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Art! - Ep 261
2.6k Plays8 months ago
This week we have 3 news stories about art in the ancient world. First up, 10 years of excavating a synagogue in Israel has revealed stunning floor mosaics. Then, we head to everyone’s favorited ancient city, Pompeii, where spectacular frescos were uncovered in a residence. And finally, rock carvings in Peru may depict people singing or dancing while hallucinating.
Links
- Surprising Scenes in Stone
- Pompeii: Breathtaking new paintings found at ancient city (BBC)
- Archaeologists Reveal Rock Art May Depict People Singing While High (Newsweek)
- Dances with Zigzags in Toro Muerto, Peru: Geometric Petroglyphs as (Possible) Embodiments of Songs
Contact
- Chris Webster
chris@archaeologypodcastnetwork.com - Rachel Roden
rachel@unraveleddesigns.com
RachelUnraveled (Instagram)
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Transcript
Introduction to Archaeology Show
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You're listening to The Archaeology Show. TAS goes behind the headlines to bring you the real stories about archaeology and the history around us. Welcome to the podcast. Hello, and welcome to The Archaeology Show, episode 261. On today's show, we talk about Jewish art, Italian art, and Peruvian art. Let's dig a little deeper, but don't knock any more frescoes off the wall. Test rack.
00:00:35
Speaker
Welcome to the show, everyone. Rachel.
00:00:40
Speaker
I start the show exactly the same way I do archaeotech, except Paul doesn't give me any crap. Oh, well, but I mean, so my job is to give you crap. Wow. I mean, come on, you're looking at the ocean right now, so I don't feel that bad for you. I am indeed.
Travel Adventures Near Redwoods
00:00:55
Speaker
And it feels like we're in Oregon or Washington, really Oregon, the Washington coast, unless you get up really north on the peninsula. Doesn't really look like this, but all of Oregon looks like this. But we're in Northern California.
00:01:06
Speaker
Yeah, like we're really close to Redwoods National Park and it's like a little rainforest here. It's such a cool part of the country. And you know us, we're always trying to find like cheap places to spend a night on the way when we're in transit somewhere and right now we're on our way to your parents house in Florence, Oregon. But this casino that we're parked at in their parking lot is a really cool deal. It's a great little spot to park and somehow magically we have a view of the ocean from our RV, which you can't get.
00:01:36
Speaker
at an RV park for less than like 100 bucks a night. And it was $20 for three nights here. What? Yeah, I mean, it's kind of through the trees and across the parking lot. Oh, it is. I know. Like, it's not fantastic or anything. But like, there it is. I know. You know I'm always chasing the view, so. I know. And we're actually on Native American land, too, or on the Trinidad Rancheria. Yes, we are. Yeah. Yeah. So it's pretty cool. It's funny when you travel around a lot, and other archaeologists would know this as well.
00:02:03
Speaker
Sometimes you just forget where you've been. Like we drove down into the little Harbor area, just kind of looking for this restaurant to grab some lunch when we got here. And the minute we got around the corner and I saw this, like this big peninsula kind of thing, this big rock and then, and then the little Harbor, I was like, Oh, yup, we've been here. We've been here.
00:02:20
Speaker
And then he pulled up on his phone like, did you do it by location? I did it by search. I searched Trinidad. Oh, okay. Yeah. And it just came up with the photos that we took last time. Cause we did some photos for some of my knitting, knitting designs. So yeah, I know if you haven't actually tried this, I know on iPhone, it's just in the photos app and on Google. I know Google does this. They've been doing it for awhile, but if you just search something, it'll search in the photo. It'll search the location of the photo. It's so good.
00:02:45
Speaker
It's actually super great. I remember one time we needed the license plate for the RV, and I knew I'd taken a picture of it. And I searched license plate, and I found all these pictures I didn't even know had license plates in them. Because I had just taken a picture. Yes, of random cars that were in the shot. But it also brought up the license plate, too. So yeah, search has gotten really, really great in photos. I know. I know. You know who else is searching for a photo? Archaeologists. Wow. And they found a photo of ancient Juhan's tribe, kind of. A photo? Yeah.
00:03:15
Speaker
I mean, it's an old style photograph. You've really got to sit a while for it. Oh my gosh. It's
Roman-era Synagogue Discoveries
00:03:20
Speaker
not. It's not at all. So this article is actually in National Geographic and we have Apple News Plus, which gets us magazine subscriptions, one of which is National Geographic, which is a pretty good deal, by the way, if you're an Apple user. I mean, I'm not trying to, we get no compensation from Apple for saying this. Not at all. Apple doesn't even know exists, I don't think.
00:03:39
Speaker
But we're also like Apple power users, and for $30 a month, as on the family plan, we get Apple News Plus, we get extra storage for everything, we get Apple Fitness, we get Apple TV, and we get a bunch of other things. But I think it's like four or five bucks a month to get Apple News Plus, and you get a bunch of magazine subscriptions.
00:03:56
Speaker
Really nice. Cause I mean, otherwise I wouldn't have national geographic. I'm not going to, I just, we don't have space for actual paper magazines anymore. I'm not even sure who really does at this point. So having the digital version of it is nice. But what that means is, is that when you go search for this article, just on their website, it doesn't come up. And I don't know if they released the digital versions of the published in print articles later on or something like that. I don't know, but I definitely couldn't find it digitally except on Apple TV plus as part of the issue.
00:04:26
Speaker
So, all that being said, let's get to what the article is. Yeah, so they called it Surprising Scenes in Stone, and then it subtitled, recently completed excavations of a Roman era synagogue reveal elaborate mosaics and up-end long-held beliefs about ancient Jewish life. And I can't remember if we said this, but it's the April 2024 issue. Yes. Yeah, so if you're looking for this.
00:04:47
Speaker
But anyway, it is the site of Hukuk in ancient Jewish village, and it's located in Hilltop in Northeastern Israel overlooking the Sea of Galilee. And they say the excavations began in 2010, and here's where we'll make an apology because the excavations weren't really done to a high archaeological standard because of
00:05:05
Speaker
Okay, excuse me, do not be throwing shade on somebody you don't even know, but her name is Jody Magnus and she went to UNC Chapel Hill, my elbow monitor. I'm sure she's fine. That's why Chris is throwing shade right now. I have no idea who she is. She was there long after I was there, but that's fine.
00:05:22
Speaker
Anyway. She's probably a professor there or something like that. Probably talking crap about her. Sorry, Jodi. And the department at Carolina was huge when I was there. And I don't think I even crossed paths with anybody who was working in that part of the world. My focus was all on South America and Peru. Anyway.
00:05:41
Speaker
So Jodi knew that this site was here because there were remains of stone buildings on the surface. And this is in 2010 when she first began, you know, looking into excavating it. She suspected there was more to be found below the surface. And that's why they started excavations just like you would for any site where you know, there's something under there. You just don't know what yet.
00:06:01
Speaker
Most of the time we dig is because we know something is on, we see something on the surface that indicates possibly something below. And this is like a desert environment, right? So like, you know, they had these remains of walls and stuff there. They knew that there were something and, you know, excavations began. Yeah. They uncovered a stone wall running north to south, approximately seven feet below the surface. So that took a minute to get there, I'm sure. Yeah. Cause I got to go down level by level. Yep. Level by level cause you never know what you're going to find.
00:06:29
Speaker
Yep. There was a main door in the structure oriented towards Jerusalem, which was not uncommon if you had the ability to move the structure. I mean, if you're like in a town, that's not going to happen. Right. And if you're a particular kind of structure, which in this case, because of the orientation, they are thinking that this structure was a synagogue and they determined that it was approximately 1600 years old and it was built sometime in the early 5th century CE. Yeah. So that's the timeframe we're looking at here.
00:06:58
Speaker
And synagogues of this time period that they found before typically have floors of paved flagstones. So like big rocks. Yeah, basically. They could be really nice big rocks. Well, yeah, sure. Yeah, and maybe there would be like a mosaic or two, but nothing crazy, right? Yeah, well, they continued excavating into the 2012 field season and began to find small little mosaic tiles known as tesserae. Now that is not from the Marvel series. The tesseract. The tesseract.
00:07:25
Speaker
But I'm sure the Tesseract would have been immortalized in Tesserae at some point in time. Yeah, the root words definitely come from the same place. Is it Tesserae like the coolest word ever, though? It is pretty cool, yeah. I love that word. Yeah. Yeah, so that was new for me. Well, actually, it probably wasn't new for me because I did a whole mosaic thing in college. But it just came back to my memory that Tesserae is a small mosaic tile. Yeah.
00:07:46
Speaker
And as they kept excavating down, they did eventually hit a floor and that floor was revealed to be covered in elaborate mosaics. And not like, you know, your basic mosaics, like elaborate. We'll talk about what the scenes were in a minute here.
00:08:02
Speaker
Yeah, it took them, I mean, archaeology is not a quick science, right? And a lot of times you're restricted in your field seasons by, I mean, usually the primary thing is funding and time. Like you're bringing students out there typically and everybody has a limited amount of time that they can do this because it's costing them a lot of money, especially students are paying by the credit to be out there.
00:08:25
Speaker
And weather too, like you've got specific weather windows when you can really work also. So there's a lot of restrictions on how long a field season can be. Right. And it took them 10 more excavation seasons, they say. Now I'm assuming that's one season per year. Yeah. That's typically how that works, but it doesn't really elaborate on that.
00:08:44
Speaker
That is what I understood. And then they returned each time and continued uncovering the floor. Now, probably doing other stuff as well. Probably other stuff as well. They probably tasked a few people to just work on the floor and keep uncovering that and then other people to do other stuff. That's just how excavations work. Because you need more than just one thing. The floor is great, but you need some context around that so that they could build the story of what this floor was, which I think they do have a pretty good story here.
00:09:07
Speaker
Now, here's something crazy. Well, this whole thing measures approximately 65 feet long by 50 feet wide, and the entire floor would have been covered in mosaic panels. Now, the picture at the top of the National Geographic article, until right now, and I've looked at this a couple times. I looked at it when we first put it in the card. I looked at it when we almost recorded last week, but didn't, and then just said, we're traveling, and then didn't release an episode. Sorry, Bodie.
00:09:34
Speaker
Sorry to our Australian friends. But anyway, I'm looking at this picture again now, and I don't think I noticed the person in the upper right-hand corner. I thought this was on a wall, and I didn't realize how big it was in the person's first scale. I completely didn't realize that was a human, and I put them as part of something on the wall, some little thing. And I can't believe how big this mosaic is. Yeah, it's gigantic, and that's just one of the panels. And this is just one of them. Yeah, it's crazy how big it is. So only about half the mosaics remain intact.
00:10:02
Speaker
But it is still so many more than a church or a synagogue of this time period usually would have. They would normally have like one to three mosaic panels and they would be, you know, not of the quality that these mosaics are. So it is very special from that respect.
00:10:18
Speaker
Yeah, these mosaics, being a synagogue and all, depict scenes from the Hebrew Bible, like pairs of animals heading towards Noah's Ark, the Red Sea engulfing the Egyptian army, the construction of the Tower of Babel, Samson carrying the gate of Gaza on his shoulder, Jonah being swallowed by three successively larger fish, which isn't totally accurate, according to...
00:10:38
Speaker
I think it depends on the translation of the Bible that you're reading. Cause I always heard the whale, but that could have been because of a Christian thing. I don't know. But the picture is pretty hilarious of that one. They have all the whole pick. If you scroll to the bottom of the article, you can see the whole thing and it's like just a pair of legs, like hanging out of the mouth of a smaller fish. And then there's inside of two more fish. It's pretty hilarious. Yeah. There's also scenes from classical art, including Cupid's theater masks and the Greek God of the sun Helios.
00:11:04
Speaker
Yeah, the context here is that the Romans conquered the land east of the Mediterranean, including Galilee, in the first century BCE. And at first, nothing much really changed for the Jewish people in this area. They lived as they had before. They had their own laws that were dictated by their religion.
00:11:22
Speaker
And they were given exemptions so that they didn't have to do things that they didn't want to do, such as worship the emperor, which is how the other Romans, that's what they would have done. They were worshipping their emperors at that time, basically. And that all changed in the fourth century when Christianity became a legal religion and they started to pass laws that restricted the freedoms the Jewish community had previously had.
00:11:45
Speaker
Yeah, so Christianity takes over, and the first thing they do is start cracking down on the Jewish. And then the Venetians came along. Wait, that's later. Not yet. And not in this area, I don't think. If you're new to the show, go listen to our episodes from Greece last fall.
00:12:02
Speaker
So some of the things that the Christian laws did was banning the construction of synagogues. That was something that they often did. But this synagogue was built during or after the time of these laws. So it's indicating that maybe like everyday enforcement of these rules weren't actually as strict as it might seem when you're just reading them in some kind of rule book somewhere, you know, that we still have.
00:12:27
Speaker
Just because the rule is on the books doesn't mean people are following it, basically. And this right here is a perfect example of that happening. So back to the mosaics themselves, one of the panels is especially dazzling and also a little bit puzzling. And I wouldn't normally use the word puzzling because I'm so annoyed when archaeologists are puzzled in news articles, but I think this one actually does kind of fit the bill.
00:12:51
Speaker
Also, mosaics are actually puzzles. Oh, they kind of are. It's true. So this one is a little bit different. And the reason it's so dazzling, as they say, is the mosaic quality. Now, mosaic quality is measured in how many tesserae there are per square decimeter, which is about 15 square inches. Right.
00:13:11
Speaker
Most of the mosaics in this site range between 175 and 230 tesserite per square decimeter. But this one, this very special panel, is more than double at about 500 per square decimeter. That is so, so many tiny little mosaics down. That's more than the first Mario Brothers and the first Nintendo.
00:13:38
Speaker
Yeah, they weren't working in 8-bit back then. No. I mean, yeah, they could like truly draw actual artistic scenes when they had such small tesserae to work with.
00:13:49
Speaker
I know, the scene that we're talking about here depicts a great conqueror facing down the high priest of Jerusalem and losing. The conqueror is probably Alexander the Great, and this is showing that even the greatest Greek king acknowledged the greatness of the God of Israel. And that is interesting because it's likely a legend.
00:14:08
Speaker
in the Jewish community and the showdown never actually happened in real life, at least not that we have evidence for. So that's sort of the puzzling piece of it is because they put so much work and effort into this mosaic to show something that's more of a legend rather than a reality. But that's what you do when you're trying to display greatness, right?
00:14:26
Speaker
Yeah. They may also have seen the changes happening with the increase in Christianity around them and use the mosaics as a way to show how strong the Israelites were in the past. So kind of a history lesson, which makes a lot of sense actually. Back to your strengths in the past. Yeah, for sure.
00:14:39
Speaker
This masterpiece, along with the rest of the mosaic panels, were probably laid down by specialists from a local family-owned workshop because this is a very specialized activity. It is, for sure. An inscription by the main door lists several names of people identified as artisans, and they could be the ones who created the floor. I don't see why they wouldn't be, at least designed the floor.
00:14:59
Speaker
Yeah, probably what I was reading about the way mosaics were constructed is the masters of the craft would have been the ones that were doing like the figures and like their hands and their faces and all that small tiny detail stuff. And then anytime there was a huge chunk of one color, they would have their apprentices and people who were still learning, younger members of the family, probably if it was a family business would be doing that. But just doing that larger section in one color was still like learning experience for them. So that was sort of the like apprentice process for
00:15:30
Speaker
building mosaics. Not only were these pretty much fancy and over the top, the entire building would have been painted in bright colors, they think. And the archaeologists actually nicknamed this the disco synagogue because of the colors, which is kind of funny.
00:15:43
Speaker
And, apparently, other towns in the area also had synagogues, of course, and they were all pretty spectacular, which they're sort of interpreting as an inter-Jewish competition in the region, just for the Mysema Ganks, nicer than yours. I'm not sure I agree with that, to be honest with you. That seems like it kind of goes against what the Jewish religion would highlight. Oh, I don't know about that, necessarily. I don't know. Back then, anyway.
00:16:05
Speaker
Yeah, it might have been a little bit of a competition between Jewish people, but it could have been more just a, hey, Christians, we're here, we have money, and this is what we can build. So it does seem like that is more likely. But building a huge building like this, I think, would be something that Jewish people would do. Yeah. Well, the synagogue was used for several generations before it was abandoned, and they think it was because of earthquake damage. Yeah.
00:16:32
Speaker
Anyway, that's pretty cool. Hey, I got a little side note here too because we were watching the Apple TV show Franklin with, is it Michael Douglas? Michael Douglas. And we were watching that and I was curious to see how many Benjamin Franklin's descendants were still alive today.
00:16:47
Speaker
And while I did find that there's apparently lots of them, because he had
New Finds at Pompeii
00:16:51
Speaker
one illegitimate son who didn't really do much as far as reproduction goes, and then he had another son who died really young, actually. And then his daughter actually had like eight kids, and all of them had many kids. So from his daughter, there's like lots of Franklins. But when I was looking that up,
00:17:08
Speaker
I saw something about Alexander the Great and apparently somebody had asked also, are there descendants of Alexander the Great? And apparently there's theoretically none unless he slept around and there's illegitimate kids because his wife and kids when he died were slaughtered. So there wouldn't be any descendants. Oh really? Yeah. I don't know the full story around that, but that's what I saw. So they say there's no legitimate descendants of Alexander the Great, but I mean, come on, he probably has some illegitimate.
00:17:35
Speaker
Maybe, maybe not. He was only, what, 32 when he died or something like that. But still, he went around the world, at least that part of the world. Yeah, he did. That powerful of a person to do what they wanted. Well, we didn't mention this in the beginning, but we do have a bit of a theme with our news articles this week. They're all kind of art-focused, arty sort of, depending on your perspective on what it is that they're creating. So yeah, we're going to move on to everybody's favorite city in the next segment.
00:18:04
Speaker
Pompeii it's gonna be a blast back in a minute Welcome back to the the archaeology show almost forgot what it was called there for a second So this episode 261 and we are continuing our art theme and we're back in Pompeii here Pompeii has
00:18:25
Speaker
It's just everywhere. Well, they keep excavating. They do. They keep finding more and more things, and they keep excavating Herculaneum as well, and some of the surrounding areas. I actually just saw an article this morning about Herculaneum and a scroll that they were able to read. Oh, really?
00:18:40
Speaker
Yeah, they're using some brand new techniques. I can't remember what it was to read these scrolls, and one of them might dictate the actual burial site of Plato, which they knew he was buried in this Roman cemetery somewhere up in Rome, I think it was. But they weren't exactly sure where. But this actually gives a little more detail, and they might have nailed it. So anyway, the more they find it, because Herculaneum was kind of a
00:19:03
Speaker
a posh little suburb of Pompeii. It wasn't a suburb, it is now. Oh, I see. It was where the rich people lived? Kind of. Not that people weren't rich in Pompeii, but it was like a nice neighborhood. Pompeii had his CD underbelly and stuff going on. And just as a quick disclaimer, because I honestly avoided this article when we were looking for them. Come on, just because it's Pompeii?
00:19:27
Speaker
I mean, a little bit, because we talk about- Would you avoid Stonehenge? We talk about Pompeii so much. I mean, a little bit. Yeah, that one too. Because we talk about these things so much, and sometimes it's too much. We need to learn about other parts of the world. But I was reading one article about this, and somebody in the article, I can't remember which one it was. It's not this one. It was a different one. But they said Pompeii is the gift that just keeps giving to archaeologists, not to the people who were in Pompeii, obviously.
00:19:54
Speaker
It just gave the one time. Yeah. And I guess I kind of just have to embrace and appreciate that because it's true. The preservation here is just spectacular and there's nowhere else that has this kind of preservation anywhere. So yeah, it's amazing.
00:20:11
Speaker
Well, what we're going to talk about today was an excavation that was done in a room they called the Black Room, because the walls are completely black, except for two amazing frescoes that were found. And this is in a private residence, they think. Yeah, and they speculate that the dark color on the walls was to hide the smoke deposits from lamps used at night. So they're thinking that this was like an entertaining room kind of a thing, where people would have been hanging out when it was dark out.
00:20:39
Speaker
I mean, didn't they hang out in other places when it was dark out? Is that based on evidence, I wonder? Anyway, I just don't know what this is based on because you'd think they would... I've never heard of a black room before. I haven't even heard. And you'd think every house would have a black room. I think that this is all speculation, honestly, because they just don't know. But their idea is that the flickering lights would have made these two stunning frescoes really come to life against the black background of the walls.
00:21:07
Speaker
And also, the other thing here, if you look at the picture, it almost looks like it's like a concrete floor that's cracking a little bit. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no. That is a completely white mosaic tile floor. It's got millions of individual tiles. I'm sure it's nothing compared to the one in the last segment. But I mean, the whole thing is white. So we've got black walls, white floors. I'm sure the reflections in the color would have just been amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Now on to the frescoes.
00:21:35
Speaker
And the first one that God Apollo was seeing trying to seduce the Trojan priestess Cassandra, her rejection of him, according to legend, resulted in her prophecies being ignored. Yeah, and you might wonder what those prophecies are, or maybe you don't, because I bet a lot of people actually know. Well, maybe. The tragic consequence of her rejection are told in the second fresco, which is when Prince Paris meets the beautiful Helen.
00:22:00
Speaker
And a union, which Cassandra knows will doom them all, occurs, and that results in the Trojan War. So it's basically depicting the beginning of the Trojan War. That's what these two frescoes are.
00:22:12
Speaker
Yep. And as we mentioned, the black room is located in a private residence in a wide residential and commercial block known as region nine. Yeah. And that's what they called it in an early, early Pompeii was region nine block 62. I mean, I know region nine is not exactly like a great Roman name, but you know, archeologists have to give methodical scientific names to things so that they can keep them separated. And yeah, everything's mapped out. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
00:22:42
Speaker
So, the staff removed several meters of pumice and ash from Vesuvius, and as they are uncovering these lost treasures, they have to also move quickly to preserve them. And this is especially important in this particular room because they found these stunning frescoes that they don't want to lose, right? Well, they can't really move them either. Exactly. They put everything else in safe storerooms, but these have to be preserved in place. Yeah.
00:23:09
Speaker
And they do that. And I thought this was so cool. I actually wish there's a little bit more information on how this works exactly in the article, but apparently they inject a plaster glue into the rear of the frescoes to prevent them from coming away from the walls. And I don't know if they're on the other side of the wall doing that or if they
00:23:29
Speaker
Those walls are really thick. I'm willing to bet that they've got like a really fine needle syringe type of thing, and it's a very small amount of glue. And they're just getting in behind there, and it's probably very meticulous work. But just enough to basically adhere it, because if it starts to dry out, those tiles are just going to start falling away from the wall. Yeah, that's so cool. The preservation techniques that they have to use at Pompeii must be like just so
00:23:55
Speaker
so much different than other places because it's so complete. You just don't get preservation like that, so you don't have to worry about, you know, conservation really. Yeah, and Italian OSHA requires them to shore it up with masonry. No, they shore up the masonry with scaffolding, and then they put roofing over the top of the frescoes. Basically, again, all to just protect everything. To protect it, yeah. It was protected by those many, many feet of ash and pumice before, but now it's just exposed to the air, so yeah.
00:24:23
Speaker
Now, this structure itself is interesting and a bit of a mystery. I'm not sure it's too much of a mystery. Honestly, those are the words from the article. And a little bit disturbing. So let's talk about why. The structure is comprised of three main areas. One is a laundry that was uncovered in the 19th century. Then more recent excavations uncovered a wholesale bakery. Wholesale? How do we know it was wholesale?
00:24:46
Speaker
We talked about this in an article from a couple months ago. And they know it was wholesale or commercial because of the size of the ovens and the size of the supplies and stuff that they had there. So they're pretty sure that it was a place where they were selling bread out of it. Gotcha. Yeah. OK, now we want bread. Anyway, that was next to the laundry. And behind both of these commercial businesses, a grand residence that contains the blackroom was existing. Yes.
00:25:11
Speaker
Yeah, so you've kind of got businesses on one side and then residents on the other side. Well, and if you've ever seen pictures of Pompeii, better yet, if you've ever been there, I've been there twice and we went there actually not too long ago. Almost 10 years now, but yeah. Geez, it wasn't that long. Anyway. 15 or 16. Something like that. If you look there, it's a very dense city. Yeah. Like it's not all spread out. I mean, there are some areas that have some courtyards and things like that, but the buildings and all things, everything shares a wall. It's a very dense city.
00:25:41
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. And in this case, the excavation team is very confident that all three of these separate spaces can be connected both physically through the plumbing and stuff that they have in the walls, but also in terms of ownership, because there are numerous inscriptions with the initials ARV found throughout all three of them. And that's in like the masonry and stuff, like on bricks and things that are underneath the walls that wouldn't
00:26:07
Speaker
you know, wouldn't have been exposed day to day, but was there in the foundations or whatever. Unlike other archaeological sites, we have a lot of information about Pompeii. And we pretty much know who ARV is, and his name was Alice Rustius Verus. He's a super rich politician in Pompeii that is known from other political propaganda in the city. And he was the apparent owner of the residents and the businesses.
00:26:32
Speaker
Yep. And it's also clear, and this is so cool because this is what I love about Pompeii is the snapshot aspect of it. And these structures were clearly under construction at the time that they were buried. And they know this because they've uncovered these neat stacks of roof tiles, filled pots of lime mortar that would have been used to place the tiles, I believe, pickaxes and even like a cone shaped lead weight from a plumb line.
00:27:00
Speaker
Yeah, so all the kind of things you would need to do in a building situation So yeah, there's even still a piece of string attached to the plumb weight Now if you're not really sure what a plumb weight is It's basically just literally a weight you hang from a line to make a straight line because gravity will hang it Straight down from a point wherever you're holding that and you can make a dead straight line to the ground by doing that and this was
00:27:23
Speaker
2,000 years ago, I mean almost 2,000 years ago actually a little more than and the fact that they knew that then obviously they knew it well before then the Egyptians knew that kind of technology it just reminds me of a reel I saw recently on YouTube like a YouTube short yeah some guy was looking at this pot from
00:27:40
Speaker
I want to say it was about 2,000 years old, and it was made from a single piece of stone that was hewed out from the inside, and he was saying how it was basically perfect. From a diameter, I guess a length and a width kind of perspective, you could spin this pot on it, and they showed it spinning. And it would spin basically perfectly, because it was less than... Yeah, like a top, basically.
00:28:03
Speaker
three, three, four, or something like that inches across, and the other direction as well. And it was only off by one 10 thousandths of an inch. And people say this was just made without any sort of modern tools or anything like that. I'm like, yeah, yeah, it was. They're actually pretty good. That's what masterful artisans and craftspeople do, is they just do this for their entire lives, and it's all they do, and they're going to get good at it. But they probably did have tools.
00:28:30
Speaker
in some cases to help them. I'm not saying they don't, but they used tools and they knew how to use those tools. They invented the right tools and they knew what they were doing. So I also am surprised they said this was probably under construction because Pompeii was well, I mean, well underway at this point. And unless it was like on the fringes of what's now the city now, which I'm not sure exactly where it was located, I imagine it was more under remodel.
00:28:55
Speaker
Yes. That's what they're saying. Remodel? It was a very remodel. So while it was being remodeled, they were staying at the Romada and that was terrible. You're ridiculous. I know. No, they are saying that it was being remodeled or renoed as the case would be, because I believe that the construction equipment was only found in the residence part of it, not the commercial areas. So that's why they're thinking that the
00:29:18
Speaker
you know, Mr. Rich, right? Like he's got to have his upgrade every so often, stay with the times, that kind of thing. In the house, they recovered and reconstructed a brightly covered and beautifully crafted ceiling fresco that was smashed during the eruption. So it probably just crashed down. Yeah, probably. And again, it's freaking gorgeous if you look at the pictures in the article. I mean, it was created by a master for sure.
00:29:42
Speaker
The whole thing wasn't super nice though. The people who were found in what they think were slave quarters actually found in the bakery were pretty appalling, the conditions there. Yeah, they definitely were. And that's kind of showing that contrast in life, daily life in Pompeii. You've got super rich and opulent on one side of the wall. And on the other side of the wall, we had slave quarters in the bakery area.
00:30:06
Speaker
It's obvious that the people who lived there were kept locked away. They were living side by side with the donkeys that would have turned the millstone in the room. And there was only one window in the room that was clearly the slave quarters and it had bars on it to prevent escape. So like, like it's not just slavery. It's like imprisonment almost. Right. So yeah, just terrible conditions.
00:30:29
Speaker
And ultimate imprisonment, too, because this is the only room where remains have been found indicating, well, and the remains were skeletons of an adult and two children that were crushed by falling stones. So they didn't leave. They were there when the eruption happened. They likely were trapped in this room. Or, yeah, or they could have been afraid of the owner of the building, so they didn't want to make him mad, so they just stayed. Who knows? But either way, their bodies are found in one of the rooms.
00:30:56
Speaker
Now let's be clear, we don't know they were slaves. The assumption is being made that they were slaves because a lot of people got out. I mean, to be honest, and where they were, how they were found, the assumption is just made that they were probably slaves or in one way, shape or form were being, you know, held there, couldn't get out or didn't know where to go. You know, everybody else took off and left them there.
00:31:17
Speaker
Yeah, that does seem like the logical conclusion. But of course, you have to be careful with that because you don't know for sure. I'm not sure if they've done any analysis on the skeletons yet to know exactly where they were from, that kind of thing. Because you can do some pretty good analysis these days, depending on what the remains look like and the preservation is. Well, what they should have done was just got high and started singing like the people in Peru did. And then they actually did carvings about it.
00:31:45
Speaker
I don't even know how you're connecting that to me. I'm just saying, the whole place is burning. Just get high. Is that what you're saying? The whole place is just like falling in. They may as well have just said, you know what? Screw it. Let's just light this up. Got it. Done. I've been saving this for just such an occasion. Yeah. Don't do drugs. Back in a minute.
Peruvian Carvings and Rituals
00:32:05
Speaker
Welcome back to The Archaeology Show, episode 261. And we are headed over to Peru and an article that was published in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal. And we have linked also to the Newsweek article in our show notes.
00:32:19
Speaker
Yeah, I did the usual thing of like, I read the Newsbook article and I was like, this is really cool. And then they linked to the Cambridge Archaeological Journal article, so good for them. And I read the abstract and I was like, this is very jargony and very written for other archaeologists.
00:32:38
Speaker
The Newsweek article did a really good job of reporting on it, so yeah, that's all you really need. So the journal article was not titled this, the Newsweek article was, but the title was Carvings in Southern Peru, may have been inspired by people singing while hallucinating, which seems to, I guess, fit with other things I've heard about Peru at the time.
00:32:57
Speaker
Maybe, but it also seems like a stretch and we'll get to why. The carvings are located at Toro Muerto in a desert gorge called the Mahes River Valley that is located in southern Peru. Is Toro like bull? Yes it is. So is this like the death bull?
00:33:13
Speaker
Yes, if you read the next notes. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Go ahead and read that one. I read this like a week ago and forgot. Yeah. Tuero Muerto translates to dip bowl. Good job. You are learning Spanish. I'm so proud of you. I did that without reading literally a half an inch down. You did. Yeah, so good job. I know. It's a rock art complex spanning 10 square kilometers. Yes. That's big. Yeah. They're approximately 2,600 volcanic boulders adorned with petroglyphs. That's a lot. That is a lot. I've seen more, but that's a lot. Have you? I'm trying to like.
00:33:42
Speaker
More, really? There's over 50,000 in China Lake. Oh, wow. Yeah, in California. In an area of a comparable size or bigger? Sorry, this is a tangent button. Way smaller. Yeah, it's like a gorge that's a half a mile to a mile long, like a drainage kind of thing, but where water really rushes down because it's narrow. And there's 50,000 plus panels. And you can only get there if you're in the Navy or with the Navy. Well, no, you can visit there. But yeah, you've got a petition for it. We should have Alan on to talk about that as a point. I know. But anyway, OK, we digress.
00:34:12
Speaker
Check out the Rock Art Podcast. Yeah, he's talked about it like kind of a lot there. The petroglyphs range from small single motifs to massive panels with many images. Yeah, a motif is basically an image on a petroglyph panel. Yeah. You know, sometimes the motifs are, I guess, themed, right? Where you might have squiggly lines and spirals and other stuff like that. Yeah. But generally, they're a single concept mixed with other things, you know, a lot of times.
00:34:39
Speaker
And the people who carved these artworks are thought to have been part of the Wari culture, which existed between 500 and 1000C. So not like the oldest of petroglyphs, but definitely prehistoric. And they don't explain how they know that. They must have some other context that they can use for dating somehow. They don't really explain that in the article.
00:35:03
Speaker
Yep, this new study conducted an analysis of denzantes, or dancing human figures, that appear on many of the boulders. I love that word. And the researchers suggest that most of the petroglyphs appear to have been thought out or planned prior to carving. Now, that is a pretty big assumption. It's a bit of a reach, right? Now, if you've got a bunch of images that look like they're depicting a scene, that I get. But I don't know. I'm not sure whether they're really coming to that conclusion.
00:35:31
Speaker
It's because their coloring and then the uniform spacing kind of make it seem like the artist knew what they were going to do before they did it. They could just be fitting things the way they fit too, so it's hard to say. Yeah, I mean it's not uncommon too for
00:35:50
Speaker
group of people or you know and we always say ritual but a lot of times rock art is based in ritual so some sort of shamanistic behavior where somebody comes back to something periodically and adds something to the to the scene basically right it didn't have to all be done at one time yeah for sure
00:36:05
Speaker
Yeah, but maybe it was. I don't know. Yeah, it's hard to say. I mean, there's so many here, but you could imagine one panel being done at the same time. The whole area would be a lot of work, honestly, to be done at the same time. And around these figures, the Densantes, they also noted similar themes surrounding them like zigzags, squiggly lines, dots, and sometimes circles, which are pretty common rock art elements. They're easy to make.
00:36:30
Speaker
If you look at the pictures, you'll see they are kind of outside the figures sort of around the edges. And they are saying that this represents the energy and movement associated with wild dancing. You see this with other rock art too. In fact, Alan and I on the rock art podcast just talked about this not that long ago with some, some of the Koso rock art down in central Southern California, really central Eastern California. And you see these like
00:36:55
Speaker
Lightning bolts irradiating out from somebody indicating energy and excitement and you know that kind of thing so it does seem like that's legit and they have some more recent like Drawings from people in the that are part of the culture of the area where they use those kind of lines Also, so kind of I like how they're kind of bringing in the modern native. Yeah, I
00:37:19
Speaker
drawings and the way they depict things and sort of comparing it with this from, you know, 500 or 1,000 years ago and saying, noting the similarities. So I think that does give it some validity, probably. Yeah, these carvings are similar to those done by the Tucano in Colombia, apparently. And I can imagine, I feel like I've seen something like these when you look at the pictures in sometimes in places in this country, too, in the United States.
00:37:45
Speaker
Yeah, and the reason that is significant is because prior research shows that the ones in Colombia were done by people consuming the hallucinogen ayahuasca. So that is where the drug bit comes into this.
00:38:01
Speaker
this sort of wild energy, wild movement that is being depicted in the rock art is potentially to represent people who are consuming a drug like ayahuasca or something similar to that. And I mean, again, it makes sense. I hate to bring the big R word in ritual.
00:38:23
Speaker
Kind of the same thing, right? So, I mean, yeah, like it's entirely possible. They don't get to go into how they know that the carvings in Colombia were done by people on ayahuasca. It's probably drawn on the rock. Maybe. Yeah, maybe. Or maybe it's a slightly more modern version. So they have some actual Spanish recordings or something like that. It's pretty common for, again, shamanistic type people.
00:38:51
Speaker
and others really trying to gain some sort of understanding or something like that to go into a hallucinogenic state using plants and plant based drugs. Yeah. Right. I mean, that's not uncommon and there's there's cultures that do it today. Yeah, it's called Berkeley. No, no. Anyway, no, but that's that's totally true. So and the fact that they decided to immortalize this on rock art or at least depict a certain time that it happened. That's the thing that gets me about rock art is, OK,
00:39:22
Speaker
Why did they do it like this one time? Why wasn't it a lot of times? Was it not part of the ritual? Did somebody be like, we need to write this down so we don't forget what happens here? And then do that. Was it a cautionary tale? Was it instructional? Was it, you know. The why of it is so hard to. We never know that about Rock Island. Yeah, it's almost impossible to know.
00:39:39
Speaker
If you don't do anything else, click on the link to the Newsweek article and look at the comparison between the boulder that has one of these big panels on it, and then the kind of like, it's not like a photo of it, it's like they took a photo and traced out all the different rock art in black and white so you can really see the actual images, but you can see all these wavy lines, the dots, the circles and stuff like that, and you can see how it might be indicating either dancing or singing
00:40:07
Speaker
And it's wild and crazy, so I guess maybe they were doing it on drugs. I don't know. I guess so. It's possible. There's no proof for it, but it does seem like it's definitely a possibility. It's kinda cool.
Episode Wrap-up
00:40:18
Speaker
All right, well, the drugs I poured into this wine glass are gone now, so I need to... Is wine a drug now? I mean, it really is, kind of. It's my drug of choice. If I had too much, it would definitely cause hallucinations. While dancing? While dancing. Wait, no, not that.
00:40:34
Speaker
I really hope it costs a while, baby. Wow. You better not draw it on the walls of your RV. I just might. Watch out. Yeah. OK. All right. Well, that's it. We'll see you next time.
00:40:51
Speaker
Thanks for listening to The Archaeology Show. Feel free to comment and view the show notes on the website at www.arcpodnet.com. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at arcpodnet. Music for this show is called, I Wish You Would Look, from the band C Hero. Again, thanks for listening and have an awesome day.
00:41:14
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his 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 chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.