Latest news with #IronAges
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Vast Hoard of Ancient Treasure Discovered on a Hill in Hungary
Archaeologists have discovered a hilltop in western Hungary that contains a vast hoard of ancient treasure dating back more than 3,000 years. The volcanic butte and its buried riches aren't protected by a fire-breathing dragon, but the discovery does feel like a story straight out of mythology. In the very first year of surveys, researchers uncovered more than 300 buried artifacts on the hill, including a whole bunch of bronze items found with metal-detectors. Most of the metal discoveries date from the Late Bronze Age, between 1400 and 900 BCE, but the site also contains one of the largest collections of Early Iron Age metal from hilltops in the region, between 800 and 450 BCE. Based on what researchers in Hungary have found, including stacks of bronze lumps, droplets, casting jets, and fragmented ingots, they suspect this hill once hosted multiple bronze-working workshops. It seems to have been an important site for the Hallstatt culture – a farming society that advanced metal work in Central and Western Europe in the Bronze and Iron Ages. Many Hallstatt artifacts that scientists have already unearthed are scattered across landscapes, mostly in what is now Germany and Austria. To find a hoard of Hallstatt metal work in Hungary is exciting stuff for archaeologists, and it could clear up the timeline and geological distribution of this once dominant human culture. "Occupation on the hilltop seems to have been uninterrupted during the transition into the Early Iron Age," writes the team of researchers, led by archaeologist Bence Soós from the Hungarian National Museum Public Collection Centre. "The unearthed hoards testify to an intentional and complex hoarding tradition on Somló Hill." Somló Hill looks like a big old bump among the northwest vineyards of Hungary's Veszprém county. Standing 431 meters (1,414 feet) high, the plateau looms over the local, low-lying wine region, and the hilltop has remained untouched by modern quarrying activity, making it the perfect spot for archaeological inquiry. Some historical records from the late 19th century suggest that other ancient artifacts were found at the base of the hill and nearby areas, but details on these discoveries are scarce. In early 2023, Hungary's National Institute of Archaeology launched a new research project on Somló to better understand the ancient humans who once called this region home. Extensive surveys on the hill, combined with laser mapping in 2024, have now shed some light on that long-lost society. Of the six new hoards of treasure on the hill, the one in the image below was found in the area with the highest density of metal items. Further research is needed to figure out why so many metals were buried here, whether it be for mundane or ritualistic purposes. Some of the items were buried within ceramic pots, which haven't been found before from this time period. Scientists didn't just find metal artifacts, like spearheads, buried on the hill; they also found amber beads, tusks from boars and domestic pigs, and fabric and leather components. Some sediment samples taken from the hill also indicate the presence of small-seeded lentils and remnants of crop cereals, like millet. These are key subsistence features of the Bronze and Iron Ages. A few of the materials uncovered at Somló are suitable for radiocarbon dating, which the team hopes to conduct soon. It's rare that Hallstatt discoveries offer up such useful forms of dating. Timelines often have to be inferred based on the context of ancient technology and sediment layers. "This hoard, therefore, could provide clearer chronological understanding of the transitional period between the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age at the site," concludes the team. The study was published in Antiquity. AI Detects an Unusual Detail Hidden in a Famous Raphael Masterpiece Scientists Don't Know Why Consciousness Exists, And a New Study Proves It Men Tend to Fall in Love Faster Than Women, New Study Shows
New York Times
04-03-2025
- General
- New York Times
Can a Finnish Sauna Improve Society?
ON A WARM September afternoon in subarctic Finland, the architect Laura Mattila kneels in the grass beside a sauna that she and Mikko Merz, her 49-year-old partner in life and work, built eight years ago in the factory town turned artists' colony of Fiskars, an hour's drive west from Helsinki. Mattila, 40, doesn't mention the near-perfect symmetry of the building's two 135-square-foot volumes (one a changing room, the other the sauna), separated by an open void that frames the forest; or the construction's elegant lock joints, folded like knuckles over the corners of its solid timber walls. Instead, she wants to discuss how the building works: Thin layers of linen packed between logs provide insulation; the stove's residual heat and air circulation below dry the sauna between uses; gaps around the windows and doorjambs allow the timber to contract over time as it loses moisture. 'If you think of a Finnish farmhouse, this is essentially how you build it: a log frame, an oven for baking and, once you've lived there for a while, you make another log frame and fill the gap between,' Mattila says. The project's client, a 54-year-old conductor and violinist named Jan Söderblom, recalls asking the architects for 'a combination of timeless and archaic.' So they gave him something virtually indistinguishable from the barns and saunas that Finns have built in their hardscrabble homeland for centuries. The Finnish sauna as we know it first emerged some 3,000 years ago in the icy transition between the Bronze and Iron Ages, though sweat bathing had been common to many cultures for millenniums before that. As farming became more difficult in the hills and forests of pine, spruce and birch that comprise modern-day Finland, some agrarian communities began using ax-hewn logs to erect threshing barns that they could deconstruct and move at will. By trapping smoke inside those structures to dry their barley and rye crops, they imbued the walls of pine, the most common Finnish timber, with radiant heat — the same method used today in the savusauna, or smoke sauna. Eventually, saunas became the locus of Finnish society. They were where women gave birth, where the sick sought treatment, where the dying received their last rites. Families cooked over saunas' open stoves and preserved meat and fish in their dry, ambient heat. Saunas served as kitchens, clinics, temples and inns, open to destitute neighbors and unknown travelers seeking escape from the cold. Although popular through the Middle Ages, sweat bathing dissipated in the 16th century as plague, smallpox and syphilis epidemics ravaged Europe. But on the continent's northern periphery — an impoverished backwater of Sweden until 1809 and then of the Russian Empire for more than a century after that — timber saunas continued to thrive, transforming into a pillar of domestic identity by the time Finland won independence in 1917. As the Norwegian American writer Mikkel Aaland notes in 'Sweat,' his 1978 history of global sauna traditions, 'No other country has attached so much national pride to their bath.' Finland now has a social welfare system that rivals those of its Scandinavian neighbors, and about three million saunas for its population of 5.6 million people. In these spaces — from tiny lakeside cabins to semipublic spas in city centers — 'it doesn't matter how much money you have or what you do,' says Saija Silen, a 48-year-old curator at the Museum of Central Finland in the city of Jyväskylä. 'The sauna is the foundation of Finnish equality.' It's also the foundation of Finnish architecture: the ur-structure made, whenever possible, from the ur-material. Like their Nordic neighbors, Finns grow up in 'a culture of wood being part of human life,' says Lindsey Wikstrom, a 36-year-old architect and the author of 'Designing the Forest and Other Mass Timber Futures' (2023). Forests cover three-quarters of Finland, more than any other country in Europe. Scientists there study the calming and antibacterial properties of wooden interiors and, in some rural communities known as wood clusters, the millers, sawyers and builders live side by side to create 'neighborhoods of supply chains,' Wikstrom adds, 'where everyone relies on each other.' Although Finnish architects haven't built wooden skyscrapers like their peers in Sweden and Norway, contemporary offices like Mattila & Merz, Livady Architects, OOPEAA and PES-Architects have used both solid logs and cross-laminated timber (an engineered wood introduced in the 1990s that's as strong as concrete or steel) for everything from minuscule smoke saunas to sprawling stand-alone baths in city centers. These structures often aim not for formal invention but rather to conserve and expand upon an ancient technology: As architects place more value on practicality and resilience while the world continues to warm, renewable and recyclable timber has become crucial in making a polluting industry more sustainable. 'We've used these ways of building for hundreds of years,' Mattila says. 'We know they last.' IN 1925, A young architect named Alvar Aalto published an essay in a local newspaper proposing an ambitious civic structure overlooking Jyväskylä, the central Finnish city where he grew up. 'What kind of building should it be? An art museum, a library, a church? These won't do,' he wrote. Instead, he suggested a sauna, which he described as 'almost the only genuinely Finnish cultural phenomenon.' Aalto, who was born in 1898 and died in 1976, lived in Finland during a period of radical change. After World War II, the country industrialized and urbanized as over 400,000 displaced people migrated from territories lost to the Soviet Union. Though they continued to use wood in domestic projects, Aalto and his peers favored manufactured materials like brick, concrete, glass and steel for their public works. Saunas, meanwhile, had moved increasingly into the private sphere: Starting in the 1970s, developers traded the communal baths of early 20th-century housing blocks for electric-heated apartment saunas, while the emergent middle class indulged its nostalgia for the recent, rural past at summer cottages with stand-alone log-built saunas. Aalto and his first wife, Aino, who died in 1949, gained acclaim starting in the early '30s for functionalist buildings and furniture that softened Modernism's clinical abstractions with organic curves and natural finishes. But less well known today are the 27 free-standing saunas that Aalto designed throughout his career. Even on the grounds of his most experimental projects — like 1933's Bauhaus-inflected Paimio Sanatorium outside the city of Turku and the 1954 brick summer cottage on the island of Muuratsalo that he and his second wife, Elissa, used as an architectural laboratory — Aalto made only modest adjustments to an age-old typology. At the latter, for instance, rather than alternating the narrower ends of the logs to form an ordinary rectangular wall, he gathered them together, like the stems in a bouquet, to subtly open the structure into the form of a bellows. Saunas were the 'one place in Aalto's architecture where he said, 'I don't have to redesign everything,'' says Timo Riekko, 46, a chief curator at the Alvar Aalto Foundation. The same was true for the architect's most radical Finnish successors, Reima and Raili Pietilä, a couple who, beginning in the 1960s, exploded Aalto's organicism into unexpected new forms. When the Pietiläs bought a piece of land two decades later in Finland's southwestern archipelago, they used solid pine logs to assemble a pair of brooding black sweat baths. With their gabled eaves pulled to expressionist extremes, the buildings read as a pair of jagged silhouettes among juniper and oak trees. But despite their initially inscrutable forms, these saunas are no more revolutionary than Aalto's at Muuratsalo. It's that sense of consistency — the sober adaptability of wood — that still defines much of Finnish architecture. Twelve years ago, the 55-year-old architect Tuomas Silvennoinen, who runs PES-Architects, removed a century-old log sauna at his family's compound on the Gulf of Finland and replaced it with a 1,054-square-foot cottage and bathing pavilion that seems to float over the granite outcropping below, like a wooden dock washed up on the rocks. But after storing the original sauna's logs, he's reusing them to build a small guesthouse. 'The thing about timber buildings is that every part is replaceable,' he says. 'You can do everything again.' FINLAND IS STILL a nation on the edge, first of empires, then of Europe — and most recently of NATO, which it joined two years ago to protect itself against Russian expansionism. 'It's not our mentality to try and be at the center,' says Anssi Lassila, the 51-year-old founder of the firm OOPEAA, or Office for Peripheral Architecture. If Aalto and the Pietiläs naturalized global influences to transform small, typically private log saunas, then Lassila and his contemporary peers do the opposite, often within larger buildings that offer public programs, arguing that saunas aren't only central to Finland but, rather, are a type of building the entire architectural profession could learn from. In 2016, Lassila designed a 388-square-foot sauna for a summer villa that had been built by one of Aalto's protégés, Aarne Ervi, on the outskirts of Helsinki some six decades earlier. Stained black and set into the base of a grassy slope, the timber structure looks sturdy and featureless, like a silhouette of the weightless glass-and-plaster home nearby. But with its long, steep gable set low in the terrain, the sauna also resembles Lassila's design for the Konsthall Tornedalen, an exhibition space that OOPEAA will start to build this year just over the Swedish border in Lapland. Other firms, like AOR and Lukkaroinen Architects, have similarly pushed the possibilities of solid logs in sprawling schools and cultural centers. 'The periphery,' as Lassila says, 'is where change is happening.' Not all of these changes are positive. Rising temperatures have dried out carbon-absorbing peatlands in the Indigenous north just as they've bleached coral reefs in the tropics; reforestation with monoculture, which diminishes ecological diversity, remains common despite Finland's well-managed forestry industry. Still, the country's ambitious climate goals are widely supported by young Finns, the same demographic that has — since 2011, when a free guerrilla bathhouse called Sompasauna popped up in a deserted corner of Helsinki's harbor — reclaimed communal baths as essential civic infrastructure. In that same period, the country has all but eradicated homelessness through an exemplary public housing program, implemented in 2008, and many of those government-owned apartment blocks have saunas. For years, Finnish researchers have found that saunas can reduce blood pressure and improve immune function; now it seems clear that they help society function better, too. Equality, shared responsibility, mutual support — these values, cultivated in the sauna, are as essential to Finland, and to its sustainable future, as timber itself. For, more than being a building or a place, the sauna is a ritual. Lassila describes the experience as 'mentally washing yourself.' Riekko, of the Alvar Aalto Foundation, refers to the Muuratsalo sweat bath as the 'holy of holies.' Finnish parents will often tell their children to behave in a sauna the same way they would in a church, says Silen, who works with volunteers to light a dozen or so smoke saunas every summer Saturday at the Sauna Village in Jämsä, a cluster of historic buildings that were reconstructed outside Jyväskylä beginning in 2012. But 'I tend to think it was originally the other way around,' he says. 'You should act in church like you would in a sauna.' Inside, though, a savusauna feels less like a church than like a womb. Daylight barely illuminates the soot-black walls. The air, fragrant with wood smoke, can exceed 200 degrees Fahrenheit. White-hot stones hiss as you pour water over the brazier and a cloud of steam — löyly in Finnish, a word that even bilingual Finns never translate — surges toward the low ceiling. An invisible wave of heat rolls over your scalp and down the back of your neck, a ghostly presence as alive as the people gathered beside you in the dark. Eventually, after five minutes or 10 or 20, you step out into the cool air. The shadows resolve into four timber walls, a sloped roof and deep eaves for shelter from sun, rain or snow. 'What,' Silen asks, 'could be more eternal?'
Hi Dubai
27-02-2025
- Business
- Hi Dubai
Dubai Culture Leverages Advanced Technology to Unveil New Discoveries at Saruq Al Hadid Archaeological Site
Dubai Culture continues to lead innovation in archaeology through strategic collaborations with both public and private sector partners. The Saruq Al Hadid archaeological site, discovered in 2002 by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE, and Ruler of Dubai, has become a focal point for cutting-edge research and discoveries. In partnership with Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Dubai Culture has utilized high-resolution ground-penetrating radar (GPR), magnetic surveys, and precise topographic data to analyze and identify potential archaeological features at Saruq Al Hadid. These efforts have led to the detection of over 400 anomalies, including potential metallic and non-metallic objects, as well as the identification of five principal buried structures. Additionally, six new archaeological zones have been located, each containing significant structures and numerous artefacts. The use of these technologies has reduced excavation time and costs by 30%, supporting Dubai Culture's sustainability goals. The site's rich historical findings include thousands of artefacts from the Bronze and Iron Ages, such as weaponry, adornments, and rare decorative items. Studies confirm that Saruq Al Hadid was a major metallurgical center during the Iron Age, offering valuable insights into the region's economic activities and lifestyle. Muna Al Gurg, CEO of Dubai Culture's Museums & Heritage Sector, emphasized that Saruq Al Hadid is a pioneering model for archaeological innovation, significantly enhancing research on the site. These discoveries not only enrich the understanding of the region's past but also support the broader Dubai Legacy initiative, aimed at preserving and sharing the city's cultural heritage for future generations. News Source: Dubai Media Office
Jordan Times
25-02-2025
- Science
- Jordan Times
Excavations at Wadi Faynan reveal Early Bronze Age household, copper trade connections
Wadi Faynan, in the southern Jordan, was the ancient centre of metallurgy during Bronze and Iron Ages (Photo courtesy of ACOR) AMMAN — A Jagiellonian University (JU) team examined the area of Wadi Faynan about 10 kilometres from Wadi Arabah. This large area, part of which is under agriculture, lies along the modern dirt road leading to the Faynan Eco Lodge. While previous research had focused mostly on surface finds, the JU team aimed to conduct a more thorough examination of one of the structures to determine its precise dating and offer an interpretation of its function— for example, lithic sites. The part of the site selected by the JU team for test excavations —WadiFaynan731 (WF731)— is located in an area noteworthy for its savannah-like landscape and rich copper deposits, said Marek Novak, noting that it was discovered during the works of the abovementioned Wadi Faynan Landscape Survey. "Surface finds collected at WF731 during the survey primarily consisted of pottery sherds, dated mainly to the Early Bronze Age I. These artefacts provided valuable insights into the chronology of WF731 and its connection to the broader archaeological landscape," Novak added. "Additionally, the survey team noticed similar structures in the vicinity, hinting at a larger network of sites in this area," Novak underlined. He added that the relatively small scale of the works conducted in 2021 by the JU team permitted to distinguish only two strata: one connected with the functioning of the building, and the other being a thin layer of dirt and intrusions accumulated after the structures went out of use. Furthermore, most of the pottery found at the site seems chronologically consistent, suggesting their contemporaneity to the structure. Nevertheless, the construction of the enclosure most likely predated the formation of the stone collapse northeast from it, Novak said. He noted that a thick layer constituting the floor level (about 17 centimetres), visible in the cross-section of the deepest sounding, might suggest that the accumulation of strata took place over an extended period. "The interior of the room yielded numerous pottery fragments —parts of vessels once used by the household's inhabitants— along with lithic tools and numerous pieces of raw malachite [a copper carbonate hydroxide mineral],which can be smelted to obtain copper," Novak explained. However, the excavations brought traces of copper processing in the form of hearths or other fire-related installations. It is possible that either the inhabitants were involved only in the extraction of the raw material for trade, or they processed it somewhere else (perhaps near the mines), as suggested by previous research. Nevertheless, samples collected within the archaeological context of the household at WF731, preliminarily interpreted as raw copper fragments, are under laboratory analyses to determine if they underwent metallurgical processing, Novak elaborated, adding that future excavations might supply more evidence to clarify this issue. Pottery fragments found at the site can be dated to the Early Bronze Age potentially even Phase IA. "The latter is indicated by holders with visible depressions on the edges, similar to those from other locations. Whole mouth jars were also discovered at the site. Also in this case, they differ from those found in Wadi Quseir by their more closed shapes and arms that slope less steeply," Novak said. He added that a small silo, approximately 1.35 metre in diameter, was found against the northern wall of the house. The silo's stone circle, visible already on the surface, was composed of around 15 closely arranged medium-sized stones, as well as layers of smaller stones mixed with gravel and mud. "Unfortunately, while some pottery fragments were uncovered inside the silo, the absence of archaeo-botanical evidence hinders the identification of supplies stored within. The excavations also revealed a circular enclosure, about 15 metres in diameter, encompassing most of the site including the household. This double-faced wall, 0.6 to 1 metre in width, featured a gap in its southeastern part, suggesting a potential entrance," Novak underscored.
Miami Herald
31-01-2025
- General
- Miami Herald
‘Long-lost' Iron Age artifacts discovered by veterans near UK airfield. Take a look
The island of Anglesey, Wales, is home to Royal Air Force Valley, an air force base and training facility for the next generation of fighter pilots in the United Kingdom. First opened in 1941, the airfield sits on thousands of years of history, and when construction began in September on improvements to the airfield, the Royal Air Force (RAF) called for help from archaeologists to sift through the sediment. It wasn't just historians and researchers who answered the call. A number of military veterans, through a program called Operation Nightingale, joined the search, according to a Jan. 27 news release from the Defense Infrastructure Organization (DIO). The program 'sees injured and sick personnel and veterans taking part in archaeological investigations across the defense estate, providing unique experiences in the field,' according to the organization, and now they've made a significant discovery that's been declared a 'national treasure.' As the veterans searched near the airfield, they discovered 'long-lost' artifacts from the Iron Ages, likely part of the 'famed Llyn Cerrig Bach' hoard which was originally discovered in the 1940s, according to the DIO. One of the artifacts was a terret ring, which would have been used on Celtic chariots to help guide the horse reins, the organization said. The piece is likely 2,000 years old. 'We'd been briefed on the sort of things we could expect to find, so when I uncovered the piece, I was pretty sure it was an Iron Age terret ring,' veteran David Ulke said in the release. 'To say I was over the moon is probably an understatement! I've been involved in archaeology for many years and this was by far the most significant recovery I have ever made.' A current servicemember, Graham Moore, discovered a bridle bit dating to about 60 A.D., according to the DIO. 'The search for the lost hoard was hard work and we had a huge area to cover. It wasn't until the final day — with just 10 minutes to go — that I discovered the horse bridle-bit,' Moore said in the release. 'At first the team thought I was joking, but quickly realized I'd found something special. Words could not explain how I felt in that moment, but it was a wonderful experience.' Adam Gwilt, a curator at Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales where the pieces will be donated, said the items were well-preserved and likely dragged onto the land that now makes up the airfield 80 years ago from a nearby lake. The items were likely thrown into the lake as part of a religious practice at the end of the Iron Age, around the time the Romans invaded Wales, and the island of Anglesey, Gwilt said in the release. The entire hoard now includes more than 150 bronze and iron objects from between 300 B.C. and 100 A.D., according to the DOI. 'These finds at RAF Valley are extremely exciting for all involved; the Llyn Cerrig Bach hoard is of national importance for Wales, and the United Kingdom as a whole,' DIO senior archaeologist Richard Osgood said in the release. 'These new discoveries have confirmed the suspicions of earlier archaeologists that there was more to be found from this particular hoard.' Anglesey is on the northwestern coast of Wales, on the coast of the Irish Sea.
