The London architectural studio «Two Create» has created a colorful interior for a new modern hospital of Queen Elizabeth in Birmingham.
The hospital interior looks rather cheerful and gives only positive emotions. Green apartments give more healthy happy life.
A mass burial of bodies, known to be victims of the Black Death, has been discovered at the site of a 14th-century monastery hospital at Thornton Abbey, Lincolnshire.
Archaeologists from the University of Sheffield revealed 48 skeletons, many of which were children, at the extremely rare Black Death burial site.
The Black Death was one of the worst pandemics in human history. It devastated European populations from 1346-1353 and resulted in the deaths of an estimated 75 to 200 million people.
The presence of such a large burial site, containing both male and female adults, as well as 27 children, suggests the local community was overwhelmed by the Black Death and was left unable to cope with the number of people who died.
Dr Hugh Willmott from the University of Sheffield's Department of Archaeology, who has been working on the excavation site since 2011, directed the excavations and explained why the find is of national importance.
"Despite the fact it is now estimated that up to half the population of England perished during the Black Death, multiple graves associated with the event are extremely rare in this country, and it seems local communities continued to dispose of their loved ones in as ordinary a way as possible," he said.
"The only two previously identified 14th-century sites where Yersinia pestis (the bacterium responsible for the plague) has been identified are historically documented cemeteries in London, where the civic authorities were forced to open new emergency burial grounds to cope with the very large numbers of the urban dead.
"The finding of a previously unknown and completely unexpected mass burial dating to this period in a quiet corner of rural Lincolnshire is thus far unique, and sheds light into the real difficulties faced by a small community ill prepared to face such a devastating threat."
Dr Willmott added: "While skeletons are interesting, they just represent the end of somebody's life and actually what we are interested in as archaeologists is the life they led before they died.
"One of the ways we can connect with that is through the everyday objects they left behind.
"One artefact that we found at Thornton Abbey was a little pendant. It is a Tau Cross and was found in the excavated hospital building. This pendant was used by some people as a supposed cure against a condition called St Antony's fire, which in modern day science is probably a variety of skin conditions.
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R004 Crouched burial. by Courtenay-Elle on Sketchfab
"Before we began the dig the site was just an ordinary green field grazed by sheep for hundreds of years, but like many fields across England, as soon as you take away the turf, layers of history can be revealed by archaeology."
Teeth samples from the skeletons found at the Thornton Abbey site were sent to McMaster University in Canada where ancient DNA was successfully extracted from the tooth pulp. Tests on the DNA revealed the presence of Yersinia pestis, which is documented to have reached Lincolnshire in the spring of 1349.
Dr Diana Mahoney Swales, from the University of Sheffield's Department for Lifelong Learning, who is leading the study of the bodies, said: "Once the skeletons return to the lab we start properly learning who these people really are.
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Tau Cross by Courtenay-Elle on Sketchfab
"We do this by identifying whether they are male or female, children or adults. And then we start to investigate the diseases that they may have lived through, such as metabolic diseases like rickets and scurvy which are degenerative diseases for the skeleton. However for diseases such as plague, which are lethal, we have to use ancient DNA analysis to investigate that further."
Source: University of Sheffield [November 30, 2016]
One of the most exciting projects in recent years at Maidstone Museum – the scanning and facial reconstruction of its very own 2,700-year-old mummy – is well underway thanks to the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). The project, within the redevelopment of the museum’s Ancient Civilisations gallery, has seen the mummy travel across Maidstone to KIMS Hospital to undergo a full body scan and closer inspection by the local team of radiologists. The scan has revealed a number of fascinating finds about the mummy as well as other mummified remains in the museum’s collection – all before the full investigation into results has really begun with a team of international specialists.
“We weren’t expecting too much to be derived from the initial scans of Ta-Kush and the other items, but the results seen have been remarkable,” said Samantha Harris, Collections Manager at Maidstone Museum. “It was such a pleasure to work alongside the Imaging Team at KIMS Hospital in being able to analyse these items and, for the initial results to reveal so much means, the remainder of the Ancient Civilisations gallery project has been injected with a whole new level of excitement.”
Among the initial findings, the scans revealed that, while many believed Ta-Kush to have passed away during adolescence, she may in fact have been much older. Speaking of the findings, Mark Garrad, CT Lead Radiographer at KIMS Hospital, said: “The scans conducted indicate evidence of well-worn teeth, loss of enamel, cavities, abscesses in the jaw and fully erupted wisdom teeth. Although we cannot place her age exactly, the evidence we have managed to glean from the initial scans would suggest a person who is at least mid-twenties, possibly much older. It has been fascinating to be part of the early stages of discovery and we are looking forward to what other insights the experts can gather about Ta-Kush.”
The scans also show further evidence of a wedge fracture in one of her vertebrae, which is seen in patients suffering a downward impact, such as a fall or landing upright. Images show that there may be signs of healing, however, it indicates that Ta-Kush could well have been living with this injury.
Further research into the life and conservation of Ta-Kush is set to be conducted over the course of the next few months with Liverpool John Moores University analysing the scans and creating a facial reconstruction. Thanks to the HLF funding, and with support from the Maidstone Museums’ Foundation, the Egyptology Department at the British Museum, the Petrie Museum at University College London, Western Ontario University and the Egypt Exploration Society, this research will uncover the stories behind the scanned human and animal remains ready for the redisplay of the wider Ancient Egyptian and Greek World collections, to be unveiled in summer 2017.
Source: Maidstone Museum [November 15, 2016]
They came from every parish of London, and from all walks of life, and ended up in a burial ground called Bedlam. Now scientists hope their centuries-old skeletons can reveal new information about how long-ago Londoners lived - and about the bubonic plague that often killed them.
Archaeologists announced Monday that they have begun excavating the bones of some 3,000 people interred in the 16th and 17th centuries, who now lie in the path of the Crossrail transit line. They will be pored over by scientists before being reburied elsewhere.
One recent workday, just meters (yards) from teeming Liverpool Street railway station, researchers in orange overalls scraped, sifted and gently removed skeletons embedded in the dark earth. In one corner of the site, the skeleton of an adult lay beside the fragile remains of a baby, the wooden outline of its coffin still visible. Most were less intact, a jumble of bones and skulls.
"Part of the skill of it is actually working out which bones go with which," said Alison Telfer, a project officer with Museum of London Archaeology, which is overseeing the dig.
Due to open in 2018, the 118-kilometer (73-mile) trans-London Crossrail line is Britain's biggest construction project, and its largest archaeological dig for decades. The central 21-kilometer (13-mile) section runs underground, which has meant tunneling beneath some of the oldest and most densely populated parts of the city.
For Londoners, that has brought years of noise and disruption, but for archaeologists it's like Christmas. Almost every shovelful of earth has uncovered a piece of history, or prehistory: bison and mammoth bones; Roman horseshoes; medieval ice skates; the remains of a moated Tudor manor house.
Chief archaeologist Jay Carver says the Bedlam dig could be the most revealing yet.
"It's going to be archaeologically the most important sample we have of the population of London from the 16th and 17th centuries," Carver said.
Bedlam cemetery opened in 1569 to take the overspill as the city's churchyard burial grounds filled up. It is the final resting place of prosperous citizens and paupers, religious dissenters including the 17th-century revolutionary Robert Lockyer and patients from Bedlam Hospital, the world's first asylum for the mentally ill. The hospital's name, a corruption of Bethlehem, became a synonym for chaos.
Tests on the bones by osteologists may reveal where these Londoners came from, what they ate and what ailed them - which in many cases was the plague. There were four outbreaks of the deadly disease over the two centuries the cemetery was in use, including the "Great Plague" that killed 100,000 people in 1665.
Carver says researchers will analyze DNA taken from pulp in the skeletons' teeth to help fill in the "evolutionary tree of the plague bacteria."
The technique was used to discover the plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis, in 14th-century skeletons excavated at another Crossrail site, identifying them as victims of the Black Death that wiped out half the city's population in 1348.
Scientists should be able to compare the bacterium found in Bedlam's plague victims with the 14th-century samples, helping to understand whether the disease - which still infects several thousand people a year - has evolved over the centuries.
Sixty archaeologists working in shifts - 16 hours a day, six days a week - will spend about a month removing the remains. After scientific study, they will be reburied on Canvey Island in the Thames Estuary - the latest in a long line of Londoners to move east out of the congested city.
The old burial ground will be the site of a new train station, whose users will probably give little thought to the history beneath their feet.
But Telfer says she never forgets that these fragile bones were once living, breathing individuals.
"When you are doing something like this, you do feel a connection with them," she said. "I think you have a responsibility to treat them with great respect. It's quite a special process."
Bedlam burial register: http://www.crossrail.co.uk/sustainability/archaeology/bedlam-burial-ground-register
Author: Jill Lawess | Source: The Associated Press [March 09, 2015]
A miniature ancient Egyptian coffin measuring just 44cm in length has been found to contain the youngest ever example of a human foetus to be embalmed and buried in Egyptian society. This discovery is the only academically verified specimen to exist at only sixteen to eighteen weeks of gestation.
This landmark discovery from the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, is remarkable evidence of the importance that was placed on official burial rituals in ancient Egypt, even for those lives that were lost so early on in their existence. Curators at the Fitzwilliam made the discovery, during their research for the pioneering bicentennial exhibition Death on the Nile: Uncovering the afterlife of ancient Egypt.
The tiny coffin was excavated at Giza in 1907 by the British School of Archaeology and came into the collection at the Fitzwilliam Museum the same year. It is a perfect miniature example of a wooden coffin of the ancient Egyptian ‘Late Period’ and may date to around 664-525 BC. The lid and box are both made from cedar wood. Although the coffin is deteriorated, it is clear that the wood was carefully carved on a painstakingly small scale and decorated. This gave the curators at the Fitzwilliam the first very clear indication of the importance given to the coffin’s contents at this time in ancient Egyptian society.
The diminutive wrapped package inside was carefully bound in bandages, over which molten black resin had been poured before the coffin was closed. For many years it was thought that the contents were the mummified remains of internal organs that were routinely removed during the embalming of bodies.
Examination using X-ray imaging at the Fitzwilliam Museum was inconclusive, but suggested that it may contain a small skeleton. It was therefore decided to micro CT (computed tomography) scan the tiny bundle at Cambridge University’s Department of Zoology. The cross-sectional images this produced gave the first pictures of the remains of a tiny human body held within the wrappings, which remain undisturbed.
Dr Tom Turmezei, recently Honorary Consultant Radiologist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge collaborated with the Fitzwilliam Museum, alongside Dr. Owen Arthurs, Academic Consultant Paediatric Radiologist at Great Ormond Street Hospital, London. The ground-breaking results were based on their extensive knowledge of CT imaging and paediatric autopsy.
Five digits on both hands and feet and the long bones of the legs and arms were all clearly visible. Although the soft skull and pelvis were found to be collapsed the categorical consensus was that inside the bundle was a human foetus estimated to be of no more than eighteen weeks gestation. It was impossible to give a gender to the specimen and it is thought that the foetus was probably the result of a miscarriage, as there were no obvious abnormalities to explain why it could not have been carried to full-term.
From the micro CT scan it is noticeable that the foetus has its arms crossed over its chest. This, coupled with the intricacy of the tiny coffin and its decoration, are clear indications of the importance and time given to this burial in Egyptian society.
"CT imaging has been used successfully by the museum for several projects in recent years, but this is our most successful find so far," Dr. Tom Turmezei explained. "The ability of CT to show the inner workings of such artefacts without causing any structural damage proved even more invaluable in this case, allowing us to review the foetus for abnormalities and attempt to age it as accurately as possible."
Julie Dawson, Head of Conservation at the Fitzwilliam Museum said, "Using non-invasive modern technology to investigate this extraordinary archaeological find has provided us with striking evidence of how an unborn child might be viewed in ancient Egyptian society. The care taken in the preparation of this burial clearly demonstrates the value placed on life even in the first weeks of its inception."
Tutankhamun’s tomb contained two small foetuses that had been mummified and placed in individual coffins, but these infants were both significantly more developed, at about 25 weeks and 37 weeks into gestation. Very few other examples of burials of miscarried babies have so far been identified from ancient Egypt.
The miniature coffin is currently on display as part of the exhibition >Death on the Nile: Uncovering the Afterlife of ancient Egypt until 22nd May 2016 at the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge.
Source: University of Cambridge [May 12, 2016]
The hidden secrets of Egyptian mummies up to 3,000 years old have been virtually unwrapped and reconstructed for the first time using cutting-edge scanning technology in a joint British-Australian exhibition.
Three-dimensional images of six mummies aged between 900BC and 140-180AD from ancient Egypt, which have been held at the British Museum but never physically unwrapped, give an insight into what it was like to live along the Nile river thousands of years ago.
"We are revealing details of all their physical remains as well as the embalming material used by the embalmers like never before," the British Museum's physical anthropology curator Daniel Antoine told AFP at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney Thursday. "What we are showing to the public is brand-new discoveries of their insides."
Two of the travelling mummies were previously exhibited at the British Museum in 2014, with the other four being revealed to the world for the first time in the Sydney show that opens on Saturday.
A dual-energy computed tomography (CT) scanner at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London—of which only a handful are in operation around the world—was used to obtain thousands of slices of images of the mummies, with volumetric software then harnessed to create 3D models, Antoine said.
It effectively allows visitors to virtually peel back the layers of history through interactive 3D visualisations of the CT scans.
"I've been able to image the arteries of the mummies, the ones that have been left, and I'm able to look at whether they are suffering from diseases which many people are suffering from today, (such as) cardiovascular diseases," Antoine added.
He believes the mummies can be rescanned in a decade's time using the latest technology to find out more about their state of health, what diseases they were suffering from and the nature of their deaths.
"We hope in the future to image the soft tissues at the cellular level to look at whether there's any changes or to find evidence, for example, of cardiovascular diseases but also things like cancer."
The scans found that one of mummies, Tamut, a priest's daughter from about 900BC, had plaque in her arteries. Three-dimensional printing was also used to recreate amulets found during scans of her mummified remains.
The earliest evidence of mummification in Egypt suggests that the practice of wrapping bodies to preserve them after death dates back as far as 4500BC.
The mummies are due to travel to Asia next year.
Source: AFP [December 08, 2016]
Archaeologists in London believe they may have uncovered a mass grave of plague victims buried beneath one of the city's busiest train stations.
The find at Liverpool Street Station is part of one of Britain's most important archaeological digs, with a team of more than 60 scientists working double shifts since March to excavate around 3,000 skeletons.
The bodies were interred in a cemetery attached to the notorious Bedlam mental asylum, with the site being used for burials for at least 170 years.
The name Bedlam, the byname for the Bethlehem Royal Hospital, became synonymous with disorder and confusion and its horrific conditions struck fear into the heart of Londoners.
The burial ground was used from 1569 to the mid-19th century for Bedlam's patients and local residents when other cemeteries became overcrowded.
Beneath the burial ground lies a Roman road where archaeologists have also uncovered a selection of Roman graves.
Jay Carver, the lead archaeologist on the dig, said the potential plague pit within the cemetery contained at least 30 bodies.
He said the mass grave showed signs of being from the time of the great plague of 1665, in which more than 100,000 Londoners died.
"Well the clue is we're certainly in an area of the burial ground that was definitely in use in the 1660s. Thereby we found a small headstone dated in 1665," he said.
"The scientific tests we can do on some of these individuals should tell us what they've died of. If it's bubonic plague and we get some other evidence in terms of dating these layers, we could well have an example of a plague pit from that great plague episode."
The remains interred at Bedlam cover an era of civil wars, Shakespeare, the Great Fire of London and numerous plague outbreaks.
Many of those buried were poor and parish records listed them as servants and apprentices.
None were wearing clothes but several coffin plates found indicate there were some more well-off people buried at the site.
>Crossrail archaeology: 360° video of suspected 1665 plague pit uncovered> at Liverpool Street [Credit: Crossrail Project]
Mr Carver said many of the remains had been disturbed because the burial ground was so crowded.
"There's so many on the site though that they are all intercutting and very often the grave digger was cutting across the remains of some previous victim, so there's a lot of disturbance to all the graves," he said.
While some remains had obvious injuries like blows to the skull, most causes of death had to be established in a laboratory.
"There's a huge amount of work to wash and prepare each skeleton and then inspect it very carefully for injury and disease," he said.
"You can sometimes see very obviously when someone's suffered from an infectious disease like syphilis which has affected their bones, particularly their legs."
He said the archaeologists working on the dig had been moved by many of the stories of those who they had unearthed.
"We've seen burials here of mother and child, very young infants [who] probably died in childbirth in fact. It's extremely poignant to see that stuff," he said.
The remains were initially discovered as part of construction work at the station and so once they are excavated they will be re-buried on an island in the Thames.
Source: ABC News Website [August 14, 2015]
The copper used to make Ötzi’s axe blade did not come from the Alpine region as had previously been supposed, but from ore mined in southern Tuscany. Ötzi was probably not involved in working the metal himself, as the high levels of arsenic and copper found in his hair had, until now, led us to assume.
His murder over 5,000 years ago seems to have been brought about due to a personal conflict a few days before his demise, and the Iceman, despite his normal weight and active life-style, suffered from extensive vascular calcification.
Scientists from all over the world presented these and other new insights, at the 3rd Bolzano Mummy Congress. To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Ötzi’s discovery, the three days of the Congress, from 19th to 21st September, are all dedicated to the Iceman.
Since the Iceman came on the scene on 19th September 1991, he has not ceased to fascinate scientists from all over the world. No corpse has been more thoroughly investigated. “In terms of his significance for science, Ötzi is not simply an isolated mummy discovery. He could be seen as a typical European from earlier times and is precious for this reason alone,” explained the anthropologist Albert Zink from EURAC Research, the scientific leader of the congress.
“Ötzi is so well preserved as a glacier mummy and through this alone, he serves us researchers as a model for developing scientific methods which can then be used on other mummies,” said Zink.
“What concerns us most these days is to know who the Iceman was, what role he played in society and what happened to him in the last days of his life. Sophisticated procedures, now available to scientists, are continually supplying us with new evidence,” said Angelika Fleckinger, Director of the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology which co-organised the Congress.
Links to Central Italy
One surprising new fact has been unearthed which concerns the most extraordinary item amongst Ötzi’s equipment – the valuable copper axe. In contrast to what had previously been presumed, the copper used in the blade does not derive from the Alpine region (researchers had suggested East or North Tyrol as the most likely provenance) but from Central Italy. Professor Gilberto Artioli‘s archaeometallurgy research group at the University of Padua has discovered that the metal had been obtained from ore mined in South Tuscany.
In order to determine its origin, Italian scientists took a tiny sample from the blade and compared the proportion of lead isotope – a kind of “finger print” of the ore deposits which remains unchanged in any objects subsequently made from the ore – with the corresponding data from numerous mineral deposits in Europe and the entire Mediterranean region. The result pointed unequivocally to South Tuscany.
“No one was prepared for this finding. We will commission further analyses in order to double-check these first results” stressed Angelika Fleckinger. If the original results are confirmed, this new evidence will give researchers some interesting food for thought.
Was Ötzi as a trader travelling possibly as far as the area around today’s Florence? What was the nature of the trading and cultural links with the south in those days? Did the exchange of goods also involve movements of the population? That is to say, did people from the south venture into the Alpine region and vice versa?
“This is a particularly exciting insight especially with respect to questions about population development”, explained Albert Zink.
Was he or was he not involved in smelting copper?
Another question long debated amongst the scientific community, is whether Ötzi was perhaps involved himself in the process of copper smelting. Scientists have advocated this thesis because raised arsenic and copper levels have been measured in the mummy’s hair, a fact which might possibly be explained, for example, by breathing in the smoke which is released when melting and pouring metal.
Geochemist Wolfgang Müller of Royal Holloway, University of London, who had already used isotope analysis to establish Ötzi’s South Tyrol origins, has now turned to this question once more. Using highly developed methods of analysis such as laser mass spectrometry and speciation analysis, Müller’s team examined not just hairs but also samples from Ötzi’s nails, skin and organs for possible heavy metal contamination.
His, so far still provisional, findings suggest that the hypothesis that Ötzi was involved in processing metal was premature. Müller did indeed find slightly raised arsenic values in the nail sample, but not in other tissue samples. Raised copper levels were only present at the extremities and this correlates with other change indicators, and thus it is doubtful if one can establish a heavy metal contamination for Ötzi’s actual life time: raised values might also be due to environmental influences over the 5,000 years since his death.
Radiological investigations with the latest CT equipment
A new computer tomography (CT) scan of the Iceman was undertaken by radiologists Paul Gostner and Patrizia Pernter in January 2013 in the Department of Radiology of Bozen-Bolzano Hospital. To do this they used a CT-scanner of the latest generation which, thanks to its large opening, allowed the doctors to run Ötzi rapidly through the machine from head to toe despite the way his arm is angled. In addition to the vascular calcification in the arteries of his stomach and legs which had already been known about, the superior image allowed doctors to spot three small areas of calcification near to the outflow tracts of the heart which had hitherto escaped their notice. This substantiates the earlier finding made by molecular biologists in EURAC that Ötzi had a strong genetic predisposition to cardiovascular diseases and that this was probably also the main reason for his general arteriosclerosis.
Investigations of a “profiler”
Ötzi was murdered. The arrow head discovered in 2001 in his left shoulder suggests this. But what were the circumstances surrounding the crime? In 2014 the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology commissioned Chief Inspector Alexander Horn of the Munich Criminal Investigation Department to investigate the “Ötzi Murder Case” using the latest criminological methods.
Horn interrogated various “acquaintances” of the murder victim such as archaeologists from the museum who had been looking after Ötzi for years, or experts from forensic medicine, radiology and anthropology. Members of the project team also took part in an on-site inspection of the location in Schnals Valley in South Tyrol Italy where the body was found.
The results of this investigation were that Ötzi probably did not feel threatened shortly before his murder, because the situation at the Tisenjoch location where he was found indicates that he had been resting while enjoying a hearty meal. In the days prior to the murder he had incurred an injury to his right hand, probably as a result of defensive action during the course of a physical altercation. No further injuries could be found, and this might serve to indicate that he had not been defeated in this particular conflict.
The arrow shot, which was probably fatal, seems to have been launched from a great distance and took the victim by surprise, from which we may infer that it was an act of treachery. Further medical findings suggest that the victim fell and that the perpetrator used no further violence. The perpetrator probably did not wish to risk a physical altercation, but instead chose a long distance attack to kill the Iceman. As valuable objects such as the copper axe remained at the crime scene, theft can be excluded as the motive.
The reason for the offence is more likely to be found in some sort of personal conflict situation, in a previous hostile encounter – “a behavioural pattern which is prevalent even today in the bulk of murder crimes”, as Alexander Horn explained.
Source: Eurac Research [September 20, 2016]
