A Royal Elite in Neolithic Ireland?

The results have just been published of DNA studies on bones from Neolithic tombs in Ireland, dating to between 4,000 and 2,500 BC. The burial that is getting the most attention was buried in the heart of Newgrange, the largest Neolithic tomb in Britain, around 3.200 BC. Science News:

A man buried in a huge, roughly 5,200-year-old Irish stone tomb was the product of incest, a new study finds.

DNA extracted from the ancient man’s remains displays an unusually large number of identical versions of the same genes. That pattern indicates that his parents were either a brother and sister or a parent and child, a team led by geneticists Lara Cassidy and Daniel Bradley of Trinity College Dublin reports June 17 in Nature.

That new DNA discovery combined with the monumental tomb suggests that ruling families who wielded enough power to direct big building projects emerged among some early European farming communities, the researchers contend.

This is quite fascinating. It's hard for Americans to understand how large these Neolithic tombs and temples loom in the historical imaginations of many people in Ireland and Britain. There has been an industry of study and speculation about the tombs and the people who built them for 350 years. Every sort of theory has been proposed, from purely egalitarian societies to rule by priest kings to aliens.

A single case of an incestuously bred leader does not prove anything, but it does suggest a hereditary elite with religious associations. This could be our first bona fide Neolithic priest king.

Then again, it could just be a priest. In ancient Egypt and among the Inca it was the rulers who went in for incest, but among some Polynesian and African societies the practice was limited to priestly orders which did not have great political power. Other then the tombs themselves, there is not much sign of a ruling elite in Neolithic Ireland: no houses bigger than others, not much in the way of luxury goods. The tombs themselves were communal affairs within which many people were buried, or in some cases stashed until they had moldered to bones before being taken somewhere else.

But then again maybe the tombs were so important to these people that being buried in the core chamber was all the sign of status anyone needed.

Anyway this is fascinating, and another way that the study of ancient DNA has shed new light on questions that have been argued over for centuries.

More on Pre-Settlement Norse Outposts in Iceland

Work has continued at Stöð, a Norse site in eastern Iceland that I wrote about two years ago. This site was founded around 800 AD, 75 years before the famous first settlement of the island. The excavator of Stöð, Bjarni Einarsson, thinks the site was a seasonal camp, occupied by people who came from Norway to work a couple of months in the summer fishing and catching seals and then went home. Such camps are well known from northern Norway and a camp in Iceland makes perfect sense; after all, people wouldn't have loaded their families into ships and moved to Iceland without having good knowledge of the land.

The discoveries on the site now include two longhouses, one on top of the other, as shown in the photograph above. The larger one is 103 feet (31 m) long, the largest yet found in Iceland dating to before AD 1000. This is the earlier of the two, dating to around 800, so if this was a camp it was a large one sponsored by an important Jarl. Around AD 870 the larger house was torn down and a smaller one built on the same site; this might represent the transition from a large band of men staying seasonally to a farm occupied by one household.

This is quite remarkable, because first settlements have in general been very hard for archaeologists to find or verify: hardly anything has been found at the Roanoke Island settlement or the possible Viking sites in Canada, and as yet there is no trace of the Basque whalers who are known to have visited New England in the 1500s. To find such a rich, well-dated site that might be one of the first Viking settlements in Iceland is amazing.

The Dance of the Conquest: Post Cortez Maya Art

Back in 2003, workers restoring a 16th-century house in Chajul, Guatemala uncovered a series of remarkable wall paintings. They have since been conserved, and just recently a detailed study has published. This was a Maya area, and Maya language and traditions are still strong there.

The paintings include European items and therefore date to after contact with the Spanish; the authors of the new study say they were made over an extended time, beginning soon after the conquest and perhaps extending as late as the 1700s. They are unusual in coming from a private house. Most surviving paintings of the period are in churches, and therefore presumably more under the control of the authorities and the church.

Combining scholarly knowledge of other art from the early colonial period with the insights of local Ixil Maya informants, the investigators conclude that these depict dances. The informants named two dances in particular that they thought were depicted, the Baile de la Conquista (Dance of the Conquest), or the Baile de los Moros y Cristianos (Dance of the Moors and Christians). They also suggested that one panel depicts a dance that no longer survives, which people are calling a Lost Dance; apparently the church banned several dances for theological reasons now obscure.

The Dance of the Conquest, as you might imagine, depicts the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. According to what I have found tonight, this may have been developed already in the 16th century by savvy priests as a way to convey the European version of events to those who did not understand Spanish. However, some articles suggest it may have later evolved into forms that were much darker and more critical of the conquistadors.

The Dance of the Moors and the Christians depicts the Spanish reconquest of the Iberian peninsula from the Muslims, the key event of Spanish history as it was understood until recently. It boggles the mind to think of Maya dancers in those costumes acting out events in Iberian history of which they can have had only the vaguest idea, and yet such a dance definitely existed and survived into the 20th century.

Most of the Maya dances that were developed under Spanish auspices were religious, depicting the life of Jesus and the like. Interesting that the owner of this houses had no interest in those, but preferred secular tales of war and conquest.

What a delightful little window into things one knew nothing about.

Falerii Novi

Ground-penetrating radar map of Falerii Novi, town about 30 miles north of Rome that prospered during the Roman Republic. The scanned area measures 30.5 hectares, or 75 acres. Big image with lots of detail, via The History Blog.

Serjilla: Dead City

In northwestern Syria are more than a hundred ghost town collectively known as the Dead Cities. They date to between 400 and 700 AD. The best preserved is Serjilla.

These seem to have been ordinary farming towns where some folks got rich after the fall of Carthage to the Vandals cut off supplies of olive oil from the western Mediterranean, leading to an olive oil boom in Syria.

That explains their rise, but their fall is more mysterious. There are no signs of violence, nor any record that the conquering Arabs did much damage. Some speak of changes in trade routes, but these towns were within two day's journey of Aleppo, which remained a great city throughout the Middle Ages, so I am not sure why that would be relevant. Did changes in the weather render the land less valuable?

I have no idea, and so far as I can tell, nobody else really knows either. So a little mystery, a whole rural district that prospered for two centuries and then faded away, leaving these splendid ruins.

Town plan.

Some authorities identify this as a tavern others an an Andron, a meeting place for men.

The town had public baths, which were a lot less common in 500 AD than they had been 200 years earlier, so the elite were a traditional bunch.

But they were of course Christian; this is the church.

So far as I can tell, this place has so far survived Syria's Civil War unscathed. May it long endure.

Driving Hadrian's Wall

Hadrian's Wall, a magnificent monument of Roman power and wealth that happens to stretch  across a beautiful and fascinating stretch of Britain; a perfect spot for a bit of historical tourism. We begin our journey at Carlisle, a small city near the western end of the Wall. Carlisle was founded by the Romans as Luguvalium around 78 AD, two generations before the Wall was built in AD 122, and has a long and exciting history. The Roman fort here was the base of a cavalry force and no doubt saw much action over the centuries defending the empire against perfidious barbarians.

Then in the late 300s the Romans gave up and moved on. So far as archaeologists can tell, the Roman fort was still occupied throughout the dark times of Roman withdrawal and Anglo-Saxon invasion. In the 500s a kingdom called Rheged emerged in this part of Britain, and its king's primary seat may well have been at Carlisle. Then the Saxons took the spot, and then the Vikings took it from them, and then the Scots held it for a while. In 1092 William Rufus, the Conqueror's son, came here, drove out the Scots, and built a castle on top of the Roman fort that over the centuries evolved into the Carlisle Castle you can see today.

The castle was besieged at least six times, most spectacularly in 1315, when small English force led by Andrew Harclay defended it against Robert the Bruce's army, hurling Scottish scaling ladders down from the walls. The museum here covers this whole history, including an array of Roman artifacts. Among the things you can see are these carvings, made in the 1400s by either prisoners or guards.

Carlisle also has a medieval cathedral and other interesting stuff.

Heading east out of Carlyle we find the visible remains of the wall before we leave the suburbs. We're going to follow this amazing Ordnance Survey Map of the Wall, published in 1964.

East of Carlisle the Wall runs along the crest of this ridge, providing some of the most spectacular views.

The Wall is only 84 miles (136 km) long, so to make a long day of this drive we're going to have to take some detours. Our first is to Lanercost Priory. (Notice the Stanegate in the lower right corner. This means "stone street" in the old northern dialect, and this was the Roman Road that paralleled the Wall, allowing for rapid movement of troops along it.)

This spectacular ruin was built in the late 1200s and survived numerous Scottish incursions.

Built into the priory wall is a stone marking a dedication by the Legion VI Victrix, taken from some  fort along the Wall.

Continuing east we come to the first of the Wall's great archaeological sites, Vindolanda. As at Carlisle, the first fort here was built during the conquest, circa AD 85, and only later made part of the Wall's defensive system.

Aerial view showing the fort and the vicus, the town outside the walls.

Vindolanda is best known because parts of the site sank over time into the mire, where deposits up to 25 feet (6 m) deep preserved an amazing array of Roman gear in leather, wood, cloth, and other perishable materials. The writing tablets, which preserve bits of arcana like invitations to birthday parties and job recommendations, are especially wonderful.

Just up the road from Vindolanda is Housesteads or Verovicium, another wonderful Roman fort, but if you are having Roman fort fatigue it's ok to move on.

Housesteads did produce one of my favorite Roman artifacts, this carving of the mysterious "Three Hooded Ones."

Continuing east we take another detour to visit Aydon Castle, a beautiful medieval manor house. (Notice the red line of Deere Street, one of the great Roman roads of Britain.)

There was a timber hall here in the 12th century, belong to people with names like fitzGilbert and de Umfraville. In 1293 it was purchased by Hugh de Reymes; he and his son Robert built the castle. They were wealhty merchants from Suffolk in the process of transitioning into the landed gentry. But they soon fell on hard times, which is is why few improvements were made to the property until the 17th century. The castle was taken by the Scotts in 1315 and again in 1346, but was not severely damaged.

Moving east through rough country we come to a series of forts. At Brocoloitia there is a small temple of Mithras,

and at Chesters there is this museum.

Continuing on our way we pass the spot where a modern stone cross marks the site of the Battle of Heavenfield, described in the Venerable Bede's history, where Oswald of Northumbria won a decisive victory over a Welsh force led by Cadwallon of Gwynedd, in AD 631.

Sometime in the afternoon we enter the city of Newcastle upon Tyne, which grew up around the Wall's eastern end. In the center of town is the keep of the castle, which is actually one of the best preserved Norman castles in Britain.

There is of course a museum in Newcastle and lots of Roman stuff, but we're going to push on. a few miles east. While the Wall originally ended in Newcastle, this was found to leave easy crossings over the Tyne undefended, so 5 years later the Wall was extended eastward to the new fortress of Segedunum.

You can walk the walls of the fort here and tour one more museum, which holds among other things this famous Roman toilet seat.

And then back into Newcastle for dinner and bed, the ringing of ancient swords, the songs of bards, and the chanting of monks filling our tired minds.

The Dump Truck and the Anglo-Saxon Brooch

Last year a metal detectorist working in a field near Swaffham, Norfolk, England, found this spectacular Anglo-Saxon brooch. It's made of silver inlaid with niello, a black alloy, 2 inches (5 cm) across, probably from the 9th century.

Archaeologists were sent to the site; digging down, they found a nineteenth-century plow. So the knew that the brooch was in fill brought from somewhere else. At this point someone thought to ask the farmer (a different person from the landowner) and he said that, yes, it was fill, but he didn't know where it came from because he had just "flagged down a passing truck."

So a great mystery: where did the soil come from, and were there other wonders that maybe got shipped off in other truckloads of topsoil to other nearby spots? I wonder if Norfolk residents who had fill put down on their property over the past few years are all out checking it with metal detectors.

The Beaker Folk and a Different Sort of Genetic History

Much of the history coming from paleogenetics has been rather grim, about how certain groups conquered others and almost completely replaced them. For example, the latest estimate is that 90 to 95% of the people of Britain were replaced after a Bronze Age invasion,  which may have been accompanied by bubonic plague.

But not everywhere. Data from Scandinavia suggests that many hunter-gatherers there survived and interbred with invading farmers, contributing up to a third of the genes of late Neolithic people. Since farmers generally live at higher populations densities, this implies a fairly equal contribution to future genes and a whole lot of intermixing. 

Distribution of the Bell Beaker Culture

And now there is some interesting data about the formation of the Bell Beaker people, who dominated parts of western Europe between 2700 and 2000 BC. Archaeologists long ago recognized that Beaker culture had two homelands, one in Portugal and one in the low countries around the mouth of the Rhine. Genetic studies showed that the two groups were not closely related. The southern group were mostly descended from neolithic farmers, while the northern group were like the Corded Ware people, who had a lot of genes from steppes invaders. Now new data shows that over time the Bell Beaker people interbred until most of them were a mix of Portuguese and Corded Ware types. Somehow these two groups, with different genetic histories and originating in different ecological zones, established a common culture with much interbreeding.

The current consensus is that many elements of Bell Beaker culture originated in Portugal. Somehow they spread that culture to northern peoples, who took it up with great enthusiasm, and then intermarried with southern folk, at least at the elite level.

So it wasn't all conquest and replacement.