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8,000 year old site destroyed by bulldozers

An archaeological site in Bulgaria, including remnants of a village said to date back 8000 years, has been destroyed by bulldozers, allegedly the work of a construction company building part of a new road from Bulgaria to Greece.

The destruction means that archaeologists have lost thousands of years of history, Bulgarian National Television reported.

A special commission from the Ministry of Culture is inspecting the damage to the site, near Momchilgrad, and police are investigating.

Zharin Velichkov, chief inspector at the Ministry of Culture’s national institute for immovable cultural heritage, said that the site had individual layers dating back thousands of years, believed to reach back as far as 6000 BCE.

He told Bulgarian National Television that he could not say who had committed the destruction but it was most likely the company that had been carrying out work in the area.

The construction company had been given accurate maps of the area, with archaeological sites marked. The mound of the site, which also included a medieval church, were a few hundred metres from the future road to Greece.

Archaeologists were doing what they could to rescue anything remaining after the bulldozing, the report said.

Source: The Sofia Echo [November 16, 2011]

DNA study to investigate the other 99% of Romans

Who were Rome’s 99%? How did the common people experience life in the Imperial capital? Dr. Kristina Killgrove of Vanderbilt University is filling in the gaps of history by studying the skeletons of Rome’s lower class denizens.

Ancient Roman [Credit: Dr. Kristina Killgrove]

Since 2007, Dr. Killgrove has been employing biochemical analyses of human skeletal material to learn more about the diet, disease, and origins of people buried in two suburban Roman cemeteries. Her research with stable isotopes has shown that men, women, and children immigrated to the city, that they ate many different kinds of food, and that several of them suffered from lead poisoning.

The Roman DNA Project, which Dr. Killgrove launched at the beginning of November, is the next step in understanding the average inhabitants of the city. With the collaboration of aDNA expert Dr. John Dudgeon of Idaho State University, Dr. Killgrove will examine the molecular structure of people who died nearly two millennia ago in Rome. This project is the first to sequence DNA from the inhabitants of Imperial Rome and will reveal more about the origins of immigrants to the city.

Dr. Kristina Killgrove at Pompeii [Credit: Dr. Kristina Killgrove]

Dr. Killgrove is seeking financing for this pilot project directly from the public. As part of the SciFund Challenge, a collection of 49 scientists from around the world who are crowdfunding their research this winter, the Roman DNA Project has already raised nearly half of the $6,000 needed to undertake aDNA analysis. Have you ever wanted to receive a letter from an ancient Roman? Donors to this fund drive can choose from rewards that feature the skeletal remains of the ancient Romans themselves.

Unlike the 99% in the U.S., who can make their voices heard via protests and media, Rome’s lower classes had almost no power to effect change in their society. The Roman DNA Project seeks to adjust the balance of history and tell the stories of the commoners at Rome.

Author/Source: Dr. Kristina Killgrove [November 11, 2011]

Research analyzes images of women in Roman mosaics

Research coordinated by Carlos III University in Madrid analyzes the images of women in Roman mosaics and their impact on the collective consciousness of feminine stereotypes. In many cases, the research concludes, the images pointed to the female as the cause of wars and other evils.

Numerous images of women appear in Roman mosaics. The majority are inspired in mythology – goddess, heroines and other protagonists of countless legends – although other flesh and blood women, probably dominae, their daughters, handmaidens and servants, are also documented. "The most significant aspect of these images is the different roles they reflect and their contribution to the construction of certain stereotypes, not just in the Roman world, but also throughout history and up to the present", points out Luz Neira, Associate Professor of Ancient History in the Department of Humanities: History, Geography and Art, and a researcher at UC3M's Institute of Culture and Technology.

The roles of the women that appear in the mosaics can be classified into three broad groups, according to the researchers. First, there are those that depict the roles of wife, mother and daughter, reflecting fidelity, concern for children and unquestioning obedience to parents (positive examples in that era), although there are also images of opposite behavior with an instructional purpose; these seem to allude to the terrible consequences that may befall those who behave in such a manner. In the second group, other images use nudes to evoke eroticism and even wild unions that guarantee pleasure and enjoyment, compared with more civilized unions to be found within the bonds of marriage.

In the third and final place, there are some mythological representations that seem to reflect a different sensibility, as in the case of certain heroines, who were willing to do anything rather than fall into the arms of a man, even if he was a god, or the Amazons who hunted and competed with celebrated heroes. "It is interesting to see how,– points out Professor Luz Neira –in many of these images, regardless of the roles they depict, the female is shown to be the cause of wars and other evils, following a tradition that, referred to by the poet Hesiod as far back as the seventh century B.C, dates back to the myth of de Pandora".

Numerous graphic examples of this type can be found in the book that was recently published under the direction and scientific coordination of Luz Neira, Representaciones de mujeres en los mosaicos romanos y su impacto en el imaginario de estereotipos femeninos (Images of women in Roman mosaics and their impact on the imagery of feminine stereotypes - Ed. Creaciones Vincent Gabrielle, 2011). From a perspective that avoids considering images as a mere illustrations, this work deals with the analysis and debate of the different roles of women as they are reflected in Roman mosaics, "rejecting the out-dated idea of an unconscious use of archetypes and models that holds no historic significance". The volume includes the work of prestigious Spanish and foreign researchers, with numerous studies on the subject.

This line of research, which is part of the wider Project "Sociedad y economía en los mosaicos hispanorromanos II" (Society and economy in hispanoroman mosaics II), of the Programa Nacional de Humanidades de la Comisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología (CICYT – National Program for the Humanities of the Interministerial Commission on Science and Technology), invites us to reflect on the significance of the mosaics' images and their relationship with the ideology of the elites during the Roman Empire.

"Keeping in mind that the mosaics tiled the rooms in the residences of the most privileged members of the elite classes, whose opinion would have been essential in choosing scenes and motifs, the evocation of very concrete stereotypes, which in many cases would have been the fruit of conscious, premeditated choices on the part of domini, stands out", states Luz Neira. In this way, the research is intended to highlight the idea that those stereotypes, whose validity appeared to be reinforced by their old age alone, were the result of self-interested construction and dissemination; thus, the mosaics shed even more light on the mentality of the elites than they do on the situations and circumstances experienced by women living in Imperial Rome.

Source: Carlos III University of Madrid [November 07, 2011]

Gold coins of Medieval Bulgarian dynasty found

A total of 18 gold coins minted by medieval Bulgarian Tsar Ivan Alexander (r. 1331-1371) have been discovered by the team of renowned Bulgarian archaeologist Prof. Nikolay Ovcharov.

Prof. Nikolay Ovcharov displays the 18 gold coins found by his team at the medieval Bulgarian fortress Urvich near Sofia [Credit: BGNES]

The coins were found during excavations of the medieval fortress Urvich near Sofia by the archaeologists led by Prof. Ovcharov and Prof. Boni Petrunova from the National Archaeological Institute.

The coins were described as the "treasure of the Shishman Dynasty", which ruled Bulgaria from the ascension of Tsar Ivan Alexander to the throne in 1331 AD to the demise of his sons – Tsar Ivan Shishman (r. 1371-1395) and Tsar Ivan Sratsimir (r. 1371-1396) in the hands of the Ottoman Turks when the Ottoman Turkish Empire conquered the Balkans in the 14th century.

Ovcharov admitted that it is an overstretch to speak of a "treasure" when only 18 coins are available but he insisted the term should be used as a reference to what was believed to be the treasure of Tsar Ivan Shishman that he buried at the fortress of Urvich where he made a stand against the invading Ottoman Turkish forces in the 1370s and 1380s.

The archaeologist believes that Tsar Ivan Shishman's treasure really existed but that most of it was snatched by treasure-hunters and that the 18 gold coins are everything that is left of it.

"These coins were burred sometime between 1371 and 1372. This is precisely the "treasure" of the Shishman Dynasty since the rest of it has been stolen by treasure hunters," stated Ovcharov, who is also known as the "Bulgarian Indiana Jones."

The Urvich fortress which is located some 20 km southeast of Sofia was first excavated in 1969 by Ovcharov's father, Prof. Dimitar Ovcharov.

The archaeological excavations there have already unearthed murals from the St. Iliya (St. Elijah) Church and the respective monastery, and have presented to the public some of the frescoes.

After the Second Bulgarian Empire was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1393-96 AD, the Urvich fortress was set on fire but was later rebuilt and used by the Ottoman Turkish invaders; the local monastery was also restored.

Ovcharov emphasized that there is information about the monastery at Urvich in the first History of Bulgaria, the Slavic-Bulgarian History, compiled by the Bulgarian monk Paisiy Hilendarski in 1762 AD. The St. Iliya Church itself was fixed in the 15-17th century.

Ovcharov and Sofia Mayor Yordanka Fandakova, who also attended Wednesday's news conference, expressed their hopes and intentions to use the archaeological discoveries at Urvich for the development of cultural tourism.

"Sofia has the chance to turn into a top tourist destination that is a leader in global cultural tourism," Sofia's newly elected mayor vowed.

Ovcharov in turn pointed to the example of the Ancient Thracian rock city of Perperikon in the Rhodope Mountains, known as the Bulgarian Machu Picchu, which has already been turned into a primary tourist destination based on his excavations in the past 5 years.

Source: Novinite [November 02, 2011]

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8,000 year old site destroyed by bulldozers

DNA study to investigate the other 99% of Romans

Research analyzes images of women in Roman mosaics

Gold coins of Medieval Bulgarian dynasty found

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