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The city market area is known to have bordered the necropolis, so a preventative excavation was ordered before construction. This spring, archaeologists have unearthed 44 graves, but last Tuesday they found the first one that had not been looted in antiquity.
The mosaic was discovered in the courtyard of a vineyard house. Police raided the site last May after receiving a tipoff to the looting activity that had been so stupidly but so helpfully posted on the internet. The looters had already arranged to sell it abroad on the black market before they were done excavation, but the Provincial Gendarmerie Command foiled their plans and archaeologists began to carry out official excavations.
“Gold in the Viking Age was concentrated among the absolute elite of society, and that is precisely why finds of this type are extremely rare. The fact that two gold bracelets are found in the upper layers of the soil and without the use of a metal detector, and that four others subsequently turn up during an archaeological survey of the area, makes the find quite extraordinary in a Danish context,” says Torben Sarauw and continues:
“The find includes gold bracelets with both twisted and smooth shapes, which together testify to a highly specialized goldsmith’s craft, which also helps to make the find something quite special.”
Three of the rings are twisted from two rods, one of which has inlaid thin gold wire and a knob-shaped closure, while the others are smooth rings made of solid rod or wire. Several are finished with characteristic wrapped closures – so-called running knots – and one ring also carries a smaller, similar ring.
One bangle is distinguished by flat-hammered, joined ends decorated with a zigzag pattern and triangles.
The hiker found the fitting at the base of a hill named Riaren where a tree that had fallen years earlier caught his eye. He poked at a mound under the roots with a stick and suddenly saw the glint of gold. It was a small rectangle, 6 cm long by 2 cm wide (2.4 x .8 inches), weighing an unexpectedly heavy 33 grams (1.2 oz).
The ornamentation consists of a stylized animal motif created in looped and knotted gold ribbons with finely beaded gold threads overlaid on some of the lines. This filigree required a high degree of skill and is rare in works from the period. While the surface is very worn, it’s possible to make out two animals face each other in profile, one with the head against the bottom edge, the other with the head against the top edge. Additional animal figures can be made out on the back of a bent part of the fitting. These ribbon-shaped zoomorphic designs date the piece to the first half of the 6th century.
This is the third elite artifact found in the marshes at the base of Riaren. A silver necklace with gold decorations was unearthed during ploughing in the 19th century, and a large Roman bronze cauldron manufactured on the Rhine around 300 A.D. was found on a farm in 1907. All three are believed to have been deliberately deposited as offerings to the gods in hard times.
[Archaeologist Håkon Reiersen] at the Archaeological Museum in Stavanger believes that the gold treasure was buried in a rock crevice for religious reasons. It may have been an offering to the gods sometime in the 6th century.
In the year 536, Norway and the Nordic countries may have been hit by a disaster after a major volcanic eruption in Central America. The result may also have been a severe cooling for several years. Several sources in Europe describe the event. In the northern hemisphere, temperatures probably dropped by several degrees. Summers became short and cold. Crops failed for several years in a row. Perhaps half the people here died.
A lot of gold was offered to the gods at this time. People probably left valuable objects as offerings in the hope of better times. “By sacrificing such magnificent objects to the gods, the leaders at Hove confirmed their status and power,” says Reiersen.
The area around Hove in Rogaland was a center of the new warrior elite who conquered the ancient tribal communities of the region during the Roman Iron Age and early Migration Period. The warriors were seasoned serving as auxilia (mercenaries) in the Roman legions starting in the 2nd century A.D., and some of them moved north after they were discharged, using the unit organization they had learned under Rome and their military might to overpower the Scandinavian tribes and claim their fertile agricultural land.
The scabbard fitting is being cleaned and conservators by experts at the Archaeological Museum of the University of Stavanger. When the work is complete, the artifact will be exhibited to the public in the museum.
The Virgin and Child Enthroned was painted around 1470, early in the carrer of Mariano Filipepi, aka Sandro Botticelli (ca. 1445–1510). It depicts the Virgin seated on a throne with the Christ Child on her knee. They sit under an architectural canopy with gilded columns and marble inlays along the arch. The checkered marble floor recedes under the Virgin’s feet to a one point perspective confirmed by imaging investigations that revealed the underlying drawings and perspective lines. The composition is similar in style to Botticelli’s Sant’Ambrogio altarpiece currently in the Uffizi, particularly the design of the Child and the position of the Virgin’s hands holding him. Art historians believe the Virgin and Child Enthroned was also an altarpiece, albeit on a smaller scale, intended for a more intimate private chapel.
It was sold at auction at Sotheby’s London on December, 4, 2024 for a final sale price of £10 million ($12.6 million), blasting past the presale estimate of £2-3 million. There are very few works by Botticelli in the United Kingdom and this one is not only of exceptional importance due to its early date, but also due to its relevance to the history of Old Master collecting in the country. Because of these factors, when a foreign buyer won the auction and applied for an export license, the UK’s Minister for Creative Industries, Arts and Tourism imposed a temporary export ban in 2025. The Klesch Collection stepped up to the plate and was able acquire the painting for the nation.
Archaeologists unearthed four layers of occupation: a thin top layer with a few artifacts from historical periods indicating it was barely used, an oldest layer consisting solely of charcoal fragments and two middle layers with dense remains of combustion pits, animal bones, ceramic vessels and an extraordinary assemblage of green mineral fragments believed to be malachite.
“Many of these fragments are thermally altered, while other materials in the cave are not, which clearly suggests that fire played an important role in their processing and that there was a deliberate intention behind it,” said Dr Julia Montes-Landa of the University of Granada, co-author. “In other words, they weren’t burned by accident.”
The hearths cut across each other, indicating that the visitors reused this space frequently, but are still distinct, which suggests that those visits were separated by plenty of time. Radiocarbon dating puts the hearth found in the second layer at about 3,000 years old, while the hearths in the third layer are around 5,500 to 4,000 years old.
“For a long time, high-mountain environments were seen as marginal, places prehistoric communities passed through occasionally,” said Prof Carlos Tornero of the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution, lead author of the article in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology. “But we found a really rich archaeological sequence, including multiple combustion structures and a very large number of green mineral fragments. We can’t say exactly how long people stayed each time, but the repeated use of the space and the density of remains suggest occupations that were short to medium in duration, but happening again and again over long periods of time.”
The study has been published in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology and can be read in its entirety here.
The Moharam Bek district was the southeastern sector of the ancient city, an area that has not been extensively excavated before now. The discoveries confirm that the area was still inside the walls of the ancient city into the Byzantine era before later changes in the city’s urban fabric marginalized the neighborhood.
Tulane University anthropologist Daniella Santoro and her husband Aaron Lorenz found the stone last year while doing yard work at their historic shotgun house in New Orlean’s Carrolton neighborhood. They reached out to archaeologists and Latin experts, including Tulane University classical studies professor Susann Lusnia, to research its history and translate the inscription. The text identified the deceased as Sextus Congenius Verus, soldier of the fleet of Misenum, an inscription matching one recorded as missing from the National Archaeological Museum of Civitavecchia after World War II.
Santoro, Lusnia, other experts and cultural heritage organizations worked together with the Civitavecchia museum on how best to get the grave marker back to the museum. Due to the complexities inherent in the repatriation process, they decided to bring in the FBI’s Art Crime Team. They took custody of the funerary marker in November of last year while the FBI in Rome coordinated the return of the slab and a number of other significant ancient artifacts with Italian authorities.
Professor Susann Lusnia:
“It is especially gratifying to know that this object will soon be home in the collection of the National Archaeological Museum of Civitavecchia. I think that those of us in New Orleans who experienced Hurricane Katrina understand the joy that accompanies the return of things that we thought were lost forever.”
“Cultural heritage is worth protecting … Every object returned builds trust and international cooperation, which I think is especially important now,” she added.
The early Neolithic pit was discovered by a team from the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology (LDA) Saxony-Anhalt in advance of high-voltage line construction in 2024. It was located above the Saale River in an area known to have had Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Age settlements. The excavation uncovered numerous remains from the Neolithic-era occupation — postholes, burials, storage pits — including one small pit less than 32 inches in diameter that was packed with animals bones. Archaeologists knew at first glance that beaver were among them, because of their distinctive orange teeth. A flint object found in the fill of the pit suggested a Neolithic date.
While archaeological evidence has been found that beaver meat was eaten at this time and later, that was not the purpose of this hunt. There are no cut marks on the bones typically left by butchering and had the carcasses been consumed, the skeletal remains would be complete when they were discarded.
The bones are exceptionally well preserved and mostly unfragmented. Based on the skulls already uncovered, it can be assumed that the remains of at least twelve individuals were disposed of in the pit. The absence of some bones and the lack of anatomical coherence among the existing remains indicate that the animals were already skeletonized at the time of deposition. Various age classes, from quite young (1 year old) to old animals (over eight years old), can be identified based on the bones.
Hunting beavers along the Saale River in Alsleben was likely possible during the Neolithic. The concentration of bones in a single find suggests a unique event. Presumably, the animals were hunted for their fur, skinned, and the carcasses left until they decomposed, possibly on a garbage heap. The individual bones were later disposed of in the pit. The Alsleben find thus not only points to specialized hunting strategies in the early Neolithic period, but also allows us to draw conclusions about clothing at that time, which we can imagine to have been quite elaborate.
Excavations are ongoing and plenty of coins are still being found. For a while coins were being unearthed at a rate of 200 a day. That seems to be slowing now, but yesterday the count was 150, so who knows what the final number will be. The site is currently under guard to keep the curious and/or greedy from messing with the archaeological context. All of the recovered coins are documented as they are found and then transported to the coin cabinet of the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo for further study.
[Museum of Cultural History coin expert coin expert Svein Harald] Gullbekk estimates that the field and surrounding area will continue to be investigated for a couple more seasons.
“When you turn the soil, additional objects often emerge, including coins that may have been missed during earlier excavations,” he says. “It will also be exciting to see whether there are any traces of building structures nearby, whether there was a farm here or other man-made structures.”
Two rare Late Anglo-Saxon coins have been found by metal detectorists in Denmark, one near Løgumkloster and one at Kåstrup in Thy. They were discovered as part of routine archaeological surveys in Jutland performed by volunteers in collaboration with Danish cultural heritage authorities and have now entered the collections of the National Museum of Denmark.
There are fewer than 30 examples of the English Agnus Dei type coin minted around 1009 by King Æthelred the Unready in the hope that God would express his approval of his iconography on the coinage by helping England’s fight against the Viking invaders. The fact that majority of the Agnus Dei coins known have been found in Scandinavia suggests the petition was rejected.
The coins differ significantly from contemporary English coins, which bear the portrait of the king and a cross on the reverse. The Lamb of God coins, on the other hand, are marked on one side with a lamb pierced by a cross – a Christian symbol of Christ’s sacrifice. The lamb stands on a tablet with the Greek letters alpha and omega, symbolizing that God is the beginning and end of all. On the other side of the coin is the ascending dove of the Holy Spirit.
After more than 150 years of constant attacks, England had a generation of relief from Viking invaders under the reigns of Æthelred’s uncle Eadwig (r. 955-959) and father Edgar (959-975). Edgar had been a strong supporter of the monasteries, giving them large grants and forcing lay landowners to give them their land. When Æthelred ascended the throne in 978, he was a child, no more than 12 years old, but when he reached his majority, he dismissed his regents and changed course, chipping away at ecclesiastical privilege and property, giving church lands to his supporters.
But the Vikings came back. Small raids in the 980s led to a major attack on Ipswich in 991 and an invading force that defeated English defenders over and over. Æthelred had to buy them off with tribute, but they returned in 993, and the king had to pay an even bigger price for a (temporary) cessation of hostilities. The Danish fleet returned in 997, and this time there was no tribute sufficient to stop the raids. He was so desperate after five years of attacks that Æthelred ordered the massacre of all Danish men in England on St. Brice’s Day (November 13, 1002). It didn’t help. When the largest army yet, led by Thorkell the Tall, landed in Sandwich in 1009, the English defenses were routed. Cities paid their own tributes to get out of the line of fire, and in 1011, England paid a massive tribute of 48,000 pounds to free Canterbury and the captured Archbishop (he was killed anyway).
Seeing the return of so much death and destruction at Viking hands as retribution for his sins, Æthelred repented of the anti-church actions of his early reign. He restored the lands and privileges he had removed, and in the 980s began minting coins featuring religious images (the hand of God, crosses) instead of his stylized portraiture. The Agnus Dei type, portraying the Lamb of God with a cross on the obverse and the dove of the Holy Spirit on the reverse, was minted in 1009 in response to Thorkell the Tall’s invasion.
The Vikings loved the religious coin types. Instead of invoking God’s favor and protection to repel Viking attacks, these types of coins ended up being highly sought after by the invading armies. They appear in Scandinavian hoards in large amounts, often pierced to be were worn as pendants. The plunder and tribute extracted from England had a powerful effect on the currency system in Denmark.
“The Danish mint is inspired and based on the well-ordered English coinage system. The Vikings quickly discovered that it was much smarter to use coins than to cut silver into pieces when trading,” says [National Museum curator] Gitte Tarnow Ingvardson.
Even the Lamb of God coins were imitated here at home. The Viking kings Canute the Great and his son Hardeknud minted coins with the same two motifs, as did Sweyn Estridsen, who ended up playing an important role in the establishment of the Danish church organization.
The two Agnus Dei coins are now being cleaned and conserved. They will be studied further and subjected to scientific analysis to find out more information about their origins in England and deposition in Jutland.
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