RON - Incredibly Rare Medieval French Ship _ Strange Prehistoric Goddess Figurines Unearthed

Hello and welcome to Really Old News, the only weekly archaeology news series on the internet. It's been a while since I last released an episode of this, but I've decided to bring the series back, and this week I found five really fascinating stories for you all to enjoy. So, without further ado, let's dive in. Today's first story, a 1300-year-old ship is being excavated in southwest France. But since it's very fragile, its excavators are trying to conserve it in a race against time, as it battles the elements. The 40-foot-long wooden vessel was first discovered all the way back in 2013, and is only now being excavated. It was found in the silted-up bed of a stream alongside the Garonne River at a place called Villeneuve d'Ornon, near Bordeaux. This is an extremely rare find, and provides an important insight into shipbuilding techniques of the early Middle Ages. The wooden beams that make up this boat haven't been subject to light and oxygen for so long that to avoid them splintering apart, they have to be routinely watered. In fact, it's being watered every 30 minutes, because southwest France is currently undergoing a heat wave. And after they're all removed, they're just going to be dunked in it. The excavation is on track to be finished by mid-September. It could be reburied, or it could be injected with resin to preserve it. But right now, its future is unfortunately uncertain. It's been radiocarbon dated to between 680 and 720 AD, so around the time of the Merovingians, the famous early French dynasty. We also know that it once carried a large cargo and navigated the rivers and the Atlantic coast of southwestern France. Our next story comes from my home and native land, Canada, because 200,000 19th century artifacts have just been found during a dig at the Centre Bloc on Ottawa's Parliament Hill. The excavations are a part of renovations of the area, and began around spring of 2019. The items discovered include a nearly intact chamber pot. How interesting. Buttons from military uniforms, dice, liquor bottles, remnants of leather shoe soles, numerous plates, and children's toys. Quite an eclectic collection. And that's because Parliament Hill used to be called Barrack Hill, because it housed British troops in three barracks, and there was also a jail, a stable, and a cookhouse. The outpost was first established by Lieutenant Colonel John Bye in 1827, and used up until 1858 to house the troops building Rideau Canal. It was built to house 150 soldiers and their families, and these objects are what they left behind, and as such, it provides an intimate insight into their lives and what they could afford. These were mainly found in outhouses, where people used to toss their garbage. Apparently, they survived because no one really wants to mess with the bottom of an outhouse. Lead archaeologist Stephen Jarrett commented that one of the former outhouses was still moist, but that otherwise, working through them wasn't so bad. The artifacts found have already been cleaned and glued together, as well as catalogued, but their current fate is uncertain. Hopefully, they'll be exhibited somewhere. The discovery of part of a British cobalt mine abandoned 210 years ago, and left exactly as it was since then, has also recently been announced. It's in, or rather under, the village of Alderley Edge in Cheshire. Cobalt has been mined there since prehistoric times, but mining intensified there in the early 19th century as a result of Napoleon, because he was blockading trade to Britain, and as a result, domestic cobalt mining was bolstered. At the time, cobalt was being used to colour pottery in glass blue, and to create blue paint for paintings. This particular mine was abandoned in 1810. The items left by the miners include leather shoes, clay pipes, mining machinery, and a single button, as well as a clay bowl buried in a wall, perhaps left by superstitious miners in order to give thanks for striking at a rich vein of cobalt. They also left behind inscriptions written in candlesuit which have miraculously survived, including the initials W.S. with the date 20th August 1810, perhaps the exact day when this time capsule of a mine was created. Astonishingly, the imprint of a miner's corduroy clothes from when he leaned against a wall still survived too. I mean, isn't that crazy? A windlass lifting device used to shift large quantities of raw material was also found, and its presence suggests that the miners left without much warning because otherwise such an important piece of machinery would have been reused elsewhere. Now, this mine isn't easy to reach, and it's accessed by a long mine shaft and a convoluted network of tunnels, so my nightmare, I would not want to go there. And since that's the case, the entire mine has been digitally recreated, so you can fly through the mine on your computer. I've left the link to that, as well as all my other sources, in the description. The objects found in it have been catalogued and photographed, but left where they were originally found. And although it was discovered a bit of a while ago in fall of 2021, it's just been announced now. Okay, so now on to our final two stories, both having to do with prehistoric goddess figurines found this week. So, on Sunday, news of an 8,000-year-old mother goddess figurine from Israel was announced. It comes from the Yarmoukian culture, which is one of the oldest in the Levant to make use of pottery, and it's famous for creating mother goddess statuettes that were perhaps part of some sort of fertility cult. This particular figure was found in the Sha'ar Ha-Golan archaeological site, and it's the largest Yarmoukian site, and was once one of the largest settlements in the world in its day at 20 hectares, which doesn't seem like a lot now, but, you know, something then. It had its own street systems, monumental courtyards, and a huge amount of prehistoric art. The entire culture, in fact, was named after this site, because it's on the northern bank of the Yarmouk River in the center of the Jordan Valley. It was found in two pieces against a house's wall, and was covered by a bracelet with a red bottom, red being the color which represented fertility to them, apparently. It's eight inches long, or 20 centimeters long, and is very large for a mother goddess of this type. It has big hips, a weird pointed hat, and copy-shaped eyes that may represent kernels of wheat or barley. It will be taken for residue analysis, which will help researchers establish what types of clay were used to create it. The second goddess figurine found this week was found in Germany. It's from the early Iron Age, and is thought to represent a prehistoric water goddess. It was found in a gully during the construction of a ring road in Mondstockheim, Upper Franconia. The gully also featured shards of glass, pottery, bone tools, and a unique pottery stamp. The pottery has been dated to between the 8th and 6th centuries BC, which corresponds to the last centuries of the Proto-Celtic Hallstatt culture, which existed in the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age in Central and Western Europe. The figure is only 19 centimeters tall, or 7.5 inches tall, and it probably would have been longer initially when the bottoms of its legs were attached to it, but they're now missing, and it's also missing the front surface of its upper body. Each side of the head has five weird perforated holes from the height of the lower chin to above the eyeline, possibly representing a hood decorated with metal rings, which are known from this culture. The clay stamp was probably used on bread, which the archaeologists involved tested out themselves by stamping it into bread that they ate, so that's pretty cool. The gully in which these artifacts were found was likely used for groundwater extraction by the residents of a nearby late Hallstatt settlement. Since the pottery finds were still sharp and not smoothed or rounded over as they would have been had they been washed into the gully naturally, it's thought that they were placed in the gully on purpose, perhaps as offerings to a water deity. The artifacts are currently being studied at the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments, where they're also getting gently cleaned and dried using airbrush water technology. So, that's about it for this week. Also, if you guys think I should put my actual face on this like an actual newsman, let me know.