Secrets of Egyptian painters revealed by chemistry

 

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CNRS

 

IMAGE: PORTRAIT OF RAMSES II FROM TOMB OF NAKHTAMON (C. 1,200 BCE). THE HEADDRESS, NECKLACE, AND ROYAL SCEPTRE WERE TOUCHED UP DURING THE PAINTING’S EXECUTION. view more 

CREDIT: © LAMS-MAFTO, CNRS

Within the scope of a vast research program undertaken in coordination with the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities and the University of Liège, an international team—including scientists from the CNRS, Sorbonne University, and Université Grenoble Alpes—has revealed the artistic license exercised in two ancient Egyptian funerary paintings (dating to ~1,400 and ~1,200 BCE, respectively), as evident in newly discovered details invisible to the naked eye. Their findings are published in PLOS ONE (12 July).

The language of ancient Egypt has no known word for ‘art’. Its civilization is often perceived as having been extremely formal in its creative expression, the works completed by the painters of its funerary chapels being no exception.

Yet an international, multidisciplinary team1 led by CNRS researchers Philippe Martinez and Philippe Walter has brought to light pictorial techniques and practices whose faint traces had long allowed them to elude detection. While studying the likeness of Ramses II in the tomb of Nakhtamon2 and the paintings of Menna’s3 tomb—among hundreds of other nobles’ tombs in Luxor—they found signs of touch-ups made to the paintings in the course of their production.

For example, the headdress, necklace, and sceptre in the image of Ramses II were substantially reworked, though this is invisible to the naked eye. And in a scene of adoration depicted in Menna’s tomb, the position and colour of an arm were modified. The pigments used to represent skin colour differ from those first applied, resulting in subtle changes whose purpose still remains uncertain. Thus, these painters, or ‘draughtsmen-scribes’—at the request of the individuals who commissioned their works, or at the initiative of the artists themselves as their own vision of the works changed—could add their personal touches to conventional motifs.

The scientists relied on novel, portable tools enabling nondestructive in situ chemical analysis and imaging to make their discovery. Altered by time and physicochemical changes, the colours in these paintings have lost their original appearance. But the chemical analysis performed by the scientists, together with their 3D digital reconstructions of the works using photogrammetry and macrophotography, should make it possible to restore the original hues—and change our perception of these masterpieces, too often viewed as static artefacts.

The team’s research demonstrates that pharaonic art and the conditions of its production were certainly more dynamic and complex than once thought. The next mission of the scientists will be to analyse other paintings in the search for new signs of the craftsmanship and intellectual identities of ancient Egyptian draughtsmen-scribes.

Notes

1. The team in France is based at the Laboratory of Molecular and Structural Archaeology (CNRS/Sorbonne University) and the Institut Néel (CNRS). Its work is part of an ambitious program coordinated with the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities and the University of Liège.
2. Nakhtamon was a priest responsible for the daily provisioning of altars in the Ramesseum, or ‘House of Millions of Years’, of Ramses II.
3. Menna held the title of Overseer of the Fields of the Lord of the Two Lands (i.e., Upper and Lower Egypt) and was responsible for their agricultural production.

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Daughters breastfed longer, and women accumulated greater wealth in ancient California matriarchal society

 

IMAGE: WOMAN MEASURING A STRAND OF SHELL BEADS IN A PHOTO TAKEN IN 1918. view more 

CREDIT: JOHN P. HARRINGTON

In a new study, researchers and members of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area are the first to publish evidence of wealth-driven patterns in maternal investment among ancient populations.

Ancestors of the Muwekma Ohlone living 2,000 years ago at Kalawwasa Rummeytak in present-day Silicon Valley in California’s San Francisco Bay Area, placed high value on women’s economic contributions to their communities, according to the study. Women stayed in the villages in which they were born, and their male partners moved from their birth communities to join their wives’ families. Women’s intimate knowledge of the local ecology and female ownership of important food resources appears to have incentivized parents to invest more in their female offspring by breastfeeding them longer. It may have also led to female-biased wealth disparities, as older women at the site were buried with much greater wealth than men.

“Ohlone ancestors living at Kalawwasa Rummeytak relied heavily on women’s contributions to the economy, so they structured their marriage and family systems around women to keep them in their natal communities,” said Dr. Alexandra Greenwald, anthropologist at the University of Utah and curator of ethnography at the Natural History Museum of Utah. “We can also see that placing a high value on women’s contributions led to greater investment in their well-being as children and created greater opportunities for them to accumulate wealth and prestige over their lifetimes.”

Over the past four decades, the Muwekma Ohlone tribal leadership has had oversight over many of the tribe’s ancestral heritage sites within their ethnohistoric home of the San Francisco Bay Area. The Muwekma Ohlone Language Committee has renamed many of the tribe’s cemetery, village sites and sacred places to counter the colonial legacies and politics of erasure perpetrated by the Spanish Empire, and the ensuing American conquest of California. In 2001, the tribe’s language committee renamed a cemetery site located in the City of Santa Clara where the tribe and San Jose State University staff and students recovered 24 ancestral remains. The site’s name, Kalawwasa Rummeytak, means Place of the Calabazas Creek Site.

“Given the fact that there was no funding for analysis or reburial, our team produced a preliminary report on the excavation and skeletal analysis,” said Muwekma Ohlone Tribal Vice-Chairwoman Monica V. Arellano and co-author of the study. “The Muwekma Ohlone Tribal Council voted to support the proposed research that has become the current published study.”

The study published on July 12, 2023, in The American Journal of Biological Anthropology.

The authors, led by Greenwald, used Strontium isotopes to assess Ohlone ancestors’ movement across the landscape throughout their lives. Strontium is incorporated into a person’s tissues from the water they drink, which bears the local geological signature. By sampling from tissues like bone and teeth that grow at specific points in an individual’s life, archaeologists can track the person’s movement. The analysis revealed that the group practiced a matrilocal kinship system where men marry and move into their wife’s village.

In other societies that follow a matrilocal kinship system, mothers invest more resources into their daughters who remain in their community and contribute to the local economy. To test whether Kalawwasa Rummeytak mothers prioritized their female offspring, the authors were interested in examining how they breastfed their children. Because lactation is costly to mothers from a caloric and time perspective, scientists considered weaning age an important measure of parental investment among mammals.

To reconstruct the infant and childhood diets of Kalawwasa Rummeytak residents, the authors measured carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios contained in permanent first molars. First molars begin forming at birth and grow in layers, akin to tree rings. These layers incorporate isotopic signatures from the food that the infant is consuming, and can be tied directly to the age of the individual when the layer was formed. 

“Infants who are breastfeeding exhibit greater nitrogen enrichment because they’re consuming breastmilk, which is synthesized from their mother’s bodily tissues,” Greenwald explained. “Using this method, we could track down to the month how long each individual at Kalawwasa Rummeytak was breastfed.”

On average, the women interred at the site were breastfed five months longer than the males, suggesting that parents prioritized their female offspring’s nutrition. On average, girls were weaned at 36 months, and boys at 31 months. When comparing the average weaning age of individuals who were born at the site, and those who moved there in early adulthood, the authors found a significant difference. Locals were breastfed an average of 42 months versus 32.5 months for non-locals.

Not only were women at Kalawwasa Rummeytak breastfed longer as girls, but they also held a disproportionate amount of wealth. Prior to contact with the Spanish and Euromericans, Indigenous Californians developed a form of money using shell beads. Individuals buried with large quantities of beads are assumed by archaeologists to have achieved greater wealth and status in their lifetime. At Kalawwasa Rummeytak, only older women are interred with shell beads. 

“This case stands out as the most definitive example in ancient California of burial wealth concentrated among women,” said coauthor Gregory Burns of the University of Utah, an expert in the shell bead economy.

The findings highlight the flexibility human societies to shift their kinship strategies in response to local ecological conditions.

“Our tribal leadership is honored to have worked and co-authored with these scholars and hopefully such analyses will leave our tribal membership, Native Americans and the scientific community a meaningful legacy that contributes to the understanding of our ancestral lifeways and adaptive strategies left by our ancestors,” said Vice Chairwoman Arellano.

Other authors of the study include Jelmer Eerkens of the University of California, Davis, Eric Bartelink of California State University, Chico, Muwekma Ohlone Archaeologist Alan Leventhal of San Jose State University, and Monica Arellano, vice chairwoman of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area and vice president of Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, Inc.

Giant stone artefacts found on rare Ice Age site in Kent

 

IMAGE: THE LARGEST GIANT HANDAXE view more 

CREDIT: ARCHAEOLOGY SOUTH-EAST/ UCL

UCL press 

Researchers at the UCL Institute of Archaeology have discovered some of the largest early prehistoric stone tools in Britain.

The excavations, which took place in Kent and were commissioned in advance of development of the Maritime Academy School in Frindsbury, revealed prehistoric artefacts in deep Ice Age sediments preserved on a hillside above the Medway Valley.

The researchers, from UCL Archaeology South-East, discovered 800 stone artefacts thought to be over 300,000 years old, buried in sediments which filled a sinkhole and ancient river channel, outlined in their research, published in Internet Archaeology.

Amongst the unearthed artefacts were two extremely large flint knives described as “giant handaxes”. Handaxes are stone artefacts which have been chipped, or “knapped,” on both sides to produce a symmetrical shape with a long cutting edge. Researchers believe this type of tool was usually held in the hand and may have been used for butchering animals and cutting meat. The two largest handaxes found at the Maritime site have a distinctive shape with a long and finely worked pointed tip, and a much thicker base.

Senior Archaeologist Letty Ingrey (UCL Institute of Archaeology), said: “We describe these tools as ‘giants’ when they are over 22cm long and we have two in this size range. The biggest, a colossal 29.5cm in length, is one of the longest ever found in Britain. ‘Giant handaxes’ like this are usually found in the Thames and Medway regions and date from over 300,000 years ago.

“These handaxes are so big it’s difficult to imagine how they could have been easily held and used. Perhaps they fulfilled a less practical or more symbolic function than other tools, a clear demonstration of strength and skill. While right now, we aren’t sure why such large tools were being made, or which species of early human were making them, this site offers a chance to answer these exciting questions.”

The site is thought to date to a period in the early prehistory of Britain when Neanderthal people and their cultures were beginning to emerge and may even have shared the landscape with other early human species. The Medway Valley at this time would have been a wild landscape of wooded hills and river valleys, inhabited by red deer and horses, as well as less familiar mammals such as the now-extinct straight-tusked elephant and lion.

While archaeological finds of this age, including another spectacular ‘giant’ handaxe, have been found in the Medway Valley before, this is the first time they have been found as part of large-scale excavation, offering the opportunity to glean more insights into the lives of their makers.

Dr Matt Pope (UCL Institute of Archaeology), said: “The excavations at the Maritime Academy have given us an incredibly valuable opportunity to study how an entire Ice Age landscape developed over a quarter of a million years ago. A programme of scientific analysis, involving specialists from UCL and other UK institutions, will now help us to understand why the site was important to ancient people and how the stone artefacts, including the ‘giant handaxes’ helped them adapt to the challenges of Ice Age environments.”

The research team is now working on identifying and studying the recovered artefacts to better understand who created them and what they were used for.

Senior Archaeologist Giles Dawkes (UCL Institute of Archaeology) is leading work on a second significant find from the site – a Roman cemetery, dating to at least a quarter of a million years later than the Ice Age activity. The people buried here between the first and fourth centuries AD could have been the inhabitants of a suspected nearby villa that may have lain around 850 metres to the south.

The team found the remains of 25 individuals, 13 of which were cremated. Nine of the buried individuals were found with goods or personal items including bracelets, and four were interred in wooden coffins. Collections of pottery and animal bones found nearby likely relate to feasting rituals at the time of burial. Though Roman buildings and structures have been extensively excavated, cemeteries have historically been less of a focus for archaeologists and the discovery of this site offers potentially new insights into the burial customs and traditions of both the Romans who lived at the villa, and those in the nearby town of Rochester.

Jody Murphy, Director of Education at the Thinking Schools Academy Trust said: "We, at Maritime Academy and the Thinking Schools Academy Trust, feel very lucky to be a part of this phenomenal discovery. We take great pride in our connection to our local community and region, with much of our school identity linked to the history of Medway. We look forward to taking advantage of this unique opportunity to teach our young people about these finds, creating a lasting legacy for those who came before us."

 

Tombs rich in artifacts discovered by Swedish expedition in Cyprus

Reports and Proceedings

UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG

 

IMAGE: DETAIL OF THE ”BULL DIADEM” (C. 1350 BCE) view more 

CREDIT: P.M. FISCHER

“Considering the richness of the grave goods, it is a reasonable assumption that these were royal tombs, even though we do not know much about the form of government practiced in the city at the time. Undoubtedly those buried here were part in the city’s government,” says Peter Fischer, professor of archaeology and leader of the expedition.

The tombs, located outside the 50-hectare Bronze Age city, consist of underground chambers accessed via a narrow passage from the surface. The chambers varied in size, measuring up to 4 x 5 metres.

More than 500 artifacts
The Swedish Söderberg expedition, which has been excavating in Hala Sultan Tekke near the city of Larnaca on the south coast of Cyprus since 2010, has previously found chamber tombs with valuable grave goods. What distinguishes the newly discovered chamber tombs from those previously excavated is the sheer quantity of artifacts and their superb quality.

“We found more than 500 complete artifacts distributed among two tombs. Many of the artifacts consist of precious metals, gems, ivory and high-quality ceramics.”

About half of the artifacts were imported from neighbouring cultures. Gold and ivory came from Egypt. Precious stones, such as blue lapis lazuli, dark red carnelian and blue-green turquoise, were imported from Afghanistan, India and Sinai respectively. The tombs also contain amber objects from the Baltic region.

The tombs were discovered using magnetometers, a type of instrument that can produce images showing objects and structures up to two metres beneath the surface.

“We compared the site where broken pottery had been ploughed during farming with the magnetometer map, which showed large cavities one to two metres below the surface. This led us to continue investigating the area and to discover the tombs.”

Woman buried with one-year-old
The several well-preserved skeletons in the tombs include that of a woman surrounded by dozens of ceramic vessels, jewellery and a round bronze mirror that was once polished. A one-year-old child with a ceramic toy lay beside her.

“Several individuals, both men and women, wore diadems, and some had necklaces with pendants of the highest quality, probably made in Egypt during the 18th dynasty at the time of such pharaohs as Thutmos III and Amenophis IV (Akhenaten) and his wife Nefertiti.”

Embossed images of bulls, gazelles, lions and flowers adorn the diadems. Most of the ceramic vessels came from what we now call Greece, and the expedition also found pots from Turkey, Syria, Palestine and Egypt.

The grave goods also included bronze weapons, some inlaid with ivory, and a gold-framed seal made of the hard mineral haematite with inscriptions of gods and rulers.

“The vast wealth of the entombed individuals came from the production of copper. Nearby mines in the Troodos Mountains produced copper ore, which was refined in the city. This port city then exported the refined metal in large quantities to neighbouring cultures. Copper was an important commodity because, combined with tin, it becomes the hard alloy bronze, which gave its name to the Bronze Age,” says Peter Fischer.

Read more about the excavations here:

• Department of Antiquities of Cyprus
• Season 2023 | Swedish Archaeology in Jordan, Palestine and Cyprus, Peter Fischer

Archaeology: The power of the Copper Age 'Ivory Lady' revealed

 

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SCIENTIFIC REPORTS

The highest status individual in ancient Copper Age society in Iberia, was a woman and not a man as previously thought, according to peptide analysis reported in Scientific Reports. The individual, now re-dubbed the 'Ivory Lady', was buried in a tomb filled with the largest collection of rare and valuable items in the region, including ivory tusks, high-quality flint, ostrich eggshell, amber, and a rock crystal dagger. These findings reveal the high status women could hold in this ancient society.

In 2008, an individual was discovered in a tomb in Valencia, Spain dating to the Copper Age between 3,200 and 2,200 years ago. As well as being a rare example of a single occupancy burial, the grave contained a large number of valuable goods, suggesting that this individual — originally thought to be a young male aged between 17 and 25 years.  — held a high status within society.

Marta Cintas‑Peña and colleagues used amelogenin peptide analysis to test for the presence of the sexually-dimorphic enamel-forming protein amelogenin in the teeth of the specimen. Analysis of a molar and an incisor detected the presence of the AMELX gene — which produces amelogenin and is located on the X chromosome — indicating that the individual was female rather than male. According to the authors, this means that the highest ranked person in Iberian Copper Age society was a woman. Additionally, the lack of grave goods in infant burials suggests that, in this period, individuals were not granted high status by birth rite. The authors therefore suggest that the Ivory Lady achieved her status through merit and achievements in life.

The authors report that no male of similarly high status has yet been found. As the only comparably lavish Copper Age tomb in the region, containing at least 15 women, was found next to the grave of the ‘Ivory Lady’ and is presumed to have been built by people who claimed descent from her. This suggests that women occupied positions of leadership in Iberian Copper Age society.

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JOURNAL

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.1038/s41598-023-36368-x 

Legends of Norse Settlers drove Denmark towards Greenland

 In 985, Viking explorer Erik the Red led a group of Icelandic farmers to Greenland, where they established a settlement on the west coast. Archaeological evidence suggests that the settlement existed for over 400 years, but the impact of the settlement lasted much longer. It is little recognised today that the hope of finding the descendants of the settlers dominated European and American perspectives on Greenland for centuries

In his new book The Vanished Settlers of Greenland: In Search of a Legend and Its Legacy, Associate Professor Robert Rix argues that the lost Norse settlement played a decisive role in Denmark’s efforts to colonise Greenland during the 18th century.

“Like other New World lands, Greenland became part of European history as a place where a hunt for resources took place. Denmark's possession of Greenland and its waters was challenged especially by the Dutch and the English. Danish claims to the island relied in large parts on the memory of the settlers. Therefore, several manuscripts, books, and maps were produced not only reminding competitors of the settlers but also promoting the idea that their descendants were still cultivating Greenland fields,” says Robert Rix.

He adds:

“The loss of communication with Norse Greenland in the early 15th century gave rise to speculations about the settlers’ fate, and many believed that the settlement still stood. This led to numerous attempts at contacting them, not least because rumours of the settlement’s wealth were circulating in European books. King Christian IV launched as many as three expeditions to look for the vanished settlers and their riches.”

The actual colonisation began in 1721 with the establishment of a colony by missionary Hans Egede, who wanted to convert the Inuit to Christianity and to finance the colony by reconnecting with the Norse settlement and exploiting its resources.

The fantasy of an unspoilt Norse civilisation

Just as other expeditions before his, Egede’s failed to locate the Norsemen, and during the 19th century people began to accept that the Norse settlers were no longer to be found in Greenland.

“Instead, scientists and explorers turned their attention to other parts of the Arctic as potential locations where the vanished settlers might have emigrated. Between 1870 and 1920 this inspired the publication of many adventure stories about isolated colonies of Norsemen, supposed descendants of the bold Viking explorers, who were strong, healthy, and physically impressive,” remarks Robert Rix.

According to Rix, the wide fascination with the Norse settlers in Western culture reflected public anxieties about the detrimental effects of immigration and the decline of civilisation.

“This fantasy is in line with a general critique of supposedly impure societies, which gained prevalence with the advent of eugenics. The fictional Arctic colonies had become communities frozen in time that served as an antidote to the cultural and physical decline of modernity.”

Well into the 20th century, it was hoped that the descendants of the settlers could be found. On a 1912 expedition to Canada’s Victoria Island, the explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson discovered Inuit of a slender build and red-brownish hair. He measured their heads and came to the conclusion that they were descendants of the European settlers who had survived by mixing with the Indigenous population.

The existence of ‘Blond Eskimos’ became a huge media sensation. Modern DNA analysis has disproven any Norse ancestry, but at the time Stefansson’s claim rekindled the old hope that the mystery of the vanished settlers’ fate could be solved.

The Vanished Settlers of Greenland: In Search of a Legend and Its Legacy has been published by Cambridge University Press.

Shattering the myth of men as hunters and women as gatherers

 

IMAGE: THE RESEARCH COMPILED EVIDENCE FROM AROUND THE WORLD TO SHOW THAT WOMEN PARTICIPATE IN SUBSISTENCE HUNTING IN THE MAJORITY OF CULTURES. view more 

CREDIT: MOHAMED_HASSAN, PIXABAY, CC0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/PUBLICDOMAIN/ZERO/1.0/)

Analysis of data from dozens of foraging societies around the world shows that women hunt in at least 79 percent of these societies, opposing the widespread belief that men exclusively hunt and women exclusively gather. Abigail Anderson of Seattle Pacific University, US, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on June 28, 2023: 

 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0287101

A common belief holds that, among foraging populations, men have typically hunted animals while women gathered plant products for food. However, mounting archaeological evidence from across human history and prehistory is challenging this paradigm; for instance, women in many societies have been found buried alongside big-game hunting tools.

Some researchers have suggested that women’s role as hunters was confined to the past, with more recent foraging societies following the paradigm of men as hunters and women as gatherers. To investigate that possibility, Anderson and colleagues analyzed data from the past 100 years on 63 foraging societies around the world, including societies in North and South America, Africa, Australia, Asia, and the Oceanic region.

They found that women hunt in 79 percent of the analyzed societies, regardless of their status as mothers. More than 70 percent of female hunting appears to be intentional—as opposed to opportunistic killing of animals encountered while performing other activities, and intentional hunting by women appears to target game of all sizes, most often large game.

The analysis also revealed that women are actively involved in teaching hunting practices and that they often employ a greater variety of weapon choice and hunting strategies than men.

These findings suggest that, in many foraging societies, women are skilled hunters and play an instrumental role in the practice, adding to the evidence opposing long-held perceptions about gender roles in foraging societies. The authors note that these stereotypes have influenced previous archaeological studies, with, for instance, some researchers reluctant to interpret objects buried with women as hunting tools. They call for reevaluation of such evidence and caution against misapplying the idea of men as hunters and women as gatherers in future research. 

The authors add: “Evidence from around the world shows that women participate in subsistence hunting in the majority of cultures.”