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17th century shipwreck found off Swedish coast

A shipwreck discovered in the murky waters of the Baltic Sea is believed to be a legendary 17th century warship whose captain went down with it in battle rather than surrender to the enemy.

Deep Sea Productions, an underwater research team, said Wednesday it believes the 25-meter (82-feet) wooden wreck it found off the island of Oland this summer is the ship Svardet, which sank when Sweden was defeated by a Danish-Dutch fleet in a 1676 naval battle.

Malcolm Dixelius, a member of the research team, said that wood samples show the wreck is from the 17th century. He also said the stern of the ship is missing, which is consistent with historical reports that Svardet went under after a fire and explosion at the stern.

Thousands of other wrecks - from medieval vessels to warships sunk during the world wars - have been found in the Baltic Sea, which doesn't have the ship worm that destroys wooden wrecks in saltier oceans.

Marine Archaeology Professor Johan Ronnby said he is convinced the newly discovered wreck is that of Svardet, making it one of four giant warships from the 16th and 17th centuries that have been recovered in the Baltic Sea.

Earlier this year, the same research team discovered the 16th century warship Mars at a nearby location. The ship Kronan was discovered in 1981, yielding more than 30,000 archaeological artifacts.

Among the four is Sweden's most famous maritime discovery, the 17th century royal warship Vasa, which was raised from the seabed in the Stockholm harbor in 1961 and can be viewed in a popular museum.

Svardet and Kronan were lost in the same fight, described as the largest naval battle in the history of the Baltic Sea.

According to historical reports, Svardet was set afire by a Dutch ship after a five-hour battle. The commander, admiral Claes Uggla, refused to abandon his ship as it went down.

The research team had been searching for Svardet for more than 10 years when it found it between the Swedish islands Gotland and Oland at a depth of between 50 and 100 meters, surrounded by the hundreds of canons it carried when it went under.

The team will now collaborate with researchers at the Swedish Maritime Archaeological Research Institute to document the shipwrecks and make a 3D documentary about the vessels.

Author: Malin Rising | Source: Associated Press [November 16, 2011]

More on Expansion of Rotterdam port turns up Stone Age artefacts

The site of what is now Rotterdam’s Yangtzehaven was inhabited by humans in the Middle Stone Age.

Archaeologists find habitation sites in Port of Rotterdam [Credit: Dredging Today]

At a depth of 20 metres, in the sea bed, unique underwater archaeological investigation found traces of bone, flint and charcoal from around 7000 BC.

These finds are the very first scientific proof that humans lived at this spot in the Early and Middle Stone Age.

Up to now, very little was known about this period in particular, the Early and Middle Mesolithic, so far to the west of the Netherlands.

The striking results were announced yesterday by the Port of Rotterdam Authority and the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands.

The Port Authority’s Project Organisation Maasvlakte 2 is responsible for the expansion of the port in the form of Maasvlakte 2.

The archaeological investigation that is being conducted is part of a series of studies being carried out in connection with the construction of Maasvlakte 2.

Delltares, Bureau Oudheidkundig Onderzoek Rotterdam (Archaeological Research Office) and the Archeologisch Dienstencentrum (Archaeological Service Centre) are among the parties involved in these studies.

The Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands is guiding the research and is the supervisory authority.

Habitation 9000 years ago

Some 9000 years ago, the area where the North Sea and the port of Rotterdam can now be found was a river landscape created by the Rhine and the Maas.

Due to the rich flora and fauna, this was an attractive place for hunters and gatherers.

We know from the Middle Stone Age period that the hunter-gatherers lived in small family groups of about 10 people.

They wandered around the area, showing a particular preference for river dunes, which provided safety when the rivers flooded.

The river dune on which they lived at the time now lies 20 metres below the New Amsterdam Water Level.

As the Yangtzehaven is to form the access waterway to Maasvlakte 2, this harbour needs to be deepened.

Part of the river dune will disappear as a result. That is why this unique excavation is now being conducted below sea level.

This investigation is geared towards gathering information about the early habitation of the area.

Finds

The bone remains found up to now are small fragments (smaller than 1 cm) of burnt and unburnt animal bone.

The unburnt bone points to the presence of animals at and in the vicinity of this spot. The burnt bone is burnt in such a way that it must be the result of human action.

This burnt bone and the charcoal also found are indications of food preparation such as the grilling of meat.

The fragments of flint and the minuscule flakes of flint prove that flint was worked on site to make all kinds of implements, such as arrowheads, knives and scrapers to clean hides.

Unique in the world

‘Nowhere in the world has such research been carried out at such an exceptional depth under water’, according to Henk Weerts, senior researcher in Physical Geology and Palaeogeography at the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands.

Before a start was made on the excavation, the exact locations were determined on the basis of geological research and test drillings.

The areas which are now being excavated measure about 9 by 16 metres. From pontoons, grabs systematically scrape 2 x 3 metre slices of ground in 20 cm layers from the sea bed.

On land, the ground is sieved and the residue is sifted through for traces of humans, animals, plants and other materials. It will take a few months to process the sieved remains.

It is possible that even more finds will be made in the coming period.

Little known about Mesolithic

Up to now, very few other traces of life in the Early and Middle Mesolithic (9000-7000 BC) have been found in the western Netherlands.

Other parts of the country are known to have been inhabited during this period, but the finds there are limited mainly to scattered remains of flint.

In the dry sandy soils in the northern, eastern and southern Netherlands, no organic remains, such as bone, have been preserved in the soil.

In the favourable, damp conditions at and around the river dunes, which were later buried by sediment, they have.

Henk Weerts: ‘At last, we have evidence to support the suspicions and indications which scientists have had for a long time regarding the area inhabited by humans in the Middle Stone Age in the extreme west of the Netherlands’.

Source: Dredging Today [November 08, 2011]

Expansion of Rotterdam port turns up Stone Age artefacts

Work to expand the port of Rotterdam has led to the discovery of the first signs of human presence in the Dutch delta 9,000 years ago, port authorities said Friday.

An example is the expansion of the Port of Rotterdam, known as Maasvlakte 2 [Credit: Maritime Journal]

"An archaeological investigation has been conducted on the site of Rotterdam port's expansion ... with some very interesting results," said Rotterdam port spokesman Sjaak Poppe.

"Archaeologists found traces of animal bone, flint and charcoal from around 7,000 BC. It's the first indication of human society in western Netherlands," he said.

Digging at a depth of 20 metres (65 feet) in the so-called Yangtzehaven, an undersea mud scooper has brought small artefacts to the surface, which archaeologists say show traces of life in the Early and Middle Stone Ages.

"Due to its rich fauna and flora, the convergence of the Rhine and Maas Rivers was an attractive place for hunters and gatherers," Poppe said.

People lived in small groups of around 10, with a particular preference for river dunes, which provided safety from flooding.

After the archaeological excavations, the Yangtzehaven is to serve as the access waterway to Rotterdam's new Maasvlakte 2 harbour, designed to increase Europe's biggest port by 20 percent, including two new container terminals, Poppe said.

The port, among the world's 10 largest, on Thursday said it had handled some 327 million tonnes of cargo in the first nine months of 2011.

Source: Expatica [Novemer 04, 2011]

Viking 'sunstone' more than a myth

Ancient tales of Norse mariners using mysterious sunstones to navigate the ocean when clouds obscured the Sun and stars are more than just legend, according to a study published Wednesday.

File illustration photo shows a replica Viking ship in Northern Jutland in August 2008. Researchers say Vikings used transparent calcite crystal to fix the bearing of the Sun, to within a single degree of accuracy [Credit: AFP]

Over 1,000 years ago, before the invention of the compass, Vikings ventured thousands of kilometres from home toward Iceland and Greenland, and most likely as far as North America, centuries ahead of Christopher Columbus.

Evidence show that these fearless and fearsome seamen navigated by reading the position of the Sun and stars, and through an intimate knowledge of landmarks, currents and waves.

But how they could voyage long distances across seas at northern latitudes often socked in by light-obscuring fog and clouds has remained an enigma.

Enter the sunstone.

While experts have long argued that Vikings knew how to use blocks of light-fracturing crystal to locate the Sun through dense clouds, archeologists have never found hard proof, and doubts remained as to exactly what kind of material it might be.

An international team of researchers led by Guy Ropars of the University of Rennes in Brittany, marshalling experimental and theoretical evidence, says they have the answer.

Vikings, they argue, used transparent calcite crystal -- also known as Iceland spar -- to fix the true bearing of the Sun, to within a single degree of accuracy.

This naturally occurring stone has the capacity to "depolarise" light, filtering and fracturing it along different axes, the researchers explained.

Here's how it works: If you put a dot on top of the crystal and look through it from below, two dots will appear.

"Then you rotate the crystal until the two points have exactly the same intensity or darkness. At that angle, the upward-facing surface indicates the direction of the Sun," Ropars explained by phone.

"A precision of a few degrees can be reached even under dark twilight conditions.... Vikings would have been able to determine with precision the direction of the hidden Sun."

The human eye, he added, has a fine-tuned capacity to distinguish between shades of contrast, and thus is able to see when the two spots are truly identical.

The recent discovery of an Iceland spar aboard an Elizabethan ship sunk in 1592 -- tested by the researchers -- bolsters the theory that ancient mariners were aware of the crystal's potential as an aid to navigation.

Even in the era of the compass, crews might have kept such stone on hand as a backup, the study speculates.

"We have verified ... that even only one of the cannons excavated from the ship is able to perturb a magnetic compass orientation by 90 degrees," the researchers wrote.

"So, to avoid navigation errors when the Sun is hidden, the use of an optical compass could be crucial even at this epoch, more than four centuries after the Viking time."

The study appeared in Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical and Physical Sciences, a peer-reviewed journal published by Britain's de facto academy of science, the Royal Society.

Author: Laurent Banguet | Source: AFP [November 02, 2011]

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17th century shipwreck found off Swedish coast

More on Expansion of Rotterdam port turns up Stone Age artefacts

Expansion of Rotterdam port turns up Stone Age artefacts

Viking 'sunstone' more than a myth

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