Here are some posts I enjoyed this week in the realm of intriguing archaeological mysteries:
New Bronze Age Cyprus finds. How’s this for peaking interest? “The excavation of these rooms brought to light novel details suggesting a sudden and very quick departure of the inhabitants from the site, obviously in the face of acute danger.” This settlement of Pyla-Kokkinokremos on Cyprus was very short-lived, having been founded not long before the widespread destruction at the end of the Bronze Age in the early 12th century BCE. Such “disrupted” time periods are great for inspiration for my fictional world-building. Here’s one of those “novel details” and what it shows about archaeology: they found unfired loom weights abandoned part way through being made. Fired loom weights are a common find, but not unfired. So, the destruction (they don’t know what it was, perhaps “seismic”) when it came, didn’t give a lot of advance notice that would cause workers to stop their usual craft in an orderly fashion. Beyond the hints that gives about the destruction of that part of the site, it also left researchers with identifiable unfired clay with its admixtures ready to study. For obvious reasons unfired clay doesn’t usually show up in a clear way in digs, but because of the way these loom weights were laid out and protected, this clay can be studied on a close scientific level. Which shows you how micro the sources of excitement are in the life of an archaeologist. I’m way more likely to use the overall layout of this settlement and its clues to daily life (which falls squarely in my favorite time period) with no muddling of layers before and after the part I’m interested in, and also the hints of drama the destruction offers my imagination. But I don’t make my career studying Bronze Age pottery production, and I do get why unfired clay is incredibly cool to those that do. Click here for Archaeology News Network “2018 excavations at the Pyla Kokkinokremos site in Cyprus concluded”
Here’s a mysterious story behind a grave dig. In a 5,000 yr old (Bronze Age) grave in Kazakhstan they’ve found a man and woman buried close together, he with quiver, bow and dagger, she with jewels of precious stones. Next to them is a pair of sacrificed horses posed stretched out in their harness in “working” position as if pulling a chariot and a grave shaped like a chariot cut behind and connected to the harness. The whole site is surrounded by impressive standing stones. Clearly these people mattered to the ones who buried them thus. The horses are supposed to be pulling the chariot-grave into the afterlife. Impossible so far to tell if the man and woman both died at the same time or if one was killed to be buried with the other. There’s no obvious damage to either skeleton, but closer study might help determine how they each died (quite possibly not). Also impossible to tell if these two were indeed the Romeo and Juliet lovers the grave is being billed as or two unrelated people who were put together in death. Still, the romantic leap to the R&J theme does seem at least forgivable given the huge importance and cost involved in the burial style. If they weren’t attached in some way in life, the people who buried them certainly wanted them to be so in death. Plenty of room for imaginative tales. Anyone want to sketch out what happened? Click here for Archaeology News Network “5,000-year-old grave with ‘Romeo and Juliet couple’ discovered in Kazakhstan”
Sometimes things just click. Here’s Philip Boyes, an archaeologist at Cambridge (among other titles he can be identified by—a multi-talented guy), arguing for Jabba the Hutt as a “good to think with” parallel to the kings and their diplomacy styles of the Bronze Age empires of the Mediterranean and Near East. “In short, Jabba’s palace is good to think with, and further evidence of how things like science-fiction can give helpful perspectives on well-worn historical discussions . . . Bronze Age archaeology can always do with a little bit more sci-fi.” Or, I might add, more fantasy. It makes my portrayal of the Bronze Age so much clearer (and, well, way more fun).