Skeleton Of Medieval Giantess Unearthed From Polish Cemetery

Skeleton Of Medieval Giantess Unearthed From Polish Cemetery

Just outside of the Medieval church of the Ostrów Lednicki stronghold in Poland, archaeologists have unearthed the strange burial of a giantess. The woman’s skeleton showed that she reached a towering height of 7’2″ but also that her short life was full of traumatic injuries and disease.

The giantess was found in a cemetery that was once used solely by the elite of the area: dignitaries, the very wealthy, and people connected with Bolesław the Brave, the king of Poland in the early 11th century, and with the local Piast ruling dynasty. By the late 12th century, though, the cemetery saw more and more burials of commoners, with over 2,500 skeletons recovered at the site of Ostrów Lednicki Island.

But in spite of the elite nature of the cemetery, its most famous resident is a woman from a lower social class who died in her late 20s. Writing recently in the book New Developments in the Bioarchaeology of Care, archaeologists Magdalena Matczak and Tomasz Kozłowski detail the intriguing skeleton and the odd nature of the grave.

Read more here >>> Forbes dot com

Anglo Saxon Christian Burial

A fascinating story that featured back in March 2012.

From the Daily Mail:

Laid to rest in her best clothes and lying on an ornamental bed, she was probably of noble blood.  Quite how the 16-year-old Anglo Saxon girl died and who she was remain a mystery.  But she was buried wearing a gold cross – suggesting she was one of Britain’s earliest Christians.

Her well-preserved 1,400-year-old grave has been discovered by Cambridge University scientists, who described the find as ‘astonishing’.

The burial site at Trumpington Meadows, a village near Cambridge, indicates Christianity had already taken root in the area as early as the middle of the 7th century.

The grave is one of 13 Anglo Saxon ‘bed burials’ to be discovered. Usually reserved for noble women, they involved being laid to rest on a wood and metal frame topped with a straw mattress. Such burials are not found after the 7th century. The girl’s inch-wide gold cross, studded with cut garnets, has been dated to between 650 and 680AD.

From BBC News:

An Anglo-Saxon grave discovered near Cambridge could be one of the earliest examples of Christianity taking over from Paganism, archaeologists said.

The skeleton of a teenage girl was found buried on a wooden bed, with a gold and garnet cross on her chest.

The grave is thought to date from the mid-7th Century AD, when Christianity was beginning to be introduced to the Pagan Anglo-Saxon kings.

It was uncovered at Trumpington Meadows by Cambridge Archaeological Unit.

The cross is only the fifth to be discovered in the UK.

Blanche Mortimer Found

From Medievalists dot com:

The discovery of a body inside a church memorial has caused amazement in the world of archaeology and surprised experts. Michael Eastham, a conservator of sculpture has been working on the memorial in a Herefordshire Church for nearly two years but was taken aback when a mysterious coffin was discovered jammed inside the tomb-chest.

“We could not work out what it was when we first took the stone panels from the front of the memorial,” said Michael. “We thought it might be a layer of slate but as we explored further we realised it was a lead coffin. It’s the first time in more than thirty years as a Conservator that this has ever happened.”

Originally it was feared the coffin had been hidden during the construction of the tomb in the late 14th century or possibly even added at a later date. It has now been decided that it is almost certainly the coffin and remains of Blanche Mortimer whose memorial it is, wife of Sir Peter Grandison and daughter of Roger Mortimer, the powerful noble who had Edward II murdered and was the de facto ruler of England for three years before being himself overthrown by Edward’s eldest son, Edward III.

Blanche was born around 1316 at Wigmore Castle in Herefordshire, and was the youngest child of Sir Roger Mortimer and Joan de Geneville. She became the wife of Peter de Grandison , but died in 1347. They had one son, Otto.

Discovery of Maiden Crown

From Past Horizons Archaeology:

During excavations in Roskilde Cathedral, Denmark, archaeologists found burials dating between 11th – 17th centuries and included a grave that obviously belonged to a noblewoman. She had been buried with her head resting on a pillow sewn with gold threads and had been wearing a maiden crown.

The crown was found at the head of the grave and had initially been interpreted as a headband. Most of the decoration consists of many small flowers made of twisted copper wire wrapped with silk thread. The metal salts in the copper have ensured the silk thread has been preserved.

Detail of a family painting showing the difference between married (left) and unmarried (centre and right) headgear. Photo: Livinghistory.dk

Prince Really A Princess

From Live Science (October 2013):

Last month, archaeologists announced a stunning find: a completely sealed tomb cut into the rock in Tuscany, Italy.

The untouched tomb held what looked like the body of an Etruscan prince holding a spear, along with the ashes of his wife. Several news outlets reported on the discovery of the 2,600-year-old warrior prince.

But the grave held one more surprise.

A bone analysis has revealed the warrior prince was actually a princess, as Judith Weingarten, an alumna of the British School at Athens noted on her blog, Zenobia: Empress of the East.

From Zenobia: Empress of the East:

Osteological analysis of the bones, however, quickly turned their speculations upside down.  The skeleton with the spear turned out to be a female, aged 35-40 when she died, whereas the cremated bones were the remains of a male.

See also: Bones Don't Lie by Katy Meyers

So let’s break this down- when the skeleton was male the lance was a sign of royal status, and now that the ‘prince’ is a female the lance is a sign of marriage unity between the two individuals. Isn’t this secondary interpretation just as biased as the first one? Why can’t a female have a lance as a symbol of her power?

See also:

The History of Eturia -> http://www.mysteriousetruscans.com/history.html

Ancient History Encyclopedia: Etruscan -> http://www.ancient.eu.com/etruscan/

Medieval Discovery of Roman Girl

From Medievalists dot net:

Some of our greatest archaeological finds have happened by accident, revealing wonders from the past. 

Such a thing could also happen in the Middle Ages, such as when the perfectly preserved body of a girl was discovered along the Via Appia just outside of Rome. The discovery took place in April of 1485.

The name of this girl, however, would continue to remain a mystery, as any inscriptions from this site had long since disappeared. One rumour that was spread around was that this was the body of Cicero’s daughter Tulliola. Another said that had an inscription had been found, saying ’Here lies Julia Prisca Secunda. She lived twenty-six years and one month. She has committed no fault, except to die.’ Everyone did agree that this girl must have been famous and wealthy. In his diary, Antonio di Vaseli, who also saw and marvelled at the body, explained she “must be an illustrious one, because none but a noble and wealthy person could afford to be buried in such a costly sarcophagus thus filled with precious ointments.”

Women in the Wari Empire

From Peruvian Times: Archaeologists Uncover Remains of Girl Sacrificed Some 1,500 Years Ago

Archaeologists have uncovered remains of a girl who was most probably used as a sacrifice some 1,500 years ago, according to RPP Radio.

The discovery was made in the district of Yautan, 40km inland from Casma in the Ancash region. The remains of the girl were discovered in a tomb by a group of archaeologists and students from the University of Santiago Antunez de Mayolo in Huaraz.

The archaeologists believe the girl could have been sacrificed as an offering to gods of the sea, perhaps as protection against the climate changes caused by the El Niño ocean current.

The Wari empire spanned much of modern Peru during the 8th and 9th Centuries A.D. Experts say that its capital, Huari, had a population of some 40,000 people, which would have been a major global urban center at the time. Much is still not known about the Wari, which like other pre-Hispanic civilizations, is overshadowed in Peru by the Incas.

From the Telegraph: Wari empire royal tomb discovered in Peru

Archaeologists in Peru say they have unearthed a massive royal tomb full of mummified women that provides clues about the enigmatic Wari empire that ruled the Andes long before the Incas.

From Adventure Life: Ancient Peru Brewery

Archeologists have only scratched the surface of discovery in many areas. A recent itch: the historic mountain-top city of Cerro Baúl. Here, at over 8,000 feet above sea level, an ancient brewery of the Wari Empire was found. Twenty ceramic 10 to 15 gallon vats suggest that this was much more than a Mom-and-Pop-shop. In fact, it may be the oldest large-scale brewery ever found in the Andes. It was used to produce great quantities of chicha, a fermented beverage similar to beer made from barley and berries of the pepper tree, Schinus molle.

From ABC News: Royal Peruvian tomb with scores of mummified women sheds light on Wari empire

Archaeologists in Peru have unearthed a massive royal tomb full of mummified women which provides clues about the enigmatic Wari empire that ruled the Andes long before their better-known Incan successors.

The mausoleum, unearthed a few months ago at a coastal pyramid site called El Castillo de Huarmey, 299 kilometres north of Lima, contained gold pieces, ceramics and 63 skeletons about 1,300 years old.

Researchers said the discovery will help them piece together life in the Andes centuries before the rise of the Incan empire, which was written about in detail by the conquering Spaniards.

From National Geographic: First Unlooted Royal Tomb of Its Kind Unearthed in Peru

Three queens were buried with golden treasures, human sacrifices

It was a stunning discovery: the first unlooted imperial tomb of the Wari, the ancient civilization that built South America's earliest empire between 700 and 1000 A.D. Yet it wasn't happiness that Milosz Giersz felt when he first glimpsed gold in the dim recesses of the burial chamber in northern Peru.

Giersz, an archaeologist at the University of Warsaw in Poland, realized at once that if word leaked out that his Polish-Peruvian team had discovered a 1,200-year-old "temple of the dead" filled with precious gold and silver artifacts, looters would descend on the site in droves. "I had a nightmare about the possibility," says Giersz.

Unusual "Royal" Aztec Burial

From Associated Press:

Mexican archaeologists say they have found an unprecedented human burial in which the skeleton of a young woman is surrounded by piles of 1,789 human bones in Mexico City's Templo Mayor.

Researchers found the burial about five meters (15 feet) below the surface, next to the remains of what may have been a "sacred tree" at one edge of the plaza, the most sacred site of the Aztec capital.

She said Tuesday that when the Mayas interred sacrifice victims with royal burials, they were usually found as complete bodies, not jumbles of different bone types as in this case. And, except for special circumstances, the Aztecs, unlike other pre-Hispanic cultures, usually cremated members of the elite during their rule from 1325 to the Spanish conquest in 1521.

Jewels of Eleutherna

From the Straits Times:

ARCHAEOLOGISTS on the Greek island of Crete have unearthed the 2,900-year-old tomb of three women buried with jewels of surprisingly advanced skill, culture officials said on Friday.

The tomb in the ancient town of Eleutherna, near the modern city of Rethymno in northern Crete, held gold necklaces and medallions decorated with lion heads and the forms of ancient gods, excavation supervisor Nikos Stambolidis said.

'The jewels are of a style that appeared in the Hellenistic Era (many centuries later),' said Stambolidis, director of the Cycladic Museum in Athens.

'We had no knowledge that this level of craft existed earlier,' he told AFP.

The elaborate nature of the tomb indicates that its three occupants, two of whom were adolescents, were likely priestesses or princesses.

A number of offerings including scarabs, amber seals and earthenware were also found in the burial chamber which was two metres high.

The town of Eleutherna is believed to have reached its peak in the Geometric Era around 3,000 years ago. Excavation in the last 25 years has so far yielded over 500 items of clay, metal and ivory including sculptures, tools and weapons.

One of the most prized sculptures of the Louvre Museum in Paris, a limestone female statue called the Lady of Auxerre, is believed to have come from Eleutherna.

Final Resting Place of Cleopatra

Further to my previous posts, comes this update from the Egyptian State Information Service:

Dominican archaeological mission has discovered new leads that could help in detecting the burial place of legendary Queen Cleopatra of Egypt and her Roman lover Mark Antony.

The mission has uncovered an alabaster head of the last Queen of Egypt in addition to 22 bronze coins bearing her face and a headless statue of the queen and another mask that could probably be that of Mark Antony, said Zahi Hawwas, the head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

The most important find made by the expedition was the discovery of a large graveyard outside a temple called Tabusiris Magna, which lies 30 kilometers from the port city of Alexandria in northern Egypt, he said.

So far 27 tombs have been unearthed in the area, besides burial chambers and 10 mummies, he added.

The place seems to have been a cemetery for nobility and senior employees during the Ptolemaic era in the history of ancient Egypt, he said.

And this from Yahoo News:

Archaeologists looking for the tombs of the celebrated queen of Egypt and the Roman general will begin excavating three sites at a temple where tombs may be located, Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities said in a statement Wednesday.

Cleopatra and Mark Antony, whose relationship was later immortalized by William Shakespeare and then in a movie with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, could have been buried in a deep shaft in a temple near the Mediterranean Sea, the council said.