The Archaeology News Network: Ancient tomb found at 'Sweden's Stonehenge'

The Archaeology News Network: Ancient tomb found at 'Sweden's Stonehenge'#.UH-wslHvqqY#.UH-wslHvqqY

Ancient tomb found at 'Sweden's Stonehenge'

Posted by TANNAncient,ArchaeoHeritage,Archaeology,Breakingnews,Europe,Northern Europe,Sweden12:00 PM

Swedish archaeologists have unearthed what is presumed to be a dolmen, or a portal tomb, that is believed to be over 5,000 years old near the megalithic monument Ale’s stones in southern Sweden.

Sweden's 'Stonehenge', the Ale's Stones in Skane [Credit: Xuanxu/Flickr[

”The findings confirm what we have believed; that this has been a special place for a very long time,” said archaeologist Bengt Söderberg to news agency TT.

On Saturday, the first day of the dig, the scientists already had a hunch that they would find something on the site, expecting a Stone Age grave and a Bronze Age monument.

And since, the hunch has become stronger.

“Let me put it like this: it looks bloody good,” said archaeologist Björn Wallebom of the Swedish National Heritage Board (Riksantikvarieämbetet) to local paper Skånskan.

Despite a few days of rain, the archaeologists have managed to uncover enough of the site to see that what they have found is like to be a dolmen, a type of megalithic tomb, most often consisting of three or more upright stones supporting a large flat horizontal capstone.

“It doesn’t have to be a chieftain buried here, it could be a wealthy farmer,” said Söderberg to local paper Ystads Allehanda.

According to reports, the archaeologists have found what they believe is an imprint of the tomb, which must have consisted of very heavy rocks as the impression was solid.

“It was like cement at the bottom. It points to it being pressed down hard,” Wallebom told the paper.

The archaeologists have also found what they believe to be the wall imprints.

“The imprints are very clear. Our hypothesis has definitely become more likely. This dig has all the recognizable components,” said Wallebom.

While digging up the barrow, the archaeologists also found a flint scraper tool.

“It is a standard tool from the stone-and bronze age,” said Söderberg to Ystads Allehanda.

However, despite the importance of the find, this was just a preliminary dig and the shaft is to be filled up on Monday.

According to the experts, a full excavation would be necessary in order to get a full view of what is buried on the site.

And a new dig could be on the cards as the find to some extent rewrites the history of the place, according to Wallbom.

“That’s what makes this dig so interesting, its location near the Ale Stones. Everyone knows the Ale stones and now we can discern a pre-history and a different context,” said Wallbom to Skånskan.

The Ale's Stones (Ales stenar) is a megalithic monument sometimes referred to as "Sweden's Stonehenge" and located about 10 kilometres southeast of Ystad in Skåne overlooking the sea in southern Sweden.

The site consists of 59 large sandstone boulders weighing about 1.8-tonnes each and arranged in the shape of a 67-metre long ship.

According to Scanian folklore, a legendary king named King Ale lies buried there

Star Wars in Manuscript on the Behance Network

Star Wars in Manuscript on the Behance Network

Star Wars in Manuscriptspecial project class assignment

The Choosen One

Darth Vader

Luke first sight

The Battle of Hoth

Luke training at Dagobah

Papal Latin Academy to Breath Life into Dead Language

Papal Latin Academy to Breath Life into Dead Language | Academy | ITALY Magazine

Papal Latin Academy to Breath Life into Dead Language

Oct 09th, 2012

Topics:

• Academy
• Latin
• Vatican
• Arts and Culture
• Religion

words by Carol King
Pope Benedict XVI is planning to set up a Papal Latin Academy to promote the use of Latin within the Catholic Church and the secular world.
Italian priest Fr. Romano Nicolini told the Italian press that the academy would include “eminent academics of various nationalities, whose aim it will be to promote the use and knowledge of the Latin language in both ecclesiastical and civil contexts, including schools.”
The Vatican’s existing organisation to advance the knowledge and speaking of Latin, Latinitas, is to be replaced with the Pontificia Academia Latinitatis. Latinitas publishes a magazine and runs a poetry and prose competition. It also translates modern words into Latin leading to translations such as ‘"ndrangheta" as ‘nruttianorum praedonum grex’, "overdose" as ‘immodica medicamenti stupefactivi iniectio’ and "playboy" as ‘iuvenis voluptarius’.
Latin is the official language of the Church but its use has fallen into decline since the 1960s when use of vernacular languages was adopted into the liturgy. Known as a traditionalist the Pope’s initiative has surprised some yet because Latin is the mother of Romantic languages it is considered a useful basis for linguists, opening the door to understanding both Ancient Roman art and literature as well as works created according to the Western Classical tradition.
The first work 
written in Latin by a Christian was Tertullian’s defence of Christianity, Apologeticum, which was addressed to the provincial governors of the Roman Empire. Now it appears that the Vatican is to defend the language itself against a world where language is continually evolving and becoming simpler thanks to the rise of social media.

Burial Customs - Archaeology Magazine

Burial Customs - Archaeology Magazine
Death on the Roman Empire's eastern frontier

At one necropolis just outside the town of Scupi in Macedonia, archaeologists have thus far uncovered more than 5,000 graves dating from the Bronze Age through the Roman period. (Courtesy Lence Jovanova)


Mass Grave Mystery

In the first century A.D. Roman army veterans arrived in what is now northern Macedonia and settled near the small village of Scupi. The veterans had been given the land by the emperor Domitian as a reward for their service, as was customary. They soon began to enlarge the site, and around A.D. 85, the town was granted the status of a Roman colony and named Colonia Flavia Scupinorum. (“Flavia” refers to the Flavian Dynasty of which Domitian was a member.) Over the next several centuries Scupi grew at a rapid pace. In the late third century and well into the fourth, Scupi experienced a period of great prosperity. The colony became the area’s principal religious, cultural, economic, and administrative center and one of the locations from which, through military action and settlement, the Romans colonized the region.

Scupi, which gives its name to Skopje, the nearby capital of the Republic of Macedonia, has been excavated regularly since 1966. Since that time archaeologists have uncovered an impressive amount of evidence, including many of the buildings that characterize a Roman city— a theater, a basilica, public baths, a granary, and a sumptuous urban villa, as well as remains of the city walls and part of the gridded street plan. Recently, however, due to the threat from construction, they have focused their work on one of the city’s necropolises, situated on both sides of a 20-foot-wide state-of-the art ancient road. In the Roman world, it was common practice to locate necropolises on a town’s perimeter, along its main roads, entrances, and exits. Of Scupi’s four necropolises, the southeastern one, which covers about 75 acres and contains at least 5,000 graves spanning more than 1,500 years, is the best researched. The oldest of its burials date from the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age (1200–900 B.C). These earlier graves were almost completely destroyed as Roman burials began to replace them in the first century. According to Lence Jovanova of the City Museum of Skopje, who is in charge of the necropolis excavations, the burials have provided much new information crucial to understanding the lives of ancient Scupi’s residents, including the types of household items they used, their life spans, building techniques, and religious beliefs. In just the last two years alone, nearly 4,000 graves have been discovered and about 10,000 artifacts excavated, mostly objects used in daily life such as pots, lamps, and jewelry.

Among the many artifacts of everyday life found in the graves are a ceramic face pot dating to the first century A.D. (Courtesy Lence Jovanova)

Among the thousands of graves there is a great variety of size, shape, style, and inhumation practice. There are individual graves, family graves, elaborate stone tombs, and simple, unadorned graves. Some burials are organized in regular lines along a grid pattern parallel to the main road, as was common in the Roman world. Other individuals are buried in seemingly random locations within the necropolis area, more like a modern cemetery that has been in use for a long time. The oldest Roman layers, dating to the first through mid-third centuries A.D., contain predominantly cremation burials. The later Roman layers, however, containing graves from the third and fourth centuries A.D., are, with very few exceptions, burials of skeletons. According to Jovanova, this variety in burial practice is normal for this time and reflects a complex, long-term, and regionwide demographic change resulting not only from an increased number of settlers coming from the east, but also from internal economic, social, and religious changes.

This past summer, Jovanova’s team was finishing excavations in one section of the southeast necropolis, where she hopes to uncover more evidence about Scupi’s history and its inhabitants among the 5,000 to 10,000 graves she thinks are left to investigate. Although there are construction pressures on archaeological work in the necropolis, the ancient city is legally protected from any modern building, so future work will focus on excavating the city walls and buildings. There are also plans to create an archaeological park on the site.

Matthew Brunwasser is a freelance writer living in Istanbul.

© 2012 by the Archaeological Institute of America
www.archaeology.org/1209/features/scupi_macedonia_roman_colony_bronze_age.html

Tomb of the Huns found in Khuvsgul Province | Ubpost News

Tomb of the Huns found in Khuvsgul Province

By M.ZOLJARGAL
Scientists and researchers from the Institute of History of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences (IHMAS) have found tombs from the Hun people dating back to the 2nd century BC. In total, 31 Huns were buried in the tombs that were discovered at the foot of Salkhit of Rashaant Soum in Khuvsgul Province. After three years of research and excavation, the experts from IHMAS finally found the tombs of the Huns. Further detailed information about the tombs will be available to the public soon.
Below is an interview from Unuudur Newspaper with S.Ulziibayar, an expert on the research on Ancient History at the IHMAS.
-Unprecedented finds were discovered from the tombs of the Huns in Khuvsgul. Can you give us more information on the discovery?
-There are indeed numerous finds with the potential of creating a stir. We conducted an excavation at the foot of Salkhit, which lies four kilometres away from the Rashaant Soum of Khuvsgul Province. A joint expedition, with officials from IHMAS and the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology from the National University of Mongolia discovered the tombs in 2006, and excavation work continued from 2009 to 2011. As the anniversary of the first state of Mongolia, the Huns, occurred in 2011, we were able to conduct the excavation rather intensely last year using the funds received from the Anniversary Commission. We excavated 29 separate tombs in total and the field research has now finished.
Our institute is set to release a book about the tombs discovered at Salkhit. As we didn’t announce the book formally through a research conference, it’s too early to publicise it. We also want to make people aware that we didn’t cooperate with any foreign partners on this excavation. It was the first ever joint expedition of native Mongolians during the past 20 years in this country.
-Out of 31 tombs, only two of the them were not plundered. Is plundering typical amongst the tombs of the Huns?
-Yes. The majority of the tombs discovered were plundered in some way. As part of an ongoing feud, it seems that the enemies of the Huns used to plunder the tombs intentionally soon after the burial. Fortunately two of the tombs remained intact.
-Some people have been plundering the tombs to gain profit lately. Is this correct?
-Yes. In an attempt to earn money easily, people have plundered a great deal of tombs with historical significance. During field research, tombs that were excavated a year ago have been plundered by the time we returned.
-Does that mean that the finds of the Huns are that valuable?
-Some say many valuable artifacts can be found from burial mounds or ancient tombs, but it’s all a misconception. In fact, there’s almost nothing that can be sold. Many broken vases and bronze mirrors are found in the tombs because ancient people used to break them and bury them with the dead according to their tradition. Most of the items found in the tombs were made of bones, as ancient people mostly buried food and meat with the dead. For instance, 80 percent of the artifacts from the tomb in Salkhit were bone. Though iron items are often found, their condition is always poor as iron erodes and loses its shape over time.
Another remarkable discovery was two bronze belt plates depicting two tigers attacking a dragon from both sides. This kind of belt plate from the Huns has only ever been found in two places in the world. A plate with patterns resembling clouds and a bone artifact depicting a boar has also been found. These are indeed unparalleled artifacts, which are hardly ever found in tombs of the Huns.
-People are speculating that the finds of the tomb will make a sensation. What are other valuable finds were discovered?
-The most significant discovery from the tomb at Salkhit is not the artifacts, but rather the burial customs. Most of the bodies buried in Hun tombs are buried lying on their left side. However, the bodies in the Salkhit tombs were all lying on their right. Also, there is no evidence of Huns being buried with their horses. Yet, in most of the tombs the bodies were buried with horses. Thus, the tombs of Salkhit uncover other distinct burial customs of the Hun people. We believe that the people buried in the Salkhit tombs represent a small percentage of the Huns.
-The tombs date back to the 2nd century BC. How did you determine the date?
-According to laboratory research conducted last June, the tombs date back to the second half of the 2nd century BC. During that time, the burial customs of the Huns were not consistent. Currently, there’s no evidence that explains the customs of the Huns. Experts believe that many ethnic groups influenced the customs of the Huns.
-Where are you storing the finds of the tombs of Salkhit now?
-Our institute is storing the finds. Once we finish the research work, we will transfer the finds to the National Museum of Mongolian History.
-Is the DNA of the Huns being researched as well?
-Unfortunately, no. As DNA research costs a great amount of money, we weren’t able to do it. It’s one of the disadvantages of working only with Mongolian excavation teams. If we cooperate with foreign organisations in excavations, they offer discounts on DNA research in their own laboratories, or sometimes they do the work for free. As such, the DNA research will not be conducted on the finds this year. The bodies in the tombs are assumed to be members of the one clan, if not members of the same family. If the DNA of the bodies is examined, we would be able to get more detailed information about the family structure. We could even compare them to people today and determine whose ancestors they were.
Short URL: http://ubpost.mongolnews.mn/?p=1486

Middle-earth according to Mordor

Middle-earth according to Mordor - Salon.com
Middle-earth according to Mordor

A newly translated Russian novel retells Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" from the perspective of the bad guys

By Laura Miller

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Topics: Books, J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Entertainment News

As bad lots go, you can’t get much worse than the hordes of Mordor from J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings.” Led by an utterly evil disembodied entity who manifests himself as a gigantic, flaming, pitiless eye, and composed of loathsome orcs (or goblins), trolls and foreigners, Mordor’s armies are ultimately defeated and wiped out by the virtuous and noble elves, dwarfs, ents and human beings — aka the “free peoples” — of Middle-earth. No one sheds a tear over Mordor’s downfall, although the hobbit Sam Gamgee does spare a moment to wonder if a dead enemy soldier is truly evil or has simply been misguided or coerced into serving the dark lord Sauron.
Well, there’s two sides to every story, or to quote a less banal maxim, history is written by the winners. That’s the philosophy behind “The Last Ringbearer,” a novel set during and after the end of the War of the Ring (the climactic battle at the end of “The Lord of the Rings”) and told from the point of view of the losers. The novel was written by Kirill Yeskov, a Russian paleontologist, and published to acclaim in his homeland in 1999. Translations of the book have also appeared in other European nations, but fear of the vigilant and litigious Tolkien estate has heretofore prevented its publication in English.
That changed late last year when one Yisroel Markov posted his English translation of “The Last Ringbearer” as a free download. Less polished translations of brief passages from the book had been posted earlier on other sites, but Markov’s is the “official” version, produced with the cooperation and approval of Yeskov himself. Although the new translation’s status as a potential infringement of the Tolkien copyright remains ambiguous, it may be less vulnerable to legal action since no one is seeking to profit from it.
The novel still has some rough edges — most notably, a confused switching back and forth between past and present tense in the early chapters — and some readers may be put off by Yeskov’s (classically Russian) habit of dropping info-dumps of military and political history into the narrative here and there. For the most part, though, “The Last Ringbearer” is a well-written, energetic adventure yarn that offers an intriguing gloss on what some critics have described as the overly simplistic morality of Tolkien’s masterpiece.

Mysterious Elk-Shaped Structure Discovered in Russia - Yahoo! News

Mysterious Elk-Shaped Structure Discovered in Russia

By Owen Jarus, LiveScience Contributor | LiveScience.com – Fri, Oct 12, 2012

• 
  Enlarge Photo
  LiveScience.com/Image copyright 2012 Geoeye, copyright 2012 GIS Innovatsia, courtesy Google Earth. - A historical Google Earth image from 2007 showing the animal-shaped geoglyph in Russia, which may predate …more Peru's famous Nazca Lines. [See more Russian Nazca Lines Photos less

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A huge geoglyph in the shape of an elk or deer discovered in Russia may predate Peru's famous Nazca Lines by thousands of years.

The animal-shaped stone structure, located near Lake Zjuratkul in the Ural Mountains, north of Kazakhstan, has an elongated muzzle, four legs and two antlers. A historical Google Earth satellite image from 2007 shows what may be a tail, but this is less clear in more recent imagery.

Excluding the possible tail, the animal stretches for about 900 feet (275 meters) at its farthest points (northwest to southeast), the researchers estimate, equivalent to two American football fields. The figure faces north and would have been visible from a nearby ridge.

"The figure would initially have looked white and slightly shiny against the green grass background," write Stanislav Grigoriev, of the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of History & Archaeology, and Nikolai Menshenin, of the State Centre for Monument Protection, in an article first detailing the discovery published last spring in the journal Antiquity. They note that it is now covered by a layer of soil.

Fieldwork carried out this past summer has shed more light on the glyph's composition and date, suggesting it may be the product of a "megalithic culture," researchers say. They note that hundreds of megalithic sites have been discovered in the Urals, with the most elaborate structures located on a freshwater island about 35 miles (60 km) northeast of the geoglyph. [See Photos of Russia's Nazca Lines]

Discovery & excavation
A man named Alexander Shestakov first discovered the glyphs using satellite images. He alerted researchers, who sent out a hydroplane and paraglider to survey the giant structure.

This has since progressed to an on-the-ground excavation by a team led by Grigoriev. They've found that the stone architecture of the geoglyph is quite elaborate. When they excavated part of a hind leg the largest stones were on the edges, the smaller ones inside. This past summer they also found the remains of passageways and what appear to be small walls on the hoof and muzzle of the animal.

"The hoof is made of small crushed stones and clay. It seems to me there were very low walls and narrow passages among them. The same situation in the area of a muzzle: crushed stones and clay, four small broad walls and three passages," Grigorievwrote in an email to LiveScience. He cautioned that his team didn't excavate all the way down to the bottom of the walls, not wishing to damage the geoglyph.

Dating the geoglyph

Among the finds from the excavations are about 40 stone tools, made of quartzite, found on the structure's surface. Most of them are pickaxe-like tools called mattocks, useful for digging and chopping. "Perhaps they were used to extract clay," he writes in the email.

The style of stone-working called lithic chipping used on one artifact dates it to the Neolithic and Eneolithic (sixth to third millennia B.C.), though Grigoriev says the technology is more typical of the Eneolithic, between the fourth and third millennia B.C.

If that date is correct, it would make the geoglyph far older than Peru's Nazca Lines, the very earliest of which were created around 500 B.C. Grigorievadded that current studies of ancient pollen at the site will help to narrow down the age. [Gallery: Aerial Photos Reveal Mysterious Stone Structures]

In the Antiquity journal article, Grigoriev and Menshenin point out that palaeozoological studies show that the landscape in the southern Urals supported fewer trees in the Eneolithic, with forest growth not appearing until about 2,500 years ago. "This means that there were open landscapes in the Eneolithic and Bronze Age, which allowed the hill figure to be created," they write.

A megalithic culture
Researchers say this geoglyph may have been built by a "megalithic culture" in the region that created stone monuments in prehistoric times.
"[M]any megalithic sites with features in common with European megaliths have been located: Some 300 are known but have not yet been studied in detail," write Grigoriev and Menshenin in the Antiquity article. Among these megaliths are numerous "menhirs," large upright standing stones.

The most spectacular megalithic complexes are on the relatively small Vera Island, located on Turgoyak Lake, about 35 miles (60 km) northeast of the geoglyph.

Grigoriev and Julia Vasina of the South-Ural State University described the Vera Island megaliths in a 2010 article, noting the surviving portion of one monument, megalith two, as being covered by a mound and supporting a gallery and square chamber. Another monument, megalith one, is cut into the bedrock and covered by a mound consisting of stones, brown sand and lots of grass. It is more than 60 feet (19 meters) long and 20 feet (6 meters) wide. It contains three chambers one of which has "bas relief sculptures" in the shape of animals, probably a bull and wolf.

Stone tools and ceramics found at the megalithic sites date them to between the Eneolithic period and the early Iron Age, around 3,000 years ago. Researchers emphasize more dating work needs to be done to verify; however, if the evidence holds, the giant geoglyph, along with the megaliths, were constructed millennia before Peru's Nazca Lines, a testament to the building prowess of an ancient prehistoric culture in the Ural Mountains.