Ancient History Roundup
Iron age hoard, cats in China, ancient avocados, and much more!
Welcome to this month’s Ancient History Roundup!
It was never the intention for this to become a monthly article feature, but there is so much being discovered about the ancient world at the moment that we shall strike while the iron is hot!
Here are the ancient history headlines that caught my eye this month
Iron age find in England
Big news from my motherland! A large iron age hoard has been discovered in Melsonby (Yorkshire), in the north of England. Dating from around the time of Claudius invasion of Britannia in the 1st century CE, over 800 objects have been identified in the single find that are most likely associated with the Brigantes tribe who were dominant in the region during this period. The finds include parts of chariots, horse bridles, ceremonial spears and large mixing bowls. This hoard will go someway to help the reassessment by archaeologists and historians of the cultures of northern England at the time of the Roman invasion!
The hoard was identified by a metal detectorist who only dug one small hole before he realised the importance of what he may have found, so he contacted the archaeology department at the University of Durham who have conducted the excavation (kudos to the diligent and ethical detectorist).
There are currently fundraising attempts to help Yorkshire Museum buy the Melsonby Hoard, click here for more information.
Domesticating Avocados
Perhaps it is just because of the generation I belong to, but the topic of avocados always grabs my attention. Like so much fruit (or is it a vegetable?!), the avocado must have gone through a domestication process - when people selectively chose seeds from more ideal specimens, with thicker skins and more edible flesh, to grow the next year’s harvest. Recent studies are suggesting this has been going on for … wait for it … 7,500 years! While the consumption of wild avocados dates back 11,000 years ago.
Forget wheat and rice, this is the agricultural revolution I want to hear about!
Pet cats in China
New research suggests that domestic cats were brought to China from western Asia by merchants and diplomats. They would have been carried along the legendary Silk Roads and given as highly valued gifts to Chinese officials from as early at the 8th century CE. One research speculates that a cat’s nature of being both aloof and affectionate may have added to their mystique in Chinese society.
Of course, it just confirms to me why I prefer dogs.
Roman mass grave
It may comes as something of a surprise, considering how prominent warfare is in our study of the ancient world, but there are very few mass graves or battlefield burials that have been discovered. So this latest announcement of a mass grave being studied in Austria is very exciting!
What I am particularly excited about is how this may change our understanding of how the Romans cared for their war dead. We often read from ancient sources about the great care and effort put into treating the bodies of the dead, but I have always been suspicious about how true this would be in a battlefield context - especially if they were on the losing side! This burial appears hasty and without due care and attention associated with ritualistic burial. Pragmatism often trumps idealism in enemy territory!
Poor(er) people buried in large monuments?
Two news stories have caught the eye this past month because they both suggest that our assumptions about seemingly elite burial monuments may be wrong, as non-elite bodies have been identified in both Irish neolithic passage tombs and in Egyptian pyramids! Much of the research relies on DNA analysis and an assessment of the bones, which helps explain the ‘what’ and maybe the ‘who’, but not the ‘why’ or ‘how’, so I look forward to more research coming out on this.
Ancient Vietnamese boats
Since writing The Far Edges of the Known World, ancient Vietnam has become a lot like a sports team you don’t necessarily follow religiously, but will check each weekend how they got on. I am not always reading about it, but will check in on the ongoing research from time to time. So when a news story comes out about two large ancient boats in Vietnam, I got very excited.
These boats were found in a fishing pond in Bac Ninh, just outside Hanoi. This places it very near to the ancient Vietnamese city of Co Loa, which was an important trading hub in south east Asia, and the city of Luy Lau, which was a Han Chinese capital in the region during their period of domination - all of which were connected by a vital river network on which these boats were found.
The research is still very early, with even the dating of the find proving difficult to manage as yet. But they are presumed to be thousands of years old.