Really Old News- The First Archaeological Discoveries of 2022! - YouTube

Hello and welcome to Really Old News, the number one archaeology news series on YouTube. Today we'll be covering the first archaeological discoveries made and announced around the world in the first couple of weeks of 2022. Just as a disclaimer, the actual discoveries described in this video might have been made in late 2021, but they were definitely announced and news of them was spread in early 2022. Let's begin, shall we? An impressive grave of a late 11th and early 12th century Pomeranian nobleman has just been discovered in Ostrowit in Poland's Pomeranian Voivodeship. I apologize if I mispronounced anything. No offense, but before this I just thought a Pomeranian was a type of dog. I somehow didn't figure that it was an actual place, but it seems like a pretty cool place. The site has given up multiple burials all containing bronze bowls... The site has given up multiple burials all containing bronze bowls since 2007, and recently it did so again. Fragments of these sorts of bronze bowls have been unearthed throughout the site, and archaeologists teamed up with metal detectorists through 2020 and 2021 in order to locate more bowls and the burials they sit within. In 2021, archaeologists working there unearthed yet another tomb, more richly furnished and larger than the other bowl graves, which are themselves usually larger than burials that don't feature bowls for some reason. It was initially a wooden chamber grave, a type of grave employed by medieval Pomeranian elites, and is 9.7 feet long and 5 feet wide. Its shape and size is what indicates that it was originally a wooden chamber. This tomb, dubbed Tomb 81, contained an intact bronze bowl and two beautiful amber rings. These bowls are exclusively found in the graves of men. I don't know what makes a bronze bowl all too manly, but I guess it's pretty metal. Huh? Huh? See what I did there? I'm a comedic genius. As you can see, the bowl had some pieces of wood in it, but that's probably just because there are bits of the tomb's deteriorated wooden roof. Fragments of textiles and their imprints have also been found on the bowl's surface, and the bowl's underside had some fragments of leather on it, which probably came from the Onto our next story, an intriguing game board that's between 4,000 and 4,500 years old was found in a country whose archaeology is rather obscure to me at the moment, that being Oman. News of this discovery came out around January 7th, but the actual discovery was made last December. It was made in the Bronze and Iron Age settlement known as Ain Badi Saida, which is in the Kumaira Valley nestled in the mountains of northern Oman. Excavations there are being carried out by a Polish team from the University of Warsaw in collaboration with Oman's Ministry of Heritage and Tourism. Several large circular towers, one of which was 20 meters in diameter, other buildings, evidence of copper processing and copper items, were also unearthed. The game board was found inside the room of one of these large buildings. This site was likely linked commercially to Mesopotamia, which makes sense given that Omani copper is actually referenced in contemporary Mesopotamian sources. This site was also at a junction of routes connecting other cities in Oman. The game board itself consists of a rectangular grid of two rows of seven columns, which host cup holes. This same design is found all across the ancient Near East, from India to the eastern Mediterranean. In South Northamptonshire, near the villages of Edgecote and Shippingwarden, the discovery of a vast, wealthy Roman trading settlement that started out as a little Iron Age village has recently been announced. The site's been excavated for a year by a team of 80 archaeologists under the Museum of London Archaeology, also known as MOLA, as part of a program surveying the future location of part of Britain's HS2 high-speed railway. It was initially an Iron Age village comprised of 30 roundhouses established around 400 BC. I'm glad it wasn't founded in 500 BC, because then I'd feel bad that I missed something for that 500 BC special I just did. The Romans totally transformed this little village when they came around. They installed stone buildings and roads, including one that's 33 feet wide. This Imperial-era town also featured workshops, kilns, and wells. These were accompanied by fiery red earth, which apparently is associated with bread-making and metalwork. I'd like to see the humdrum of daily life in this Romano-British town that resulted in all this. I think it'd be rather quaint, eh? In addition, glass vessels, pottery, jewelry, and traces of galena, which was used as coins, were found, and lots of them, 300 in total. This site is referred to as Black Grounds, given that the ground there is black. Other finds have been made as a result of work on the HS2. The discovery of a very rare early Roman wooden figure was announced recently, although it was discovered way back in July of 2021. It was found at Threebridge Mill in Twyford, Buckinghamshire, in a waterlogged ditch. When archaeologists from Infraarchaeology, who were working for the contractor creating HS2, initially unearthed it, it was thought to just be a random chunk of wood. They eventually realized that wasn't the case, though. Now, I know it seems pretty small in these pictures, or at least that's what I thought initially, but it turns out that it's more than 26 inches or 67 centimeters high. It isn't exactly in the prime of its life, but you can see that its calves still show that they were delicately shaved and that it wears a tunic tied at its waist. Traces of whatever is meant to be on its head, which is either its hair or a hat, have also survived. Apparently, the style of carving suggests it's early imperial, which is backed up by contemporary pottery found in the same ditch, which have been radiocarbon dated to 43 to 70 AD. Such early wooden sculpture is very rarely found in Britain, and complete wooden Roman statuettes don't seem to have survived there, but they have in France, apparently. This statuette is currently being examined in York Archaeology's conservation lab. A small fragment of it, which was found broken off next to it, will be radiocarbon dated and subjected to stable isotope analysis to see where it's from. Now let's move to a place even further north in Europe, Norway, where multiple important discoveries have recently been announced. The Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research, also abbreviated to NIKU, have uncovered two objects in Oslo inscribed with Norse runes in Oslo's Middelalderparken, or Medieval Park, in what was once the south of the city of Oslo. It contains the runes of multiple churches and a royal estate, and it also happens to be where a figure of a royal falconer from the 13th century was found last month. The two inscribed items are a bone and a stick, with the bone bearing an inscription in just Norse runes and the stick bearing inscriptions in both Latin and Norse runes. The runes on the bone, which probably belong to a horse or a cow, read this, which could be some person's name or nickname. It could also be self-referential, because this means bone in Old Scandinavian. There are actually comparable rune bones like this, and they date to 1100 to 1350. The fragment of Latin text on the stick reads Manus Domine, which is probably part of a prayer in Latin. The stick also bears the female name. Another interesting, nearly contemporary artifact was uncovered in Norway recently, and it's a rare Arab-inspired chess piece made of antler, which was found in the remains of a 13th century house in Tonsberg. I know it looks pretty abstract, but apparently it's supposed to be a knight for the chess-like game called Shatrange, and its abstractness comes from Islamic tradition, which is big on not producing graven images. This version of chess was brought into the Arab world after the Arab conquest of Persia in the 7th century, and found its way to Spain in the 10th century, also as a result of the game then made its way all over Europe from there, and was able to reach Scandinavia shortly after. The oldest chess-related find made in Norway are similar pieces from late 12th century Lund. The discovery of two fascinating coin hoards from antiquity have also recently been announced. The first of these has been dubbed the largest hoard of Roman coins ever to be unearthed in northern Spain, and may have been discovered last year by a badger. The discovery was made in the dense woodlands of the municipality of Grado in Asturias. In April of 2021, a badger, whose den was near the cave the hoard was in, stumbled across it while desperately searching for food during an especially harsh winter, and abandoned some of the coins at the entrance of its den, because it of course couldn't eat brawns. I know what you're thinking, this isn't really old news, this is just old news. Well, you have to keep in mind that this find was only recently published in Madrid Autonomous University's Journal of Prehistory and Archaeology, but it certainly wasn't published by the badger. The coin hoard was discovered by humans when two archaeologists went to visit the cave of La Cuesta de Bercio with a local resident, and the cave was then fully excavated. This was funded by the Asturias government. It yielded a hoard of 209 late Roman coins from the 3rd to 5th centuries. This isn't actually the only late Roman coin hoard to have been found in this specific municipality, as 14 gold coins minted during the reign of Constantine the Great were found in the area in the 30s. The coin hoard from the cave featured coins minted all over the empire, from Antioch in the east to Londinium in the north. It was likely hidden in this cave during tumultuous times, which is an apt way of describing the 5th century, because that's when various groups of Germanic barbarians really started pushing into the Western Roman Empire, and eventually, of course, swallowed it whole. Speaking of Germany, the discovery of a coin hoard in Germany, Brandenburg to be specific, was recently picked up by the media, although it seems to have been discovered in mid-December. This isn't a new find, but it was just recently made public after it was thoroughly analyzed. It consists of 41 Celtic gold coins which curve into cuffs and bear blank flans. If I didn't know any better, I'd think they were some Byzantine tracheas. This type of coin has actually been given their own term by the Germans, Regenbogenschusselchen, which I swear I'm not making up. It means rainbow cups because of how they look after being turned up and freshly cut, and because of the sort of treasure you'd find at the end of a rainbow. I bet the German leprechaun guarding these was pissed off when these were found. This is the only Celtic coin hoard to have ever been found around Brandenburg, which is explained by the fact that they didn't inhabit the area when these coins were minted between 125 and 30 BC. These coins are destined to be exhibited at the State Archaeological Museum in Brandenburg by spring, so if you happen to be there at the time, that's something for you to look forward to. Now onto the last, but certainly not least, story. The discovery of a truly beautiful Roman statue discovered in northern Greece on Friday, December 17th. That was announced a bit later than that. It was found in the center of the ancient city of Baroea in ancient Macedonia, which is now Varia. It dates to sometime in the 2nd or early 3rd century, and was sculpted in marble. The statue portrays a young, fit man with a cloak, but it's headless and was left unfinished. It's also nearly a meter tall, meaning it's three-fifths life size. That pretty much does it for the news this week. Thank you so much for watching, and make sure to subscribe and stay tuned for more fascinating, really old news.