Archaeology
Study solves mystery of coal origins on Blackbeard’s Queen Anne’s Revenge
A study by the University of Kentucky has solved the origins of the coal found on Blackbeard’s Queen Anne’s Revenge.
Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, was an English pirate who operated around the West Indies and the eastern coast of Britain’s North American colonies.
Blackbeard earned his nickname due to his thick black beard and intimidating presence. He was known to tie lit fuses (slow matches) under his hat which instilled fear in his opponents.
Around 300 years ago, Blackbeard seized a French slave ship named La Concorde and renamed her as Queen Anne’s Revenge, arming her with 40 guns and manning her with a crew of around 400 men.
In 1717, the ship hit a sandbar near Beaufort, North Carolina, in the present-day Carteret County. The ship was rediscovered in 1996 by Intersal Inc in 8.5 m of water, about one 1.6 km offshore of Fort Macon State Park, Atlantic Beach, North Carolina.
Currently, over 300,000 artefacts have been retrieved from the wreckage and around 30 cannons. The cannons originate from various places, such as Sweden and England, and come in different sizes, which is typical for a pirate crew during colonial times.
The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology recently published the findings of researchers who aimed to determine the source of the coal found on the historic shipwreck.
James Hower from the UK Centre for Applied Energy Research (CAER) and Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences, said: “We wanted to figure out where this coal on the shipwreck might have come from in that particular era before there was any real coal mining of any sort in this country.”
Archaeologists previously discovered that coal was distributed evenly throughout the excavation site, leading them to find samples present in corroded iron and other parts of the wreckage.
Four samples of the coal were sent for further analysis at CAER’s Applied Petrology Laboratory to determine the coal rank. Coal is classified into four main ranks, or types, which depend on the amount of carbon the coal contains and the amount of heat energy it can produce.
The coal samples displayed a wide range of quality, with some being low volatile bituminous coal (87-90% carbon) and others being anthracites (above 90% carbon).
“Low volatile bituminous coal is generally found in Virginia. It’s good for cooking and was also used on steamships because that type of coal doesn’t give off smoke when it burns,” explained Hower. “Anthracite is not the most common coal rank found anywhere, much less in the U.S. All the anthracites here come from Pennsylvania.”
Another key to solving this mystery is knowing what time those sources of coal were active.
“Simply, the coal samples post-date the Queen Anne’s Revenge grounding. In a 19th- or 20th-century setting, the easiest explanation for the source of both types of coal could have been in the Appalachians, but the mining there didn’t exist in the period we’re looking at. Plus, European settlers did not discover Pennsylvania anthracite until maybe the later part of the 1760s and real, legitimate mining didn’t happen until the 1800s,” said Hower.
According to the researcher, the post-date coal samples were likely dumped from U.S. Navy ships in the Civil War after Union troops captured nearby Fort Macon on April 26, 1862.
There was a heavy influx of ship traffic at that time, especially during the Union’s blockade of Wilmington, North Carolina — a major port for the Confederacy and the last one to fall in February of 1865.
Natural forces, such as waves, tidal currents, tropical storms, and hurricanes, also played a role in how the coal ended up settling in and around the Queen Anne’s Revenge. This is due to the frequent shifting of inlets and sand shoals along the Outer Banks over time.
Archaeologists from the University of Kentucky explained that the same movement is responsible for intrusive items finding their way onto the shipwreck, like 19th-century glass and ceramic artefacts, as well as 20th-century coins, soda bottles and even golf balls.
https://doi.org/10.1080/10572414.2022.2101775
Header Image Credit : Shutterstock
A study of the “Excalibur” sword found in Valencia has been revealed to have Islamic origins sometime during the 10th century AD.
Valencia is one of the oldest cities in Spain, founded under the name of Valentia Edetanorum by the Romans in 138 BC.
The city was conquered by the Moors in the 8th century AD, and was destroyed by Abd al-Rahman I of the Umayyad dynasty. Under Caliphate rule, the wider city area became known as Madînat al-Turâb (meaning “city of earth” or “sand”).
The sword was discovered back in 1994 in a house on Valencia’s Historiador Chabàs Street, where it was found standing upright in a grave beneath an Islamic era house.
Dubbed “Excalibur” due to the circumstances of its discovery, the sword is made from iron and has a hilt decorated with bronze plates. In mythology, Excalibur was the legendary sword of King Arthur and appears in various medieval poems describing Arthur pulling the sword from a stone.
However, the “Excalibur” from Valencia was found in a sedimentary strata from the 10th century AD and was likely the weapon of a cavalryman from the Andalusian Caliphate Era.
According to the archaeologists, the sword measures 46 centimetres in length and has a slightly curved blade towards the tip. Swords from this period are rarely found well-preserved due to the levels of oxygen and water in the soil that causes oxidation of the iron.
“It is the first Islamic sword that appears in the city of Valencia, with only one similar example being found during the excavations of Medina Azahara, the caliphal city of Abd al-Rahman III, in Córdoba,” said the Valencia City Council.
Header Image Credit : The Archaeology Service (SIAM) of the Valencia City Council
Sources : Valencia City Council
This content was originally published on www.heritagedaily.com – © 2023 – HeritageDaily
A study of a Roman shipwreck off the coast of Mallorca has identified a new type of amphora.
The shipwreck, known as the shipwreck of Ses Fontanelles, was discovered 65 metres from the coast of a tourist beach near Mallorca’s capital of Palma.
According to a paper published in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, the ship dates from the 4th century and likely departed from Cartagena in southeastern Spain while navigating the trade routes of the western Mediterranean.
Archaeologists found in the hold a cargo packaged in amphorae, some of which have painted inscriptions (tituli picti) on the exterior. The inscriptions provide information such as the origin, destination, type of product, and the owner of the goods – identified as “Alunnius et Ausonius.”
The amphorae have been classified into four main group types. The most abundant is the Almagro 51c type amphorae, for which the tituli picti indicate a contents of fish sauce which derives almost exclusively from a single species: the European anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus)
The other groups consist of the flat-bottomed amphorae, the Keay XIX type, and a new type of amphora named Ses Fontanelles I, which is larger and heavier than most other amphorae types and was used for carrying plant oil.
According to the study authors: “All the analytical data suggest that Alunnius et Ausonius prepared a trade enterprise fleeting, a merchant ship with a cargo composed mainly of fish sauce (Liquaminis flos), in Almagro 51c amphora, oil transported in Ses Fontanelles I amphorae (probably an imitation of Dressel 23 type), and grape derivates or fruits preserved in those substances in flat-bottomed amphorae.”
Header Image Credit : Arqueomallornauta – Consell de Mallorca
Sources : Cau-Ontiveros, M.Á., Bernal-Casasola, D., Pecci, A. et al. Multianalytical approach to the exceptional Late Roman shipwreck of Ses Fontanelles (Mallorca, Balearic Islands, Spain). Archaeol Anthropol Sci 16, 58 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-024-01952-3
This content was originally published on www.heritagedaily.com – © 2023 – HeritageDaily
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