Archaeology
17th century coin hoard discovered at Wettin farmstead
Archaeologists from the State Office for Monument Preservation and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt (LDA) have discovered a large 17th century coin hoard during construction works at a farmstead in the town of Wettin, Germany.
Situated in the heart of Wettin, the farmstead has been maintained by the Altstadt Wettin e. V. since 2018. The organisation is dedicated to preserving the town’s cultural heritage, which is at risk of being demolished due to modern development.
The bourgeois farmstead dates from the 16th to 17th century and can be traced to the time of the end of the Thirty Years’ War via written sources. From 1681, the building served as the town’s pharmacy, as indicated by remnants of an 18th-century baroque stucco ceiling and an Apotheke vault.
Construction work at the farmstead has uncovered a hoard of 17th-century coins in the gate area leading to the central courtyard. Archaeologists found 285 silver coins in layers of compacted soil, which were sent to the restoration workshop of the LDA Saxony-Anhalt.
Image Credit : Juraj Liptak
The hoard was likely deposited in the late 1650’s, with more than half of the coins being silver thalers, a currency used by several states of Northern Germany, first under the Holy Roman Empire, then by the German Confederation. The rest of the hoard consists of thaler fragments and various groschen coins.
Among the hoard are the so-called Schreckenberg grochen coins and Albertus thalers minted in the Spanish Netherlands. There are also coins minted by the German emperors, the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg, the Archduke Albert VII of Austria, and King Philip IV of Spain.
According to the LDA: “In addition to its scientific significance, the Wettin coin find is also an excellent example of the important contributions that voluntary work in close cooperation with the responsible authorities for the preservation of buildings and archaeological monuments can make to our knowledge of the history of Saxony-Anhalt.”
Header Image Credit : Juraj Liptak
Sources : State Office for Monument Preservation and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt
This content was originally published on www.heritagedaily.com – © 2023 – HeritageDaily
Archaeologists from the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences have been excavating a burial ground associated with the Finnic Muromians.
The Finnic Muromians were groups of settlers that lived within the vicinity of the Volga and Oka rivers. They spoke Muromian, an Uralic language that became extinct following their assimilation by the Slavs.
The burial ground, which dates from the early 10th century AD, was discovered on the eastern bank of the Oka river, located in the Nizhny Novgorod Region of Russia.
A total of seventeen burial pits have been identified, nine of which have been severely damaged through looting.
The surviving 8 burials contain the remains of four children, two women, and two men.
The men were accompanied with an ornate collection of grave goods, including arrowheads, knives, bronze bracelets, iron plates, a bronze buckle, and a whetstone.
At the bottom of one of the pits is a heavily corroded axe, along with a flint that has traces of iron-coated embossed leather and textile threads.
The burials containing women were also accompanied with high status funerary goods, such as a necklace of red-brown prismatic and dark blue berry-shaped beads of Byzantine origin, signet ring-shaped pendants, plate bracelets, a bronze spiral, and a silver ring.
Traces of wood within the pit fillings suggest that they originally contained a wooden structure, similar to a log house made of thin beams and covered with birch bark.
According to the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences: “The culmination of the discoveries at the site were two clay vessels, testifying to direct and close contacts between the right-bank Muromians and the Old Russian population.”
Header Image Credit : Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Sources : Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences
This content was originally published on www.heritagedaily.com – © 2023 – HeritageDaily
Archaeologists from the State Office for Monument Preservation and Archaeology of Saxony-Anhalt are currently excavating the site of a former gallows in Quedlinburg, Germany.
Gallows are usually wooden structures made of two vertical posts, a horizontal crossbeam, and a hanging noose. They have been used for executing criminals by hanging, a prevalent form of capital punishment in Europe since the Middle Ages.
Archaeologists are currently excavating a gallows site on Galgenberg, or ‘Gallows Hill,’ which was used for public executions by the courts in Quedlinburg from 1662 to 1809.
Excavations have revealed complete and partial burials in the area, along with bone pits containing multiple bundled burials, likely the result of mass executions carried out in a short period.
Image Credit : LDA
According to the State Office for Monument Preservation and Archaeology of Saxony-Anhalt, “these discoveries provide unique insights into penal practices from the Middle Ages and early modern times.”
A burial unrelated to the gallows has also been unearthed, featuring a wooden coffin containing the skeletal remains of an individual buried with a rosary chain.
Archaeologists propose that the burial’s characteristics suggest that the individual was likely a suicide victim, denied burial in consecrated ground so was placed in the cemetery near the gallows.
Also discovered is a so-called ‘revenant grave’, where the skeletal remains of a man was found placed on his back with several large stones placed across his chest.
According to the researchers, the stones were likely placed to prevent the individual from rising as a revenant, which are described as animated corpses in the verbal traditions and lore of many European ethnic groups.
In medieval times, those inflicted with the revenant condition were generally suicide victims, witches, corpses possessed by a malevolent spirit, or the victim of a vampiric attack.
Header Image Credit : LDA
Sources : State Office for Monument Preservation and Archaeology of Saxony-Anhalt
This content was originally published on www.heritagedaily.com – © 2023 – HeritageDaily
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