Vikings, Emojis and Michaelmas: Medieval News Round-up

This week's news from the medievalverse has Anders Winroth talking about his new book The Age of the Vikings, funding for Newport's medieval ship, and Buzzfeed talking another look at medieval images.

Today (September 29th) is also Michaelmas, the Christian feast of St. Michael the Archangel. During the Middle Ages it was an important feastday.

Boat, oyster shells, coins and an Anglo-Saxon gravestone - what has been found from the Middle Ages

Some recent news on what medieval items people are finding in England and Wales...

Archaeologists working in Norfolk have discovered the remains of a boat which could be as much as 600 years old. The boat was found along the River Chet near Loddon, with some of its wooden timbers, iron and copper alloy nails. The vessel would originally have been about six metres long and would have had a sail.

This is the first time that a medieval vessel has been discovered in Norfolk, according to site archaeologist Heather Wallis. She explains, "We think it dates between 1400 and 1600 AD and is very well preserved. It might have been used for carrying lighter good on the river."

Click here to read reports from the BBC, Beccles and Bungay Journal and Eastern Daily Press.

A group of amateur archaeologists are working in Northampton, where they are doing digs to find remains of the town's medieval castle. John Duthie, one of the organizers of the dig, said in their last search, “We actually found a piece of the castle - a large piece of sandstone. We also found oyster shells and pieces of pottery which look to be medieval. They’re now being checked over by a professional archaeologist and we’re really delighted with the finds. For only a small dig, we found a great deal.”

The group of amateur archaeologists do digs of one-square metre around the site of the former castle, which was torn down in the 19th century so the land could be used for the town's railway station.

You can read more from the Northampton Chronicle and Echo.

The next two articles are a little odd. First, when Ifor Edwards dropped his keys somewhere on his farm near the Welsh village of Bronington, he called in spme metal-detecting experts from the Wrexham Heritage Society to help find them.

Not only did they find the keys, but also 14 coins dating from the later Middle Ages. Mr. Edwards told the Shropshire Star, “It is a once in a lifetime thing. It is such a shock, you just can’t quite believe it. You realize those coins were there before they ever found America or anything. You just can’t believe you’re holding something that is 600 and something years old. We only bought the land three years ago and nothing like this has ever been found before.”

You can read more from the Shropshire Star.

An even bigger discovery was made in a garage in Surrey - an auctioneer clearing out a house stumbled across a ninth-century gravestone. The 1,100-year-old stone is carved with Christian symbols, including an early Christian Celtic-form cross enclosed by a halo, with a panel of geometric carving below.

Guy Schwinge from the auctioneering house Duke's of Dorchester, told the Daily Mail, "Our valuer spotted the grave marker at the back of the garage, partially obscured by cardboard boxes and garden tools. To the untrained eye the gravestone appears insignificant, but closer examination of the carved decoration and detailed research has enabled experts to identify the object as an Anglo-Saxon grave marker, which probably dates from the time of Alfred the Great."

The gravestone has been sold at auction for £4,300. Click here to read more from the Daily Mail.

Famed Roman shipwreck reveals more secrets

Ancient artifacts resembling the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient bronze clockwork astronomical calculator, may rest amid the larger-than-expected Roman shipwreck that yielded the device in 1901.


Marine archaeologists report they have uncovered new secrets of an ancient Roman shipwreck famed for yielding an amazingly sophisticated astronomical calculator. An international survey team says the ship is twice as long as originally thought and contains many more calcified objects amid the ship's lost cargo that hint at new discoveries.

At the Archaeological Institute of America meeting Friday in Seattle, marine archaeologist Brendan Foley of the Woods Hole (Mass.) Oceanographic Institution, will report on the first survey of Greece's famed Antikythera island shipwreck since 1976. The ancient Roman shipwreck was lost off the Greek coast around 67 BC,filled with statues and the famed astronomical clock.

"The ship was huge for ancient times," Foley says. "Divers a century ago just couldn't conduct this kind of survey but we were surprised when we realized how big it was."

Click here to read this article from USA Today

Denmark’s only medieval rowboat dated

Researchers have now assigned a date to the sensational find of a rowboat. The dating cements the small vessel’s position as Denmark’s only preserved medieval rowboat.


Archaeologists in the Danish town of Vordingborg have every reason to be excited.

During a recent excavation of the moat surrounding the Vordingborg Castle ruins, they came across a fallen castle tower and a rowboat from the Middle Ages. The latter has never previously been found in Denmark.

Lars Sass Jensen, who headed the excavation, says that a dating of the boat’s wooden planks reveals that the little vessel was in its prime around the year 1400.

“A tree-ring dating of the rowboat reveals that the wood that the boat was built of was felled around the year 1390. So a good estimate would be that the boat has been sailing around in the moat around the year 1400,” he says.

With this dating, the soon-to-be-opened Danish Castle Centre in Vordingborg can boast of housing Denmark’s only preserved medieval rowboat.

Click here to read this article from ScienceNordic

The Mary Rose archers were among the elite soldiers of the 16th century, research reveals

The archers who fought on Henry VIII’s warship the Mary Rose, which sank in 1545, would have been elite soldiers for their time, standing over 6 feet tall and able to pull weights over 200 lbs. These findings come from a new research project being carried out by sports scientists at Swansea University and the Mary Rose Trust to discover more about the lives of the 16th century archers on board the ship.

When the ship was raised from the Solent in 1982, many thousands of medieval artefacts along with 92 fairly complete skeletons of the crew of the Mary Rose were recovered.

Nick Owen, Sport and Exercise Biomechanist from the College of Engineering at Swansea University said, “This sample of human remains offers a unique opportunity to study activity related changes in human skeletons. It is documented that there was a company of archers aboard when the ship sank, at a time when many archers came from Wales and the South West of England."

Click here to read this article from Early Modern England

Newport’s Medieval Ship could have been Basque

The origins of the Newport Medieval Ship may have finally been solved – with new research announced yesterday pointing to the north of Spain.

 Thanks to recent advances in tree-ring dating, experts have obtained the first scientific evidence that the ship may come from the Basque Country.

 A Basque origin had been suspected for some time but it was only with research into the ship's timbers and historic buildings in Northern Spain that the new results were possible.

 Experts from the University of Wales Trinity Saint David and the Arkeolan Foundation based in the Basque town of Irun had conducted the research.

Click here to read this article from the South Argus Wales

Medieval shipwreck found in Danube river

Hungarian archaeologists have found what they believe may be an intact medieval shipwreck in the Danube river. Partially buried in mud and gravel near the riverbank at Tahitótfalu, some 18 miles north of Budapest, the flat bottom river wreck has yet to be excavated.

 A preliminary survey from the Argonauts Research Group in cooperation with the county museum of Szentendre, revealed that the ship is about 40 feet long and 10 feet wide. The archaeologists could distinguish oak floor-planks, floor-timbers, and L-shaped ribs. They also noticed that the junction piece of the bottom and the side wall of the wreck is carved from a single log.

 "Only a few river ships of this kind have been found in Europe," Attila J. Tóth, associate of the National Office of Cultural Heritage, told Discovery News.

Click here to read this article from Discovery News

800 year old shipwreck discovered in Baltic Sea

An 800-year-old shipwreck has been found by divers off the south coast of Sweden, prompting archaeologists to ponder the potential treasures inside.


Lars Einarsson, underwater archaeologist at the Kalmar County museum, was amazed at the results of the exploration of the ship found off the coast of Sturkö, near Karlskrona. “This is an extraordinary medieval wreck. We’ve found that the wood was cut down between 1250 and 1300,” he told The Local.

The long and narrow ship, measuring 14 by two metres, would have been sleek and fast, and most likely used for attacking and looting.

The ship is 1.8 metres underwater, and is still almost completely buried under the seafloor, which makes for “troublesome diving conditions” according to Einarsson. “When the divers recovered fragments for dating, they were literally ‘looking’ with their hands. The sediment is so easily disturbed that it makes it almost impossible to see what you’re doing. In some ways, it would be easier if the ship was ten times deeper.”


Click here to read this article from The Local


See also Iron and sulphur compounds threaten old shipwrecks

‘Lost Fleet’ discovered in medieval cellar

A project to clear rubbish from a cellar in the English village of Winchelsea has led to the discovery of a series of medieval graffiti inscriptions that are being hailed as being nationally significant.

 The inscriptions, located in a medieval undercroft beneath Blackfriar’s Barn, were first identified by builders carrying out repair work prior to the National Trust opening the cellar to the public this summer. A recent survey of the inscriptions, undertaken by medieval graffiti specialist Matthew Champion, has identified a whole series of large-scale medieval ship inscriptions; leading to the discovery being referred to as Winchelsea’s ‘Lost Fleet’.

 The undercroft at Blackfriar’s Barn is believed to have been built in the early fourteenth century, dating back to the time when Winchelsea was a bustling south coast trading port. The town was constructed on the orders of Edward I after the former settlement of ‘old winchelsea’ was lost to the sea, and it soon became one of the busiest ports in southern England. However, a series of French seaborne attacks, culminating in their sack of the town in the 1380s, led to the slow decline of this once bustling port into the picturesque village that survives today.

Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net

World's 'oldest fish trap' found off coast of Sweden

Wooden fish traps said to be some 9,000 years old have been found in the Baltic Sea off Sweden, possibly the oldest such traps in existence.

 Marine archaeologists from Stockholm's Sodertorn University found finger-thick hazel rods grouped on the sea bed. They are thought to be the remains of stationary basket traps.

 "This is the world's oldest find when it comes to fishing," said Johan Ronnby, a professor in marine archaeology.

 Arne Sjostrom, a fellow archaeologist who worked on the Sodertorn project, said the sticks seemed to have been used as a "sort of fence to lead the fish into a creel or they were part of the actual creel".

Click here to read this article from the BBC

See also Landscapes Lost. Exploring the Early Holocene sub-marine landscapes in Hanöbukten, Southern Sweden

Two Roman shipwrecks found in deep waters around Greece

Two Roman-era shipwrecks have been found in deep water off a western Greek island, challenging the conventional theory that ancient shipmasters stuck to coastal routes rather than risking the open sea, an official said Tuesday.

 Greece's culture ministry said the two third-century wrecks were discovered earlier this month during a survey of an area where a Greek-Italian gas pipeline is to be sunk. They lay between 1.2 and 1.4 kilometers (0.7-0.9 miles) deep in the sea between Corfu and Italy. That would place them among the deepest known ancient wrecks in the Mediterranean, apart from remains found in 1999 of an older vessel some 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) deep off Cyprus.

 Angeliki Simossi, head of Greece's underwater antiquities department, said sunken ancient ships are generally found 30-40 meters (100-130 feet) deep. Most scholars believe that ancient traders were unwilling to veer far offshore, unlike warships which were unburdened by ballast and cargo.

 "There are many Roman shipwrecks, but these are in deep waters. They were not sailing close to the coast," Simossi said.


 "The conventional theory was that, as these were small vessels up to 25 meters (80 feet) long, they did not have the capacity to navigate far from the coast, so that if there was a wreck they would be close enough to the coast to save the crew," she said.

Click here to read this article from NRToday

Newport's medieval ship set to mark decade of discovery

A decade of the Newport Medieval Ship will be celebrated next month at the site of the original discovery.

 ‘The Newport Medieval Ship: A Decade of Discovery’ event will be held at The Riverfront on June 1. Visitors will be taken on a journey from the initial excavation to present day discoveries.

 Speakers will include the Friends of the Newport Ship and local historian Bob Trett. The National Poet of Wales Gillian Clarke will also debut her poem marking the anniversary.

Click here to read this article from the South Wales Argus Click here to see more videos about the Newport Ship

Iron and sulphur compounds threaten old shipwrecks

Sulphur and iron compounds have now been found in shipwrecks both in the Baltic and off the west coast of Sweden. The group behind the results, presented in the Journal of Archaeological Science, includes scientists from the University of Gothenburg and Stockholm University.

A few years ago scientists reported large quantities of sulphur and iron compounds in the salvaged 17th century warship Vasa, resulting in the development of sulphuric acid and acidic salt precipitates on the surface of the hull and loose wooden objects.

Similar sulphur compounds have now been discovered also in other shipwrecks both from the Baltic and off the west coast of Sweden, including fellow 17th century warships Kronan, Riksnyckeln and Stora Sofia, the 17th century merchant vessel in Gothenburg known as the Göta wreck, and the Viking ships excavated at Skuldelev in Denmark.

Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net

Research uncovers new details about John Cabot’s voyage to North America

Evidence that a Florentine merchant house financed the earliest English voyages to North America, has been published on-line in the academic journal Historical Research. 

The article by Dr Francesco Guidi-Bruscoli, a member of a project based at the University of Bristol, indicates that the Venetian merchant John Cabot (alias Zuan Caboto) received funding in April 1496 from the Bardi banking house in London.

The payment of 50 nobles (£16 13s. 4d.) was made so that ‘Giovanni Chabotte’ of Venice, as he is styled in the document, could undertake expeditions ‘to go and find the new land’.

Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net

Smuggled cargo found on Roman shipwreck

Evidence of ancient smuggling activity has emerged from a Roman shipwreck, according to Italian archaeologists who have investigated the vessel's cargo.

Dating to the third century AD, the large sunken ship was fully recovered six months ago at a depth of 7 feet near the shore of Marausa Lido, a beach resort near Trapani.

Her cargo, officially consisting of assorted jars once filled with walnuts, figs, olives, wine, oil and fish sauce, also contained many unusual tubular tiles.

The unique tiles were apparently valuable enough for sailors to smuggle them from North Africa to Rome, where they sold for higher prices.

Click here to read this article from Discovery News

Medieval Ship will not be excavated in Estonia

Remnants of a relatively well-preserved 13-century ship discovered under a Tallinn warehouse will remain unresearched for the time being due to a lack of funds.

A recent radiocarbon dating of excavated wooden details conducted by the Tallinn University of Technology put the ship's construction date between 1210 and 1280. There is now reason to believe that the ship, discovered in the fall of 2009 by builders pouring concrete below Lootsi street near the Old City Harbor's D-terminal, is the best-preserved late medieval era ship discovered in Estonia so far.

Click here to read this article from Estonian Public Broadcasting

Sports scientists examine the medieval archers of the Mary Rose

A unique project about the historical warship the Mary Rose which is providing information about life in medieval times is benefitting from 21st century technology.

For the past 18 months the Mary Rose Trust has been working with sports scientists from the College of Engineering at Swansea University to discover more about the lives of the medieval archers on board the ship.

When Henry VIII’s warship, which sunk in 1545, was raised from the Solent in 1982, many thousands of medieval artefacts along with 92 fairly complete skeletons of the crew of the Mary Rose were recovered.

Nick Owen, Sport and Exercise Biomechanist from the College of Engineering at Swansea University said, “This sample of human remains offers a unique opportunity to study activity related changes in human skeletons. It is documented that there was a company of archers aboard when the ship sank, at a time when many archers came from Wales and the South West of England."

Click here to read this article from Early Modern England

Archaeologists begin restoring ancient boat near pyramids

Archaeologists on Monday began restoration on a 4,500-year-old wooden boat found next to the pyramids, one of Egypt's main tourist attractions.

The boat is one of two that were buried next to the Pharaoh Khufu, spokesmen for a joint Egyptian-Japanese team of archeologists said. The boats are believed to have been intended to carry pharaohs into the afterlife.

Khufu, also known as Cheops, is credited with building the Great Pyramid of Giza, the largest of the pyramids. Khufu, son of Snefru, was the second ruler of the 4th Dynasty around 2680 B.C. and ruled Egypt for 23 years.

Both boats, made from Lebanese cedar and Egyptian acacia trees, were originally discovered in 1954. One of the boats is on display at a museum near the pyramids.

The second boat, which is now undergoing the restoration, remained buried. It is thought to be smaller than its sister ship, which is about 140 feet (43 meters) long.

Click here to read this article from TheDailyNewsEgypt.com

Seabed with 13th century Mongol shipwreck may become historic site

The Agency for Cultural Affairs plans to have the seabed off Nagasaki Prefecture where the wreck of a ship believed to have been used by 13th century Mongol invaders has been found declared a national historical site, agency sources said.

The declaration would make the area off Takashima Island in Matsuura, Nagasaki Prefecture, the first underwater ruins to be registered as such a site in Japan. The designation will in principle prohibit the area from being altered.

The agency sees the need to take immediate measures in the area, given that the relics there are expected to provide archeologists with crucial information on the 1274 and 1281 Mongol attacks that, until the discovery of the relatively intact shipwreck, has mostly been available only from documents and drawings.

Click here to read this article from the Japan Times

Istanbul to launch replica of Byzantine ship

Turkey is going to build the perfect replica of a Byzantine ship for scientific purposes. The copy of the medieval ship, nearly 10 metres long and more than 2.5 metres wide, will be put to sea next year under the name ''Yenikapi 12''.

The project of the Istanbul University's Cultural Artifacts Protection and Restoration Department was recently announced by a Turkish news website and ANSAmed has received photos of the initiative from the University. Construction will start this summer and the ship's launch is scheduled "mid-2013". The organisers of the project suggested that visitors will have an opportunity to come on board: "they will have a magnificent experience in a boat from the Middle Ages," they announced.

The ship will be the same type of one of the 36 that were found, along with thousands of other artifacts, during the ongoing excavations for the Istanbul underground that started in Yenikapi in 2004. It will also be exhibited to the public, probably in a museum, before being launched. The shipwrecks that were found on the coasts of Istanbul are estimated to have been constructed between the fifth and 10th century AD, are regarded as the world's largest shipwreck collection, associate professor of the Department that leads the initiative Isil Kocabas said. The ships shed light on the construction technology that was used in the Byzantine era. A doctorate thesis has already shown how the "Yenikapi 12" was designed and constructed, indicating the process of making its replica.

Click here to read this article from ANSAmed