Skeletons Found at Mass Burial Site in Oxford Could Be 10th-Century Viking Raiders

Thirty-seven skeletons found in a mass burial site in the grounds of St John's College may not be who they initially seemed, according to Oxford researchers studying the remains.

When the bodies were discovered in the grounds of the college in 2008 by Thames Valley Archaeological Services, archaeologists speculated that they could have been part of the St Brice's Day Massacre in Oxford -- a well documented event in 1002, in which King Aethelred the Unredy ordered the killing of 'all Danes living in England'.

However, a new research paper, led by Oxford University, has thrown up a new theory -- that the skeletons may have been Viking raiders who were captured and then executed.

The skeletons were found in the ditch of a previously unknown Neolithic henge monument during excavations. They are mostly of men aged between 16 and 25 who were robust and taller than average. There is evidence that each individual was stabbed many times shortly before he died and severe wounds show they were brutally slaughtered. Some of the men also appear to have older scars, which could suggest that they were professional warriors. There is also evidence of charring on some of the skeletons, showing they may have been exposed to burning before burial.

Researchers from the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art at the University of Oxford carried out a chemical analysis of collagen from the bones and the teeth of some of the individuals and concluded that they had had a substantial amount of seafood in their diet. It was higher in marine protein than that found in the local Oxfordshire population, as recorded in existing data.

Testing was done using strontium isotope analysis of tooth enamel, a technique which provides evidence of where an individual lived when the tooth formed. Strontium, a naturally occurring element in rocks and soils, is absorbed by plants and animals, and can be found in trace amounts in mammalian teeth. Strontium isotopes reflect the particular geological conditions so even small traces can be revealing of that individual's location.

They also looked at data relating to previous research in which an isotopic analysis of dismembered skeletons found in a burial pit at the Weymouth Ridgeway in Dorset identified the individuals as Scandinavian Viking raiders. The decapitated skeletons in Dorset, dated at between 890 and 1030 AD, and were thought to be a group of young men from different countries across Scandinavia. The isotopic analysis of the Dorset group and the individuals found in the mass burial site at St John's College show similarities.

Lead author Professor Mark Pollard, Director of the Research Laboratory in the School of Archaeology, said: 'Our latest research suggests that it is possible that the grisly remains at St John's College are the outcome of the documented massacre at St Frideswide's Church in AD 1002. Evidence of knife wounds and the burning of the bodies are consistent with the story of the burning of the church. However, following the chemical analysis of the teeth and bones, we are presented with an alternative interpretation: that they could have been a group of professional warriors, rather than a group of residents of Danish origin who were later rounded up and massacred.'
_____________ References:

Science Daily. 2012. "Skeletons Found at Mass Burial Site in Oxford Could Be 10th-Century Viking Raiders". Science Daily. Posted: May 1, 2012. Available online: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120501204839.htm

A. Pollard, P. Ditchfield, E. Piva, S. Wallis, C. Falys, S. Ford‘sprouting Like Cockle Amongst the Wheat’: The St Brice's Day Massacre and the Isotopic Analysis of Human Bones from St John's College, Oxford. Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 2012; 31 (1): 83 DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0092.2011.00380.x

Formula follows the evolution of writing styles

Few novelists today would have a character say, "It is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known." That is not only because few modern characters ponder death by guillotine, but also because writing styles have changed dramatically since Charles Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities in 1859. So how does literary style evolve? Surprisingly, clues lie in words with seemingly little meaning, such as "to" and "that".

By analysing how writers use such "content-free" words, mathematician Daniel Rockmore and colleagues at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, were able to conduct the first, large-scale "stylometric" analysis of literature.

Content-free words are indicative of writing style, Rockmore says. While two authors might use the same words to describe a similar event, they will use content-free "syntactic glue" to link their words in a different way.

Using the Project Gutenberg digital library, Rockmore's team analysed 7733 English language works written since 1550, tracking how often and in what context content-free words appeared. As you might expect, they found that writers were strongly influenced by their predecessors.

They also found that as the canon of literature grew, the reach of older works shrank. Authors in the earliest periods wrote in a very similar way to one another, the researchers found, probably because they all read the same small body of literature. But approaching the modern era, when more people were writing and more works were available from many eras and numerous styles, authors' styles were still very similar to those of their immediate contemporaries. "It's as if they find dialects in time," says Alex Bentley of the University of Bristol, UK, who was not involved in the study. "Content is what makes us distinctive, but content-free words put us in different groups."

That writers should be most influenced by their contemporaries rather than the great works of the past is interesting, Rockmore says, because it challenges the reach of "classic" literature. When it comes to style at least, perhaps we aren't so strongly influenced by the classics after all.
_______________
References:

Reardon, Sara. 2012. "Formula follows the evolution of writing styles". New Scientist. Posted: May 1, 2012. Available online: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21767-formula-follows-the-evolution-of-writing-styles.html

Bones4Culture: The history of ordinary people

A new project has begun to analyse population, life, health and culture of the people that lived in the German-Danish border lands during the Middle Ages (AD 1050 – 1536).

The Interreg-project Bones4Cultures will allow researchers from Denmark and Germany to examine skeletons of people who lived in the city of Schleswig as well as other parts of the border region during this period.

Learning about identity

The purpose of the project is to provide information about the identity of the medieval and renaissance population of Schleswig town. Historically Schleswig has been both German and Danish and therefore has experienced a turbulent history both ethnically and politically. However, the the area is now one of the most peaceful borders in Europe.

The project aims to show how people lived in this region and where they came from. Were they born and raised in Schleswig town – or were they more mobile coming from other parts of Germany, Denmark or even farther afield?

A knowledge gap

There is a knowledge gap concerning the identity and history of the ordinary people of the Duchies from the early Middle Ages up to the end of the Renaissance.

In Denmark there has been a focus on Danish identity and history and similarly in Germany. There has never been research and dissemination of the identity of populations in the border area. The new research intends to fill this gap in history with a focused effort that uses a completely new technology which will be developed in cooperation between leading research and intermediary institutions in the region.

Researchers from both countries will examine the skeletal remains of approximately 1000 human skeletons during the three year project period and samples will be taken from 350 skeletons for a more detailed chemical and physical analysis.

Conflicts common in the region

From the 6th century onwards ethnic and political conflicts were common in the region. In the medieval context the conflict was accentuated when Schleswig was made a Duchy – demanding increasing independence from the supremacy of the Danish king.

So, from this period onwards the region was increasingly influenced by German culture. Schleswig and its environs remained an area of conflict between Germans and Danes until after the 1st World War when a referendum in 1920 made the northern half Danish and the remainder German. From this point onwards the region has been peaceful and it has acted as an example of good ethnic relations in a mixed region.

In-depth analysis

Project leader, Professor Jesper Boldsen of SDU: “The First step in the Bones4Culture was to create a basis for all the analysis by anthropologically identifying and examining all skeletons excavated in five Schleswig cemeteries. It creates a basis for selecting skeletons for the in depth chemical analyses, and secondly, it creates a database of anthropological knowledge about the medieval population of the city. The database has already provided important knowledge about age and sex composition of the samples; and even more importantly, it has facilitated an analysis of the occurrence of the most dreaded disease in the Middle Ages: leprosy. It appears that leprosy was a very common disease and that the prevalence of the disease declined through from the early to the late Middle Ages. This means that the first step of the project has successfully been completed and that it has produced new insights into the population of the region.”

The selected bone samples will undergo new chemical analyses for detecting strontium, lead and mercury. “Even small amounts of the latter are toxic. Nevertheless, mercury was used to heal certain diseases, lead was part of ceramic glaze of everyday house ware”, explains Professor Kaare Lund Ras-mussen of SDU. The detection of these elements will make it easier for the scientists to study common diseases in the Middle Ages, their treatment and the heavy metal contamination at that time.

Performing a strontium/calcium-analysis, which may be conducted on samples taken from dental matter, can answer questions concerning common diet. “We wish to know who lived on a predominantly vegetarian diet and who ate meat. The strontium isotopes will also give us information on mobility and sedentary lifestyles, because they differ due to regional occurrences”, says Professor Anton Eisenhauer with GEOMAR.

Radiocarbon-dating will be done in order to place the remains into a historical timeline, analysis of the carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen ration (δ15N) will complement the research on diet.
______________
References:

Past Horizons. 2012. "Bones4Culture: The history of ordinary people". Past Horizons. Posted: April 30, 2012. Available online: http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/04/2012/bones4culture-the-history-of-ordinary-people

The bright side of death: Awareness of mortality can result in positive behaviors

Contemplating death doesn't necessarily lead to morose despondency, fear, aggression or other negative behaviors, as previous research has suggested. Following a review of dozens of studies, University of Missouri researchers found that thoughts of mortality can lead to decreased militaristic attitudes, better health decisions, increased altruism and helpfulness, and reduced divorce rates.

"According to terror management theory, people deal with their awareness of mortality by upholding cultural beliefs and seeking to become part of something larger and more enduring than themselves, such as nations or religions," said Jamie Arndt, study co-author and professor of psychological sciences. "Depending on how that manifests itself, positive outcomes can be the result."

For example, in one study American test subjects were reminded of death or a control topic and then either imagined a local catastrophe or were reminded of the global threat of climate change. Their militaristic attitudes toward Iran were then evaluated. After being reminded of death, people who were reminded of climate change were more likely to express lower levels of militarism than those who imagined a local disaster.

"The differences seen in this study resulted from the size of the group with which the test subjects identified," said Ken Vail, lead author and psychology doctoral student. "In both cases, they responded to the awareness of mortality by seeking to protect the relevant groups. When the threat was localized, subjects aggressively defended their local group; but when the threat was globalized, subjects associated themselves with humanity as a whole and became more peaceful and cooperative."

After real catastrophes, such as the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombing, people's heightened fear and awareness of death had both positive and negative effects.

"Both the news media and researchers tended to focus on the negative reaction to these acts of terrorism, such as violence and discrimination against Muslims, but studies also found that people expressed higher degrees of gratitude, hope, kindness and leadership after 9/11." Vail said. "In another example, after the Oklahoma City bombing, divorce rates went down in surrounding counties. After some stimuli escalates one's awareness of death, the positive reaction is to try to reaffirm that the world has positive aspects as well."

In their personal lives, people also were influenced to make positive choices after their awareness of death was increased. Studies found that conscious thoughts of death can inspire intentions to exercise more. Other studies found that keeping mortality in mind can reduce smoking and increase sunscreen use.

Even subconscious awareness of death can more influenced behavior. In one experiment, passers-by who had recently overheard conversations mentioning the value of helping were more likely to help strangers if they were walking within sight of cemeteries.

"Once we started developing this study we were surprised how much research showed positive outcomes from awareness of mortality," said Arndt. "It seems that people may be just as capable of doing the opposite and 'looking on the bright side of death,' as the Monty Python song says."

___________________
References:
EurekAlert. 2012. "The bright side of death: Awareness of mortality can result in positive behaviors". EurekAlert. Posted: April 30, 2012. Available online: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-04/uom-tbs043012.php

Hunting for the world's oldest decorated eggs

South Africa’s Richtersveld coastal desert is a thirsty place. Some rain falls in winter – but not much. Most of the year plants and animals depend on the coastal fogs that develop as the warm desert air meets the cool upwelled waters of the southern Atlantic. To work there, we needed to take all our food with us and relied on a 500-litre plastic water drum strapped to our 4×4, driving two hours to the nearest town to refill it every ten days. It’s an environment populated by a huge variety of reptile and insect life, including cockroaches the size of Amazon’s Kindle.

Surviving marginal environments

Yet hunter-gatherers survived in this and other arid regions of southern Africa for tens of thousands of years without conveniences like Land Rovers or plastic containers. How did they do it? This is what our team of archaeologists from the Universities of Cambridge and Toronto travelled to Sub-Saharan Africa to find out: how early members of our species, and perhaps even earlier hominins, colonised and made a living in marginal environments like the sub-arid Richtersveld.

The answers lie in the fragments of ostrich eggshell buried in 60,000 years’ worth of silty archaeological deposits trapped by the natural rock-shelter – called Spitzkloof A – that we excavated. Each day we uncovered hundreds of pieces of shell. Ethnographic research teaches us that recent and modern hunter-gatherers in another arid environment of southern African – the Kalahari Desert – use ostrich eggshells as water flasks.

Kalahari Bushmen gather eggs from ostrich nests (a risky exercise given the speed, strength and notoriously foul temper of these largest birds on earth). They empty the contents of the egg through a hole drilled in one end and use this opening as the spout through which to pour water for drinking, transport and storage. Ostrich eggshells are brilliant flasks – they’re robust, not too large (1 litre on average) and breathable, so water stays cool. As such, they were valued objects for both Kalahari Bushmen and prehistoric groups.

Clusters of whole ostrich eggshell flasks (with grass or beeswax stoppers to prevent spillage) have been found stashed in the arid landscapes of southwest Africa and, as at Spitzkloof, fragments are found in the earliest archaeological deposits to occur in these areas. Although spout rim fragments are rare, it is probable that the innovation of using ostrich eggshells as water flasks allowed humans to live in sub-Saharan Africa’s driest areas, such as the Richtersveld.

Decorated eggs

Flasks were sometimes decorated with patterns engraved or painted on their surfaces. In the Kalahari this typically denotes ownership, but over the great depths of prehistoric time these patterns may have held many meanings. Once the flasks had broken, fragments were ground down and perforated to form beads (or pendants) to be strung as necklaces and bracelets and sewed onto clothing. Among Kalahari Bushmen, these beads become the focus of intricate and often long-distance exchange networks that bound people together in an uncertain landscape.

Ostrich eggshell beads made their appearance in the southern African archaeological record some 40,000 years ago, but decorated eggshell fragments have an even older pedigree. The Spitzkloof fragments, including those from the earliest levels, came in many colours, including black, beige, yellow, orange, teal and even bright red. Much of this discolouration was certainly unintentional, but some may have been purposeful.

At a site called Diepkloof, about 500 km south of Spitzkloof, archaeologists have uncovered 60,000 year-old ostrich eggshell flask fragments with clear engravings. Precisely what they meant for their makers is unknown, but together with 60–90,000-year-old finds from other African sites, these eggshell fragments are among the world’s earliest evidence for abstract thought, and thus ways of behaving that resemble our own.

People were decorating for eggs long before Easter, and Kindle-sized cockroaches or not, we’ll keep hunting for them.

Visit the site to see some informative videos and pictures.
____________________
References:
Past Horizons. 2012. "Hunting for the world's oldest decorated eggs". Past Horizons. Posted: April 29, 2012. Available online: http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/04/2012/hunting-for-the-worlds-oldest-decorated-eggs

Eastbourne ancestors: A story from bones

The Eastbourne Borough Council Museum Service has been awarded a confirmed grant of £72,000 by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) for its exciting new project ‘Eastbourne Ancestors’ which will be the first of its kind in the UK. Over 300 skeletons.

There are over 300 skeletons in the Eastbourne Museum Service collection, most of them Anglo-Saxon from around 1500 years ago but some are possibly Neolithic, over 4000 years old. The aim of ‘Eastbourne Ancestors’ is to give an osteo-biography or story from the bones for each individual in the collection. This will involve detailed scientific analysis which will not only confirm the gender, age and size of each individual but could also tell us about their health, diet, social status, regional (or national) origins and perhaps how they died.

Eastbourne Ancestors is a project that will prove groundbreaking to the Borough Council, Eastbourne Museum Service, the wider archaeological/museum community and most importantly the public.

The results will be collated and form the basis for a fascinating exhibition that will include reconstructions but along the way there will be a series of education programmes and public participation in some of the processes. This is the first time such an extensive analysis has taken place on one collection and the discoveries will have an impact on the work of the Museum Service for years to come.

Training for volunteers

High quality training will be offered to the 150 or so volunteers who will work with Eastbourne Museum Service on this project and the training and learning opportunities for all elements of the project have attracted and engaged a broad cross section of the community.

To carry out the analysis, working partnerships with universities in Bournemouth, Kent and Durham have been confirmed and there has also been interest from Bradford and Exeter. These are institutions with some of the best reputations for their osteoarchaeological teaching and analysis in the country.

Jo Seaman, Museum Officer who conceived the idea for the project said: “I am so grateful to the HLF for backing us as I believe that we will now learn so much about the actual people who lived in and around Eastbourne in the past. A lot of archaeology is focussed on objects and structures and rightly so, but this gives us an opportunity to learn about individuals who’s bones may tell us some very tangible truths about their lives and ultimately deaths. It helps us relate to the past in a different way from an object such as a pot sherd that can tell us about a culture but not an individual person.”

Eastbourne Ancestors will also be working with local schools and colleges, ESCC, Archeological Units and Eastbourne Natural History and Archaeological Society (ENHAS).

Temporary lab

During the project schools, colleges and the public will be invited to a temporary lab, which will be set up in Eastbourne Town Hall, to take part in artefact conservation and environmental sampling processes alongside staff and volunteers.

Some of the finest practitioners of forensic facial reconstruction will also be on the team to produce the centrepieces of a stunning and thought-provoking exhibition at the end of the project. DNA could even be used to link local families to the people discovered!

The ‘Meet the Eastbourne Ancestors’ exhibition will feature 3D and 2D forensic reconstructions so that people can see ‘in the flesh’ individuals from Eastbourne’s distant past. The exhibition will show what can be discovered about people from their bones and try to give these long dead people at least a little of their life story.

___________________
References:
Past Horizons. 2012. "Eastbourne ancestors: A story from bones". Past Horizons. Posted: April 29, 2012. Available online: http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/04/2012/eastbourne-ancestors-a-story-from-bones

What the kula traders of New Guinea can teach us about financial markets

An anthropological perspective on how bankers function can help challenge our reliance on discredited neoliberal economics In his recent column, Aditya Chakrabortty observes that the current financial crisis should represent a crisis of legitimacy for the "narrow, straitened form of economics" that both helped to create the meltdown and failed to see it coming. But in contrast to previous crises, other voices have failed to make themselves heard, leaving the field free for the reassertion of neoliberal economic perspectives that were roundly discredited only five years ago. To an extent this criticism of non-economists is justified. Fiddling while Babylon burns, much of anthropological debate remains dominated by such pressing concerns as the "relationship between cosmological deixism and perspectivism", or whether "glaciers can listen". Such examples might appear to be suggestive of a discipline revelling in its own irrelevance, but thankfully they do not tell the whole story. Karen Ho's work on the culture of Wall Street has been widely picked up by the mainstream media in the US, while Gillian Tett has been hailed as "the most powerful woman in newspapers" on the back of being pretty much the only financial journalist to sound the alarm about the developing crisis. Tett consistently argues that it was her training as an anthropologist that helped her to spot the signs that were overlooked by her colleagues. And here on Comment is free, the anthropologist Joris Luyendijk explained how the City works from the perspective of those inside it. These writers build upon a long tradition within anthropology that has challenged the over-simplified assumptions underpinning many economic models. Take for example, Bronislaw Malinowski's analysis of the kula exchange of New Guinea, conducted nearly a century ago. Kula traders engaged on lengthy and dangerous canoe voyages in order to exchange shell necklaces and armbands. But far from seeking to maximise their gains, as conventional economic theory might predict, kula valuables were not accumulated. Instead a man only gained renown by passing them along the chain. Such behaviour might have appeared economically irrational, but made perfect sense in a context where a man's power and renown was measured by the number of social relationships that he could maintain through exchange. Malinowski's conclusion was that one has to start from the wider sociocultural context within which people act in order to understand their actions. This remains important, not least because people often develop powerful attachments to particular cultural habits even if logic tells us that these patterns might not be the best way of proceeding in new situations. Take for example the trend in the early 2000s towards the construction of collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) out of mortgage backed securities (MBSs) that was a major factor behind the crash of 2007. As both Tett and sociologist Donald Mackenzie observe, practitioners in these two fields had developed different methods to calculate their exposure to defaults. During the development of CDOs in fields such as corporate debt in the 1990s, its practitioners had become attached to highly complex mathematical models. By contrast, those involved in MBSs relied more upon specialist knowledge and research into particular areas of the market. The two groups had developed different cultural traditions regarding risk management. Yet when they came together, the numerical CDO model was applied in a context where it proved to be less appropriate. Many factors might explain why this was the case: hubris, a culture of short-term thinking, and a fashion for faith in the magical power of markets were doubtless powerful factors. Even the relative power and influence of groups and factions within investment banks play a part in how such decisions are made. The point is that even in this age of automated trading by algorithms, the numbers that flash across computer screens are ultimately produced, received and acted upon by real people who operate within particular social networks and whose actions are more than the simple expression of abstract economic rationality. The manner in which financial instruments such as CDOs and MBSs are traded differs wildly in many respects from that of the kula. But like kula necklaces, these financial instruments are cultural artifacts and their circulation and use can likewise only be fully understood if this is taken as our starting point. _________________ References: Martin, Keir. 2012. "What the kula traders of New Guinea can teach us about financial markets". The Guardian. Posted: April 23, 2012. Available online: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/23/kula-traders-new-guinea-financial-markets