to be limited to modern industrial societies. That is the conclusion of an analysis of thousands of archaeological finds from this time.
“Over that period of about 350 years, you’re looking at roughly a two and a half [fold] increase in productivity per capita,” says Rob Wiseman at the University of Cambridge.
It has long been believed that economic growth in the ancient world depended on having more people and more resources, says Wiseman: to increase food production, say, required more land and more farm workers. This kind of growth is known as extensive growth.
By contrast, economic growth today is driven mainly by increased productivity, or intensive growth. Thanks to mechanisation and better breeds of plants and animals, for instance, more food can be produced from the same area of land with fewer workers.
Some recent studies have challenged the idea that intensive growth occurred only after the industrial age began, inspiring Wiseman and his colleagues to look at growth in Roman Britain from AD 43 to 400.
The team’s research was made possible by UK laws requiring archaeological investigations to be done when a site is developed, says Wiseman. “The result is there’s been tens of thousands of archaeological excavations done in this country. And, moreover, that data is publicly accessible.”
By looking at how the number of buildings changed over time, the researchers were able to get an idea of how the population of Roman Britain grew. There is a strong relation between the number of buildings and population size, says Wiseman.
To get an idea of economic growth, the team looked at three measures. One was the size of buildings, rather than the number of them. As people grow richer, they build bigger houses, says Wiseman.
Another measure was the number of lost coins found in digs. “These are things that have fallen through the floorboards, or they’ve been lost in the baths, or something like that,” he says.
The idea is that the more coins are in circulation, the more are likely to be lost. The team didn’t count hidden hoards of coins, as these reflect instability rather than growth.
The third measure was the proportion of crude pottery, such as cooking pots and storage pots, to more ornate pottery like decorated plates. Economic growth requires people to interact more and socialise more, which means “showing off” when guests are present, says Wiseman.
Based on these measures, the team found that economic growth exceeded that expected from population growth alone. They estimate that per capita growth was around 0.5 per cent between AD 150 and 250, slowing to around 0.3 per cent between AD 250 and 400.
“What we’re able to show is yes, after the Romans arrived, there was definitely intensive growth,” says Wiseman. The pace of growth rather than the kind of growth is what probably distinguishes the modern world from the ancient one, he says.
The researchers think that this growth was driven by factors such as the roads and ports built by the Romans, the laws they introduced making trading safer, and their technologies, such as more advanced grain mills and better breeds of animals for ploughing.
The higher growth between AD 150 and 250 may be a result of Britain catching up with the rest of the Roman world, says Wiseman. “You’re moving from a small tribal society where there’s not a lot of interaction going on to a world-spanning economy.”
What isn’t clear is whether this economic development made people happier or healthier. “Just because the productivity is going up doesn’t automatically mean that the welfare of Britons who were invaded and colonised was better under Rome,” says Wiseman. “That’s an open question.”
To investigate this, the researchers now plan to look at human remains to work out things such as how long people lived.
“I am convinced that they are right and that, indeed, intensive growth took place in Roman Britain,” says Alain Bresson at the University of Chicago, Illinois.
“A lot of archaeologists have noted compelling evidence for economic growth in Roman Britain, but this paper adds a welcome formal theoretical dimension to the discussion,” says Ian Morris at Stanford University, California.
However, Morris suspects that the lower average growth rate from AD 250 to 400 actually reflects high growth followed by rapid decline as the Roman empire began to break up. Further studies will resolve this, he says.
National Trust’s largest ever survey might have uncovered two Roman villas
Two villas, the equivalent of a large country estate, are thought to have been uncovered at the Attingham Estate in Shropshire.
Two Roman villas are thought to have been identified at the Attingham Estate in Shropshire by a survey commissioned by the National Trust.
The non-invasive geophysical survey encompassed over 1000 hectares (2,471 acres), and is the largest of its kind ever carried out by the organisation.
This type of survey uses scanning and mapping technology, to provide a better understanding of Attingham’s archaeological remains to help the conservation charity develop its nature recovery plans for the area.
The area, which encompasses a portion of the buried Roman city of Wroxeter (Viriconium Cornoviorum) is cared for by English Heritage, and some of the land surrounding the city.
Among the features identified by the survey work was evidence for what are believed to be two previously unknown Roman villas and a Roman roadside cemetery, on a road leading out of Wroxeter.
National Trust said the two rural villas – the equivalent of a large country estate – show evidence of at least two construction or occupation phases, along with floor plans with internal room divisions and associated outbuildings.
The conservation charity explained: “Villas of this nature in the UK were usually heated by hypocausts (underfloor heating), they often had their own bath houses and were decorated with painted plaster and mosaic floors. It is likely that both villas identified would have had similar features. Only six other Roman villas are currently known in Shropshire.”
Eight ditched enclosures and associated remains, many believed to be Iron-Age or Romano British farmsteads, have also been detected by the survey.
In addition, evidence for several Roman roads to the west of Wroxeter were identified and surveys have “substantially enhanced archaeologists’ understanding of the settlement activity immediately outside the defences of the city and the changing use of the area during Roman times,” it said.
National Trust Archaeologist Janine Young explained: “This new geophysical survey has really transformed our knowledge by establishing a comprehensive ‘map’ of what is below our feet, providing us with a fascinating picture of the estate’s hidden past, revealing previously unknown sites of importance.”
John Deakin, Head of Trees & Woodlands at the National Trust said the project will help Attingham to work with its farm tenants to identify opportunities for tree establishment across its land in North Shropshire “whilst ensuring the protection of heritage features”.
“This has been a one-of-a kind investment for the National Trust, due to the size of the estate being mapped and the complexities presented by the rich archaeological heritage of this area of North Shropshire.
“Learnings from this project will help inform the Trust’s approach to planning for nature and heritage together in different landscapes, supporting its ambitious work to improve the state of nature in the UK.”
The project was supported by bequests and donations to the National Trust to support its nature conservation, tree planting and heritage work.
Archaeologists find evidence of how Iron Age Britons adapted to the Roman conquest in Winterborne Kingston
Archaeologists from Bournemouth University (BU) have discovered human remains and artifacts which give new insight into how early Britons adapted to life after the Roman invasion.
For over fifteen years, Bournemouth University staff and students have excavated Iron Age settlements at the Winterborne Kingston site. Although human remains and pre-Roman artifacts have been found before, these are the first discoveries that can be used to reconstruct the lives of those who lived through the invasion of Dorset.
Amongst the grave goods excavated from the 2000-year-old burial pits and graves are Roman-style wine cups and flagons, which suggest that Mediterranean alcohol had become a popular addition to British life around the time of the Roman conquest in AD 43.
“Being incorporated into the Roman Empire was one of the biggest societal changes in British history,” in a press release said Dr Miles Russell, Principal Academic in Archaeology at Bournemouth University, who is leading the dig.
A woman in her thirties was buried with a number of Roman-style wine vessels. Photo: Bournemouth University
“It’s all very well learning about the Roman legions and their conquests, but we wanted to find the farmsteads and burials that tell us what life was like for ordinary Britons and what happened to them at the time – did they become part of the wider empire, did they resist, or did they carry on living as they had always done? So finding a site like this was critical,” he added.
Three graves in particular indicate the extent to which the local Durotriges tribe partially integrated into certain Roman ways of life. The first contained the bodies of two women, aged in their thirties who had been buried together. The student archaeologists found a Roman-style wine flagon and goblets alongside the remains.
“The women were buried in the traditional Iron Age way – on their side in a foetal position. So, although the grave was dug ten to twenty years after the Romans arrived, in the mid to late first century AD, it’s clear that the local people are not becoming Roman in a big way, merely taking things from the Romans that enhance and improve their life, in this instance wine,” Dr Russell explained.
Two hunting dogs, believed to have been sacrificed despite being an important British export for the Romans. Photo: Bournemouth University
Another grave contained two dog burials which is significant because hunting dogs were very important to Iron Age society and were a key British export for the Roman elite. Despite their status, Dr Russell suspects the dogs may in this case have been sacrificed to the gods because of their placement in the grave and the fact they both died at the same time.
A third grave contained the remains of a man who had been buried in more classic Roman way, with arms folded across his chest, in a coffin, a large number of iron nails being found alongside his remains.
“Our more Roman-style graves, set down in the second and third century are low in artifacts,” explained Paul Cheetham, co-director of the project. “This suggests that although burial customs were changing over time, the farmers of this area, despite being part of a wider empire, weren’t benefitting much from belonging to the Roman world and were maintaining more native culture patterns.”
A typical Roman-style burial. Photo: Bournemouth University
Although the wine vessels excavated from the early graves look, Roman, the team has identified that they were local copies of Mediterranean-style vessels manufactured in nearby Poole harbor.
“They are made from a local fabric by a local potter, but they are very much in a Roman style and not something we had found in local traditions before,” said Kerry Barras, a visiting researcher at Bournemouth University and Finds Manager at the site. “So they are taking their designs and copying them. They are mixing their traditions, taking on some of the Roman culture and influence, but they were found by a crouched burial which is not Roman and a part of more regional British tribal culture,” she added.
Many artefacts were found to be in a Mediterranean style but they were made locally in Poole harbour. Photo: Bournemouth University
To help us understand more about life in early Roman Dorset, all human remains and artifacts will be subjected to additional testing at Bournemouth University. Next summer, Dr. Russell and the group of employees and students will revisit the location to conduct additional excavations on the surrounding land.
An Ancient Empire – Its Propaganda and Modern Parallels
Some 2700 years ago, a young king began his reign in Assyria. At the time, it was the world's greatest empire and the Assyrians had reached that peak through sheer brutality.
Some 2700 years ago, a young king began his reign in Assyria. At the time, it was the world’s greatest empire and the Assyrians had reached that peak through sheer brutality … although that appeared to be not unusual for those days.
The Assyrians lived in that part of what is now northern Iraq as among the earliest peoples of the region. As loose-knit tribes, they were not yet a political force although that was to change. It took a forceful ruler to coalesce them into a power capable of challenging their traditional rivals and antagonists, the Babylonians. That ruler was Sargon II who ruled from 721 – 705 B.C. He built a walled city with massive defensive walls (100 feet high and 100 feet wide), and a 20 ton winged bull with a human head stood as guardian at one of the gates.
It was the Assyrian deity — worshiped and revered — and the city it guarded was Dur-Sharrukin. Intended by its builder to be the greatest city the world had ever known, the effort did not last — for Sargon II was shortly to die in battle, and his son Sennacherib who succeeded him abandoned the project.
Susceptible to the building genes inherited from his father, the son soon undertook an even vaster enterprise. His city, Nineveh, described in the Old Testament as a place of indulgence and avarice, was (according to Greek and Roman sources) of unparalleled size and riches. The Assyrians had prospered, and in 701 B.C. when they campaigned against the Biblical Kingdom of Judah, it became an event to be related in the Bible.
They are described as being brutal: a rebellion against them would usually lead to severe reprisals — the execution of military leaders might be understandable but they would burn down the rebellious city and transfer out the whole population — an action reminiscent of Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union. Does the history of the world have a way of repeating itself?
Assyrian engineering feats remain a marvel for they brought water down from the river to the city through deep covered channels, so it remained cool, for the inhabitants. Nineveh was packed with people archeologists have ascertained, and in the kind of heat Iraq experiences water was vital.
Sennacherib’s son Ashurbanipal ruled for 38 years, extending the empire in all directions and keeping the Babylonians at bay. Reliefs of him show the practice of manly arts like fighting a lion so the public could remain in awe. The propaganda arts it turns out — are not new or confined to Hitler or Stalin and other modern leaders.
Even Biden’s team is busy whitewashing his shockingly wooden debate performance ascribing it to jet lag, or the onset of flu, etc. And the other candidate, Donald Trump, appears to follow in Goebel’s footsteps in repeating his slogans often enough …. that they begin to be the ‘truth’.
One almost wishes Biden would wrestle a lion (like an Assyrian king in one relief) or Trump an alligator to bring life to a dead election. Perhaps that is not fair as the party conventions have yet to be held. But then the candidates are already picked …. yawn!
Dr. Arshad M. Khan is a former Professor based in the US. Educated at King's College London, OSU and The University of Chicago, he has a multidisciplinary background that has frequently informed his research. Thus he headed the analysis of an innovation survey of Norway, and his work on SMEs published in major journals has been widely cited. He has for several decades also written for the press: These articles and occasional comments have appeared in print media such as The Dallas Morning News, Dawn (Pakistan), The Fort Worth Star Telegram, The Monitor, The Wall Street Journal and others. On the internet, he has written for Antiwar.com, Asia Times, Common Dreams, Counterpunch, Countercurrents, Dissident Voice, Eurasia Review and Modern Diplomacy among many. His work has been quoted in the U.S. Congress and published in its Congressional Record.
3,000-Year-Old Lost Anatolian language ‘Kalašma’ deciphered
In 2023 excavation site at the foot of Ambarlikaya in Boğazköy-Hattusha in Turkey, a cuneiform tablet with a previously unknown Indo-European language was discovered. The newly-discovered language, Kalašma, belongs to the Anatolian-Indo-European languages family.
Based in central Anatolia, Türkiye, and with Hattuša as its capital, the Hittite Kingdom and later Empire is acknowledged as one of the principal Old World empires of the Eastern Mediterranean and Near East between 1650 and 1200 BCE from both rich archaeological remains and textual sources.
The tablet contains an introduction stating that a ritual expert conjures in (the language of) Kalašma.The Hittite ritual text refers to the new idiom as the language of the land of Kalašma. This is an area on the north-western edge of the Hittite heartland, probably in the area of present-day Bolu or Gerede.
“These texts show that Anatolia was a multilingual and multicultural place in 2000 BC,” says Prof. Andreas Schachner, head of excavations at Hattuša.
The tablets, written in Kalašma, a language similar to the Luwian used by the Luwians who lived in southern Anatolia and about whom little is known, contain texts on daily life and celebrations.
The 174 tablets containing the Kalašma language were deciphered in a study conducted by Prof. Dr. Daniel Schwemer from the Department of Near Eastern Languages at the University of Worzburg in Germany and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Metin Alparslan from the Department of Hittitology at Istanbul University.
“All texts under the responsibility of the German excavation team have been published,” Schacher said.
Prof. Dr. Schachner said, “Professor Daniel Schwemer, head of the Chair of Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg in Germany, is working on the cuneiform finds from the excavation. He converted it from cuneiform to the Latin alphabet. Then linguistics experts Professor Elisabet Rieken and Assoc. Prof. Ilya Yakubovitich from the University of Marburg analyzed and deciphered the texts. It was a team effort.”
Professor Schachner said that there was no new alphabet in the Kalašma tablets, emphasizing that the cuneiform system, well known to the Hittites and taken from Mesopotamia, was used for writing.
The discovery of another language in the Boğazköy-Hattusha archives is not entirely unexpected, as Daniel Schwemer explains: “The Hittites were uniquely interested in recording rituals in foreign languages.”
Such ritual texts, written by scribes of the Hittite king reflect various Anatolian, Syrian, and Mesopotamian traditions and linguistic milieus. The rituals provide valuable glimpses into the little known linguistic landscapes of Late Bronze Age Anatolia, where not just Hittite was spoken. Thus cuneiform texts from Boğazköy-Hattusha include passages in Luwian and Palaic, two other Anatolian-Indo-European languages closely related to Hittite, as well as Hattic, a non-Indo-European language. Now the language of Kalasma added to these.
Professor Schachner said: “The content of the tablets does not actually convey very important information, but thanks to these texts we learn that Anatolia was a multilingual and multicultural region in 2000 BC. People knew and used at least a few of these languages. The Hittite view of the gods of another region is also confirmed by this text, because they included the gods of the conquered region into their system and worshipped them. In this way, they tried to bind those regions to themselves. These texts were written in this language so that they could pay their respects to the god they brought from Kalašma in a language they could understand. According to Hittite logic, that god would not understand the Hittite language.”
The work ‘Keilschrifttexte aus Boghazköi (Cuneiform Texts from Boghazköi)’, written by Prof. Dr. Schwemer on the decipherment of 174 tablets, is now available digitally. The final publication of the texts will take place in the coming days. Starting in November, the Kalašma texts will be published.
Archaeologists have discovered the remains of what they believe was the 18th century home of "King Pompey"—an enslaved African who later won his freedom—in New England
Researchers identified the likely location of the homestead on the banks of the Saugus River in Massachusetts, where the man, named Pompey Mansfield, lived with his wife Phylis (or possibly named Phebe) more than 260 years ago.
Historical sources indicate that Mansfield was a prominent figure in the Black community who bought land and built a stone house in Lynn, Massachusetts, becoming one of the first Black property owners in colonial New England. At his home, Mansfield hosted free and enslaved Blacks from the region during an event known as "Black Election Day."
"King Pompey was an esteemed leader in the Black community but his home and property have always been a mystery," Kabria Baumgartner, Dean's Associate Professor of History and Africana Studies at Northeastern University, who was involved in the investigations, said in a press release.
Archaeologists at the dig site of what is believed to be the home of King Pompey. The location of his 18th century home had been lost.
MATTHEW MODOONO/NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY
"I spend a lot of time in archives looking at written materials so to be on site and see this revealed has been exciting," she said.
To find the location of the home, a team of archaeologists from Northeastern and the University of New Hampshire spent months examining public documents, deeds and genealogical records. They also compared historical maps with contemporary topographic maps, cross-referencing them with probate records and historical newspapers to identify specific landmarks and narrow down the search area.
At one promising location on the banks of the river, the team began excavating and unearthed foundations that matched the documentation they had reviewed.
"The big find was the handmade pebble foundation without quarry rock," Meghan Howey, Professor of Anthropology and Director of the University of New Hampshire's Center for the Humanities, said in the press release. "That showed determination and ingenuity. And then the compelling match of the historical descriptions, the bend in the river, marshy meadow, oak trees.
"We are thrilled. I'm extremely confident this is a foundation from the 1700s and everything that points to this being the home of King Pompey is very compelling."
The title of "King" was bestowed on Mansfield at an annual event known as "Black Election Day."
At the event, attendees voted for and crowned a "king" who would then be expected to deal with important matters in the local Black community. The event, held on the same day that white men voted for their leaders, involved dancing and singing based on West African traditions. Similar events took place in other locations across New England and the rest of the country.
