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My name is Oss, you bent my sword, prepare to die! - Teabreak 32
227 Plays4 hours ago
This month we’re getting elite as Matilda chats all about chieftain burials with archaeologist, curator, editor, and model Dr Sasja van der Vaart-Verschoof (also known on her online platforms as The Overdressed Archaeologist). Well, they’re talking about one chieftain burial in particular - that found in Oss in the Netherlands - and they’re especially talking about why the burial included a large and beautifully made iron sword bent into a ring. Why did people break or bend swords before burying them in the past? How could such a sword be bent into a ring? And how does Sasja manage to juggle so many different jobs and specialisms? Listen in to find out!
Transcripts
- For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/teabreak/32
Links
- NWO article about Sasja and the sword
- Antiquities Museum article
- Fragmenting the Chieftain book
- Article on chieftain graves
- Sasja’s website
- Sasja’s blog article on Iron Age elite burials
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. um You're listening to Tea Break Time Travel, where every month we look at a different archaeological object and take you on a journey into their past.
00:00:17
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to episode 32 of Tea Break Time Travel. I'm your host, Dr. Matilda Ziebrecht, and today I am savoring a strawberry kiwi fruit tea. I thought, why not? Let's go fruity. It's very, very sweet though, so I'm actually quite looking forward to having it later as an iced tea. I think that'll be nice.
00:00:33
Speaker
Joining me on my tea break today is archaeologist, model, editor, all-round awesome human being, Dr. Sasha Fandefard-Freschauf, which I am very proud to say that I can sort of say it almost correctly. Well done. Congratulations. You might know more as the Overdressed Archaeologist, which is the handle of all her digital platforms. So welcome, Sasha. What are you drinking today? I i feel bad now, but I am drinking coffee. ah That's fine.
00:01:00
Speaker
but Is it a plain old coffee? Is it a fancy coffee? It's a latte with oat milk and cinnamon sugar, so it's a little fancy. I mean, that sounds very, very fancy. I had. So I don't usually drink coffee, but I've started drinking more coffee, weirdly, since the second child's arrived. I don't know what the correlation is. I am so surprised.
00:01:20
Speaker
I don't know what the correlation of that is, but also sometimes if I, when I go into work, I go into Gertigam, which is the city nearby and I have to get quite an early train. And if I catch the right train, then I'm there with enough time to spare to let me get like a little coffee from the nice little coffee shop in the train station. And I usually get a caramel latte, but the other day oh she forgot to add the caramel syrup. and then So I took my sip as I was like halfway to work and was like, oh, this is just coffee, which I don't like just coffee. It has to be sweet and sickly for me to like it.
00:01:50
Speaker
But yeah anyway, oh well. But are you a coffee drinker in general? Yes. I also enjoy the occasional cup of tea, but mostly I drink tea tea when I feel like I've reached my caffeine quotient for the day, but i um I am a proper Dutch girl in that sense. that I like the coffee quite a lot. Although, well, you say that though, because apparently the Dutch are the largest tea drinkers in the world. Really? Yeah, more than the What?
00:02:16
Speaker
i Yeah, it was a shock to me. So, you know, you say you're a good good Dutch girl. Really, a good Dutch girl should be drinking tea at all times. I mean, also, to be honest, I'm associating the expression of a proper coffee drinker with my father who drank an obscene amount of coffee daily. And actually, in his opinion, I'm not a good Dutch girl because I drink it without milk. Black coffee is apparently the the proper Dutch way to drink coffee. Not this fancy oat milky stuff.
00:02:44
Speaker
Yeah, fair. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Well, fair enough. And do you have final final beverage related question? When you have your coffee, do you just do? ah Do you make it yourself with like a little packet of coffee and do things? Do you have a fancy machine? I have an espresso machine with a milk foamer.
00:02:59
Speaker
Oh, I mean, that sounds very, very fancy. But indeed, he would be turning in his grave. the milk <unk>s He'd given up on my coffee habits years and years ago. So I think he he accepted it and still loved me. and It's no problem. That's fair. That's fair. I mean, that's good of him to, to you know, put that behind him. yeah so yeah Well, thank you so much again for joining me ah on tea break, coffee break, hot beverage break. My pleasure. Indeed, as I mentioned, you you are an archaeologist, you're also plenty of other things, but we will get into that more kind of later. But in terms of the archaeology, what was it about archaeology? What was your path into archaeology? This is something I ask all my guests, and it's so fascinating to hear the range of different ones, but also quite a lot of patterns, I must say. So I'm curious, were you one of the
00:03:48
Speaker
from birth, you knew you would be an archaeologist. No. Archaeology in the past was always something I found interesting. My parents were very heavily into taking us into museums and culture and all these things.
00:04:04
Speaker
And I was, as most archaeologists of my generation, a huge fan of time team. I used to watch that. it's Very dedicated as ah as a kid and a teenager. And no, actually, I ended up studying archaeology because I couldn't really decide what I wanted to study, but archaeology had always been one of the options. Like, I always doubted between archaeology and something medical biology-ish, like I considered being a vet or a doctor. or all these different things. And sort of the the medical side kept changing, you know, one year I'd be want to be a vet and the other day maybe I'll be a doctor. But the archaeology was always the other option. So in the summer where I had to decide what to do, I was starting to lean towards archaeology. And then we went on summer holiday to Ireland, and we went to Newbridge. It's this huge Neolithic
00:04:54
Speaker
monument with lots of fantastical carvings on it. And I just went, yep, this is it. I want to know what this is. I want to know more about the people who made it. And I started studying archaeology like two months later, and it just stuck. Loved it turned out to be good at it. And we went from there. Excellent. But that's interesting that you say you were interested in kind of medical veterinary, but you didn't just you didn't want to go down the bio archaeology route or the zoo archaeological route.
00:05:20
Speaker
I did consider it. I did do like minors in physical anthropology okay and that kind of thing. But no, I like artifacts more than I like bones or anything like that. so Yeah. Okay. which And so you became specialized indeed in the sort of material culture side of things and which... Yes. I mean, that is that itself is very broad. But um which which direction did you choose to go?
00:05:43
Speaker
Well, during my bachelor, I started going quite heavily into the Neolithic and I trained to do useful analysis on stones.
00:05:53
Speaker
Totally unbiased opinion there, Matilda. Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely. i said My bachelor thesis was on the use wear of wrist guards from the Bell Beaker period. And then during my research master, I started doing a thesis on corded wear hammer axes. And it was about I don't know, maybe a third of the way through that when I had a research seminar um as part of my degree on the wholesale culture and Iron Age elite burials. And I kept finding myself thinking, oh, once I finished this stupid thesis on hammer axes, I can maybe apply for a PhD on this topic because I was absolutely loving it. I was working as an intern at the museum that had a lot of artifacts from this period. I was studying them and I had all these questions.
00:06:38
Speaker
And at some point I just went, well, this is stupid. Why would I continue doing a thesis that I don't really want to do anymore? And I'm fascinated by this new thing. And I just sort of went with it, changed my topic, wrote a thesis that led to being able to apply for a grant for a PhD, got the grant and just went nuts for a couple of years. I feel like that's the best description of a PhD I've ever heard. Got a grant and went nuts for a couple of years. Yep.
00:07:07
Speaker
It's pretty much that. On the one hand, you're just absolutely loving all the time you get to spend on the topic that you're so interested in. The rest of the time, you're just you know a pile of despair.
00:07:18
Speaker
yeah
00:07:20
Speaker
And then you get your doctorate and life begins. Yeah, allegedly. You're doing great. we yeah We're all doing great.
00:07:31
Speaker
Yeah, no. but And it's interesting that you say, yeah, that you decided to switch, I guess a third, it's still early enough that you could indeed switch. But I feel like so many people indeed, assume that they're just stuck in that, you know, if you specialize in this thing, in your bachelor or in your master, or even your PhD, then you're stuck in that forever.
00:07:50
Speaker
At some point, you're past the point of no return and it doesn't make sense to switch. But in my case, it was also for the research seminar. Because I was an intern at the museum, my professors had asked me to create an inventory and a quick analysis of a series of artifacts.
00:08:06
Speaker
So by the time I decided to switch, I was already so heavily into researching that type of material that I sort of evened out where I was with the study of of the stone hammer axes. So I was just like, actually, except for the part right now, I have to so tell my professor that I'm switching to a different professor. That was really the only, yeah. She was very gracious about it. She yeah that's saw the light in my eyes, as it were, and let me go. Okay, that's good.
00:08:34
Speaker
But yeah, no, I feel quite strongly that you need to love what you're doing because otherwise, what's the point? Yes. Oh, that's I'm gosh, that's yeah. I think that should be the theme, the theme of of the whole archaeology degree. Love what you're doing because otherwise, indeed, what is the point? of doing this. It's not like we got into this for the money and the fame. No, no, no. And I mean, you have to also be realistic about it because, you know, it's not always fun and games, but there needs to be at least a little, little ember of passion for whatever it is you're doing behind it. Otherwise, you're not gonna last.
00:09:08
Speaker
yeah farho I think that's excellent, excellent advice. Thank you. So, yeah. So, indeed, went into a slightly different direction, specialised more in that, and we'll talk about that a little bit more, I guess, during the the discussion. We'll be sharing your insights ah with us. But another question I ask my guests, because, of course, this is tea break time travel. So, if you could travel back in time, I feel like I know the answer, but you never know. Some people throw me off and go completely different to what their specialism is. If you could travel back in time, where or when would you go and why?
00:09:38
Speaker
Oh, that is a good question. I knew I had read you were gonna ask me that and I've changed my answer like four times. I think I think I would go back to when they were the erection of a megalithic monument. who You know, like Newgrange really has it has a really passionate place in my heart, just because ah I find it so fascinating, wrote my first year's thesis on it. And i'm just I'm just so darned intrigued about why they did it and what they were thinking and what it looked like. um I always imagined ceremonies and music and, you know, fire lights and all these things. And I just I'm probably at the impression of Newgrange or one of the Dutch unibetta, which is also my type of my Gallithic grave, just because it's
00:10:21
Speaker
and I just never lost the intrigue. both Both how they just technically achieved it, which I think was just you know really hard work, yeah but also the the why and what they were feeling and and thinking while they did it.
00:10:34
Speaker
Yeah. And indeed who was doing it, like the community aspect of it, like you say, was it would be really interesting to watch, like to see the exactly dynamics. Exactly. We think of people of having come from really far away to participate in it. Was that true? Or was it, you know, was it a relatively quickly done thing with like a huge team of people or was it more like Like should we be picturing the cathedrals which took generations to erect? yeah Which in some cases I guess we already know was the case. Like Stonehenge was sort of redone over several generations at multiple times. But I think that would be my ah my number one thing.
00:11:12
Speaker
Which you also wonder, it just makes me think, I wonder if you had, you know, and like, yeah, a generational thing. So if it was, you know, some man or woman or whatever being in charge and then going, yes, this is how we're going to do it. But then at some point they pass on and their son or daughter is going, yes. so Okay. I know that that's what they said, but actually I have this new vision. We're going to do it this way.
00:11:32
Speaker
it's Yeah, I mean, I feel like with Stonehenge, that almost has to be the case. That's what happened because they did have like, I mean, it was in use for like 1000 years and redone yeah several times quite drastically.
00:11:43
Speaker
know This is wildly off the point and probably disrespectful to what they were actually thinking in the past. but I often think of it like when I was growing up, my mother would randomly decide actually we're going to redo the living room. Yeah, and exactly. you know My father would lovingly roll his eyes and do it for her because he knew she wanted it. you know like Just like need something fresh. yeah Probably there was a lot more thinking behind it with a lot more you know ceremonial and symbolic significance to it. But I do kind of wonder if people just wanted to change it up. or Or we're trying to just renovate it like trying to to keep it almost like we do with I recently went to Rome for the first time ever and was looking at the Colosseum and I found it so interesting all of the different kinds of stones that have been used over the years to like patch up you know all of the different aspects of things so whether that was the things but it's like oh well okay and you know you had then some people grumbling being like well it's not the original material and other people going this stone malarkey is never gonna work and you know like it would be
00:12:42
Speaker
yeah Yeah, but also and also like ah this seems a great example with like every emperor wanting to sort of add to it and make it, you know, add a personal touch to it. Perhaps that's also what happened with all our historic monuments, just a new leader, priest, shaman, whatever you want to call them, feeling like I have to leave my mark here in stone.
00:13:02
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And it's like you say, it's so funny because you don't think of them as being, you think of them associated with one culture, but like you say, they were around for thousands of years. They're still around. so it's so Yeah, it's so they've always been muse. Anyway, well, yes. Anyway, but moving slightly away from the the purpose, but still very, very good point. Very nice journey. I think I'll come with you when you go, because I would also be really interested to see.
00:13:25
Speaker
Before we look at today's object, we're first going to journey back to around 700 BC to a land that we currently call the Netherlands. And I know, by the way, some of you might be thinking, you mean Holland, but after having lived there, I can assure you it's the Netherlands. If you call anyone from the Netherlands and say they live in Holland, they'll get very angry at you. Anyway, m moving on.
00:13:45
Speaker
It is night, so but the darkness is lit with the sparks and the roar of glittering flames held aloft by a crowd of watching people who surround a freshly dug pit in an already existing mound. Piles of sod lie nearby, and a group of shadowy figures stand beside them with tools at the ready, their face shimmering in the heat of torches. Nearby, a cremation platform has finally stopped smoking, and its contents have been gathered into a huge bronze urn, smooth and bright.
00:14:11
Speaker
Also placed in the urn are various items, metal horse tack, large bits and rings, plus a knife, a whetstone, some finely woven and colourful folded clothes, and finally a sword with inlaid gold handle, its blade curved into a tight ring to allow it to fit inside the urn. The urn is slid into the pit, the watchers stand silently, the sparks from their torches floating up towards the stars.
00:14:33
Speaker
So today we're looking at this sword, which I only really learned about from being at a university in the Netherlands, and I haven't seen it that much, but it's incredible. It is called the Sword of Oz, which already the name I'm like, yes. um And we'll get into the details soon, but first let's have a very quick break.
00:14:53
Speaker
So, something that I usually like to do at this point, which most listeners should be aware of by now, is to look at the most asked questions on the internet about the object, courtesy of Google Search Autofill, to see what other people are wanting to find out about this object. However, when I was putting in sword of Oz, or sword Oz, or anything like that, first of all, it kept auto-correcting Oz to is. So instead of saying what, you know, sword Oz, it would correct it to what sword is, and then that wasn't really particularly relevant questions coming up.
00:15:21
Speaker
So it was actually impossible for me to find any questions about this. And so I came up with my own question, which is why, why is this sword not particularly well known? Well, it's an interesting question, because actually, it it really is if you're just looking up sword, it probably indeed won't show up. But if you look up anything slightly more specialized, like it's it's It's from a place called Ols in the Netherlands, but we call it the Chieftains' Grave of Ols in English or Forstagrof in Dutch. And if you look up Chieftains' Grave, Ols, or Forstagrof, Ols, or Mindlheim, which is the type of sword, or even Celtic Iron Age sword, it will actually often come right up because it is it's one of the most most famous prehistoric sites in the Netherlands. And if you're looking at like Iron and Age archaeology or the Hausa period, as we call it, or
00:16:12
Speaker
Celtic, which is not a term I love, this sword actually will pop up. And actually, like all throughout Europe, when various museums have large exhibitions on this theme or this period, they will request this sword to be loaned and appear in it. So it's it's It requires slightly more specialized googling, but it is actually a very, very well known site. Well, that's good to know, because I was getting very disappointed when I was looking at stuff. I was going, why did not more people know about this? Because like you say, I mean, and I'm going to have some links to this in the show notes. So anyone listening in, do go check the show notes or look up. Don't look up sort of us, because like I say, you won't get anything, but look up in the achievement burial or so or something like that. It's an incredible sort. I mean, it's
00:16:56
Speaker
beautiful, first of all, yeah the gold inlay is so clear, and the pattern is so amazing. And yeah, it's just bent into this ring, which just looks completely bizarre. yeah buts Because and you mentioned kind of how house you mentioned a couple of different things in there. You mentioned Mindelheim, Hallstad, Iron Age, Celtic. So what is the like cultural context, I guess, of of this sword or of this burial?
00:17:20
Speaker
Okay, so this, we call refer to this specific type of sword as a Mindlheim type sword, which just means that the first, or that it's named after a very similar sword that was found in Mindlheim, which is just how our guild is named. It's how we name everything. It's pretty much named either very descriptive, like a full Grisztzeft, the rosette, which just means fully bronze grip, or it's named after a place.
00:17:48
Speaker
And the same is true for the Hallstatt period, which is named after Hallstatt in Austria, which is a very famous site where they have a huge salt mine that was in operation from the Bronze and Iron Age onwards, as well as an extremely rich cemetery from about 800 to 500 BC, which is now the period we call the Hallstatt period.
00:18:12
Speaker
And that name, for large parts of Europe, is called the Holocaust period, that period. And in the case of U.S. to just make it slightly more complicated. We also call it that, because most of the grave goods from the chieftains' grave unfolds, including this sword, are actually imports from the Hauschitz culture, which is a name we gave to sort of a cultural and a material cultural phenomenon around southern Germany and upper Austria that have this specific type of material culture. So it's a period, it's a place, it's a period, and it's a a sort of cultural denomination.
00:18:51
Speaker
so Okay, yeah. Yeah, it gets complicated. But so you mentioned it's in sort of Germany and and Southern Austria, but is it also then in the Netherlands? I mean, do you have the Hallstatt culture in the Netherlands? Because you mentioned import. Okay. yeah So we have Hausa culture, you would not refer to what we have going on in this period in the Netherlands and in Belgium um as the Hausa culture, but we have Hausa culture imports and this is also pretty much the topic of my PhD thesis was that these elite graves that have these objects in them are actually the result of a sort of blending of local customs and Hausa culture burial customs.
00:19:33
Speaker
So they demonstrate that these people living in what we now call the Netherlands and Belgium actually had a fairly intimate and understanding of what these objects were, what they represented, how they should be treated in death. So the interesting thing about that is that there's an area of a hundreds hundreds of kilometers between being a Dutch person, us and them, where we don't find these things.
00:19:59
Speaker
Oh, okay. So it wasn't that it was just sort of gradually seeping through. it was No, it was not. i Also with terms of how these objects ended up in the low countries, it was not a matter of trading with your neighbor, who traded with his neighbor, who traded with his neighbor. yeah we We really seem to have a case where it was direct contact over hundreds of kilometers, exchanging objects and ideas and very tempting to think probably people.
00:20:25
Speaker
But it's something we really see only in sort of the elite, rich, high status material goods. If you take them away, there's not really a lot of sign of Hallstatt culture influence in the area. It's just these specific graves. So it's just the the posh people of the region wanted to be like the Hallstatt culture people, so they would order in the the specific Hallstatt goods to make themselves look Hallstattie. That is very 1930s thinking of you. We can prove that they had interaction with people from the Hallstatt culture. We can tell they imported goods, but we also see cultural understanding of what those objects meant. So it wasn't like just ordering a fancy outfit from somewhere else.
00:21:15
Speaker
Yeah. They understood the symbolism ah associated with these objects and how they should be used. But they then also incorporated very local elements into how they treated them during burial. Like this curling up of the sword was not something that was done in the Holoshia culture, but it is done in our area. And it's something that we also see in other local graves in our area. that the The idea of Bending and breaking and and destroying grave goods was very much a local custom, not a whole shit culture one.
00:21:48
Speaker
Which, let's get into that, indeed, a little bit. So this, so for example, this sword, the sword, which I'm going to just call it the sword of Oz, even though I know that's not the correct and how you pronounce it, but I can't stop thinking about the Wizard of Oz. So the sword of Oz, sword of Oz. So what was it actually made from? I mean, would it have been easy to bend? Also, a good question and complicated answer. All right. So first, maybe for the podcast. Since it's a podcast, a bit of a description of what this sword actually looks like. It is a huge sword with a blade made of iron. It is one of the earliest iron artifacts from the region. Oh, amazing. It is above averagely long. An average sword from this period is usually about 90, 95 centimeters. And the sword of also is 116. So it's already quite oversized. And then it has a handle made
00:22:43
Speaker
in part of wood and other parts probably made of bone or ivory that have not survived. And that hilt is kept on with rivets made of bronze in little diamond shapes with little circled bla circular decorations in it. And then it also has gold inlays in the shape of triangles, some little sort of curved moons, as well as the iconic lightning shaped. They really look like lightning bolts.
00:23:10
Speaker
And what we turned up during my PhD was that it actually originally also had a circle of lead inserted into the handle and slivers of worked bone. okay So it was very, very much a fancy sword. Also the the the complex decoration of The handle also suggests it was not intended for use in battle. i mean Any rigorous use of the grip, the gold would come right out. It's it's literally just inlaid in little slits. okay So there's that. And then when it comes to bending it, the issue we have is that in this period we're not 100% sure what type of iron.
00:23:52
Speaker
the blade was made from. So it seems that it is something called soft iron. Later on, it gets ah it's called hard iron and it just has to do with how it was processed. So current thinking is that it would have required careful heating and work by someone familiar with metal work in order to bend it around because it's really bent into a circle.
00:24:18
Speaker
so It wouldn't have just been someone getting angry and going, ah! There's actually a great reconstruction drawing of a similar grave from Belgium from, I'm going to say the 30s or 40s, where you see a dead chieftain on ah on a pyre and there's a guy standing next to it wearing what actually looks like a coconut bra made out of bronze objects that survived from the site.
00:24:44
Speaker
We now know that these are not in fact coconut bras, but Mary's bits of horse tag, but it's a wonderful drawing. I love as well that you first went to coconut bra, like like not not just a bra made out of bronze, but a coconut bra. These little mounded discs.
00:25:00
Speaker
and on the chest. It's a coconut, bro. And he's actually literally standing holding an iron sword of the same type with his knee sort of raised, like he's about to just bend it it's about to just bend it on his knee. That's very self-dying. Yeah, no. So that would not have worked. If you had done, first of all, you would have broken your knee, but also it would not have been able to bend it nicely round. yeah And we have other blades of the same period that are even more tightly Curl up into a circle or bent in various directions so it would have been it's not something you could have just easily done by your side it would have taken a bit of specialized work and control.
00:25:36
Speaker
And you mentioned that it is also a very complex kind of mixture of materials in the making of it. So not only did you have to have someone who knew what they were doing to to bend it, but I'm assuming someone professional or for want of a better word, would have made it as well. Like it wouldn't have just been one of the everyday swords that were made. No, I mean, first of all,
00:25:56
Speaker
<unk> swords is already kind of incorrect because not yeah most warriors would not have fought with swords in this period. It was much more, you know, spears and axes and always for that type of thing. So the sword is already kind of fancy special and fancy. okay And then this sword, we actually have a couple of them with have which have this type of decoration here in gold inlay or theres some with amber inlay. Beautiful.
00:26:23
Speaker
And they're all so similar that we actually think they were made in one workshop, probably in Southern Germany. Oh, cool. Yeah, and they all have varieties of, you know, lightning, sun, um and moon shapes in the decor. So they actually do, we we always call it sort of jokingly lightning decoration, but it actually might really relate to that, given that they all seem to have they all have variations of this.
00:26:50
Speaker
I wonder if the the the person's name was something with lightning or, you know, like that was his sort of, his nickname. I mean, we also see, especially in the preceding Bronze Age, but also in the Iron Age, quite quite ah a hefty obsession with, you know, the movement of the sun and the stars and and the sky. So if you imagine it you're a people pretty much at the mercy of the weather and the climate. it would It makes total sense for that to have quite a heavy heavy really ah presence in your um conceptual thinking and also in in the art expression. And designs and yeah yeah, interesting. But that's also really fascinating, that idea indeed that they might have all come from one potentially, from from one workshop. I immediately, I've reread the Princess Bride recently. And I'm just thinking of Enigma Montoya going, oh no, they bend the sword, the sword that my father made.
00:27:44
Speaker
but My name is Inigo Montoya, you bent my sword, prepared to die. so Nice, yeah? Yeah, perfect. Sorry, that's... You can see I'm feeling very intellectual today.
00:28:01
Speaker
But okay, so yeah so swords swords themselves weren't very common. These kinds of swords in particular weren't necessarily very common if you if if it's assumed they're sort of coming from one one kind of workshop. So that's yeah, that's really amazing. So the other question I have, which I'm sure other people might be thinking as well, is you have this sword, this beautiful sword, beautifully made from Inigo Montoya's workshop, and it's got these lightning bolts in it and everything, and then you decide A, to bury it with someone, which, you know, we know about that a little bit more, I guess, you know, need weapons for the afterlife and all that kind of thing to to help fight your enemies. But why would you bend it? Like, what's the reasoning there? That's a good question. And when we have theories on, but not a definitive answer. So first of all, for some reason, the people who buried this
00:28:54
Speaker
so It was buried in the grave of a man. It was about 30 to 40 years old when he died. Everything seemed to have to fit into his bronze bucket, which was used as an urn. It was a big wine bucket because the barrow they made over his grave, it was 53 meters in depth. They could have put the sword in straight. They could have, you know, kept the whole ah whole wooden wagon for his horses, everything intact, but they spent quite a lot of time and effort taking everything apart and making it small so it would fit inside this bucket. yeah So that can be a very practical decision. It can also be like there's theories about burial urns being like recreating the person's identity, sort of that there was a symbolism to it.
00:29:37
Speaker
So on the one hand, it could be that kind of practical issue. When it comes to swords, also have to see it sort of in the context of the time because during the preceding periods where most of the Bronze Age up to the very end of it, it was not culturally accepted to put swords in burials. They would be targeted in wet places, at least speaking for the area where we're talking about now. So swords pretty much never went into graves until about 200 years before the Chieftain of Oz was interred.
00:30:09
Speaker
at the earliest. And we see that the swords that first start going into graves, which are bronze swords, are all bent and broken. Okay, or melted, um which fits into the local burial custom when people were cremated. And if they had grave goods, they were always bent, broken, fragmented, even giving a little piece of something rather than the whole object. So that seems to have been very much and That was intentional. like it was It was done for the burial. It wasn't that they just they broke their sword. yeah no No, it was definitely done. like bench rat Things were bent, things were broken, things were melted on the pyre. so that was and We think that relates to some kind of shift in cultural thinking. that It used to be taboo to put it in a grave, and then for some reason they started changing that. They started putting them in graves, but like as a sort of lingering
00:31:01
Speaker
the of the taboo, they would make them unusable. Yeah. No, it's not a sword. Look, it's a ring. It's really a ring. I know it looks like a sword, but trust me, there's no sword. It could be something like that. We honestly just don't know, but you have to remember it's not just a sword that was bent. In the case of the Chisholm's grave, of was all of his things were were sort of taken apart. like His wagon was taken apart. The horse tag was taken apart.
00:31:31
Speaker
And then in other graves from the same period with the same type of objects, we have, you know, horse tack being broken and bent. We have bronze vessels being destroyed before they're put in a grave. So for some reason, destruction was a part of how they buried their dead.
00:31:49
Speaker
which I guess makes sense if they were cremating as well, because that's also a form of destruction. So you're yeah you're destroying the body too. Yeah. And also being able to distribute both the body and grave goods seems to be important to them. Like the cremations we find are usually they usually do not represent a whole person.
00:32:07
Speaker
you know, most of the time, if you cremate someone, you'll end up with about two kilos worth of cremated bone. And we find graves with half that, a quarter of that, if not less. So it's like they, we call it a pars plototo deposition, where you put in a small piece of something to represent the whole. And they seem to do that with both the objects and the gravelets, like we have graves where only a part of the horse tack is interred and a part not, perhaps because they would take it with them or they would keep it in their house for a while or they would take it to a different place, maybe the area they were born or you know a vacation spot they like to go to and leave a part of their home. It's something that we still do today. i mean A lot of people, if they have a cremated loved one, will
00:32:55
Speaker
you know leave a part of the vacation home, leave a part at the place where they met their partner, leave some of the cremation remains somewhere else. So it's perhaps also something quite human. Yeah, yeah. No, which is yeah a really fascinating idea as well in terms of, also but also like you say, that they that they built this massive mound. Then you just had these tiny little urns. But I guess that makes sense as well in terms of saving space. Yeah.
00:33:25
Speaker
Yeah, very practical. And so in terms of the mound, so you've mentioned quite a few times this idea of elite, of chieftains, of, you know, high status individuals. And I mean, I guess I'm just thinking automatically back to this, you know, the kind of classic stereotype of a chieftain burial and, you know, it's it's what you're taught not to think of, I guess, when you when you're trying to do critical thinking, it's like, don't assume everyone is the chief. But I guess in this case, it's quite clear they are, or like, how did that sort of what What was it that gave the clue for that apart from I suppose the 53 foot burial? of was that main clue and It's pretty much the main clue. So it's kind of a complicated thinking in the sense that we when you do your archaeology degree, you get ah told hundreds of times, richness of grave goods does not equal high status. For example, The example you always get is like early 20th century traveler and Romani groups, which are sometimes disrespectedly disrespectfully referred to as gypsies, which were at the time very low status people in most Western countries. But they actually had customs of burying their dead with lots of jewelry. That was their norm. So if you were to actually look at graves from that period,
00:34:37
Speaker
the people who were actually at the time considered high status would have quite poor graves, whereas these people who were socially considered quite bottom of the ladder would not. yeah So it's something to always keep in the back of your mind when dealing with archaeology.
00:34:52
Speaker
When it comes to these grades that we're talking about now, it's not just the richness of the grave goods, it's also the type of grave goods, which seems to be related to sort of high status activities, very exclusive activities, plus the creation of the burial mound was a community effort. So there's a lot of time and effort put into by a large group of people, which would not generally be done for just about everyone. So that's ah another indicator of high status.
00:35:22
Speaker
And then when we have the name Chieftain's grave, that's honestly just a name that evolved in archaeology for this type of really rich burial. Pretty much any grave that's unusually rich in grave goods in archaeology will start to become a princess grave, a priestly grave, princely burial, king's mound, all these things. But it's it's just a way for us to indicate someone of unusual high status.
00:35:48
Speaker
Yeah, because I guess there are enough other graves from this time period and from this culture that are not like that. Like it's not like these are the only graves we're finding. No. So it's actually quite interesting. ah Just two years after I finished my PhD on the elite burials of this period in the Low Countries, which is about my whole thesis is about 70 graves of which probably 30 are really rich, like the other 40 are sort of rich adjacent.
00:36:16
Speaker
The wannabes, the wannabes chieftains. The wannabes, they'll have something but they're not quite the same thing. So I had 70. My colleague, Aaron Low, who finished two years later, working on all the graves, on what we, we you know, the people, as it were, of the same period and the same distribution area, he had over 40,000 graves. Oh, wow. Okay. So, you know, like, we sometimes, whenever we give lectures together, we say, I'm the 1%, he's the 99.
00:36:46
Speaker
Yeah, which is always quite fun to do because I indeed am wildly overdressed and he's usually the classic archaeologist in jeans and a flannel.
00:36:56
Speaker
But anyway, so it's not even the 1%, it's like the 0.001%. It's a tiny fraction of the people who are buried in this way. Yeah, and I guess it's funny just because probably because they're so interesting and so fascinating, there's probably more publications about those graves than the other graves, but actually, there's less of them than the normal graves. Yeah, that's actually an interesting thing because there's also this phenomenon you think that and they are published and discussed and better known Yeah, but actually because they're so famous people assume they've been really well studied when in reality there's a lot of repetition of what has been said without looking into the reasoning behind it like my whole
00:37:39
Speaker
career pretty much started when during this research seminar i referenced earlier, a professor who'd been studying the elite grave, this specific elite grave from Oost for 20 odd years, asked me to just create an inventory of the grave within the grave.
00:37:54
Speaker
which you'd think would be straightforward. it It was not. It turned out that it had been restored like three times, which meant that the number of objects and the type of objects had changed. It turned out that there was a lot of stuff in the depot that had never been published that was like taken out of the bucket and they were like, I don't know what it is, we'll just store it. So it actually took me like seven months just to come up with a list.
00:38:18
Speaker
of what was in the grave. And I'm not kidding what I'm saying. This grave was excavated in the 1930s. I'm the fifth generation of archaeologists to specialize in this grave. And there has never been. Do you think someone would have made a list? You would think. You think that would be the first thing to do? That's like the stillest thing to do.
00:38:42
Speaker
It wasn't because it's also been restored three times by three different generations of restorers, which is actually one of my favorite things about this grave is that in the 1930s, restoration as a science and a skill was also still being developed just like archaeology. So they took everything out of the bucket. They only recognized a few of the objects among them, the sword, and then they have one the one inventory number number 7.10, which is literally recorded in our book as a clump of rust. Oh, nice. Okay. Yes. And then in the 60s, it was taken to a new restore who had some access to like x rays and stuff. And he took that clump of rust apart and found some horse tack and an axe and stuff. And then in the 1990s, they went even further. And that's when they
00:39:29
Speaker
sort of restored everything into what it is today, which also meant that things like that in the 1930s are published as an iron rod turned out to be an iron toggle, but nobody actually had written down iron rod is now iron toggle. They just have to sort of figure out how everything went together. And then of course, some things were renumbered wrongly, which just happens. So that that's true. That is truly where my specialty as an Iron Age archaeologist started, was just trying to make a list of what was in the grave. And then an archaeology of the archaeology, trying to work out what happened with the other archaeologists yeah in the last hundred years. Wow. yeah ah Well, it sounds yeah like really amazing research. We're going to have another quick break now so that those listening can have an opportunity to top up their tea, but we'll be back soon.
00:40:21
Speaker
Welcome come back, everyone. I hope that the teacups, or you know, coffee cups as well, are now full and the biscuit jar is empty. So that was yeah really interesting to hear about. Hear about the sword, hear about the burials, hear about chief there are. There are chieftain burials. We were all nice in our archaeology degrees. And we did all sort of introduce and we kind of went a little bit into your your other life as ah a curator and and well already in that last bit. But maybe we can go into a bit more detail now of, ah you know, how, how you manage to actually combine all of these different things that you're you're doing. So at the moment, and I think
00:40:56
Speaker
A curator at the Museum of Antiquities in the Netherlands. You're also a freelance editor, translator and researcher for various yeah publications, universities, all sorts of things, projects, plus you'll do occasional work as a vintage model.
00:41:14
Speaker
Which is yeah very very kind of, I guess they're related, but they're also very different. And also you have a family. You have various hobbies like horse riding, which people who follow you will will see on your social media. How on earth do you manage to balance all of those things and keep them all up? what What's your kind of, I don't know, what's the trick? well i mean returning to the beginning of the episode, the coffee plays quite a big role. It's a combination of things. It's on the one hand, I am genuinely someone who loves what they do and a workaholic. So I like having lots of things going. I find lots of things interesting. And I've been lucky enough to have the circumstances to to pursue all of them. I mean, theres i I won't lie, there's the occasional breakdown.
00:42:04
Speaker
w all high like life as an academic, lovely. more Even more than that is I have a very, very lovely and supportive partner who, you know, in the more like, for example, we're um approaching we're less than a month away from opening a huge exhibition on the Bronze Age, which means that my husband is pretty much taking over most of the childcare household duties just so I can remain functional while we go through this really, really busy period. But i I just find if I don't like what I'm doing, I don't do it. And if I like what I'm doing, then I figure out a way to to make it happen. And, you know, i'm I'm chronically late with things, you know, project deadlines pass me by because I'll be working on a different project.
00:42:52
Speaker
yeah so I manage it all, but it's not always as smooth or seamless as it may come across, if you don't know me personally very well while I'm having a breakdown. yeah fair. And you mentioned just quickly that big broads age exhibition, which date is it opening again? It is opening on October 18.
00:43:17
Speaker
oh Okay, so those who are listening to this fresh episode, it will be open a couple of days ago. so Yes, if you're in the Netherlands, do go look it out because there's another really fascinating sword on display that will be on display. Am I right? but the big There will be absolutely no shortage of fascinating swords in this exhibition. now There will be an absolute overload of swords and gold and bronzes, but also really cool wooden artifacts. It's it's it's an archaeologist's dream, to be honest, to be able to work on it. but
00:43:53
Speaker
yeah I really need to try and see if I can visit. How long is it on for? It's until like mid-March. So you have a little under six months to come visit. yeah I will share will do my best because I really want to see it. It looks amazing. so You have to see it. If anyone is visiting the Netherlands in the next six months, definitely go to Leiden, go to the Museum of Antiquities and have a look at it. It looks fantastic.
00:44:16
Speaker
Anyway, going back to the job balancing. So, because all of the sort of work that you do is quite different as well in that respect, they sort of have quite different spheres. Do you have a very different approach to kind of the work required in terms of, I don't know, just logistics of things, just mindsets of things? Yes, I suppose I do. I mean, first of all, I have learned quite early on that I need to compartmentalize. For example, I use a different email address for different types of work.
00:44:45
Speaker
and I try to limit. For example, like at the moment, I have my museum email and I have my own freelance email address and my museum days, which is three days a week. like In the more early morning, I'll check my other email just to check that there's nothing critical happening and I'll do it at the end of the day. But the rest of the day, that email stays off. So I'm still refocusing on my museum work, also figuring anybody in my other projects who really needs me that second has my phone number and they will call me. It's just to sort of maintain that peace of mind to to be in focus, to work on what I'm working on, and vice versa. you know so On my ah my freelance days, I will check my museum email twice, but other than that, assume and trust that they will call me if anything is critical in terms of timing.
00:45:32
Speaker
yeah So there's that, and there's also the mindset of do I, for example, if I want to start a new project, whether it's realistic under the circumstances or on offer, I won't take a job freelancing, editing or translating if i if I just know ahead of time that I won't have the time to do it.
00:45:53
Speaker
yeah Which is you know quite a ah luxurious position to be in these days. It wasn't the case when I first started freelancing. I'd take on pretty much everything just because I was still building my reputation, building my business, building my skill set. And I'm now at the sort of luxury position where I can just say, no, I don't have time for that. or I would love to do that. I mean, it is it is it is really, really wonderful. And we'll see if it continues to work out because after the exhibition opens by contract at the museum ends. And I'll be freelancing again full time.
00:46:26
Speaker
For the foreseeable future. Time for all the jobs. Time for all the jobs. I'm actually giving myself two months of not working just to to finish all these sort of side quests I've got going on in terms of research projects that haven't been completed or all these manuscripts of half written articles that I have piled up. So it's so it takes some balancing and hard work. but And I mean, you mentioned that like when you first started doing a freelance work, you were sort of taking, taking all in any jobs that you could. How did, I mean, if, for example, people are thinking of trying to go into freelance and I know your work is, your freelance work is mainly related to editing, translating and researching. But if, yeah ah I mean, I guess it's sort of applicable to anyone who wants to do that kind of thing. What would be the advice that you would give in terms of trying to start out as a freelancer in terms of making contacts or that kind of thing?
00:47:18
Speaker
Well, I think first of all, I give this advice to anybody considering to speak become an archaeologist or any type of career career where work is just not guaranteed in your field is to have transferable skills. Like the editing business came about because I'm a native speaker English and Dutch because I had an American mother and a Dutch father.
00:47:39
Speaker
And when I was a full-time academic, you know, colleagues would ask you to it just have a quick read of something and check it for them. And then I became an official freelancer, which meant I could send bills for things. And I started when that type of request continued after I'd finished my ph d i'd be like, Oh, well, I can do it, but I'm gonna have to charge you just a little bit because I have to pay for childcare now in order to do this. And it just so I did started that way and just started raising the prices as I went. So it's sort of learning to exploit the skills that you have. And for example, I have a touch of OCD, like I am quite compulsive about things being a certain way, which is actually wonderful for an editor because it means I instantly see yeah
00:48:24
Speaker
things are not spelled consistently, and that kind of thing. And then I short aside, I had sent Sasha, I sent all of my guests just a very I call it a script. It's not really a script. It's basically just a list of some of the questions I'm planning to ask some of the points I'm planning to raise and things and it's not intended for publication or anything. It's literally just to let the guests know what's what's coming. I got it back from Sasha with all kinds of spelling corrections. Every And I was like, oh yeah, I forgot she was an editor. I very much appreciated it, by the way. I don't mean to say that it was a bad thing, it was just hilarious to get it back. It's the first time I've ever got it back with corrections. I was like, oh wow, I've been doing how many episodes of this now? I've been doing it for a couple of years and this is the first time anyone said corrections.
00:49:14
Speaker
of course, it also helps that we're friends and you know, a random person, but it is true, i can't I can't turn it off anymore. And once I realized that was a useful skill, I, you know, did some coursework on it, like, how do I improve that? And I just sort of grew The reputation and I got to a place where I could also like charge different rates for different people. Like if I knew someone had quite a lot of funding for their work or if it was for a well-funded institution, I'd charge a slightly higher rate so that I could also afford to you know help the poor PhD student.
00:49:49
Speaker
Yes, that type of thing. And just sort of commercializing all the skills I have, like I'm quite good at, I did a lot of supervising of students and PhDs, just like a very practical note of how do you plan your work? How do you structure your work? And I turned that into workshops that I'm hired to give. So it's, I think the the challenge for most people is to know what you're worth and to not you know, sell yourself for free. And it can be a very small rate or a very high rate, depending on what it is, but that you also are brave enough to just say, I can't do this for free, my time is money. Yeah, ah especially like, in our case, we have a daughter who if I'm working, either my husband is taking care of her so staking family time away from me, or I'm paying for childcare. So in which case, I would be spending money in order to help
00:50:40
Speaker
someone. someone yeah So you know you just have to sort of balance that. yeah and just develop the skills you have. Which I find interesting as well. And this was something that, to be honest, personally, I'm struggling with and I need to get better at. And I saw someone else talking about the same thing in terms of developing the skills you have. So actually, yeah, going on courses and learning new things and developing those skills and everything. Because I suppose that is also, you know, a lot of them cost money and all that kind of thing. So it's, it's difficult to force yourself to do it because it's like, no, I don't want to spend this amount of money on skills. I i totally already have, but I guess, yeah.
00:51:15
Speaker
Yeah, but another thing that I've done in that regard is also finding people that you can sort of trade skills with. Like, from personal interest, I became quite adept at social media, even though I don't do it as much now. And I had a friend who had a quite a successful company doing presentation training, like how do you present yourself? How do you present conferences? How do you present yourself on film?
00:51:39
Speaker
And at the time, I started having to do quite a lot of recordings at the museum in different circumstances with different vibes, as it were, very casual, very professional. And I had sort of a, even though I'm quite a good presenter, in most circumstances, as soon as the camera was in my face, I would start losing the charm I had when I speak about things I like. And I couldn't... I was struggling with it. I was talking to him about it. And he was mentioning that he was having some issues with his marketing. And so I did an analysis of his social media, gave him some pointers, helped him redesign his strategy. And he gave me a course on presentation. So it cost neither of us anything. But we both got several hundreds of euros worth of free services because we helped each other out.
00:52:24
Speaker
well Which, you know, is how how it was done, right? Proper trading goods for goods, you know? Trading skills for skills. Yeah. Oh, I like that. That's a nice song. Now I need to try and find people. I don't know what skills I'd give them. Do some use work. What do you mean this isn't useful for your current work? Of course it is. Yeah, no that's a really good tip. And the final kind of, I guess, question related to this, what, I mean, in regards to any of these jobs, but maybe in terms you mentioned, archaeology is quite also quite difficult to find kind of solid work in. Like, what do you wish that you had known when you started your journey into archaeology that you do know now?
00:53:04
Speaker
Mostly just to recognize that your time is is is worth something. you know Especially in academia, there is this spirit of you must be working all the time in order to succeed. and which is There is a ah grain of truth in that. You can't be very laid back and lazy and and be successful in most fields. but I also decided quite early on that I was going to either be successful on my own terms or not be successful when I figure out something else to do. So I don't i don't work jobs that I'm not comfortable with. I don't i won't compromise compromise my ethics or my desires in life in order to to do certain jobs and things. in the same like For example, I love doing research. I don't love academia.
00:53:49
Speaker
So I chose to not be a full-time academic, but still have enough of ah an academic presence that I still get to do my research projects, which I enjoy. So it's sort of... having the bravery, the the the confidence to to make that ball choice and and just do what you want to do. Yeah. Oh, that's so nice. Such nice advice. And I want to just add something onto this as well that sort of relates to that a bit is don't be afraid to ask other people how they've done things too, because it's actually a funny story. The reason that Sasha and I became friends, I want to say friends. I want to say friends, definite friends.
00:54:25
Speaker
yeah, was following her on social media. And then at some point was like, oh, she just has such a great life. Like she does archaeology, she does the translate, she has a cool family, she, how does she manage it? I really wish I knew. And then I thought, well, screw it, let's just message her because I was also enlightened. She was also in enlightened. So we never met, we'd never even spoken, I don't think, on social media. I think I just kind of stalked you. Yeah, I sent her a message saying, hey, this sounds really random. But next time you're enlightened, you want to grab a coffee. And I wanted to ask you some questions about stuff. And she was like, yeah, sure.
00:54:53
Speaker
And we met up and you gave some great advice, very similar to what you've given here. And yeah, that it was the start of a long and beautiful friendship. We've done all kinds of projects. In general, great advice, if you see someone doing something you want to be able to do is ask them how they did it.
00:55:08
Speaker
yeah You know, the same with how how to be a PhD. Nobody knows how to be a PhD candidate of when you start doing it and you feel really lost and pathetic because everybody knows what they're doing. And then you ask someone, how do you do this? And they'll all go, I have no idea. I'm completely panicking all the time. And you'll start to realize that's the norm. Yeah. And everyone has a different bridge. Like that's what I always, I like to ask all my guests, indeed, you know, how do you get into archaeology and all this kind of thing? Because everyone has had a completely different answer, like completely different background completely different route, but everyone still is is working in some way related to archaeology. i mean I've had quite a few crafts people on as well, but they're also all related to archaeology still in some way. and it's yeah It's always so nice to see that there's no one right way to do something.
00:55:52
Speaker
for sure which on that so positive note, I think it's a good too good place to stop. So I think that's the end of our tea break. It sounds like, well, you it sounds like you've got a lot of work to get back to, so I'll let you go back to that. But thank you so, so much for joining me today, Sasha, as always. Thank you for having me. It's ah been great to hear from you. Absolutely. Yeah, if anyone wants to hear more about Sasha's work or the Sword of Oz, the chieftain of all ah burial things, you can check out the show notes on the podcast homepage. Do make sure to look up the the picture because it does it looks absolutely beautiful. yeah I hope that you enjoyed our journey today. Please do like, share, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to help support this show and of course all the other amazing series that form the Archaeology Podcast Network,
00:56:39
Speaker
You can follow us on social media, or you can also become a member of the APN. You'll be helping us to create even more amazing content, and you'll also have exclusive access to ad-free episodes and bonus content. So for more information on that, check out the homepage at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com. I hope that you enjoyed our journey today. If you did, make sure to like, follow, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and I'll see you next month for another episode of Tea Break Time Travel.
00:57:07
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.