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Interesting Archaeological Artefacts

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isha
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Interesting Archaeological Artefacts

#1

Post by isha »

That's it. That's the topic. Archaeological Artefact Porn.
Everyone has to get their thrills somehow.

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Gundestrap Cauldron. Silver. 200 BC - 300 AD. Diameter 27 inches. Found in Denmark in 1891.
Iconography is Celtic, Thracian and from Near East. .
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Re: Interesting Archaeological Artefacts

#2

Post by isha »



Cute 3000 year old ring from Egypt.
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Re: Interesting Archaeological Artefacts

#3

Post by Hodors Appletart »

I've been in the museum in Cairo, you know that famous Tutenkhamun gold head

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it's way, way more impressive and breath-taking in person

hugely impressive
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Re: Interesting Archaeological Artefacts

#4

Post by Uncle Frank »

King Tut's dagger which was found in his tomb in the 1920s by Howard Carter.
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Recently it was discovered that the iron blade is actually made from a meteorite.
Iron was more expensive than gold back then because smelting it was so difficult and meteoric iron was harder to work because it is more fragile.
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Re: Interesting Archaeological Artefacts

#5

Post by Wibbs »

Tutankhamun being from the Bronze Age meant that though they had the tech to reach the temperatures for smelting copper and tin, they didn't for smelting iron which requires much higher temps. But the bronze temperatures were fine for working iron, if it was pure enough. Meteorites met this requirement. Iron from that source is like you say fragile to work with and is much higher in nickel than terrestrial iron sources, which is how they first spotted the origin. When it was first found it threatened to rewrite history. The much higher nickel also means it doesn't corrode nearly as readily as most terrestrial irons, hence it's still shiny. Being buried in a very dry area helps too mind you.. :D

The skills of the metal workers are clear. I mean just look at the quality of the scabbard and the hilt. :shock: With the carved rock crystal pommel. Rock crystal is a thundering bugger to work on its own.

His furniture was incredible too.

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The carving and woodworking(and metalworking) skills in that chair. Never mind the design itself. IKEA it is not... Then again an Egyptian pharoah was about the richest most powerful being on earth at the time. A living god in so many ways. Cost wasn't even a consideration. And to think Tut was a minor royal that was only on the throne for a very short time, his burial was rushed in a big way, even his tomb wasn't originally his. If you ever get there look at the wall on the left of the viewing platform, you can see the crude gouge out of the wall they needed to knock out to get his coffin(s) in. Even his famous death mask proably isn't his. The beard is an addition and the ears are pierced and when found the holes were crudely covered up. Adult Egyptian men didn't have pierced ears. It's likely it was originally fashioned for a queen or high born woman.

He was so minor that after his death and the removal of his name from the monuments and history(cos his da was seen as the antichrist) he was forgotten. His tomb was robbed soon after it was finished, but they didn't get as far as the main part and then it was resealed. Then soon after a flood ran down the valley and covered the entrance with tons of silt and rubble and it was forgotten. This is the seal that lay in wait for thousands of years for Howard Carter.

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Now can you imagine the wonders someone like Rameses the Great or Seti the First were buried with.
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Re: Interesting Archaeological Artefacts

#6

Post by 490808 »

Hodors Appletart wrote: Fri Jul 23, 2021 9:23 am I've been in the museum in Cairo, you know that famous Tutenkhamun gold head

Image

it's way, way more impressive and breath-taking in person

hugely impressive
I can remember queing up to see that only it was nearly 50 years ago when it was at the British Museum. Have to agree its well impressive and worth the wait in the queue

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Re: Interesting Archaeological Artefacts

#7

Post by isha »

I was actually going to ask about the pommel on the knife. Egypt never fails to be mind-blowing, archaeologically speaking.

This is altogether cruder but something marvelous about it / them - Armenian carts from Lchashen. Ceremonially buried. 1500 BC

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Re: Interesting Archaeological Artefacts

#8

Post by peasant »

These figurines were found in caves that litter the mountain range (Schwäbische Alb) near where I grew up.

These are considered to be some of the oldest pieces of art of all of mankind, 35 to 40.000 years old

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this one is a flute
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Re: Interesting Archaeological Artefacts

#9

Post by isha »

Have Catalhoyuk on my mind these past few days. A top place on my bucket list (just under Gobleki Tepe) and hopefully this damned pandemic does not go on forever and some fine Spring day before it gets too warm I can spend a long time having a look at this place in Turkey. (And then on overland to Gobekli Tepe!)

Some artefacts -

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This seated woman on her cat throne is fairly well known. Made of clay. was found in 1961, and is from 6000BC. The head is a reconstruction.

But I also like this one which was found in 2016 and is carved from marble. At 6.7 inches long and 1 kg in weight it is one of the larger of these Venus-type figurines found. About 200 so far have been found scattered around Europe and Eurasia, dating way back to 35000 BC, fascinating remnants. This one is from 8000 BC.

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Cleaned up...

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Bull bucrania -

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Çatalhöyük is unusual in a number of ways. The houses were very tightly packed and there were no streets; people moved around on the roofs of houses and entered by a ladder that effectively went down the chimney. The ladder was positioned over the oven, so people would go down through the smoke into the house, which was relatively dark. And in that lower space, there was a lot of very elaborate symbolism. For example, bulls’ heads and horns were placed on walls or on pedestals, or they would make paintings on the walls of pairs of leopards, large bears with their arms and legs lifted up, or vultures removing the heads of human corpses. The insides of these houses were very rich in a wide range of symbolism, and a lot of that symbolism seems related to the dead.
https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/ ... turner.php

Burying the dead under the floor of the house was a big thing in Catalhoyuk - one house had 64 burials.
One female was buried with a plaster skull cradled in her arms

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This is a great article on Catalhoyuk and suggests that the abundant clays in the place, used for plaster were one of the main draws for the inhabitants.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ ... -78015429/

This link has lots of brilliant photos of finds there, lots of figurines, murals, pottery, jewelry, clay stamps etc.
http://users.stlcc.edu/mfuller/catalhuyuk.html

Just one more for here.

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Ceremonial Snake-handled dagger :o
Brown obsidian blade with a carved bone handle. 5200 BC. Just over 10 cm long.
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Re: Interesting Archaeological Artefacts

#10

Post by isha »

I just see today that a leaf shaped spear point has very recently been found in Hohle Fels cave that is 10,000 years earlier than what was previously the oldest dating.
https://www.archaeology.org/news/9864-2 ... _zY9UrB8r4

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And this coinkidentally allows me to show one of these Venus figurines mentioned earlier, which was also found in the cave at Hohle Fels. The oldest one - I think! 35000 to 40000 BC. Mammoth ivory. 6 cm. Possibly worn as pendant. the fertility aspect to these is really notable in this one with the exaggerated genitalia.

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Re: Interesting Archaeological Artefacts

#11

Post by Wibbs »

That obsidian blade would have taken incredible skill to make. :o

Interesting leaf shaped pear point as I didn't know neandertals used them. Their usual technique was to fashion them using the Levallois technique. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levallois_technique Which is actually a more difficult technique to master compared to later pressure flaking of the kind we used. Here's a few examples of such spear points;

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Personal collection

The black one on the left is very unusual as it shows retouching, basically the maker refined the shape by further knapping of the flint. In the vast majority of cases they left the initial shape alone. Retouching is more "our" thing. The large one at 11cms is one of the largest such points I've ever seen(later damage to the top left edge).

Most of their tools were utilitarian, but you do find examples of tools that have more symmetry and seem to be fashioned around a central point of interest in the flint. Some examples I have;

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The one on the left was knapped around what was the fossil of a sea urchin. The one in the middle the fossil of a shell(point lost through later damage). The one on the right you can see a part of shell and that seems to have been deliberately selected for as the rock around the fossil fragment is crap for tool use, porous and crumbly. Better view:

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The one at the top looks more impressive in the flesh. The pale part of the stone really "shines", especially with light behind it. They would have all been either black or dark brown flint colour, but after tens of thousands of years in different soils they change colour.

Now it could be that such central bits were selected as much for extra grip and they do add extra purchase alright, but that wouldn't explain the shell fragment one and I've another older example where a fossil in the rock was selected and would have had nada to do with grip. So they could be for aesthetic reasons. When we moder humans come along in Europe we go nuts for art. It's actually harder to find tools of bone where we didn't decorate them. This art thing has a very long history.

Going even further back we have this from 600,000 years ago found in South Africa;
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Unreal skill to make that and examination shows it was never used as a tool.
Another, this time from the UK around 200,000 years old;
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The framing of that fossil seems pretty deliberate.
And both of the above were likely made by Homo Erectus, a hominid that had a much smaller brain than ours(neandertals were the same size or larger than ours, but organised slightly differently).
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Re: Interesting Archaeological Artefacts

#12

Post by isha »

Absolutely wonderful personal collection - really lucky to have them.
I love the one with the fossil especially because of knowing they would have chosen it for that quality - I really do think they were fascinated by beauty we simply overlook as mundane - one sees the same in little pebbles left at the base of post holes. We would cast them from us now, and some archaeologists still have too little regard (I think) for the significance ancient people likely saw in small depositions of ''special stones''. They can be so easily overlooked. Just things of casual beauty that through deliberate placement one knows were imbued with a sense of appreciation, even awe. I know this from living with an obsessive ''rockhound'' and collector of pebbles, fossils, flints etc :lol: .
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Re: Interesting Archaeological Artefacts

#13

Post by Wibbs »

isha wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 11:49 am Absolutely wonderful personal collection - really lucky to have them.
I was fascinated by fossils and neandertals as a kid. Collected a load of fossils here in Ireland, found a few neolithic flint tools too, but on holidays in France I found a fair few neandertal tools. Legal then, probably get arrested now. :D Oddly I only ever found one modern human flint there. Then collected more from auctions and the like since then(though ebay is full of fakes so...). One of my faves is this one;

French handaxe(biface) Neandertal in general design, but early enough, 100-200,000 years old at a guess. They can be very hard to date outside of very localised designs as the handaxe was the most widely used tool and for the longest period of time in human history. Except in the far east funny enough. Which is an ongoing mystery. Anyway this one shows a pretty clear selection for something of interest in the original stone material.

Front view

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It's roughly heart shaped and has few losses to the original, but it's at the base where it gets interesting;

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Leaned it up against a hard drive for jaysus how far we've come effect. :D

That was likely a space where a shell once was. It's too shallow to be a hafting point for a handle and these tools were rarely hafted anyway. It's clear by the striking process that the maker selected for this object/space as there are more than double the number of hammerstone strikes on one side of the object compared to the other to refine it centrally. They also made many small strikes around it to accentuate it. Now inside the space is some black material that has been analysed as likely tree resin, which they used as glue. The first compound glue with it as they processed it in ways we still can't replicate today(requires a very precise temp and an anerobic environment to form. you can't just lob it on a fire and hope for the best). So either the original shell or whatever fell out and they reglued it back in, or added something else. It does nothing for grip, if anything reduces it and also reduces the cutting edges by about a quarter. These tools generally had a cutting edge all the way around for maximum efficiency(see the large triangular grey one in the previous post). Think of them a circular saw of sorts. So the original guy(or gal*) took time and effort to work an not great piece of flint material and then made it a little less efficient. This IMHO is not random.


*we don't know how work was gendered if at all. One theory goes that modern humans had an edge because we gendered the work, thereby increasing food yields. EG in many hunter gatherer societies it's actually the women through the gathering bit source the majority of calories for the group, whereas the males through hunting source the higher value calories. The theory is neandertals didn't do this. I'm not so sure as of the skeletons we have every single one of the men shows physical injury in life, but the women don't. Which would suggest that the women didn't do the close in ambush hunting the men did. Or the injuries are down to men beating the crap out of each other over territory or mates, but they left the women alone. Though they did practice cannibalism in hard times and butchered both sexes(as did we, but with us researchers are far more likely to label it as cultural death rites, rather than food sources). We still know so little about them. They had culture, it seems they had art and ornament and they were around for longer than we have. Though it's touted as a given they buried their dead, I personally don't buy the so called evidence. In modern human burial it's very obvious, but with neandertal "burial" sites it's anything but and looks more like wishful thinking IMHO.
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Re: Interesting Archaeological Artefacts

#14

Post by isha »

It's a beauty alright. Great balanced shape to it. Lovely thing to have. Holding these ancient artefacts in the flesh is a really special feeling, the appropriate word is not coming to me, but it functions as a sort of memento mori or remembrance beads. Fascinating that there is evidence they glued back in the fossil when it popped out, maybe it was a kind ceremonial axe(?)
Which would suggest ceremony and rite and now there is big speculation!

I would guess they at least buried some. Probably most got some kind of at least an attempt at a version of excarnation treatment - I mean, they were quite sophisticated really, their tools alone show that. I suppose they have such a long time span that one cannot make one general supposition for their whole length of time, and there was an overlap with homo sapiens towards the end that might have affected things. But presumably they did not just leave their comrades where they lay, or chuck old gramps into the forest or over the cliff when done - but maybe they did! Or into the stew!
The special ones may have gotten more though. There is at least some evidence of deliberate grave cuts as far as I know (which is very, very little!).

Neanderthal cave art. I know it's a bit disputed. Hopefully as time goes on more evidence will be found.

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I don't know how or if Youtube posts can be embedded. Interesting short vid on the Iberian Neanderthal cave art
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Re: Interesting Archaeological Artefacts

#15

Post by isha »

:shock:

When elves ruled the earth..

Found in the megalithic tombs in Valencina de la Concepción, in Spain, dating to approx 2500-3000 BC

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https://mymodernmet.com/prehistoric-crystal-dagger/

https://www.academia.edu/3406550/_Ivory ... e_Spain_._
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Re: Interesting Archaeological Artefacts

#16

Post by isha »

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Awwwww :) Such a cute thing.
Egyptian Faience Hippo, Late Period, c. 6th-4th Century BC

Here is another even older Egyptian hippo - called William, which is not a very Egyptian name, but let's not get political :P

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"William", also known as "William the Hippo", is an Egyptian faience hippopotamus statuette from the Middle Kingdom, now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, where it serves as an informal mascot of the museum. Found in a shaft associated with the Upper Egyptian tomb chapel of "The Steward, Senbi", in what is now Meir, William dates from c. 1961 BC – c. 1878 BC, during the reigns of Senusret I and Senusret II.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_t ... ppopotamus
Hippopotamus figurines are common finds in Middle Kingdom tombs. It was believed that they could help to ensure the rebirth of the deceased, a role that is alluded to in William’s blue glaze and the lotus flowers painted on him. These invoke his natural habitat of the marshes of the Nile, the great river essential to life in ancient Egypt. The association is carried further by the decorative lotuses, as the cycle of the opening of the lotus flower at sunrise and its closing at sunset was closely linked with the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.
https://www.world-archaeology.com/issue ... iam-hippo/
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Re: Interesting Archaeological Artefacts

#17

Post by isha »

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:o

Knotted dragon pendant, made out of jade (nephrite).
3rd century B.C. Eastern Zhou dynasty (770–256 B.C.)
China.
Dimensions: H. 3 1/8 in. (7.9 cm); W. 2 1/16 in. (5.2 cm)

Nephrite is a bit softer than jadeite, but still extremely difficult to carve. Used sand pastes to carve it worked in by tools like bone or bamboo...I am not sure this small a piece would have been carved via hand turned rotary devices they had developed, but maybe...


Details of 5000 year old history of Jade carving in China - they have been getting this right for quite a long time! - https://www.gia.edu/gems-gemology/sprin ... -evolution
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Re: Interesting Archaeological Artefacts

#18

Post by isha »

Villa Romana del Casale - Sicily
Mosaics from early 4th century
The Bikini Girls...lifting weights etc 8-)

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https://www.amusingplanet.com/2019/12/t ... asale.html

https://www.ancientworldmagazine.com/ar ... le-sicily/
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Re: Interesting Archaeological Artefacts

#19

Post by Uncle Frank »

:o No way! I didn't think the bikini was invented until the 40s or 50s.
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Re: Interesting Archaeological Artefacts

#20

Post by isha »

Uncle Frank wrote: Fri Sep 24, 2021 10:50 pm :o No way! I didn't think the bikini was invented until the 40s or 50s.
It is actually a kind of loin cloth and breast binder for sporting purposes - I think they are just affectionately known as the bikini girls. But what is often striking is how advanced and "modern" the ancients in fact were.
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Re: Interesting Archaeological Artefacts

#21

Post by isha »

From facebook



The Venus of Willendorf, possibly in the hand of her finder, Johann Veran or Josef Veram, 1908.

"The Venus of Willendorf is an 11.1-centimetre-tall (4.4 in) Venus figurine estimated to have been made 30,000 BCE. It was found on August 7, 1908 by a workman named Johann Veran or Josef Veram during excavations conducted by archaeologists Josef Szombathy, Hugo Obermaier and Josef Bayer at a paleolithic site near Willendorf, a village in Lower Austria near the town of Krems. It is carved from an oolitic limestone that is not local to the area, and tinted with red ochre.

Traditionally referred to in archaeology as "Venus figurines", due to the widely-held belief that depictions of nude women with exaggerated sexual features represented an early fertility fetish, perhaps a mother goddess. The reference to Venus is metaphorical, since the figurines predate the mythological figure of Venus by many thousands of years."
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Re: Interesting Archaeological Artefacts

#22

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https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-glo ... e-58736866

Here is a lovely find from a Gloucester dig, just hot out of the ground. Site assistant Dani Hurst just found this 1800 year old Venus figurine. What a gorgeous find for her. She must be thrilled.
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Re: Interesting Archaeological Artefacts

#23

Post by isha »

Oh I should put in my avatar. The Tassili Bee Shaman. 9000-year-old painting found in a cave in Tassili n'Ajjer, Algeria.

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I mean, just look at it, what were these dude and dudettes on 9000 years ago?
Tassili n'Ajjer
Located in a strange lunar landscape of great geological interest, this site has one of the most important groupings of prehistoric cave art in the world. More than 15,000 drawings and engravings record the climatic changes, the animal migrations and the evolution of human life on the edge of the Sahara from 6000 BC to the first centuries of the present era.
https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/179/

Further
http://www.artepreistorica.com/2009/12/ ... -7000-b-p/
Lest we think it was just the lads doing mad stuff, in or around the same place,on the Aouanrhet massif, the highest of all the “rock cities” on the Tassili, there is a depiction of a running horned woman

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https://smarthistory.org/running-horned ... r-algeria/
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Re: Interesting Archaeological Artefacts

#24

Post by isha »

The Ain Sakrhi Lovers.
Bethlehem.
About 11000 years old. Oldest known representation of sex. Natufian culture, among first farmers/settlers
This article tells the story of it being found in a cave.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articl ... s-figurine

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The surviving natural surface on the (calcite) cobble is bruised with chattermarks indicating that it came from the bed of a stream where it had bumped together with other stones. The sculptor utilised the natural heart-shaped outline of the stone to pick out the outline of a couple making love face to face in a sitting position. This was done using a 'picking' technique using a stone chisel with the stone or antler hammer to reduce the calcite surface by percussion so that the outlines of the figures appear in low relief. When first made the picked line would appear lighter than natural surface of the cobble enhancing the visual impact of the sculpture.
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Re: Interesting Archaeological Artefacts

#25

Post by isha »

A couple interesting things crossed my path today, the first ones being purely intellectual, the next ones being at least at first sight purely carnal..

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From Hamangia in Romania, The Thinker and The Sitting Woman of Cernavoda. Circa 5000 BCE.
One of the great masterpieces of late Stone Age art, an extraordinary statuette, knows as “The Thinker” was unearthed in 1956, together with a similar statuette of a female figure, knows as “The sitting woman“, and numerous other similar, though headless figurines – during archaeological excavation of Neolithic settlement and burial debris in the lower Danube region, near Cernavoda in Romania.

They were made of clay and baked in the oven.

Created during the Hamangia culture, “The Thinker” is believed to be the oldest known prehistoric sculpture than reflects human introspection, rather than the usual artistic concerns of hunting or fertility. As a result it has become an iconic sculptural figure of prehistoric art. It currently resides in the National Museum of Romanian History in Bucharest.

In 2000, statuette “The Thinker” was named, by an international committee, as being “the one of the 10 artefacts of the earthling culture which should represent our planet”.
https://nextjourneys.com/2017/08/02/the ... -hamangia/

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Those very rude Romans. Looks like the hand/fist part of this artefact is giving the ''fig'' gesture which was for good luck.
40 AD. Found in London. Bone (edited- not bone and wood!).
Interestingly the Romans seemed to have really liked their phallus-plus rude gesture ornaments. From the same site a 1st century AD decoration for a horse

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On Fascinus more generally, and they were often used to protect infants.
Phallic charms, often winged, were ubiquitous in Roman culture, appearing as objects of jewellery such as pendants and finger rings, relief carvings, lamps, and wind chimes (tintinnabula). Fascinus was thought particularly to ward off evil from children, mainly boys, and from conquering generals. The protective function of the phallus is usually related to the virile and regenerative powers of an erect phallus, though in most cases the emotion, shame, or laughter created by obscenity is the power that diverts the evil eye.

There are very few Roman images of people wearing a phallic charm.Varro notes the custom of hanging a phallic charm on a baby's neck,[a] and examples have been found of phallus-bearing rings too small to be worn except by children. A 2017 experimental archaeology project suggested that some types of phallic pendant were designed to remain pointing outwards, in the direction of travel of the wearer, in order to face towards any potential danger or bad luck and nullify it before it could affect the wearer. Other symbols may have been interchangeable with the phallus, such as the club of Hercules.

The victory of the phallus over the power of the evil eye may be represented by the phallus ejaculating towards a disembodied eye. This motif is shown in several examples of Roman art. For example, the motif is known from multiple relief sculptures from Leptis Magna in present-day Libya, as well as several instances on Hadrian's Wall. A 1st-century BC terracotta figurine shows "two little phallus-men sawing an eyeball in half".

The "fist and phallus" amulet was prevalent amongst soldiers. These are phallic pendants with a representation of a (usually) clenched fist at the bottom of the shaft, facing away from the glans. Several examples show the fist making the manus fica or "fig sign", a symbol of good luck. The largest known collection comes from Camulodunum. Some examples of the fist-and-phallus amulets incorporate vulvate imagery as well as an extra apotropaic device
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascinus

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Roman bronze amulet: Tintinnabulum quadruped-shaped bird with tail scorpionic phallic and two insects on the back (cicadas?), Found in Pompeii, now on display in the Secret Cabinet of the National Archaeological Museum of Naples 1st century AD
Last edited by isha on Fri Oct 15, 2021 10:22 am, edited 1 time in total.
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