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The island of Britain and its associated smaller offshoots (around 1,000 islands in all and with 11,000 miles of coastline) have a history of human settlement going back to the early dawn of humanity. Repeated settlement and abandonment of Britain as the ice sheets waxed and waned over nearly a million years has been followed by continuous settlement for at least 12,000 years and possibly 16,000 years. Britain has sometimes been an island, and sometimes an extension of the northern European plain, inundated between 8,400 and 8,000 years ago to become today’s modern North Sea. The archaeological record is rich and reveals a constantly changing set of cultures, slowly becoming the modern Britain we know today. Indeed, archaeological study of these remains includes the study of contemporary material culture as much as it does that of the distant past.

The British Isles have been known as such for nearly 2,000 years, since early Roman times. Early geographers included Ireland as part of the Isles, but Ireland has long since been separate with its own rich, but very different, series of human cultures. Here, I will only deal with Britain.

Britain and its extension to the north in the Shetland Islands to its southern most set of islands in the Scillies extends from latitude 60º 51′ N to 49º 53′ N. This is equivalent to stretching from the Ungava Peninsula to the middle of Newfoundland in Canada. As offshore islands, they currently have a maritime climate, bathed in the warming waters of the Gulf Stream crossing the Atlantic Ocean from the Caribbean. Its winters and summers are generally mild. The mainland of Britain extends for 600 miles from Caithness in the north to Cornwall in the south. Its widest point is the far south, 350 miles from Cornwall to Kent, while much of the middle and north of Britain is only 150 miles wide. It easternmost point is Lowestoft in England at longitude 1º 46′ E and its westernmost is at Ardnamurchan in Scotland at longitude 6º 14′ W, with the island of St. Kilda lying farther west at  8º 38′ W. It is currently separated from the rest of Europe by the English Channel (20 miles wide at it narrowest point) and the 350-mile-wide North Sea.

Within Britain, there is an unparalleled variety of geology, landscape and weather. Britain can be divided into upland and lowland zones, which have shaped much of its prehistory and history. The north and west are generally formed of older, harder rocks once folded into high mountains and now eroded in highland landscapes. These areas benefit from the moist warm air of the westerly weather and are ideal pastoral farming lands, with highly indented coastlines where travel by sea was often easier and faster than travel by land. The south and east are formed of younger rocks, less affected by great earth movements, forming lower lying downland and plains, with a dryer climate suitable for the growing of cereals as well as the keeping of livestock. This south-eastern lowland is the side that faces the rest of Europe, and is well placed for trade but also more likely to face the problems of defence against invaders. Within this broad distinction, there are smaller regions, each with their own characteristics and histories, such as the Thames estuary, the south-west peninsula of England, Wales and the marches, the long Pennine mountain chain, the mountainous Lake District, the Borders that cross northern England and southern Scotland, the low-lying Scottish central belt, the Highlands and north-east Scotland.

Modern Britain consists of three nations: England, Scotland and Wales. Each has existed for more than a thousand years. England and Scotland have their origins as kingdoms under royal houses descended from foreign migrants during the 9th and 10th centuries AD. The English came as Anglo-Saxons from the coastal areas of the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark in the 5th and 6th centuries to rule over and merge with the native Britons. Likewise, the Scots came at the same time as migrants from Ireland to take over and dominate the Britons and Picts of the far north. The Britons, who were left as free and independent, formed the indigenous kingdoms of Wales. All three have been united under the same crown since 1603, yet still retain their own cultural identities and histories. Before the creation of this threefold division, we can only speak of one Britain, leaving to archaeology the task of teasing out the connections between its parts during its long prehistory.

Key archaeological sites

The earliest evidence of human occupation in Britain is on the coast at Happisburgh (in Norfolk, England). Not only are there stone tools left behind, but also precious, rare footprints left in mud by a once flowing river between 970,000 and 814,000 years ago. The humans were probably of the species Homo antecessor, an early descendant of the first humans to leave Africa. These remains belong to the Palaeolithic, or Old Stone Age. This early period of the human past lasted until the end of the Ice Age and among its more evocative sites is the gorge with associated caves at Creswell Crags (on the Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire border in England). On either side of a stream lie cliffs of limestone in which there is a series of caves with evidence for human settlement from the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic, left by both Neanderthals and modern humans as far back as 60,000 years ago. Modern people, Homo sapiens, seem to have replaced Neanderthals in Britain by about 36,000 years ago. The chief claim to fame of the caves is the presence of the most northerly Palaeolithic in the world, images of animals scratched into the cave walls, along with a possible masked human figure and a wonderful horse head, both engraved on animal bones. The art probably dates to around 14,000 years ago, towards the end of the last Ice Age, belonging to a people who hunted horses as one of their main sources of food. This is ironic, given modern Britons’ aversion to eating horse today.

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The footprints at Happisburgh

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A view of Creswell Crags

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One of the earliest, and best, sites of human occupation after the end of the Ice Age is the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) site of Star Carr (in North Yorkshire, England). Preserved in peat that was once a lake are many artefacts of bone, wood and antler, materials that do not normally survive on prehistoric sites. Among them were 21 red deer head-dresses, used probably in ceremonies designed to ensure the success of future hunts or as the coming of age of newly adult hunters. There are many special features of Star Carr beside the head-dresses, such as the oldest built structure in Britain and the earliest evidence for carpentry in Europe. The people who lived here 11,000 years ago were among the direct ancestors of modern Britons, and represent a time when people lived in close relationship with the landscape and its plants and animals. There are few (if any) truly natural environments in Britain today. To recover a sense of wild Britain and our proper place in it, we have to journey back in time to the Mesolithic, a world that was lost with the advent of farming 6,000 years ago.

The first farmers left behind an Early Neolithic (New Stone Age) culture, where clearings were being made in the forest on a large scale and large burial mounds and gathering sites were created. The basis of Britain’s lifestyle of dependence on wheat, barley, cattle, sheep and pigs (all still the mainstay of modern farming) was being laid. One key site of this period was not, however, a farming site. The site of Great Langdale (in Cumbria, England) was a factory, producing blanks for making stone axeheads out of the very bedrock of Britain. A fine-grained volcanic tuff, the solidified ash of a long extinct volcano provided a highly prized material for making polished stone axeheads. These were traded across large areas of Britain in a network of social contacts that spanned the island from north to south and east to west. No part of Britain could consider itself alone and apart from the rest of the island. People may have had different styles of pottery, or modes of burial, and lived in different ‘tribal’ identities, but they still connected with one another and made links across the whole of Britain.

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Great Langdale

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Some parts of Britain have been blessed with more favorable locations than others, whether with better soils, a better climate, better resources or with a better location for trade along rivers or the coasts. One of the earliest great centers in Britain was the Wessex Downs, whose greatest site is the renowned Stonehenge (in Wiltshire, England), 5,000 to 3,500 years old (passing from the Late Neolithic into the Early Bronze Age). Another great center, only recently discovered and still being excavated, is the Ness of Brodgar (in Orkney, Scotland) and currently dated from 5,200 to 4,300 years ago. Each was very different, but each was a religious and ceremonial site concerned with the passing of the seasons, and probably with beliefs connecting the endless cycle of birth and death with the rebirth of the sun at mid-winter and its decline every year at mid-summer. The two areas may even have been in direct contact with each other. Britain was small enough for far-flung communities to be easily in contact, especially by sea, while it was also big enough that certain parts could thrive relative to others and be powerful political, religious or cultural centers providing distinct identities. By the end of the Early Bronze Age it seems that powerful families were accumulating wealth and power above and beyond the rest of the population. From now on, social and economic inequalities would be built into the fabric of British life.

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Stonehenge

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Tensions between inequality and the notion of community is well seen in the sites of the Late Bronze and Iron Ages Gurness with their hill forts and farms. One particular type of site that is unique to the north of Britain is the stone-built, fortified tower known as a broch. Gurness (in Orkney, Scotland) is one of the best surviving of these. It was occupied for 300 years after 2,200 years ago. The central tower is 65 feet across and has a surrounding settlement of linked houses built also in stone that could have housed up to 40 families. The site lies on the coast commanding views of the sea. It combines functions of defense in the tower as well as display over a distance signaling the status of the inhabitants or their leaders. Along Britain’s coast have long been key sites for defence and display, natural for a sea-going island people.

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Gurness

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Britain finally becomes part of history, illuminated and described by written documents and inscriptions, and having named ‘tribes’, people and settlements, with the conquest of the southern half of the island by the Roman Empire after 43 AD (more than 1,970 years ago). Attempts to conquer the whole of Britain failed and the Romans settled for a northern border between them and the Britons in the north, Hadrian’s Wall (between Northumberland and Cumberland, England). This was begun in 122 AD and after an aborted try at building a frontier farther north, the Antonine Wall (between Dunbartonshire and Falkirk, Scotland, occupied 142-158 AD), became a 73-mile long fortified frontier eventually centered along a stone-built wall connecting the North Sea and Irish Sea coasts. The whole border included 15 major forts along the wall with supply depots to the south and outlying forts to the north. The Wall symbolises a divide between a so-called civilized south and wilder, less acceptable north. Of course, this is a wholly southern perspective! The position of this psychological difference between the two extremes of Britain has changed often since then but is still a feature of a modern Britain, dominated by a prosperous southeast in contrast to the north and west.

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Hadrian’s Wall

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The origins of modern Britain lie in the centuries after the end of Roman rule in Britain. Germanic peoples migrated to eastern Britain, eventually conquering much of the south and east to create Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Irish migrants entered the west coast, and in the far north east created a Scottish kingdom. Native Britons remained in the northwest, west and southwest of Britain. These new kings in Britain were a warrior caste, with contacts to the rest of Europe, but forging new insular identities. The most spectacular evidence for them comes from the site of Sutton Hoo (in Suffolk, England). The burial ground here contains the resting place of a 7th century king, probably King Rædwald of the East Angles who died in 626 AD. He was placed in a 90-feet-long ship within a large mound of earth. Buried with him were many artifacts, including some of the most spectacular goldwork of the past, of a remarkably high technical and artistic standard. They represent the ultimate in ‘bling’ and symbolize the extremes of wealth and power that early Medieval kings could attract. The artifacts also came from a wide range of places on the continent and in Britain, so also symbolize the interdependence of the royal elites and how wealth comes from looking outwards as much as from power over one state.

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Artifacts found at Sutton Hoo reflected fine craftsmanship and were testaments to the wealth and power of some Anglo-Saxon kings.

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The creation of larger and more powerful kingdoms of England and Scotland was based on the work of particular 9th century kings like Alfred the Great of Wessex (in England) and Kenneth MacAlpin of Dal Riada (in Scotland) and completed by the mid-10th century. These together with the smaller Welsh kingdoms were fully Christian, able to withstand and absorb the heathen Vikings who attacked and settled in Britain during these centuries. They developed societies and cultures that far surpassed the achievements of Rome. Britain’s towns, villages and landscapes took shape in the Medieval centuries that followed. Castles, manor houses, churches, cathedrals and monasteries became major architectural marvels of their day. They were also centers of great wealth, based on farming. Much of England’s great wealth at this time came from the sale of wool and cloth to the continent. The great monasteries played a key role in creating such wealth, and one of the most poignant of these is Fountains Abbey (in North Yorkshire, England), founded in 1132. It is poignant because the religious reformation of the 16th century swept it away along with all other monasteries, leaving it an impressive and picturesque ruin today.

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The ruins of Fountains Abbey

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The Reformation ushered in the modern age in both England and Scotland. This was an age of enlightenment, dominated by a prosperous middle class of merchants and rural gentry and serviced by scientists and philosophers. The city of Edinburgh (capital of Scotland) is a supreme symbol of this modernism. The building of the royal palace at Holyrood in 1498 led to the redevelopment of the street between it and the castle with its closely packed tenement buildings for the new urban population. Scotland was at the forefront of the new intellectual enlightenment in the 18th century and the new spirit of rational application of science was applied to town planning. Rather than sweep away the now crowded tenements in the Edinburgh, a new, planned town was created from 1767 onwards. This Edinburgh New Town was built to a classical architectural style, symbolizing the rationality of the time and forms a breathtaking contrast to the Old Town next door. Edinburgh symbolizes the growth of the new out of the old, keeping past and present together, yet achieving a freshness and beauty out of the contrast. Britain is both old and new, constantly reinventing itself.

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A  view of Edinburgh

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Modern Britain was the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, which created the world we now live in. One of the best representatives of the revolution is the World Heritage Site of Blaenafon (in Gwent, Wales). The site began as an ironworks in 1788 with an added coal mine in 1860. Industrial production ended in 1980 and the site now stands as an epitaph to Britain’s industrial past and symbol of its post-industrial status. It also reminds us that Wales, so long seen as a marginal part of Britain, was for part of its history a central part of the world economy. Blaenafon became a complex of mines, quarries, canals, railways and workers’ housing, including the world’s first railway viaduct built in 1790. The remains of industry are as much a subject for archaeology as any prehistoric site, and much richer in their symbolism of the hard work of the many ordinary people who provided the wealth for the richer or more powerful few who are usually remembered in most accounts of our past. Britain has come a long way since those first footsteps in the mud around 900,000 years earlier.

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Blaenafon

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Taking the long view

Looking back on Britain’s past, what does it tell us? Can we see any patterns, anything that could help us make sense of the world we live in today?

One thing that stands out is the importance of the physical environment in which people lived, on the political relations between different parts of the island and on the economy of trade, agriculture and industry. First the fast-flowing rivers in the uplands, then the coal fields of central Scotland, northern England, the English midlands and south Wales determined the creation of the world’s first industrial revolution and brought wealth to previously marginal parts of Britain. The extensive coast and river systems, and later also the canals were the main arteries of transport within Britain but also between Britain and its neighbors (both for trade, migration and war). The variety of rocks, landscapes and climates in Britain creates regions with clear identities, yet still tied together in both rivalry and dependency.

Over time, there have been strong changes in this geography. Britain has not always been an island and its connections with the rest of Europe are often underestimated. The modern island mentality is curiously at odds with the constant flow of people and ideas between Britain and the continent over thousands of years; from its resettlement after the Ice Age, the coming of agriculture in the Neolithic, the development of Celtic languages and peoples during the Iron Age or earlier, the Roman conquest, migration and conquest by Anglo-Saxons and Scots, Viking raids and settlement, Norman conquest, protestant refugees in the 16th and 17th centuries to the influx from the former Empire in the 20th century. All have left traces in Britain’s archaeology.

Changes in climate over this time have also had important effects. The drowning of the land bridge to Europe by rising sea levels as climate warmed after the Ice Age is the greatest of these. Warming and cooling at different times since then have affected how we gain our food from the land, the ebb and flow of farming into and out of marginal uplands and the ability of powerful elites to support themselves on agricultural surpluses. Deserted villages and farms all over Britain are testimony to the changes wrought by climate, landlords and local people at different times in our past.

Different parts of Britain have been important political, economic or religious centers at different times. Currently it is London and the southeast that dominates the island economy. In previous times this was not so. Argyll, Tayside, Edinburgh and Glasgow have at different times dominated Scotland in historic times. Orkney seems to have been especially important during prehistory. In England, dominance has fallen to the industrial areas either side of the Pennines and the midlands, the rich medieval farmlands of East Anglia, the powerful Kingdom of Wessex in the south, and the prehistoric splendors of central chalk downs. Wales has swung between domination by Gwynedd in the north to the industrial valleys of the south. Nothing lasts forever, and centers today may be on the margins tomorrow. For the archaeologist this leaves a rich landscape of remains and sites from all periods not yet destroyed by ‘redevelopment’.

Britain then is a diverse island, both spatially and over time. Its cultural diversity continues to grow and change. Its remains continue to delight and baffle in equal measure as archaeologists seek to uncover its rich island story. What they reveal is an island at times a cultural backwater, at other times a world center. The story of Britain is endlessly fascinating; a story of varied and mixed identities, or different peoples living together and overcoming dreary and disastrous wars to live together in peace, and while absorbing later newcomers, all descended ultimately from those intrepid colonists who migrated north and west into Britain as the ice sheets retreated and opened up a new land on the edge of Europe.

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You can read more about Britain’s archaeology in Donald Henson’s new book, Archaeology Hotspot Great Britain: Unearthing the Past for Armchair Archaeologists

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All images provided courtesy of Donald Henson

Far from being a modern invention, genuine belief in what we would deem today to be ‘fringe’ or ‘occult’ was commonplace in the ancient world. Although specific attitudes toward paranormal activity differed according to time and geographical place, the ancient Greeks provide an example of a civilization that wholly embraced the supernatural. The writings of ancient authors give us a glimpse into the minds and beliefs of the Greeks, and it is clear that many members of the society thought that the dead could roam the earth. Greeks imagined scenarios in which reanimated corpses rose from their graves, prowled the streets and stalked unsuspecting victims, often to exact retribution denied to them in life. Even those who could not physically leave their tombs posed a threat, because mediums could easily invoke restless spirits and cajole them into committing heinous acts. These ideas were mainstream, and not rooted in folklore or fantasy, because the cultural and religious foundations of the ancient Greeks led them to believe that death was not necessarily a permanent state. Instead, there were special cases in which it could be fluid, blurring the seemingly rigid lines that separate the living from the dead.

Necrophobia, or the fear of the dead, is a concept that has been present in Greek culture from the Neolithic period to the present. At the heart of this phobia is the belief that the dead are able to reanimate and exist in a state that is neither living nor dead, but rather ‘undead.’Scholars sometimes refer to the undead as ‘embodied or solid ghosts’ because they have a solid physical form, but the term most frequently used is ‘revenant’ from the Latin word for ‘returning,’ revenans. Revenants are feared because it is believed that they leave their graves at night for the explicit purpose of harming the living. To prevent them from departing their graves, revenants must be sufficiently ‘killed,’ which is usually achieved by incineration or dismemberment. Alternatively, revenants could be trapped in their graves by being tied, staked, flipped onto their stomachs, buried exceptionally deep or pinned with rocks or other heavy objects. Although rare, the material remains of these necrophobic activities are preserved in the archaeological record, and they present modern archaeologists with the difficult task of their interpretation.

The material remains of necromancy, the purposeful invocation of the dead, are also perceptible in the archaeological record. However, our knowledge of the ephemeral aspects of necromantic ceremonies largely comes from Greek literary sources. Indeed, the oldest extant description of a necromantic ritual is found in Book 11 of Homer’s Odyssey. Odysseus fills a pit with milk, honey, wine, water and barley, then slits the throats of a ram and a ewe, allowing their blood to commingle with the liquids in the pit. He offered these libations to the dead so that they would be compelled to appear to him and provide answers to his questions. The dead were also invoked covertly through the use of curse tablets, which the Greeks called katadesmoi. Katadesmoi are binding spells inscribed on thin sheets of lead, often shaped like tongues or leaves, which were deposited in graves during clandestine nighttime ceremonies. The messages on curse tablets were intended for Underworld deities who, upon receipt, were expected to coerce the souls of the dead into fulfilling the requests of the living. Often, petitioners sought to redress a wrong that had been committed, such as murder or the theft of an inheritance, but katadesmoi were also used so that one might gain an advantage in love or business.

These ancient supernatural beliefs can be better understood through the investigation of the archaeological evidence of necrophobia and necromancy. One unique site, the Greek colony of Kamarina in southeastern Sicily, provides evidence for both practices. Using Kamarina as a case study, our exploration begins with a brief description of the city and its Classical cemetery, followed by details of the pertinent burials and their associated objects, as well as the examination of possible explanations of their peculiarities and the discussion of parallel case studies. When neatly pulled together and packaged, this information will ultimately serve the purpose of placing these macabre customs within the wider framework of Greek mortuary and cultural practices.

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Map of Sicily, showing location of Kamarina. Drawing by D. Weiss

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Kamarina: A Greek Colony in Sicily  

Although the ancient Mediterranean region experienced many waves of migration and colonization throughout its history, the period between the 8^th and 6^th centuries BCE saw a Greek expansion that was, by far, the largest in terms of scale and extent. At the end of the 6^th century, Greek colonies and settlements stretched from the Iberian Peninsula to North Africa, Asia Minor and the Black Sea. There were numerous reasons for this unprecedented growth, but those that are cited most frequently are overpopulation, ‘land hunger,’ food shortages, the need for raw materials and the desire for increased trade. Nevertheless, it was during this time that the Greeks began to colonize southern Italy and Sicily, a region they called Magna Graecia. Kamarina, a city strategically positioned for commerce on a juncture between two rivers, was founded on the coast of southeastern Sicily around 598 BCE and remained occupied until the middle of the 1^st century CE, when the site was abandoned.

Although it was never resettled, vestiges of the memory of ancient Kamarina were preserved throughout the centuries. In fact, the plateau upon which the ancient city sat was called ‘Camerana,’ enabling 16^th century European scholars to conclude that the ruins at this site must have been the remnants of ‘Kamarina.’ This identification was positively confirmed in the late twentieth century by the discovery of lead administrative plates inscribed with the names of Kamarinean citizens. These plates were found near the city’s main sanctuary, which was likely dedicated to Athena. The function of the plates has been a source of scholarly debate since their excavation, and although their precise purpose remains unclear, it is likely that they collectively constituted an official, updated record of citizenship, land ownership, public contributions or military registrations. 

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View of the ruins of Kamarina from the beach. Photo courtesy of R.J.A. Wilson

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The city’s Classical necropolis, which archaeologists call Passo Marinaro, was established southeast of Kamarina and was in use from the 5^th through 3^rd centuries BCE. Although the precise boundaries of the cemetery have yet to be discovered, approximately 2,905 burials have been excavated in the 8,000 square meters explored by archaeologists. Both inhumation (the burial of an intact body) and cremation were practiced at Passo Marinaro. One of the principle excavators, Giovanni Di Stefano, estimates that 85 percent of the burials are inhumations, where the bodies were deposited in either supine (lying flat on their backs) or flexed (lying in their sides with their legs bent) positions. Some of these individuals were found without burial containers, but others were placed in trench graves, coffins made of roof tiles, sarcophagi made of stone or terracotta or underground chamber tombs. The remaining 15% of the burials were cremations that were buried in either pits or pots. More than half of the total burials contained grave goods, which are items that are deposited in the grave with the deceased. Terracotta vases were the most prevalent objects, but some other commonly found goods were metal coins and terracotta figurines. 

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Map of Kamarina with a detail of Passo Marinaro necropolis. Drawing by D. Weiss

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Typical flexed burial from Passo Marinaro. Photo by author, courtesy of the Regional Museum of Kamarina. 

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Fearing the Dead

Two unique burials stand apart from the rest. The first, tomb number 653, contains an adult of indeterminate sex and stature. In life, this person experienced a period of serious malnutrition or illness, as evidenced by distinct horizontal lines of growth arrest that are visible on the teeth. The grave itself is oriented east to west, and although its occupant appears to have been buried without a container, the body is accompanied by two grave goods, an unguentarium and a lekythos. Both objects are vases that typically hold oil and are connected with Greek funerary rituals. What is unusual about Tomb 653 is that the head and feet of the individual are completely covered by large amphora fragments. An amphora is a large, two-handled ceramic vessel that was typically used for storing liquids. The heavy amphora fragments found in Tomb 653 were presumably intended to pin the individual to the grave and prevent it from seeing or rising. The second burial, tomb number 693, contains a child approximately 8 to 13 years old, also of indeterminate sex and stature. No signs of disease are present on the child’s skeletal remains, and there are no traces of either a burial container or grave goods. The grave is orientated north to south, and although this is different from the orientation of Tomb 653, north to south orientations were not uncommon in Passo Marinaro. However, what is uncommon is the placement of five large stones on top of the child’s body. Like the aforementioned amphora fragments, it appears that these stones were used to trap the body in its grave.

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Reconstruction of a typical tomb from Passo Marinaro. Photo by author, courtesy of the Regional Museum of Kamarina.

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Drawing of the burial in Tomb 653. Drawing by D. Weiss from G. Di Stefano’s excavation journals. 

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Drawing of the burial in Tomb 693. Drawing by D. Weiss from G. Di Stefano’s excavation journals.

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The extraordinary burial treatment of these two individuals raises the obvious question of ‘why?’ The research of folklore historian Paul Barber reveals that, regardless of time period or geographical location, preindustrial societies have strikingly similar ways of interpreting the phenomena associated with death and decay. Therefore, it is unsurprising that ethnographic parallels from historic cultures, such as 12^th century Western Europe, 19^th century New England and early 20^th century Greece, reveal a widespread underlying belief that specific events and circumstances are capable of transforming a corpse into a revenant. These factors can be separated into four broad categories: predisposition, predestination, events and nonevents. Certain individuals whose behaviors fall outside of societal norms are predisposed to become revenants. In particular, these are people who are considered to be difficult, unpopular, odd or ‘bad.’ Others are predestined to be revenants and are powerless against their fates. These persons include illegitimate offspring, children who were conceived on a holy day or born on an inauspicious day, and babies born with abnormalities or deformities. Occasionally, birth order is also significant; for example, Romanians traditionally believed that the seventh child is always destined to become a revenant. An unrelated collection of events can likewise transform a corpse into a revenant. Animals and insects must be kept away from the deceased, because if one were to leap or fly over it, the body would become a revenant. Humans must also be wary, for reaching over a corpse could have the same undesired effect. Suicides, mothers who died in childbirth and victims of murder, drowning, stroke, plague and curses are all likely candidates for revenants and are usually disposed of in a manner that is different from the other non-afflicted members of the community. Finally, nonevents, or things that are left undone, can compel a person to return from the dead. Corpses must be buried, and when they are not, they become revenants. Individuals who do not receive proper burial rites or are not buried deep enough, fall into this category as well. Presumably, the logic behind this belief is that a person who is neglected in death will reappear in order to harm the living. Other people, such as those who have died too young or mothers whose children are left uncared for, will also return from the grave.

Tertullian, a Christian author living in the Roman province of Africa (ca. 2^nd to 3^rd centuries CE), tells us that the ancient Greeks adhered to similar convictions. Under normal conditions, the soul would leave its body after death and journey to Hades, the Greek Underworld, where it would spend eternity. It was believed, however, that a very small subset of the spiritual population could not transition to the Underworld in the regular fashion. These earthbound souls were ‘special’ dead who were angry with the living and capable of causing them harm. Grouped into three categories, the special dead consisted of the aoroi, who had died prematurely or before marriage; the biaiothanatoi, who had met violent deaths in various ways (including soldiers who died in battle or persons who committed suicide); and the ataphoi, who had not received proper funerary rites or were left unburied. These categories were not mutually exclusive, as individuals could have been killed violently and left unburied. Nevertheless, extant supernatural tales tend to describe the special dead as ghosts without solid body or form. There are, however, some notable exceptions where it seems that the apparition is in fact a revenant. For example, Roman authors Pausanias and Strabo both tell the story of the Hero of Temesa. A tempestuous storm forced Odysseus and his crew to seek shelter on the island of Temesa. One of his sailors got drunk and raped an island girl. Native justice prevailed when the locals stoned the offending sailor to death. Odysseus, seemingly indifferent, sailed off without the body of his shipmate. Back on the island, the murdered sailor could not rest in peace. One-by-one he began to kill the inhabitants of Temesa, until the Pythia, Apollo’s prophetic priestess at Delphi, ordered the islanders to propitiate the dead man by dedicating a sanctuary to him and offering him a yearly human sacrifice of the most beautiful maiden in Temesa. They did as they were commanded and the killings stopped. One year, the famed boxer Euthymus came to the island around the time of the propitiation ceremony. He fell in love with the chosen sacrificial maiden, so he fought the dead sailor and bested him, driving the monster from the island and into the sea.

Although necrophobia seems to be rooted in superstition and folklore, Paul Barber argues that there is a scientific basis for some of the occurring phenomena. Oral and written accounts from different cultures often describe revenants as having either ruddy or dark complexions, swollen and bloated bodies, flexible limbs without a trace of rigor mortis, an ‘evil’ smell, open eyes and mouths and blood around the lips, nose, eyes or ears. The traditional vampire, a special class of blood-sucking revenant, also displayed these traits. Although Nosferatu, Dracula and the characters of the Twilight saga have conditioned us to picture vampires as pale and wan, it is likely that the vampire legend arose to explain the appearance of bodies that were flushed and bloody, presumably from nocturnal feastings on members of the community. Furthermore, all revenants also seem uncannily ‘alive’ as they tend to have warm skin, fingernails and hair that continue to grow, and are often found in positions markedly different from those in which they were buried.

Far from exceptional, all of these traits are normal byproducts of decomposition. As a body decays, it swells and becomes discolored, and a blood-stained fluid seeps from the mouth and nostrils. Further bloating and distention is caused by microorganisms in the abdomen that expel gases as they digest tissue. This process generates a foul odor and heat, causing the skin of the corpse to feel warm. Contrary to popular belief, rigor mortis is temporary. It sets in a few hours after death and dissipates within 10 to 48 hours. Thus, flexible limbs and open eyes and mouths are simply the result of relaxed muscles. Another misconception is that blood coagulates indefinitely upon death. This is true in most cases, but in instances when death is sudden and the flow of oxygen is abruptly cut-off, blood begins to clot initially, but quickly returns to a liquid state. If internal gases cause the thoracic and abdominal cavities to burst open, as they are apt to do, seemingly fresh blood spills into the burial container, again reinforcing the vampire myth. Finally, the movement and release of gases can cause the body to change position, while shrinkage of the skin gives the appearance of hair and nail growth. 

Although there are no known parallels in Sicily for the Kamarinean examples, bioarchaeologist Anastasia Tsaliki maintains that burials of suspected revenants have been discovered throughout the ancient Greek world. The earliest examples are from Cyprus and date to the Neolithic period (ca. 4500–3900/3800 BCE). At Khirokitia, flexed bodies buried in pit graves were pinned by millstones that were placed on either their heads or chests. A similar burial was found in a Middle Helladic (ca. 1900–1600 BCE) deposit from the Argolid. The individual was flexed, placed in a stone-built cist tomb and restrained with a large rock. Three additional examples date to much later periods. At the site of Merenda in Attica, an abandoned limekiln served as a gravesite for two dismembered individuals. The first body belonged to a woman who was cut in half, with both halves placed parallel to one another in the prone position. The arrangement of her bones reveals that she was cut before she had fully decomposed, but it is unclear whether this happened around the time of her death, or at some point shortly thereafter. Buried with her was a small trefoil Roman jar containing a single coin from the reign of Emperor Constantine (ca. 307–337 CE) and a portion of the dismembered left leg of an adult male. After deposition, the skeletons were deliberately sealed in the limekiln by large rocks. At Mytilene on the island of Lesbos, a Turkish cemetery from the Ottoman period (18^th to 19^th centuries CE) contained an isolated tomb of an adult who was pinned at the neck, pelvis and both feet with 20 cm nails. Finally, another burial from Lesbos dating to the same period contained a man over the age of 60. He was found in a cist grave and had three bent 16 cm spikes mixed in with his bones. Although their original locations are uncertain, it is presumed that these spikes had been driven into the corpse. The man had a number of pathological conditions and deformities that could provide an explanation for his abnormal burial treatment. His frontal sinuses were seriously infected, to the point where the upper margins of his eye orbits were deformed. His nose, upper and lower jaws were also deformed, presumably caused by facial paralysis due to neurological problems with the facial and trigeminal nerves. In addition to these, he also had a healed wound on his forehead that was likely caused by a knife or other sharp instrument, suggesting that he was involved in at least one incident of interpersonal violence. Thus, the skeletal remains reveal that this individual was not only deformed, but also had come into conflict with members of his community during his lifetime. These observations, coupled with his unique burial treatment and its similarity to other confirmed instances of revenant burials, suggest that this man was also treated as a potential revenant when he was laid to rest. 

Often, it is not possible to determine the reasons why a person was buried in a deviant fashion because ephemeral traits, such as personality or birth order, are not preserved in the archaeological record. However, as with the man from Lesbos, information gleaned from the analysis of skeletal material can provide important clues. For example, anthropologist Paul Sledzik and archaeologist Nicholas Bellantoni discovered a skeleton of a 50- to 55-year-old man from mid-19^th century Connecticut with his head and femurs placed in a skull-and-crossbone pattern. This unique positioning indicates that the man was exhumed and his bones were rearranged after his flesh had decomposed. Presumably, the man was believed to be a revenant, and since his body could not be staked, burned or dismembered, his bones were arranged instead in a manner that was symbolic, significant and powerful. Skeletal analysis revealed that the man had lesions on his ribs that were consistent with a chronic pulmonary infection, such as tuberculosis. Tuberculosis is closely linked to vampirism, primarily because its victims expel blood-spotted sputum while coughing and slowly waste away as their weight and appetites decline. It is also a highly contagious disease. The connection between purported revenants and infectious disease is strong, considering revenants are believed to attack close friends and relatives, the very persons who are at highest risk for contracting the illness that killed the supposed revenant. Contemporary accounts from 18^th and 19^th century New England contain approximately 12 references to revenants and vampires. Eleven of the 12 documented individuals died from ‘consumption,’ a popular name for tuberculosis.

Although there are no clear indicators in either the burial contexts or the skeletal remains that would explain why the occupants of Kamarinean Tombs 653 and 693 were pinned in their graves, their special treatment suggests that necrophobic beliefs and practices were present in Greek Sicily. However, our understanding of these traditions is tenuous and more questions than answers remain. It is hoped that the careful examination of future cases will shed light on this unusual custom and provide us with a more complete picture of necrophobia in the ancient Greek world.

Calling Upon the Dead

Necromancy, on the other hand, is better understood than necrophobia because katadesmoi provide written accounts of necromantic activities. Often referred to as ‘curse tablets,’ katadesmoi are small, thin sheets of lead inscribed with binding spells. Although their shapes can vary, they were frequently fashioned in the form of tongues or leaves, which were then rolled or folded and occasionally pierced with nails. These tablets were prepared by professional mediums, called goetes, who, for a fee, had the ability to communicate with spirits and negotiate relationships between the living and the dead. Katadesmoi were often commissioned to remedy an injustice such as murder, theft or slander, but they were also used by cunning individuals who wished to turn the tide on an unrequited love or gain an advantage in business. In essence, katadesmoi were a magical means by which individuals could alter the course of events to suit their specific needs, and the intent that lay behind their creation was primarily manipulative, rather than malicious.

The messages on curse tablets were typically directed to Underworld deities. Some are vengeful, and a typical example would read like this: “To Hermes and Persephone, I send this katadesmos. Turn your attentions to criminal people so that they will receive their deserved punishment.” Others reference the tablets’ deposition in graves (e.g., “Just as this corpse lies useless, so too may everything be useless for Krates”), and a few reveal information about the emotions and insecurities of the petitioners (e.g., “I bind Euelpedes and the women who will be seen about with him. Let him not marry another matron or maiden”). Upon receipt of these injurious requests, it was understood that the Underworld deities would recruit the souls of the dead to fulfill the desires of the petitioners. As servants of the living, the dead would begin to actively harm the targeted individuals mentioned in the katadesmoi. Some curse tablets were accompanied by small dolls made out of wax or lead, but the presence of these dolls did not enhance the efficacy of the curse. Rather, the success of the curse depended on the tablet’s proper deposition under the cover of night in either a well, chthonic sanctuary or in the grave of an aoros or biaiothanatos. While this act could be done quietly and in secret, some spells required that the tablet be read aloud prior to deposition.

More than 600 katadesmoi have been found throughout the Greek world, but the oldest extant examples date to the 6^th century BCE from the Greek Sicilian city of Selinous. Katadesmoi have also been recovered from other Sicilian sites, specifically Gela, Syracuse, Akragas (modern Agrigento), Himera, Lilybaeum (modern Marsala), Zankle (modern Messina) and Morgantina. To date, eleven katadesmoi have been recovered from Kamarina’s Passo Marinaro necropolis and studied by the Italian archaeologist Federica Cordano. Since lead is a soft metal and Kamarina’s soil is acidic, many of the inscribed surfaces of these tablets are degraded, which prevents their complete translation. Those for which translations are available appear to merely list names of individuals who were likely the intended recipients of the prescribed curses. Although the exact wording of the inscriptions is sometimes unclear, what is obvious is that at least three of them were pierced by nails. Nails were used to puncture or symbolically ‘kill’ objects, presumably to ensure their arrival in the Underworld or to draw the attention of Underworld deities.

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Drawing of a katadesmos from Kamarina. Drawing by D. Weiss

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Literary evidence suggests that seashells were also used as katadesmoi. For instance, a passage from the Greek Magical Papyri, a Greco-Roman magical text dating to approximately the 2^nd century BCE to the 5^th century CE, instructs petitioners to write their messages on seashells in a specific type of ink. Then, when the moon stands in opposition to the sun, the petitioner’s shell should be buried in the tomb of someone who died untimely. If these conditions are met, the deceased will carry the shell to the Underworld and deliver it to its designated recipient. Since the binding spells were presumably written in ink and not inscribed on the surface of the shell, there are no extant examples of seashells with magical inscriptions. Although it is unknown whether they served a magical purpose, three seashells were recovered from Passo Marinaro graves.

What Does it all Mean?

Magic was a critical tool in the ancient Greek world, because it was believed that magic allowed the practitioner to proactively manipulate situations that were beyond his or her control. In essence, magic gave power to the powerless. Necrophobic reactions, such as trapping corpses in their graves, and the use of katadesmoi are two examples of magical solutions to weighty life problems—and these problems were indeed serious, for who could stand idly by as their family members die from tuberculosis, and who has not felt the grievous pain of unrequited love? Although our modern sensibilities might perceive corpse-manipulation and curse tablets as extreme responses, we are equipped with additional information and alternative solutions that were not available to the ancient Greeks. For instance, advances in science can assure us that our loved ones will never return from the dead and we have the luxury of being able to choose from a plethora of self-help books or mental health professionals to empower us to work through sticky personal problems and frustrating business situations. Yet, without these modern conveniences, the ancient Greeks both comprehended and confronted their problems within the confines of their abilities. As a result, as classicist Sarah Iles Johnston aptly points out, the ‘special’ dead often served as scapegoats and were assigned blame for a number of inexplicable natural phenomena, from the spread of disease to destructive weather fronts. 

Evidence from the Passo Marinaro necropolis, though limited, demonstrates the concomitant desires to both suppress and invoke the special dead. Although these acts appear to be contradictory, together they provide a powerful testimony to the ways in which the ancient Greeks conceptualized the dead. In particular, death had little impact on the essential features of human personality. If an individual was dangerous in life, he continued to be dangerous after death. Furthermore, the dead retained their ability to emote, and were assumed to feel the same about good or bad treatment after death as they would have when they were alive. The unfortunate special dead were predisposed to feel unhappy or vindictive, which directly affected the living because these individuals could reanimate on their own accord, or be easily manipulated into serving the nefarious desires of others. The living were therefore ever mindful of the possibility that even after death, the dead could once again rise to help or haunt, depending on one’s fears or desires. As a result, the care and propitiation of the dead was a civic, rather than a personal, concern because the negligence or provocation of the restless dead held the potential to threaten the entire community. Thus, the macabre archaeological findings from Kamarina not only provide additional material evidence for necrophobia and necromancy in the Greek world, but also shed light on a rare, but interesting, aspect of Greek mortuary practices.

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This research will be published in the author’s forthcoming book The Bioarchaeology of Classical Kamarina: Life and Death in Greek Sicily (University Press of Florida, August 2015). Funding was provided by The Etruscan Foundation, the McIntire Department of Art (University of Virginia) and the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences (University of Pittsburgh). Special thanks are owed to G. Di Stefano (Director, Museo regionale di Kamarina), D.K. Rogers (Assistant Director, American School of Classical Studies at Athens), D. Weiss (Director of the Visual Resources Collection, University of Virginia), J. Josten, (Assistant Professor, University of Pittsburgh), J. Ellenbogen (Associate Professor, University of Pittsburgh), A. Tsaliki and R.J.A. Wilson (Professor Emeritus, University of British Columbia).

Pertinent Links: 

Regional Museum of Kamarina

http://www.regione.sicilia.it/beniculturali/dirbenicult/database/page_musei/pagina_musei.asp?ID=29&IdSito=121

The Etruscan Foundation

http://etruscanfoundation.com/

McIntire Department of Art, University of Virginia

http://www.virginia.edu/art/

Department of History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh

http://www.haa.pitt.edu/

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The Hippos-Sussita Excavations Project, under the auspices of The Zinman Institute at The University of Haifa, Israel, was initiated in the year 2000. Since then, an international team has excavated for one month each a year, totaling 15 excavation seasons to date at the site of ancient Hippos-Sussita. The last three seasons yielded some surprising finds that allow us to better understand the Hippos necropoleis, religion, public building complexes and the final stages of a major regional polis devastated by the 749 CE earthquake.

Excavations thus far have unearthed a wealth of Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and Umayyad structures erected during a period of a thousand years – from the 2^nd century BCE to the 8^th century CE.

From the beginning of the 2^nd century BCE, the land that contains present-day Israel was ruled by the powerful Seleucid kings, rulers of a Greek–Macedonian kingdom that was created from the eastern conquests of Alexander the Great. In order to strengthen their hold on the various regions under their imperial rule, they founded new cities to contain a Greek-speaking and Hellenized Syro-Phoenician population that regarded itself as the bearers of Greek culture. From its very inception, Hippos (which means ‘horse’ in Greek) was a polis in all respects. When the Romans assumed control over the eastern seaboard of the Mediterranean (from 63 BCE onwards), Hippos became one of the ten cities – the Decapolis – that comprised a particular settlement group which included, among others, Gadara (today Umm Qais in the Kingdom of Jordan) as its southern neighbor, and Scythopolis (today Beth Shean in Israel) to the southeast, on the western bank of the River Jordan. These cities were highly influential centers of Greek culture within a region almost entirely populated by people of Semitic origin. The hostility between a gentile Hippos and a Jewish Tiberias on the opposite side of Lake Kinneret was notorious in ancient times.

During the Pax Romana that extended from the end of the 1^st century BCE until the end of the 2^nd century CE, Hippos enjoyed a long period of florescence and prosperity. Most of the magnificent public buildings, still in evidence today in their ruined state, were erected in the city during that time, such as the forum, basilica, kalybe, temple, odeion, and others.

The Christianization of the Roman Empire in the 4^th century CE did not bypass Hippos. The eight churches built there during the Byzantine period (4^th to 7^th century) are clear proof of the conversion of Hippos and its citizens to Christianity. The Arab conquest in the first half of the 7^th century was not inimical toward the Hippos population, which continued to conduct their lives normally. Among the ruins in Hippos are a few structures and agricultural installations built during the Umayyad period.

But on January 18, 749 CE, the region suffered a violent and devastating earthquake. The damage it caused Hippos was so severe that all its citizens abandoned it, never to return. The dramatic evidence of the violent destruction can still be seen in the ruins today. 

At the end of the First World War (1918), when the British and French marked the borderlines between the Palestine under the British Mandate and Syria under the French Mandate, Sussita Mountain was included within the mandatory borders of Palestine. It is now a part of the modern state of Israel.

The Hippos Excavations Today

Sussita Mountain, upon which the city was built, is located about 2 km east of the shores of the Sea of Galilee, overlooking the lake and the Galilee to its west and the southern Golan Heights to its east. The mountain rises to a height of about 350m above the lake and about 200m above its surroundings, making it a prominent feature in the area. The crest of the mountain is long and narrow in shape, descending slightly from east to west. The length of the crest is about 550m along a southeast-northwest axis and the width is about 150m at the center of the crest.

The mountain is almost cut off from the surrounding area by three riverbeds that flow around it. On the western side, where the mountain slopes toward the Sea of Galilee and its surrounding valleys, an ancient path snakes gradually downward from the mountain crest. In only one place, on the southeast side, is the mountain attached to its surroundings—a natural geologic saddle ridge connecting Sussita with the southwestern slopes of the Golan Heights. It is here that the main road was paved to the east gate, the main entrance to the city.

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Hippos within its geographic context near the Sea of Galilee.

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Sussita Mountain and the Sea of Galilee. View from the Golan Heights (photo M. Eisenberg).

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The Necropoleis

Recent surveys and excavations in the vicinity of Sussita Mountain made it clear that there is much more to be found in Hippos’ necropoleis. We have recently discovered a new necropolis, excavated a mausoleum and exposed the settlement’s first burial tombs with portraiture, affording a better understanding of the world of the dead at Hippos.

During a small-scale excavation south of the Sussita saddle ridge we located a tomb stone in secondary use which most probably originated in the nearby necropolis, south of Hippos. It was the first find of a portraiture of a Hippos man—a roughly depicted bust of a man wearing a toga within an aedicula on a basalt stone, likely dated to between the 3^rd and 4th centuries CE.

The main necropoleis are set on a hill and a wadi just south of Sussita, to the east of the mountain and along the saddle-ridge. It was here that the main road to the city was paved, leading to the main east city gate. A field of sarcophagi, which contains hundreds of hewn rectangular graves and a series of mausolea (elaborate tombs with their upper stories highly decorated), were built along the ridge but did not cross the ditch that was cut in the middle of the saddle ridge. The ditch, though created purely for protective reasons, marks the limit of the urban boundary of Hippos, and it is only from this area and beyond that burial was permitted anciently.

A square mausoleum, 7.5 x 7.5m, was built of basalt ashlars in the Roman period (2^nd century CE) and was in use until the Byzantine period (6^th century CE). The mausoleum consists of a lower vaulted chamber supporting its upper story. The lower chamber was found to include family members’ sarcophagi, and the upper story was highly decorated and seen by everyone crossing the main road toward Hippos. The architectural fragments found here, made of the local basalt, are of superb craftsmanship. The best designed piece found here is a small Ionic corner capital of a pilaster. The rest of the pilaster drums are scattered around the building and down into the nearby wadi. One of several recovered fragments of the sarcophagi lids is made of limestone and features a crouching lion at its crown. We have located some of its remains, mainly the lion’s head, which features a protruding tongue that makes the image perhaps more amusing than threatening.

We hope to one day reconstruct this mausoleum, one of a few dozen that were erected along the main road leading to the city’s main east gate.

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Sussita Mountain as seen from the saddle ridge towards the crest. The mausoleum, the ditch and the round tower area are visible (photo M. Eisenberg).

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The mausoleum on the saddle ridge (photo M. Eisenberg, photogrammetry. E. Gerstein).

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Lion head that adorned sarcophagus lid from the mausoleum (photo M. Eisenberg).

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Y. Vitkalov from Haifa Uni., leaning on an Ionic corner capital of a pilaster from the mausoleum (photo M. Eisenberg).

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The ditch cut in the middle of the saddle ridge. On the left a field of graves.

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The Faunus of Hippos

It is only recently that we decided to embark on excavating the northwestern side of the saddle ridge, in between the major excavation seasons. Our hypothesis was that here were a series of basalt structures which were part of the city’s lower defense system, connected with the ditch above it. In such case, these outworks would have served as protected hangers for the Hippos defenders’ projectiles (catapultae and ballistae alike) against besieging forces advancing on the ancient road to the west. We concentrated our efforts on the southernmost of this series of structures. To date, we have exposed a large round tower with an outer diameter of 10 m, its lower courses built of basalt and the upper ones of limestone. It appears to have been part of a bathhouse complex in its second phase; however, its lower courses have not yet been exposed, so it is too soon to determine if it served as a defensive position in its original plane. A fraction of a ballista ball was found in the towers’ debris. We have located about ten of these in various sizes in Hippos so far, but this stone was unique. It was the only one made of hard limestone—not the usual local basalt. It is probable that this ballista ball was shot by the besiegers and broke upon impact.

As good fortune would have it, perhaps the most surprising find thus far at Hippos was located in this area. While clearing the area to excavate another basalt structure located beneath the ditch, Dr. Alexander Iermolin, head of the conservation laboratory at the University’s Institute of Archaeology, heard a faint humming sound coming from the metal detector he was operating. Whatever it was, it was relatively large for a metal finding, buried just above one of the plaster floors of a large, well-built basalt tower with 2 m thick walls. Exploring further, we pulled out a big brown lump and realized it was a large metal mask. We cleaned it, and began to distinguish some details. Hints of its identity began to emerge when we could see small horns on top of its head, slightly hidden by a forelock. Horns like these are usually associated with Pan, the half-man, half-goat god of the shepherds, music and pleasure. Or it could be a satyr. A more thorough cleaning in the lab revealed strands of a goat beard, long pointed ears, and other characteristics that led us to identify the mask as depicting the Greek god Pan, or his Roman counterpart, Faunus. Pan was worshipped not only in the city temples but also in caves and in nature. This mask is made of bronze, somewhat larger than that of a human face: 30 cm long, 29 cm wide and weighing just above 5.0 kg. Pan’s eyes are widely open and his mouth gapping, in what seems to be a furious and tragic expression. Though there are no masks like this one found dating to the Roman period, similar masks made of terracotta and stone were found and are dated to the 1^st-2^nd centuries CE. The first ceramic evidence from the tower floor where the Pan mask was found are dated to the Early Roman period, 1^st-2^nd century, and it seems this may also be the approximate date of what we are now calling the ‘Faunus of Hippos’.

As the mask was not found in-situ, it is difficult to know for certain where and how it was incorporated, but judging by the location there are several options.

• The mask was set up in a shrine for the worship of Pan.
• The mask may have served as a fountainhead.
• The mask may have served as a burial offering in one of the nearby mausolea.
• The mask may have served as an oscillum. The oscilla (pl.) were small figures or masks hung from trees or in between columns for offerings, worship, or for apotropaic reasons.

It is noteworthy to mention here that the polis to the north of Hippos, Paneas, or Banias, is well known as a worshipping compound to the god Pan, set up within a cave. The polis to the south of Hippos, Nysa-Scythopolis, otherwise known as Beit She’an, was dedicated to Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility, with whom Pan is frequently associated. The idea of the cult of Pan here at Hippos should therefore not be a surprise. Because the festivities of Pan included drinking, sacrificing and ecstatic worship that sometimes included nudity and sex, rituals for rustic gods were often held outside of the city gates.

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The round tower by the saddle ridge overlooking Sussita Mountain and the Sea of Galilee on the far left (photo M. Eisenberg).

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A. Iermolin unearthing the Pan mask (photo M. Eisenberg).

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N. Shamir, Haifa team member, holding the mask just after it was unearthed (photo M. Eisenberg).

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Author holding the mask just after it was unearthed. This shows more directly the comparative sizes of the mask and a human face. (photo. M. Hecht).

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The mask after it was half way cleaned (photo M. Eisenberg).

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The mask after its full cleaning and before final conservation treatment (photo M. Eisenberg).

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The Roman Basilica

The basilica is the main public building found in every Roman city and is usually erected adjacent to the open plaza of the forum to serve as its roofed alternative when weather conditions made it necessary. The basilica served not only as a shopping area and center for public administration, but also for the tribunal (the seat of the magistrate).

During the most recent seasons, we have almost fully unearthed the basilica at Hippos. Its construction is dated to the end of the 1st century CE and its destruction to a 363 CE earthquake. During the last season, Haim Shkolnik, the area supervisor and his team, found some tragic evidence of the destruction of the basilica. Two skeletons on the northern side of the basilica were discovered with some of the roofing and roof-tiles above, suggesting their demise resulting from the collapse of the roof during the earthquake. One of them, a woman, was still wearing her golden dove-shaped pendant, found near her neck.

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The basilica and the northeast corner of the forum (photo M. Eisenberg).

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The basilica main nave and western aisle with partially reconstructed columns (photo M. Eisenberg).

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The golden pendant in the shape of a dove.

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The Bastion

Hippos’ fortifications system is among the most intriguing and elaborate in the region. Though the mountain is naturally well protected by cliffs and sharp slopes, the defenders, during early Roman times, chose not only to surround the crest with a fortification wall and towers but also built an elaborate outwork system consisting of additional fortification walls, a ditch in the center of the saddle ridge, and a series of adjacent protective artillery posts. Among the defensible features, the bastion is no doubt the most unique and impressive. Built over and protruding from the center of the southern cliff, it is the main defensive and firing position along the southern fortification line of the city. The bastion has a rectangular plan, 47m in length and 8m wide, composed of a series of five vaulted chambers and a tower amongst them that supported each other and created a solid and uniform expanse for the upper fortifications, which did not survive. From here most of the firepower was directed toward the most threatening area for Hippos, which was in the direction of the stream flowing south of the mountain and along which passed the ancient road. The series of vaults and especially the opening built into at least one of the chambers, raises the possibility that they served as defensive positions for the heavy launchers. Such a launcher (ballista) of 8m long could have lunched a basalt ball of about 18 kg to a distance of 350m, and indeed some of those basalt balls have been found nearby.

On the ancient binding material of the bastion rear wall, we noticed to our great surprise a number of imprints that were left by Roman military boots while their owners were walking over the mortar before it had dried. To be more precise, there were several imprints made by the iron nails (hobnails) of caligae soles—the standard footwear of the Roman army from the 1^st century BCE until the beginning of the 2nd century CE (from the ordinary soldier up to the level of centurion). One complete sole imprint was discovered as well as other partial imprints. The complete imprint was 24.50cm long and had 29 round impressions. It was a left foot caliga, approximating a European size 40. During the last season, Adam Pazout and his team exposed the block entrance of the fourth chamber vault and initiated the excavation of the fifth, most eastern chamber vault.

The bastion and its imprints raise the possibility that Roman cohorts or auxiliary stationed in Syria were also in charge of building the bastion. This is an exceptional case and probably occurred during a time of emergency. Such an emergency may have been in connection with the Great Revolt in the Galilee (66-7 CE).

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Aerial view of the bastion.

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The western corner of the bastion over the southern cliff. Y. Vitkalov is pretending to support the basalt beam foundations exposed after the mortar had washed away (photo M. Eisenberg).

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The bastion. A suggested reconstruction (drawn by D. Porotski, V. Pirsky and M. Eisenberg)

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The complete caliga imprint on the rear wall of chamber Vault IV and (b) 3D scanning of its cast (photo M. Eisenberg).

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A. Iermolin, the team’s small finds conservator, holding a 42 minae (18.5 kg.) basalt ballista ball (photo M. Eisenberg).

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The Southern Bathhouse

Like any Roman polis, Hippos had public bathhouses, one of which is located east of the forum. It is not yet excavated. The other lies south of the forum. The southern bathhouse is built over the ruins of the bastion on the southern cliff, enjoying the western breeze and overlooking the spectacular panorama of the Sea of Galilee, the Galilee and the Jewish city of Tiberias on the west side of the lake. While only the palaestra (open court for exercises), natatio (pool) and some caldaria (hot rooms) have been exposed so far, the bathhouse yielded several surprises. During some major renovations of the 3^rd cent. CE, a narrow gap was left between two of the bathhouse walls. In this gap we found hundreds of ceramic vessels and terracotta lamps dating to the mid-3^rd cent. CE, as well as a unique relief in stucco of a Heracles bust. During the last season, while clearing the debris of a collapsed caldarium vault of the 363 earthquake, Arleta Kowalweska, the area supervisor and her team, found part of a Roman statue. It is of superb Roman craftsmanship made out of marble, but is only the right leg of a muscular man leaning against a trunk. The statue must have been above 2m tall but without any additional attributes it would be impossible to identify it as a specific god or athlete. We hope to find more of its pieces in the coming seasons.

We realize now that the 363 CE earthquake left Hippos in its debris for a period of about 20 years. Some of the main public buildings, such as the basilica, odeion and southern bathhouse, were never rebuilt.

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The southern bathhouse looking towards the Sea of Galilee. The palestra, natatio and one of the caldaria are well seen (photo M. Eisenberg).

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A stucco relief bust of Heracles after conservation (photo M. Eisenberg, conservation A. Iermolin).

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Team members Anna and Caro, just minutes after unearthing a piece of a Roman statue at the southern bathhouse (photo M. Eisenberg).

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The Umayyad Caliphate

Hippos’ status as the capital of the region soon disappeared after the Byzantine period. Tiberias (Ṭabariya), on the western side of the lake, became the capital of local province Jund al-Urdunn of the Umayyad Caliphate. The decline in Hippos’ urban life was well felt already during the late Byzantine period (6^th-7^th centuries) and in the 8^th century it was no longer a city, but an industrial town. The public area of the forum, and mainly that of the Hellenistic Compound, turned into an industrial zone. A large winery complex, olive press and large bakery were excavated here. Some other parts of the city were abandoned and the question of whether the famous water supply system was still active during the first half of the 8^th century is being studied. The earthquake of January 18, 749 CE, was the ‘last straw’ for the city’s life. It was abandoned, never again to be re-settled.

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An artistic reconstruction of Hippos during the Roman Period, including the ancient road, the ditch at the saddle ridge and a series of hangars next to it (drawn by D. Porotski, V. Pirsky, M. Eisenberg and A. Regev-Gisis).

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Sussita Mountain is an officially declared national park under the supervision of the National Parks Authority of Israel. Its location along one of the main tourist and pilgrimage routes on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee makes it one of the most prominent archaeological parks in the north of Israel.

The Hippos excavation is an international enterprise, welcoming dig participants from all over the world. For more information about participation, see: http://hippos.haifa.ac.il. See also the Hippos-Sussita Excavations Project facebook page for updates and images.

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Ammaia, Portugal—Today there are only a few visible reminders of this ancient community.  In one place, looking like the dilapidated form of a great, round chimney, what remains of an early 2^nd century AD round tower juts glaringly upward from the corner of an area that features the architectural remnants of what in its heyday must have been an impressive gateway entrance for this long vanished ancient Roman town. It was part of a twin-towered structure known as the Porta Sul, or Southern Gate. Well used during its time, one can still clearly see the ruts in the granite block paving stones of the gate threshold, a testament to the many carts with heavy loads that passed this way into the town almost 2,000 years ago. It would have led the common visitor into an expansive monumental square, or courtyard. Today, not much remains to be seen, compared to the full splendor of its appearance during its heyday. But one can still see the large granite block paving stones, and standing pillar sections defining its perimeter. Nearby are exposed parts of the ancient city wall, and not far away are the visible traces of a great Roman bathhouse and evidence of the core of a temple podium that once supported the temple of the central town forum complex.

The town’s standing ruins, though modest in scale as compared to the great monumental remains of other Roman centers and cities, were noted by Spanish and Portuguese historians in the sixteenth century.  But the name of the town remained a mystery, until Leite de Vasconcelos identified it as Ammaia in 1935 in a paper about an honorific inscription found at the site dedicated to the Emperor Claudius.

Seeing the Unseen

Excavations have been carried out more or less continuously at the site since the early 1990’s. But the excavations could only be limited. The remains of Ammaia sit in protective status within a nature reserve. Thus, the biggest revelations about Ammaia didn’t begin emerging until after 2009, with the launch of the Radio-Past (an acronym for Radiography of the Past) project under the coordinative co-direction of Cristina Corsi of the Universita degli Studi di Cassino, Italy, and Frank Vermeulen of the Universiteit Gent in Belgium. As a marshalling of the collective efforts of a consortium of European institutions, spearheaded by the University of Evora in Portugal, as well as a broad array of experts, Radio-Past approached the site with a non-invasive research strategy, collecting data not as much through traditional excavation as through the application of technology and a multi-disciplinary plan to, in essence, ‘see’ what was hidden beneath the surface without digging it up.

Said Cristina Corsi, co-director of the project, “this project allowed some of the most skilled European specialists of different fields to join their resources and work together on a project that involved theoretical and methodological elaboration, the definition of guidelines for good practice in many fields related to the ‘understanding’ of deserted complex archaeological sites, enhancement of fieldwork and data-capture techniques, sophisticated data-processing, development of innovative visualization techniques and management plans, and training and transfer of knowledge and dissemination at several levels.”

In other words, Ammaia became an open lab for testing an integrated ‘hands-off” approach to archaeological discovery—an undertaking they hoped would become a model for future efforts.  

By applying combined and integrated state-of-the-art techniques of remote sensing, such as laser LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) scanning, topographical survey with global positioning systems, geophysical surveys using magnetic gradiometry and Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), surface surveys of artifacts, as well as ‘ground truthing’ of the applications through systematic, limited targeted excavation and artifact analysis, the researchers were able to develop a set of data to visually reconstruct the ancient town as it existed in its time. What they found was a town that appeared to have been carefully planned or developed over time, including:

—a wall circuit that enclosed the town proper;

—the main road network leading into and outside of the town;

—necropoleis outside of the town, as well as industrial, production centers or sectors in the suburban outskirts;

—the street grid system within the town, at least some of which likely featured flanking, streetside porticoes with tabernae  and arcades;

—in amazing detail, the reconstruction of the main public places and monuments of the town, including the forum and its temple, the public baths, and the southern gate and its associated square; and

—the town block plans, with their houses and shops.

“What we can see through the “radiography of the subsoil” is a town carefully planned, according to a regular grid,” stated Corsi. “In different sectors we have been able not only to distinguish easily all essential walls, floors and even columns, but also other meaningful linear structures, such as local aqueducts or drainage systems, and the associated basins, fountains, impluvia or cisterns, and sometimes even ovens, cooking installations and hypocausts, the “heating systems” of Antiquity.”*

The payoff was clearly extraordinary. But there was more.

With the data obtained, the team was able to create images and an interactive, video reconstruction of the town using high resolution digital processing, visualizations and interpretation.

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Aerial view of Ammaia, showing some excavated areas. Courtesy Radio-Past

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View of the Porta Sul, or Southern Gate complex, as excavated. Courtesy Radio-Past

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Ground level view of the Porta Sul. Courtesy Radio-Past

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Temple remains in the forum area of Ammaia. Courtesy Radio-Past

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Some of the remains of the forum, as excavated. Courtesy Radio-Past

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Aerial northwest overview rendering of reconstructed town of Ammaia. Courtesy 7reasons

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Southwest view rendering of the city wall. Courtesy 7reasons

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Rendering of the South Gate of the city wall. Courtesy 7reasons

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Rendering of the internal view of the South Gate. Courtesy 7reasons

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Street view of the south part of the city. Courtesy 7reasons

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The forum and its temple. Courtesy 7reasons

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Internal view of the Basilica. Courtesy7reasons

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Internal detail of the baths. Courtesy 7reasons

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East part of the baths. Courtesy 7reasons

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Clarifying the Place of Ammaia in History

In addition, according to Corsi and her colleagues, the continuing study and analysis of archaeological finds and the archaeological record have further elucidated the significance and historical context of Ammaia.

“Analysis of the archaeological record collected so far allows us to propose for Ammaia a foundation during the Principate of Augustus, possibly in the last years of the first century BC or the very beginning of the new Era,” writes Corsi.*

In an expanding empire, Ammaia was established as a settlement that would function as a center from which the surrounding land and resources would be exploited, strategically placed at the junction within a road network that connected the inner and coastal areas of the new Roman province of Lusitania. It continued to flourish during the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries CE, but then gradually declined and fell to abandonment after the 5^th century. “Recent excavations have shown that some parts were already covered by floods and slope deposits during the Late Antique period,” states Corsi in a recent publication* But in its heyday, it must have served as an important mid-sized economic and cultural center for citizens of the Roman province, as testified by the remains of a typical Roman forum complex that characterized the center of the town, along with its monumental temple and nearby bath complex and the monumental gate, public square area at the entrance to the town, and extensive urban residential structures, tabernae, arcades and shops. As the town is largely absent from the ancient historical sources, it has thus only been through archaeological investigation and the recent application of the non-invasive technologies and resulting state-of-the-art visualization techniques that have informed the re-discovery of this important site, placing it on the map of Roman civilization during the Imperial period. 

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 Ammaia and the Future of Non-invasive Archaeology

Perhaps most importantly, Radio-Past’s work at Ammaia has represented a new model for archaeologists and other researchers looking to tease the detailed information they need from archaeological sites around the world, particularly in terms of expanding our knowledge of the past without incurring the enormous costs and physical destruction of the sites that have traditionally been required.

“For the first time a complete Roman city was investigated and virtually reconstructed based mostly on the results of non-invasive investigations,” said Cornelius Meyer of Eastern Atlas GMBH & Co. KG, a major player in the project. “The result is not only of scientific interest, but it can be directly used for the wider public, as well.”

Adds Corsi, “It is proof that astonishing knowledge can be acquired about ancient settlements without excavation, and that the non-specialist public can enjoy and share this knowledge, thanks to digital technologies.”

Corsi, Vermeulen, and Meyer and their colleagues thus hope that, beyond the obvious contributions that technology-based, non-invasive approaches can make to archaeological research and the scholarly community, it can open up a whole new world, like a visual time machine, for anyone who wants to virtually ‘see’ the past with accurate graphic clarity.

What is next for Radio-Past? Meyer of Eastern Atlas spelled it out:

“We are planning to work at other ancient cities, where predominantly non-invasive strategies for their investigation will be applied,” he said. “In June and July of 2015 we will work on a research project together with Barcelona University on the Roman town of Pollentia (Mallorca); and another project will involve the investigation of the Hellenistic site of Sikyon in the northern Peloponnesus in Greece, a joint project with the University of Kiel and the Danish Institute at Athens.”

Interested readers can see Radio-Past’s website for more information about their work and projects.

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The partners involved in the Ammaia project include the Universidade de Évora, the Universiteit Gent, the British School at Rome, the University of Ljublijana, Past2Present, 7reasons, and Eastern Atlas

The project was funded by the European Union from the 7^th EU Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development under the action scheme FP7, Marie Curie/People IAPP 2008. 

*Ammaia, A Roman Town in Lusitania, publication presented by Radio-Past (Radiography of the Past), 2013

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The El Mirón Cave in the Cantabrian Mountains of northern Spain strikes a dramatic presence, commanding a scenic view of the lush green, mountain-framed upper valley of the Ason River far below. For the ancient human hunter-gatherers who once sojourned here tens of thousands of years ago, this was a convenient and strategic living space. From here, they could view some of their game below them, such as red deer herds migrating in the summer from the coastal plain to take advantage of the high altitude grass. The cave’s solid rock walls and high, dry vestibule would have afforded them good protection from the rigorous elements without.  

Humans no longer camp here as they once did. Humanity has moved on. But a few archaeologists, students, and other scientists regularly pay their visits, and like their predecessors tens of thousands of years ago, they are also making their living by hunting and gathering—though their ‘prey’ and methods are something of a very different sort. Lawrence Straus of the University of New Mexico is one of those scientists. Along with colleague Manuel Gonzalez Morales of the Universidad de Cantabria, he has been exploring the El Mirón Cave since 1996.

“No one had ever done any work there since it was scientifically identified as a site in 1903, as archeologists believed it to be totally disturbed,” says Straus. “It was being used to stable goats. In 1995 I persuaded my old friend and colleague, Prof. Manuel Gonzalez Morales that we ought to conduct a test excavation in it, which we began in 1996.”

Since then, their findings have revealed a veritable gold mine of human occupation. El Mirón contains a long, essentially complete cultural sequence beginning with the late Middle Paleolithic through the early Bronze Age, dated using as many as 84 radiocarbon assays.  Among the features and finds are rock art engravings and especially rich Magdalenian and Neolithic occupation levels. Within the Neolithic alone, according to Straus, is “the oldest evidence of wheat agriculture, domesticated animals and ceramics in northern Atlantic Spain”.

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Above and below: Views of El Mirón Cave, from within and without. Excavations in the El Mirón Cave have yielded a cultural sequence of Late Mousterian, early Upper Paleolithic, Solutrean, Magdalenian, Azilian, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze Age, and Medieval period occupation. The research has provided new insight on the Middle-Upper Paleolithic transition, the phases of the Magdalenian culture, the emergence of the Neolithic in the Atlantic zone of Spain, and the beginning of metal age cultural complexity. Image courtesy Lawrence G. Straus

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The mouth of El Mirón Cave, with L.G.Straus. Courtesy Lawrence G. Straus

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View from inside El Mirón Cave looking at Pico San Vicente in the Cantabrian Mountains (ca. 1000 m. above sea level). Courtesy Lawrence G. Straus

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View from El Mirón Cave of Pico San Vicente and the second range of the Cantabrian Cordillera and the upper part of the Rio Ason Ruesga Valley. Courtesy Lawrence G. Straus

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Straus and Morales suggest that the cave served as a seasonal camping spot for Paleolithic hunter-gatherers during the summer or warmer seasons of the year, taking advantage of the migrating game and other resources that the Cantabrian mountainous area and its river valleys afforded. This was particularly evident in the finds.

“El Mirón has one of the longest and most complete sequences for the Magdalenian in Iberia,” says Straus. Evidence from the site for this period/culture of human occupation stems from a series of C14 [radiocarbon] dates, paleoenvironmental and subsistence data, evidence for seasonally-patterned occupation and mobility and possible trade based on the presence of non-local flint, and possible stylistic or cultural differences among different groups or hunting bands based on striation-engraved red deer scapulae with red deer images possibly “linking Mirón to such coastal Lower Magdalenian sites as Altamira,” says Straus. Archaeologists were also able to determine the pattern of site use and spatial organization within the large vestibule area of the cave.

The Red Lady

From the analysis of the excavated evidence, researchers have been able to tease a picture of Lower Magdalenian culture and behavior. It depicts a people who used tools and weapons made from both local and non-local stone as well as from antlers and bones—a people who hunted ibex and chamois in the higher elevations and red deer in the Ason river valley below, where they also fished for salmon—a people who built fire pits, butchered carcasses, ate the meat and the plants they gathered, processed hides, bone marrow and grease from the animal remains, and made clothes and moccasins.

But perhaps the most tantalizing discovery came when they encountered red ochre-stained bones in a natural depression in the rear of the cave living area. They were found within a 1-meter-wide space between the cave wall and a large block of stone. They were human, dated to about 18,700 calendar years BP, deposited in a way that suggested intentional burial—an unusual find, particularly as the archaeological record thus far has suggested that the Magdalenians rarely buried their dead in the caves where they lived.

“When one is digging in the burial layer, it is not only red, but it sparkles with thousands of crystals,” said Straus. He was speaking of specular hematite crystals, which created the curious sparkle. “They specially prepared this ochre, which came from an outcrop over 20 km from the cave, despite the presence of other, local ochres in occupation layers of the cave.”

Further analysis of this burial feature and the bones revealed that the remains had been disturbed by a wolf or other canine at some point not long after initial burial, as suggested by gnaw marks on a tibia. Later, according to the analysis, the cranium and all long bones (except the tibia) had been removed, presumably by human occupants for a secondary burial or other purpose. The mandible, tibia and some other bones were re-stained with red ochre and, along with all other bones, remained in place where they had been originally buried. The bones were that of a female, about 35-40 years old, robustly built and in good health. She ate ibex, red deer, salmon and other fish, and mushrooms and other plants. “Chenopod pollen are abundant right in the center of the burial layer, perhaps because small yellow flowers were placed in the grave or because she had eaten a lot of Chenopod seeds in her last meal and they were in her stomach at death,” said Straus.

Perhaps most significant about the burial was the presence of features that suggested something more than a simple, quick interment.  

Said Straus, “the burial seems to have been “marked” by engravings—a multi-line V that could represent a pubic triangle, and other signs that could possibly be hands—on a huge stone block that had fallen from the cave ceiling only a few centuries before the burial. The block fell around 19,600 cal. BP, the burial was made in the meter-wide space between the block and the vestibule rear cave wall around 18,700 cal BP, and the sloping, smooth, west-facing surface of the block was engraved more or less contemporaneously with the burial. The “rear”, east face of the block with the corpse’s back up against it was stained with red ochre to a height above the burial layer, then the block and its west-face engravings were gradually covered over by occupation layers dating to the later Lower, Middle and Upper Magdalenian and post-Upper Paleolithic periods. The engravings may well have to do with the burial and even mark it, especially if the ‘V’ was indeed a female “signifier”.” In addition, according to the published report of the findings, there were lines engraved on the bedrock lower wall and ledge against which the body had been laid behind the stone block.

Straus notes another curious feature of the ‘grave’:  “Given the huge, west-facing mouth of the cave, the sunlight hits the engraved face of the block—which is located a distant 30 meters from the entrance—at the end of the afternoon.” 

Was this a human grave containing a person who was perhaps revered or respected by her family or contemporaries?

The evidence appears to suggest it. Straus states that the burial findings indicate “a complex, no doubt ritualized sequence of events”, not typically found in the prehistoric deposits of human remains.  As he and other study authors report in a recently published paper in the online Journal of Archaeological Science:

Although lacking in clear grave offerings, the amounts of red ochre on the bones and in the burial infilling and the apparent association with rock art (both engravings and red ochre on the block against which the corpse’s back had probably rested), the evidence points to a ritualized interment, different from, but equally impressive as such famous primary burials of Magdalenian age and cultural affiliation on the territory of France as Duruthy, Saint-Germain-la-Riviere, La Madeleine, Laugerie- Basse, Bruniquel, or Chancelade*

In any case, within the context of other finds at El Mirón, the ‘Red Lady’, as the red-ochre-stained burial subject has been aptly named, helps to paint a picture of a people who managed a living more than 18,000 years ago as hunter-gatherers in the cold, open environment of the Ice Age Oldest Dryas (much like an Alpine valley of today), and who likely regarded and related to each other in much the same way as we do today. In and around the cave, “they ate, sang, danced, told stories, reproduced, laughed, cried, slept … and they died.”*

And then there was this one, special burial.

Straus and colleagues would be the first to say that they will never know the full truth of what was happening in this space, but the available archaeological evidence, including lines in stone, could give clues for reasonable hypotheses.

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Inside the cave: The cave vestibule with excavation areas. Burial is out of the photo at center left behind block. Courtesy Lawrence G. Straus

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Inside the cave: Excavation in the burial area behind the engraved block. Courtesy Lawrence G. Straus

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The Red Lady burial, with mandible, clavicle, gnawed tibia, red ochre-stained sediment and east face of block. Courtesy Lawrence G. Straus

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The Red Lady burial, with mandible, tibia, red-stained sediment and east face of block, rocks atop more skeletal remains. Courtesy Lawrence G. Straus

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The Red Lady mandible. Courtesy Lawrence G. Straus

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Looking Ahead

Straus stresses that there is much more to do before additional conclusions can be drawn about El Mirón and its place in understanding the ancient Lower Magdalenian culture. Research will revolve around questions concerning the lithic technology, faunas, human settlement subsistence systems, mobility, trade, site occupation functions, seasonality, palynology, and further study of site features such as pits, walls and hearths, including the red ochre found on the east face of the stone block.  But “most importantly,” said Straus, “we want to see completion of the DNA analyses by Dr. Svante Paabo’s team on the Red Lady to determine the genetic role of human populations that had survived the Last Glacial Maximum in southern France and Iberia in the subsequent (Magdalenian-age) resettlement of northern and Northwest Europe.”

Thus, El Miron stands to play a critical role in advancing what we know about the Lower Magdalenian culture and its environmental context. But some tantalizing questions will likely never have answers.

“At the end of the day, we are left with a mystery,” concludes Straus. “Who was the “Red Lady” of El Miron and why was she given such special treatment after her death?”

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Profs. Manuel Gonzalez Morales (Universidad de Cantabria) and Lawrence Straus (Univ. of New Mexico) excavating the El Mirón Cave Red Lady Magdalenian burial. Courtesy Lawrence G. Straus

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Co-directing this research is Professor Manuel Gonzalez Morales (Universidad de Cantabria in Santander), with the osteological study of the Red Lady skeleton organized and spearheaded by Prof. Jose Miguel Carretero (Universidad de Burgos, a member of the Atapuerca research team).  Funding has been provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Geographic Society, LSB Leakey Foundation, the Regional Government of Cantabria, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Education, the Marcelino Botin Foundation, the University of New Mexico and the UNM Fund for Stone Age Research.

The detailed study is published as a special issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science (guest edited by L.G.Straus, M.R. Gonzalez Morales and J.M. Carretero): “The Red Lady of El Miron Cave: Lower Magdalenian Human Burial in Cantabrian Spain”. The issue features 13  articles, all of which are now available on-line and released in a hard -copy version during the summer of 2015.

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*Straus, L.G., et al., “The Red Lady of El Miron”. Lower Magdalenian life and death in Oldest Dryas Cantabrian Spain: an overview, Journal of Archaeological Science (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2015.02.034

Just west of Lake Turkana in northwestern Kenya, the rocky, arid terrain of the desert badlands, like a southern New Mexico landscape, can wear a hiker down very quickly. Without ample water supply, dehydration becomes one’s worst enemy. Temperatures typically vary between 100 and 110 degrees Fahrenheit with little available shade. Venomous snakes and scorpions abound. Malaria is not uncommon among those who live and work here. For Sammy Lokorodi, a local Turkana tribesman who is a resident of these parts, this is a familiar and livable landscape. He is also, among other things, a fossil and artifact hunter. As an integral part of scientific field expeditions, he has been specially trained by experience to see and excavate fossils and artifacts that likely could be millions of years old, teasing them from a surrounding matrix of desert rock and soil that, to anyone with an untrained eye, would make them unrecognizable. On any given day, this would be routine for Lokorodi.

But one day in 2011, while working as a member of the field team for the West Turkana Archaeological Project (WTAP), he found himself front-and-center in a discovery that would end up raising new questions with far-reaching implications about the human evolutionary past. 

“Our project has been working in this region of northern Kenya for 20 years, and in 2011 we made a plan to survey for early stone tools in very old sediments,” said Dr. Sonia Harmand, a French archaeologist and co-director of the WTAP project field team. “So on the morning of July 9,” she continued, “we were on the way to a particular survey zone, where Meave Leakey and her team found a hominin skull back in 1999.”

While driving in a dry riverbed, Harmand and her party came to a point where it branched off to the left and to the right. They chose the left branch. In time they could see, however, that they were off course. They were lost—but, as she and her colleagues soon discovered, they were lost in a very fortuitous way. 

“Something was really unique about this place,” she said. “We could tell that this zone had a lot of hidden areas just waiting to be explored. So for an hour before teatime, while trying to head back to the main channel, we surveyed around and spotted a few strange rocks on the surface. We surveyed around a bit more intensely, and that’s when Sammy Lokorodi, one of our Turkana team members, called us over to the site where we found these oldest stone tools.”

A New Stone Tool Industry

“Oldest stone tools” turned out to be the operative phrase in this discovery. What they found, over two field seasons spanning 2011 and 2012, was an assortment of simple stone tools that exhibited characteristics unlike any they had ever seen before. In some ways they resembled the simplest stone tool industry known to date—that of the Oldowan, first discovered by Louis Leakey in the 1930’s at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. Those tools consisted of simple cores, choppers, scrapers, awls and burins made of quartz, quartzite, basalt, obsidian, flint and chert. Early humans produced them by striking a core stone on the edge with a hammerstone to produce a conchoidal fracture with sharp edges that could be used for a variety of functions, such as cutting meat. In some other ways, however, these newly found artifacts differed. By experimenting with the same stone material to replicate what they had found, the researchers concluded that these objects were something altogether distinct from that of the Oldowan. The “lithics (cores and flakes) are significantly larger in length, width, and thickness” than the Oldowan-type tools discovered at many other sites in eastern Africa, noted Harmand and her colleagues. “The dimensions and the percussive-related features visible on the artifacts suggest the hominins were combining core reduction and battering activities and may have used artifacts variously: as anvils, cores to produce flakes, and/or as pounding tools. The use of individual objects for several distinctive tasks reflects a degree of technological diversity both much older than previously acknowledged and different from the generally uni-purpose stone tools used by primates [such as using stones exclusively to crack open nuts].” The arm and hand motion employed in the production of the tools were somewhat less sophisticated than that employed in producing Oldowan tools, the researchers observed. “The “knappers’ understanding of stone fracture mechanics and grammars of action is clearly less developed than that reflected in early Oldowan assemblages……… the assemblage could represent a technological stage between a hypothetical pounding-oriented stone tool use by an earlier hominin and the flaking-oriented knapping behavior of later, Oldowan toolmakers.”*

In other words, what Harmand and her colleagues were looking at was an entirely new stone tool industry, previously unknown to the science. And though simpler or more “primitive” than that of the Oldowan, these were clearly not made or used by chimpanzees or some other primate. The “artifacts indicate that their makers’ hand motor control must have been substantial and thus that reorganization and/or expansion of several regions of the cerebral cortex (for example, somatosensory, visual, pre-motor and motor cortex), cerebellum, and of the spinal tract could have occurred,” stated Harmand and colleagues in the research report related to the discovery.*

By the end of the 2012 season, the artifact assemblage totaled 149 lithic objects in all, including “83 cores, 35 flakes (whole and broken), seven passive elements or potential anvils, seven percussors (whole, broken or potential), three worked cobbles, two split cobbles, and 12 artifacts grouped as indeterminate fragments or pieces lacking diagnostic attributes.”*  They assigned them to a new lithic tool industry, the ‘Lomekwian’, named after the hill site where they were initially found, Lomekwi 3, or LOM3.

How were these stone tools used?

“This is the key question everyone is still trying to answer,” says Harmand. “Early members of our lineage surely first began making tools to solve a problem, but what problem that was remains unclear. Maybe they needed sharp flakes to cut or otherwise process new food resources, whether animal or vegetal. Maybe they were using the cores to pound open nuts or bones. In any case, this development was important because it represents the ability to modify our environment, to imagine tools that aren’t naturally there and make them from available raw materials, and use those tools to solve problems and better survive.”

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The mapped location of the Lomekwi site, just west of Lake Turkana in Kenya. Courtesy West Turkana Archaeological Project

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The Lomekwi site area is not unlike an American Southwest landscape. Courtesy MKW and West Turkana Archaeological Project

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A general view of the excavation site. Courtesy MKW and West Turkana Archaeological Project

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Sonia Harmand excavating a stone tool find. Courtesy MKW and West Turkana Archaeological Project

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Sonia Harmand examines a stone tool, just unearthed. To the untrained eye, it looks like any stone, but to the scientists who know how and where to look, it bears the unmistakable signs of having been intentionally worked by hand in antiquity. Courtesy MKW and West Turkana Archaeological Project

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Project directors Sonia Harmand and Jason Lewis examine and compare stone tools just unearthed. How old are they? Courtesy MKW and West Turkana Archaeological Project

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Before Oldowan

Though the finds were tantalizing by themselves, none of them would be more significant without their context in time.

The team called on Christopher Lepre, of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Rutgers University, to take a look at the contextual sediments of the finds. Arriving one week after the initial discovery, he collected samples of sediments from a series of different depths associated with the artifact locations. Returning to the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory lab at Columbia University, he worked closely with Dennis Kent to cut the samples into sugar cube-size blocks and place them into a magnetometer. This measured the polarity of key grains of minerals within the sediment known as hematite and magnetite, a record of the time periods in the past when the Earth’s magnetic field reversed itself. “We essentially have a magnetic tape recorder that records the magnetic field … the music of the [earth’s] outer core,” said Kent.

Comparing their measurements with the already-known chronology of those changes going back millions of years, they were able to determine the dating of the artifacts.

The results: These stone tools were between 3.33 and 3.11 million years old. That made them the oldest stone tools ever found.

Moreover, scientists were able to develop a picture of the environment in which the toolmakers must have lived. They did this by studying carbon isotopes in the sediments, conducting forty-seven isotopic analyses on eleven paleosol samples using a Micromass Optima mass spectrometer. They also examined the animal fossils recovered at the site.

What they found was surprising: These tools were fashioned in a partially wooded, shrubby environment. Not a dry savannah. It belied the broadly accepted evolutionary paradigm that toolmaking emerged at least in part due to adaptation by early humans to the spread of the dry, savannah grassland environment, analogs of which can still be seen today in the modern east African landscape.

The implications of these findings were enormous. It meant that there was a group of hominins living in a partly wooded, shrubby land who made simple stone tools before the Oldowan, the earliest examples of which were dated to about 2.6 million years ago and thought to have been made by hominins in the Homo line (more directly ancestral to modern humans) in a dry, savannah-like landscape. 

So who were the Lomekwian toolmakers?

“It is unclear at the moment who the most likely maker of the tools was,” said Jason Lewis of Rutgers University, a lead researcher and lead author of the study. “We can be fairly certain it was a member of our lineage and not a fossil great ape, as modern apes have never been seen knapping stone tools in the wild. Which of the members of our lineage it was, however, remains to be determined. The most likely possibilities include Kenyanthropus platyops (the fossils of which are from just a few hundred meters from the LOM3 site), Australopithecus afarensis [the species best known through the famous Lucy discovery], or an as-yet undiscovered early member of the genus Homo.”

Kanyanthropus platyops, fossils of which were first discovered in 1999 by Justus Erusas, a member of the expeditionary team led by Meave Leakey, is considered by many scholars to be a hominin species that lived 3.2 – 3.5 million years ago in the Lake Turkana region. It is not yet certain whether Kenyanthropus belongs with the Homo genus or the Australopithecus genus, but its discovery has added to the growing consensus that there may indeed have been multiple species, and perhaps even multiple genera, of hominins living at roughly the same time. Early humans and their proto-human cousins may have been a diverse lot. 

And there is already arguable evidence that even more primitive tool production and use was taking place even before LOM3. In 2009, a team of researchers at the site of Dikika in Ethiopia discovered 3.39 million-year-old animal bones featuring slash marks and other cut marks, evidence of intentional de-fleshing. It is considered the earliest possible evidence of hominins consuming meat and marrow. Although no tools were found at the site, it was clear that the marks were made by either sharp-edged stones or more finely crafted stone tools.

Who were the possible hominins responsible for the Dikika cut marks? Fossil remains of Australopithecus afarensis are (as of this writing) the only hominin fossils found in the area of Dikika dated to the same time period.

In any case, even if/when any additional hominin fossils are discovered at or near the LOM3 site, certainty about the identification of the toolmakers may continue to be elusive. As Lewis states, “it is extremely rare to be able to pinpoint what fossil species made which stone tools through most of prehistory, unless there was only one hominin species living at the time, or until we find a fossil skeleton still holding a stone tool in its hand.”

Most important of all, the LOM3 findings may require a re-thinking of what constitutes the ‘evolutionary divide’ between Homo, the genus that gave rise to us—Homo sapiens—and the more ape-like proto-human precursors known as the australopithecines.

“The idea was that our lineage alone took the cognitive leap of hitting stones together to strike off sharp flakes and that this was the foundation of our evolutionary success,” said Lewis. “This discovery challenges the idea that the main characters that make us human, such as making stone tools, eating more meat, maybe using language, etc, all evolved at once in a punctuated way, near the origins of the genus Homo. If the makers of the LOM3 tools were australopiths or some other non-Homo species, then that tells us some of these main traits were important for our lineage’s survival before the origins of Homo. If they were made by an even earlier and as-yet unknown member of the genus Homo, that’s a different but equally interesting story, in which our genus evolved half a million years before, and in response to completely different natural selective pressures, than we currently think.”

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Chris Lepre of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (back to camera) precisely dated the artifacts by analyzing layers above, around and below them for reversals in earth’s magnetic field. Courtesy MKW and West Turkana Archaeological Project

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Above and below: A stone tool in situ, in the process of being excavated. Courtesy MKW and West Turkana Archaeological Project

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Sammy Lokorodi, who first found the Lomekwi 3 site. Courtesy MKW and West Turkana Archaeological Project

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The Earliest Homo?

Hundreds of kilometers to the northeast of Lomekwi, another tantalizing new discovery was being made that, like the LOM3 finds, would push back the clock and raise new questions about human evolution. Along with a team of scientists led by Arizona State University’s Kaye E. Reed, ASU graduate student Chalachew Seyoum was conducting an assigned surveying task on a fossil-bearing hill in the Ledi-Geraru area of the Afar region of Ethiopia on January 29^th, 2013. Something had attracted his attention on that day.

“After I climbed up the plateau,” he recalled, “I saw three molars sticking out of the sediment. I sat down and looked at it, and then I picked at it. There were three molars intact with a piece of mandible [lower jaw bone].”

Examining the find further, he could see that there was a “fresh break”, a place where it had been broken away from the body of the rest of the fossil. Thinking that perhaps it was nearby, he began to search for it. “Eventually I found the other piece and I pieced them back together. They fit perfectly. We found more broken pieces of a crown in the same spot.”

The initial discovery led to dry sieving, and the team was able to piece together a relatively ‘complete’ partial 8- cm.-long mandible with five intact teeth, representing the left side of a lower jaw.

Analysis of the fossil, led by Brian Villmoare and William H. Kimbel of ASU’s Institute of Human Origins, revealed features such as slim molars, symmetrical premolars and an evenly proportioned jaw, characteristics that have distinguished species of the Homo lineage from the more apelike characteristics of Australopithecus, the genus of which one species is suggested by many scholars to have been a forerunner of the Homo genus. Yet some features of the Ledi-Geraru mandible, such as a more primitive, sloping chin morphology, is similar to that of the Australopithecines.

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Close-up view of the Ledi-Geraru partial mandible close to where it was sighted. Credit: Kaye Reed

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Detailed map of where the Ledi-Geraru site is located in reference to other important fossil sites in Ethiopia. Courtesy Erin DiMaggio

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Site, geography, and geological stratification where the fossil partial mandible was discovered. Courtesy Villmoare, et al.

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A caravan moves across the Ledi-Geraru project area near the early Homo site. The hills behind the camels expose sediments that are younger than 2.67 million year old, providing a minimum age for the mandible. Courtesy Erin DiMaggio

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The best reasoning among the scientists of the team led them, at least for now, to a significant conclusion—the mandible came from a Homo. “We have a jaw with teeth that preserves enough anatomy to be quite confident that it does represent an early part of the Homo lineage,” said Kimbel.

Until this discovery, the earliest credible fossil evidence of the Homo genus was dated to about 2.3 or 2.4 million years ago, as represented by the fossil mandible HCRP-UR 501 (see image below), found by the German paleoanthropologist Friedermann Shrenk at Uraha, Malawi. HCRP-UR 501 has been identified as belonging to Homo rudolfensis, an early Homo species that lived roughly contemporaneous with Homo habilis around 2 million years ago.

Could this partial mandible be as old as that? Or even earlier?

Pushing Back the Clock

To date the find, Kaye Reed’s team used multiple dating methods, including radiometric analysis. Geologists Dr. Erin DiMaggio of Penn State and Dominique Garello of ASU took volcanic ash/tuff samples from the layers just above and below the position where the fossil was found at the site. Returning to the lab with the samples, they then used argon 40/39 dating, a high-precision radiometric dating method that measures the decay through time of different isotopes of argon within the ash/tuff. With this, they were able to calculate the ages of nearby associated ancient volcanic eruptions, determining the youngest and oldest dates when the Homo individual could have lived.

The results, according to DiMaggio, “all show that the hominin fossil is 2.8 to 2.75 million years old.”

That made the Ledi-Geraru find the oldest Homo fossil ever found. It predated the earliest known Homo find by about 400,000 years. If the finding holds, the discovery would be nothing less than remarkable. 

“In spite of a lot of searching, fossils on the Homo lineage older than 2 million years ago are very rare,” says Villmoare. “To have a glimpse of the very earliest phase of our lineage’s evolution is particularly exciting.”

Moreover, Reed’s team was able to determine the environment in which this early Homo must have lived. The variety of 2.8 – 2.75-year-old animal fossils found in the area indicated that the ancient landscape inhabited by the Homo individual was an open habitat of mixed grasslands and shrub lands with a gallery forest—trees lining rivers or wetlands, likely similar to African locations like the Serengeti Plains or the Kalahari.

“We can see the 2.8 million-year-old aridity signal in the Ledi-Geraru faunal community,” said Reed.

This was significant because some researchers have suggested that global climate change during that time created an environment of climate variability and aridity, triggering evolutionary changes in many mammal lines, including early humans. “But it’s still too soon to say that this means climate change is responsible for the origin of Homo,” says Reed. “We need a larger sample of hominin fossils and that’s why we continue to come to the Ledi-Geraru area to search.”

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Geologists Dr. Erin DiMaggio of Penn State (left) and Dominique Garello (ASU, right) sample a volcanic tuff near the early Homo site in the Ledi-Geraru project area. Credit J. Ramón Arrowsmith

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Homo Who?

The next million-dollar question related to the identity of the species to which the fossil could be assigned. Was it Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, or something else?

It is much too soon to say, according to the scientists. More information is needed, not the least of which would be more fossil finds. Nevertheless, according to Villmoare, “what is special about this jaw is not only the date, which is much older than any specimen of Homo known until now, but that it has a unique combination of traits, from the height of the mandible to the shape of the teeth that make it clearly transitional between Australopithecus and Homo,” said Villmoare. “It would not be a direct ancestor, but we are arguing that the population from which this mandible came is ancestral to later Homo, which was in turn ancestral ultimately to us. So it is on our lineage fairly deep.”  

Like most research in this area, discovery and study are producing far more questions than answers. But clues and signs are beginning to emerge that may help paint a picture of human evolution at the “evolutionary divide” between the more ape-like Australopithecines and our more directly ancestral Homo line.

“The fossil record in East Africa between 2 and 3 million years ago is very thin,” says Villmoare, “and there are relatively few fossils that can inform us about the origins of the genus Homo. However, this is one of the most interesting periods in human evolution, because during this poorly- known period, humans made the important transition from the more ape-like Australopithecus to the more modern adaptive pattern seen in Homo.”

“We’re beginning to narrow the time,” added Kimbel, “not only as to the origin of the Homo lineage, which now predates 2.8 million, but to the time when it is likely that these two separate lineages of early Homo could have evolved…….the precise nature of the transition, for example whether it was a gradual transformation along a lineage, or a rapid divergence of lineages, or whether the early changes in the teeth and jaws were accompanied by changes in other systems, such as brain, or technology—these things are unknown still.”

The research team plans to continue their search for additional Homo fossils in the area of the find, hoping to shed additional light on the specimen and ultimately determine a suggested species designation. 

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Close-up images of the Ledi-Geraru partial mandible, as seen from different angles and perspectives. Courtesy William Kimbel

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Going Forward

For Sonia Harmand and her team at the Lomekwi site, the remarkable stone tools found west of Lake Turkana, like the Ledi-Geraru fossil finds in Ethiopia, will likely have much more to say about the hominins who inhabited eastern Africa during the critical transition between Homo and Australopith some three million years ago. 

“We are in the process of looking at the surfaces and edges of the tools under microscopes and with laser scans to try to reconstruct how they were used, and [we are] also studying the sediment in which they were found to search for trace elements or residues of any possible plant or animal tissues that could be left on them after use.” Moreover, says Harmand, the site is still under excavation, with many more stone tools left to unearth.

Perhaps most significant of all, the Lomekwi scientists, like the Ledi-Geraru scientists, suggest there is an even older horizon to be discovered. 

“The Lomekwi tools are sophisticated enough that they are likely not from the first time a hominin tried to knap a stone tool,” concludes Harmand.  “We think there are older, even more rudimentary stone tools out there to be found, and we will be looking for them over the coming field seasons.”

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*Harmand, Sonia, et al., 3.3-million-year-old stone tools from Lomekwi 3, West Turkana, Kenya, Nature, Vol. 521, 21 May 2015.

Quotations related to the Lomekwi finds were sourced from interview questions posed by Popular Archaeology to Jason Lewis and Sonia Harmand of the West Turkana Archaeological Project, Turkana Basin Institute, and from subject press releases by the project participating institutions.

Quotations related to the Ledi-Geraru find were sourced from transcripts of the subject AAAS press conference conducted on March 4, 2015 in Washington, D.C.

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