Goose Salmon Stone

In "The Reliquary & Illustrated Archaeologist, July 1895", in the chapter entitled "Discovery of an Ancient Burial Place and a Symbol-Bearing Slab at Easterton of Roseisle" (page 142), we can read this: 

At the end of April, 1895, a still further discovery was made, for, on removing the symbol -bearing slab from the grave, we observed that it was a square sea-beach stone much water worn, and without mark of any tool on it. On the outer side or back of the stone were cut two figures, viz., a bird, either a goose or duck, with webbed feet, and a salmon...

Here is the illustration from the book showing the stone...

And here is a photo of the stone, now in National Museum of Scotland...

A very interesting stone indeed...Why is it decorated with a depiction of a goose and a salmon? 

Ever heard of animal calendar markers? 

Well, this is one, marking Oct/Nov...

Here is why...

In Oct/Nov, huge flocks of pink-footed geese arrive to Scotland from Northern Europe...They spend winter in Scotland and leave in Mar/Apr...More about pink-footed gees in Scotland can be found here...

In Oct/Nov, huge shoals of salmon arrive to Scotland and run up the Scottish rivers to their spawning grounds. This is the best time to see salmon leaping in Scotland...Mora about salmon in Scotland can be found here...

Both are hugely important annual events which happen at the same time, every year, and are not easily missed, if you are a hunter gatherer whose survival over winter depends on these birds and fishes as food sources... 

So, Oct/Nov, the time when gees and salmon arrive to Scotland...Rejoice, the food is here...🙂

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...

Beer making on Vače Situla

Here's something funny. The Vače Situla is an ornamented Early Iron Age (5th c. BC) Illyrian ritual vessel (situla) found in the 19th century at the Vače Archaeological Site in central Slovenia...Thanks @another_barbara for reminding me of it.

The vessel has three rows of relief that show what look like scenes from some complex religious ceremony...A lot of stuff depicted on this vessel is very very strange and definitely deserves further investigation. Like all the animals in the bottom row...

But for now, the funny part: "The middle one shows the main happening: at first a sacrifice of grain..." Why is the guy on the right blocking his nose if this is a sacrifice of grain? What exactly is going on here?

I want to thank @JuraPijandura for pointing me at the right direction. What we are looking at is the depiction of beer making...

In "A toast with bear for eternity" that talks about beer making techniques from Ancient Egypt, we can read that:

The most common interpretation of brewing in ancient Egypt is based on the use of bread. Beer loaves or the so-called beer bread were made from dough rich in yeast and lightly baked so that the yeast would not be killed by heat. Those loaves were then crumbled and rinsed with water through sieves into vats (additional ingredients such as dates or extra yeast might have been added at this point). Fermentation occurred inside the vats and the resulting liquid was decanted into jars which were sealed for storage or transport.

The described process is similar to the one used for making a Nubian beverage bouza even today:

First, cereal, generally wheat, but also barley, millet and sorghum is ground and lightly baked as leavened bread, with a moist, yeasty center. The bread is broken, diluted with water, and combined with malt. The resulting mash is moderately heated for several hours and more water added, and, sometimes after a filtration step, the beverage is primed with some old bouza and set aside to ferment for several days.

The above article continues with this statement: "Archaeological data has provided a different view on ancient Egyptian brewing methods" and explains that most beer was not made with bread but with malt...

But malt could have also been turned into "malt loaves" which could then have been crumbled into water...I talked about this in my post "Fulacht fiadh, primitive ale brewery" about Bronze Age Irish brewing...

The important thing here is not whether the starter was a yeast bread loaf or malt loaf...The important thing is that the starter loaf was then crumbled into vats full of water for fermentation...A smelly process...

PS:

Stone slab depicting two Illyrian warriors from the Iapodes tribe sharing a drink from the same vat (most likely beer) using drinking horns. Una National Park, Village of Ripač, Bihać, Bosnia.

Carnage

Carnage...A fragment of a stone relief depicting a scene of a battle, Discovered in 1983 during excavations of the Yubileinoye I settlement on the Taman Peninsula southern Russia. This relief was made in the 4th century. BC. in the Bosporan Greek workshop...

Now the guys who commissioned this relief were not Greeks or Scythians...They were Maeotians, an ancient people dwelling along the Sea of Azov, which was known in antiquity as the "Maeotian marshes" or "Lake Maeotis"

These guys had a complicated relationship with both Bosporan Greeks and Scythians. Most of the time they were actually enemies of Scythians and the allies of the Bosporan Greeks...Other times...They were in process greatly influenced by both Bosporan Greeks and Scythians...

The scene depicted on the relief is one of utter carnage...Among the chaos, it is easy to miss "the interesting bits". So I have tilted the image slightly and have added some notes to it (based on the translation from "Военное дело синдомеотов"

On the left in the foreground is a man with long hair; he is wearing a large torc around his neck, and a bow and arrow is suspended from the belt on his left side...

In his raised right hand, he holds a small spear, pointed downward, the strange position of which suggests that this warrior is defeated by the enemy or, possibly, doomed to death...

His enemy on the right had grabbed him by the hair, and has a sword raised to strike. Probably, this second warrior is mounted on a horse, whose head, with a wide opened eye, as well as part of the neck and chest, is visible in front of him...

The most interesting bit: Suspended to the horse's bridle are two severed human heads, hanging upside down...

Now remember this: Celts, "When their enemies fall, cut off their heads and fasten them about the necks of their horses...." (Diodorus Siculus). 

I talked about the head cutting Celts in my article "Head cutters"...

Also remember that Scythians also liked cutting their enemies' heads off.

I talked about this in my article "Helmet?"...

So, Celts and Maeotians hanged the severed heads of the dead enemies from their horse's bridles...Celts, Scythians and Maeotians collected human heads as trophies...

Who started it? Where? When?

Helmet?

This amazing object is officially described like this: "Gold parade helmet with the image of warriors. Scythian culture. Found in the mound of Peredereyev Grave (Передереева Могила), Zrubnoe. Donetsk region, Eastern Ukraine. 4st century BC"...But...

Is it possible that this is not a "ceremonial helmet" but instead a "ceremonial cup" used in human sacrifices? Well the scene depicted on the vessel surely shows a man about to be slaughtered...

Herodotus says that: "Of all their enemies that they take alive, they sacrifice one man in every hundred...to their god Aries...which they represent by a scimitar placed on a pile of sticks..."

"They pour wine on the men's heads and cut their throats over a vessel; then they carry the blood up on to the pile of sticks and pour it on the scimitar"...Is this the vessel used for collection of the sacrificial blood??

Oh, and Herodotus also says that "Scythians drank the blood of the first person they have overthrown"...You need cups for that too...Like this one? More from Herodotus on Scythians can be found here. 

PS: I was just shown this pic of the top of this object, from "Images of scythians on the “helmet” from perederieva mohyla kurgan"

Cups usually don't have holes at their bottoms...So... 🙂

PPS: Another similar strange object, found in 1898 in Kurghip tumulus, Krasnodar, Maykop district, Russia. Gold. Height 5,4 cm. Dated to 4th century. BC...Two warriors, one holding a sword and the other holding a severed head of an enemy, holding onto a spear together...Is this some ritual? Definitely confirms that Scythians liked cutting heads of their enemies off...

Nakovana

This is the abandoned Nakovana village located near the tip of the Pelješac Peninsula in Southern Dalmatia, Croatia...

The name Nakovana is related to the Slavic word "nakovanj", meaning "anvil", most likely because of the shape of this nearby hill. It is known today locally as Grad (City), because of the ruins of a huge Illyrian fortress which once stood on its top...

The fortress was destroyed during the Octavian's Illyrian campaign which lasted 8 years, from 35 to 27 BC, and encompassed almost the entire eastern Adriatic and much of its hinterland...

During the first year of operations, the Roman army massacred the native populations of the islands of Korčula and Mljet. Historical sources do not say whether the Illyrians on the Pelješac peninsula met the same faith...

But the archaeological survey of the region found virtually no traces of occupation during the Early Imperial or Late Roman periods. This is an unusual situation in Dalmatia, where those periods often account for the bulk of archaeological remains...

Most likely, the conquering Romans could not tolerate a native stronghold at such a key strategic position and they most likely destroyed it and turned the surrounding area into a wasteland. The local population was either exterminated or expelled...

How important Nakovana fort was during the Illyrian times can be seen from the fact that over 50 stone tumuli (cairns) are strewn over the fields surrounding the fort. Like the one on this picture shown with the Grad fortress in the background...

These are burials of important people, most likely the aristocracy of the era and the time - the people who built and lived in the Grad fortress. None of the tumuli have been excavated so far...

You have probably never heard of Nakovana before...Unless you are an archaeologist with an interest in Dalmatian prehistory...But you should have. And the fact that Nakovana is not famous world wide beggars belief...

The reason why Nakovana should be famous is not because of its Illyrian fortress and its tumuli...It is because of this cave that lies near the fortress. 

It is the same cave I talked about in my article about the Neolithic maritime trade...

The reason why Nakovana should be famous is not (just) because the lithics found in the cave's front chamber are the proof of the maritime trade network which existed for thousands of years in the South of the Adriatic Sea...

The reason why Nakovana should be famous was discovered in the cave's second chamber which was deliberately sealed, probably immediately before or after the Illyrian fortress Grad was destroyed by the Romans...

This is how the archaeologists who discovered this hidden chamber described the event:

And what they discovered in the hidden chamber is this: A large gleaming white stalagmite in a shape of a phallus...

The stalagmite sits on top of a series of superimposed prehistoric layers, the earliest being from Early Copper Age and dated to the mid-fourth millennium BC. A direct radiocarbon date on the base of the stalagmite suggests that it began to grow about 3600 years ago...

The floor of the chamber was strewn with broken high quality pottery, mostly drinking cups, mostly imported and mostly Greek, broken and deposited there as sacrifice...

The fact that the pottery was Greek made, doesn't mean that Greeks deposited there. Some of the cairns surrounding the Grad fortress, were looted in the past. What remains in and around them shows that the character of the funerary rite is unquestionably Illyrian...

The people were buried with locally made Iron Age jewellery, handmade pottery, and fairly often, fragments of fine Hellenistic ceramic vessels, identical to those from the cave...

Illyrians were famous maritime traders and pirates and they pretty much controlled the southern Adriatic for hundreds of years...

And the Nakovana Grad fortress controlled one of the most strategically important points, the entrance into the Neretva river which was the entrance into the Balkan hinterland...

Which is the reason why the Romans eventually wiped them out...

By the way, were Illyrians the descendants of the people who controlled the Southern Adriatic since Neolithic??? Just putting this out there for people to think about it...

The broken pottery was deposited around the stalagmite, showing that it was the centre of the cultic activities in the cave. The earliest pottery shards deposited next to the stalagmite date to the 4th century BC, around the time of the Alexander the Great...

Now this is very very interesting...

If I didn't tell you where this cave was, you would be forgiven to think that this was a Siva lingam cave temple located somewhere in India...

I wonder if this Illyrian sanctuary predates or postdates Alexander's Indian campaign and who was celebrated in a shape of a lingam in this cave???

The archaeologists who excavated the cave say Silvanus, Pan...

Hmm...Possibly...

Believe or not, as impressive as this phallus looks like :)  this is not the most amazing thing found in the hidden chamber of the Nakovana cave...The most amazing thing was found among the rubble deposited around it...

Among hundreds of pottery shards, archaeologists have also found several pieces of ivory with engraved astrological signs, which once formed part of an astrologer's horoscope board...The oldest so far found horoscope in the world...

I am here talking about Greek horoscopic astrology, which is believed to have been invented in late Ptolemaic Egypt, in the 2nd or early 1st c. BC...

Now we know that the Nakovana cave was sealed around 35BC. So the horoscope board deposited next to the stalagmite must have been made before that. Radiocarbon dating actually points to much earlier date...

The age obtained by the accelerator mass spectrometry is 2217±21 B.P. The calibrated range of two standard deviations is the period between 375 and 204 BC, with an asymmetrical probability distribution leaning towards the 3rd c. BC...

In plain English, the animal from which the ivory was obtained was killed in the 3rd century BC...

Archaeologists who discovered this amazing artefact say: "It is believed horoscope was invented in Egypt, late 2nd, early 1st c. BC. Therefore, the Nakovana zodiac could not have been made before the 2nd c. BC (probably not much before 100 BC), meaning that the ivory used to make it was at least hundred years old"...

Now I don't know for how long a piece of ivory is usually left lying around before it is cut and carved into sellable objects, but I don't think it was left to "age" for over 100 years...

Why playing it down? "It is believed (!!!) that horoscope was invented in Egypt in late 2nd, early 1st c. BC"...What if it wasn't? What if it was invented somewhere else? Earlier? And brought to Egypt from there?

I have been writing about zodiac for a while...One of the things that I have discovered is that zodiac signs, as they are positioned in this "Ptolemaic Greek zodiac" mark the annual lifecycle events of the depicted animals in Europe. You can read about this in this series of articles about Zodiac signs (work in progress)...

As if someone observed the significant annual behavior (mating and birthing) of the animals in Europe, and derived the zodiac signs from that behavior: Pisces - mating season of Europan salmon, Cancer - mating season of Atlantic crabs and European crayfish, Taurus - calving season of European Aurochs...

By the way, I am here talking about the horoscope zodiac circle the way we know it today. Not animal solar calendar markers found in many cultures in Eurasia and North Africa over last 10,000 years. I wrote about those extensively too. You can read about this in this series of articles about Solar calendar markers (work in progress)...

Do you see now why I think that it is completely unbelievable that Nakovana is not a famous archaeological site? 

Sources

Text and images:

"Zodijak iz Nakovane" by S. Forenbaher, A. Jones

"Recognizing Ritual in the Dark: Nakovana Cave and the End of the Adriatic Iron Age" by T. Kaiser and S. Forenbaher

Images:

The oldest horoscope board 

Nakovana tourism

Taurides

This is a very interesting vessel from Kizil-Koba settlement, fragment and reconstruction. Kizil-Koba Culture was an archaeological culture that existed in the mountain and foothill regions of the Crimea in the ninth to sixth centuries B.C.

The material similarity between Kizil-Koba culture and Koban culture of the northern Caucasus has led to the supposition that the two were genetically linked and that the Kizil-Koba culture originated in the Caucasus. Kizil-Koba pottery. Probable cheese curd strainer bottom right

The Kizil-Koba culture has been also linked with the Tauri tribes of transhumance shepherds which at the time lived in the mountains of southern Crimea. Map showing Kizil-Koba settlements (circle) and Taurian cemeteries (square).

Kizil-Koba settlements, consisting of pit-houses or aboveground wattle-and-daub houses with numerous grain pits around, had no fortifications. The excavations unearthed bronze decorations, arrowheads, parts of horse harness similar with the artifacts found in Taurian cists.

The Taurian cists were about one meter in diameter, made from four massive stone walls stuck into the ground and a massive cover stone. They were encircled by pebble pavement surrounded by square stone fence

Some necropoleis consisted of a few grave constructions, the other contained tens of cists sometimes located in parallel lines.

Cists were used for multiple burials. It seems that when cist got full, the bones were removed and only skulls kept. One cist in Mal-Muz cemetery contained 68 skulls.  

Kizil-Koba Household pits contained a few dozen artefacts of ill- baked clay including anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines,  like these two, probably of cultic nature 

The local population mixed with Greeks who set up colonies along the Crimean coast. Example of this mixing can be seen in the settlement and necropolis of Panskoye, village near Greek Chersonesos 

Herodotus says that "...Tauri...live by plundering and war...they sacrifice their captives...to the Virgin goddess...The Tauri themselves say that this deity to whom they sacrifice is Agamemnon's daughter Iphigenia...."

And this is very very interesting. The Greeks called the Tauric goddess Artemis Tauropolos and also linked it with Iphigeneia, daughter of Agamemnon... 

According to Euripides, the cult of the bloodthirsty Artemis Tauropolos was brought to Greece by Orestes and Iphigenia, who brought a wooden statue of Artemis to Sparta where she was from then on worshiped as Artemis Orthia

The whole story about how Iphigenia finds herself among the Tauri and how and why she gets the Artemis statue from Tauri to Spartans is very strange....

Apparently King Agamemnon accidentally kills a deer in a grove sacred to Artemis and is forced to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to the goddess to repay his debt. But goddess changes her mind at the last moment and replaces Iphigenia with a deer which is then killed...

Artemis then transports Iphigenia to Tauris where she becomes the priestess in Taurid Artemis temple, directing human sacrifices...

When her brother Orestes is captured by Taurides and was brought to the temple to be sacrificed to Artemis by Iphigenia, two of them instead steel the statue and run away to Greece. And as I said, according to Euripides, they bring the statue to Sparta...

In Sparta the wooden statue of Artemis becomes the centre of a major cult. During the excavation of the temple, numerous female offering statues were discovered. Possibly symbolic replacement for actual female sacrificial victims??? Or the depictions of the Goddess?

But the Tauride goddess still demanded blood. As described by Plutarch Xenophon Pausanias and Plato, the temple of Artemis was the place where once a year young men were ritually whipped until they bled and the blood sprayed the statue of the goddess

Here is the best bit: During the Roman period, according to Cicero, the ritual became a blood spectacle, sometimes to the death, with spectators from all over the empire 🙂 An amphitheatre had to be built in the 3rd century CE to accommodate the tourists

Bloody Romans 🙂 

Sources:

Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia
Очерки этнической истории Крыма в раннем железном веке. Тавры. Скифы. Сарматы
Essays on the archaeology and ancient hystory of the black sea littoral
PONTIKA 2008 Recent Research on the Northern and Eastern Black Sea in Ancient Times

Donja Dolina

Helmet (6th. c. BC) from Sisak, Croatia found in Illyrian warrior grave. Prior to the arrival of the Romans, who gave it the Latin name Siscia, the region was Celtic and Illyrian and the city there was named Segestica or Segesta

Similar helmet, also dated to 7th-6th c BC, was found in 1896, by Ilija Knežević, a peasant from the village of Donja Dolina (Lower valley) located further downstream on Sava river in Bosnia

The discovery of this second helmet led to the discovery of a very important prehistoric industrial and trading centre, which was continuously inhabited from the second half of the second millennium BC until the Roman times.

The Donja Dolina site is located on the right bank of the river Sava, near marshy area full of fish, surrounded by big forests full of game and on the land which is ideal for agriculture. 50km southwest are mountains full of iron ore. Ideal settlement for an Iron Age community


Interestingly, the old Iron Age settlements (there were two, an older and newer one), which were abandoned 2000 years earlier, were found in areas known locally as Velika i Mala Gradina (Big and Small ruined city)...

The old, Late Bronze Age settlement was built on land. But right about the time when the place was settled (1300-1200 BC), a sudden catastrophic climate change made climate much wetter and colder.

This diagram is from my post about ancient salt extraction techniques. 

The cold and wet period, which increased the river water level, caused frequent floods, made land even more marshy and pretty much completely wiped out agriculture in the area, culminated around 850 BC.

It is around 800 BC when people finally abandoned land life and started living in houses on stilts. The image by Igor Ilijev from his upcoming book about Donja Dolina.

The excavations started in 1896. The settlement was exceptionally well preserved because of the fact that it was covered by thick layers od mud. Pic 1: support substructure. Pic 2: stairs going down to the water level

A very interesting burials were discovered in the settlement. 8 people were buried in wooden coffins in the ground between the stakes which supported the house platforms. None of the people buried under the settlement were warriors

Most of the people were buried in cemeteries located near the settlement. They were either cremated and urns (pic) were placed in shallow graves or their bodies were placed in the ground either directly or in wooden coffins

Most burials had no grave goods apart from food vessels (bowls and cups). These are particularly beautiful examples

However hight status individuals were buried with jewellery, armour and lots of additional grave goods (multiple ceramic vessels). This is a grave of a high status woman buried with her jewellery

Warrior graves contained weapons and food and drink vessels. Here are contents of three warrior graves all dated to 7th-6th c BC. From: The Forgotten Graves from Donja Dolina 
‏

The Donja Dolina was an important trading centre. Goods from as far as Greece in the south, Italy in the west, Bulgaria in the east and Baltic in the north were found in the graves belonging to the people from settlement

The settlement was also an important metallurgical centre. This fibula mould found in one of the graves is of a type found only in Italy at the time, suggesting that this was a grave of an immigrant metalworker

Among many items produced in the Donja Dolina Iron Age settlement, I particularly like this type of bracelets. Are they unique? Anyone seen anything similar from the period 800-400 BC?

Another interesting type of objects found in Donja Dolina Iron Age settlement were bronze "ornamental rods". Up to 10cm long, they are found in graves as components of the funerary ornaments. Anything similar anywhere else? Meaning?

Here is a complete inventory of one of the warrior graves where these ornamental rods (also classified as staffs, even though they are only 10cm long) were found

Most helmets found in the Donja Dolina 7th-6th c BC graves, were made in Macedonia where they were found in princely graves. At that time in Greece, they are found only in sanctuaries, linked with the territory of ancient Macedonia

Among the scattered finds from the cemetery, these two peculiarly shaped clay objects stroke my attention. The size of the objects is less than 10cm. Use unknown. Any ideas? Stamps of sort? For bread maybe?

Another type of objects without good explanation are these sandstone prisms with swastikas engraved on the top and bottom.

Another interesting swastika design was reconstructed from several fragments found at the site

The results of the excavations, were published by Ćiro Truhelka in 1904 in "Der vorgeschichtliche Pfahlbau im Savebette bei Donja Dolina" 

I like this stamp issued by Bosna i Hercegovina - Republika Srpska (Bosnia and Herzegovina - Serbian Republic), showing weapons found in Donja Dolina site

To me the most interesting finds from Donja Dolina Iron Age archaeological site are boats. This is the biggest one, 12 meter long oak dugout, currently in Zemaljski muzej Bosne I Hercegovine, Sarajevo

And this is the photo from 1901 showing the lifting of the boat from the site. Were boats like this one used during the early Iron Age for trade transport along Sava river?

And this is the picture showing the smallest boat found in the Early Iron Age settlement Donja Dolina in Bosnia, a miniature model of an oak dugout. Several are found in every house in the settlement. Toys? Or???

What is interesting is that almost identical boats were still used in Donja Dolina in the early 20th century. In the book "Vremeplov: Narodno ribarstvo u Bosni I Hercegovini" we find this fishing boat

I particularly like this picture from the book about the folk fishing from Bosnia, showing three types of dugout boats from Donja Dolina: a) male, b) female, c) front male back female...

The dugout boats are not the only thing which has been in continuous use since the early Iron Age in Donja Dolina. These are stilt houses in which people lived in Donja Dolina in the early 20th c

And finally here is my favourite picture. Women from Donja Dolina, in a "female" boat, coming back home from a bridal party. This could easily be a scene from the Iron Age Donja Dolina...

In the end, here is the link to the report about Donja Dolina Archaeological site published by the commission for preservation of national monuments from Bosnia and Hercegovina from which I translated some excerpts for this post.