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People Stumbling Into Archaeology - Ep 277
2.4k Plays3 months ago
If you pay attention to your surrounding you just might find a bit of history. Our new stories this week are all about people paying attention and looking around and ultimately finding something worthy of the history books.
Links
- Walker stumbles on bones sticking out of field — and finds Viking-era grave in Norway
- Volunteer notices buried structure on mountaintop — and finds ancient Roman campsite
- Archaeology Student Stumbles on a Cache of Danish Viking Silver
Contact
- Chris Webster
[email protected] - Rachel Roden
[email protected]
RachelUnraveled (Instagram)
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Transcript
Introduction to 'The 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.
Discovering Artifacts: Methods and Stories
00:00:15
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to The Archaeology Show, episode 277. On today's show, we talk about people finding artifacts or sites by metal dissecting, lidar, or even just walking around. Let's dig a little deeper, but not on Labor Day. It's a holiday here in the United States.
Corrections and Clarifications
00:00:35
Speaker
Welcome to the show, everybody. Hello. All right. So first off. i i just This is the first time I'm seeing this note. I didn't realize. Oops. Yeah, first off, we have a correction. And I just got my notes mixed up because I was looking for stuff real quick yeah last week to find out different places where mastodons have been found, just like some famous ones. And the mastodon site, something I really should have like stuck in my head, was not found in Florida. It was found in Squam, Washington, a place we've been oh okay and we know about.
00:01:06
Speaker
weird but like you know I I just went with it. I wouldn't surprise me. um Maybe the environment is not super conducive to mastodons. Northern Florida, maybe. Yeah, maybe. But i mean they've been found all over the continent, so yeah I wouldn't count Florida out just just because it's Florida. But that being said, and the Manus Mastodon was definitely not Florida. yeah So one of our listeners wrote in and was like, ah Thanks for that. And they're lucky I know how to pronounce Squim because I'm from Washington. Yes. so I did not. I think I said Sequeam the first time. Right. they're probably They're probably just like, oh my god, he's totally going to say it. He's going to say Sequeam. Sequeam.
Cultural Digressions and Podcast Style
00:01:43
Speaker
Just so everybody knows, it's spelled S-E-Q-U-I-M. It's obviously a Native American word. A lot of place names in Washington are. and But it's pronounced Squim. yeah Yeah, and they have the best lavender fest every year, yeah lavender festival. And we went last year and I'm like dying to go back just to go to that because it was so fun walking around all the farms and smelling all the lavender. It was great. so Okay, but swim, you need to listen real quick, especially, dear listener, if you have any control over the lavender festival because some things shouldn't be lavenderized like hot chocolate.
00:02:19
Speaker
Oh, that was good. I didn't like it. Well, good for you. I did. Although I should probably drink it, shouldn't I? Or did you get rid of it? Oh, come on, man. It wasn't great. Floury hot chocolate? No. You're not invited to my flour hot chocolate party, OK? Yeah. We also had a complaint that we spent like a few minutes talking about not archaeology in one of our reviews. That's who we are. Yeah, get over it. No, I understand it. We try to stay on topic, but like our life just sort of creeps into our podcast sometimes. So like if you don't like that part of the show, like right now, if you wish we were talking about archaeology like three or four minutes in, you probably ought to go find something else on the archaeology podcast network. Yeah, we're just a little more laid back than that. yeah so Or hit your hit your fast forward 30 until you hear the word archaeology. Yeah, until we start sounding like we're reading like some notes.
00:03:08
Speaker
and then discussing, then you'll get to the like script, not scripted, we're never scripted, but yeah the prepared part of the podcast. Okay, let's talk about archeology. All right, archeology.
Legalities and Reporting of Finds
00:03:18
Speaker
Okay, so now here is a news article where we will talk about.
00:03:24
Speaker
Well, the archaeology is boring. I know. All right. Yeah. So this one's from the Miami Herald. Well, what's your theme? We have a theme, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Wandering around and finding stuff. Yeah. Metal detecting. Metal detecting. But people just kind of like doing their own thing and finding cool stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that's a really fun topic to talk about, especially And for our audience, because a lot of people are just like, how do you find archaeology sites? archeology yes and where where do you go? And what are you looking for? And what should you do if you find one? And it seems like the people in these stores that we're going to talk about kind of did the right thing, where they reported it to whoever they needed to report it to, museum, well university, agency, stuff like that. That's because what's a common theme amongst those people? None of them were in the United States.
00:04:11
Speaker
um Because otherwise all that crap would be in eBay. Well, yeah, but I think it happens in the United States. No, there's no one to call. That's one problem we have with the United States, is there's not a consistent entity to call if you find something. If you find something on British soil, you literally call the authorities, right? Because everything belongs to the crowd, and everybody knows that, right? Now you might get a fair share, which we'll talk about. Well, I think not in this one. Not in this one, but yeah. But we have talked about it in the past. But a lot of countries have laws where anything under the ground, antiquities-wise, belongs to the country. Well, it's this shared interest in the history of the country. And I think a lot of people in this country feel
Significance of Reporting Finds
00:04:52
Speaker
like Native American artifacts are not their history, and they don't have as much
00:04:57
Speaker
interest in them. Sure. But it's not just Native American stuff. There's bottle hunters out there. There are. Especially on the east coast here. There's civil war, metal detector, people, battlefield metal detecting. I'm not going to take down metal detectorists. I mean, they're out there doing stuff, but you've got your arrowhead hunters, and then you've got your metal detectorists. And I'm just saying,
00:05:19
Speaker
There is a finder's keeper sort of mentality. And like I said, it is partially, there's not a consistent set of laws and regulations. There are some in some places, of course. Every state has these laws and regulations. And there's obviously federal ones. They just always have ways of enforcing them very well, I think.
00:05:36
Speaker
So but we're going to talk about people who did it the right way. And if you're in the United States and you find something, then your best bet is to start at your local museum or your local history historical society. Even you're going to find the people that can point you in the right direction. So and it's oh e like, even if you really want to keep it, just like think about the big picture and whatever you have found might be so significant that it it rewrites the history of that region or that place. And so reporting it is just, it's the not selfish thing to do. So we would encourage everybody to think about it that way. All right. Yeah.
Norwegian Discovery: Human Bones and Artifacts
00:06:13
Speaker
Well, this one was a man who was a, he is a metal detectorist, but he actually wasn't metal detecting. He was just decided to go for a walk along a plowed vegetable field in Norway. This is actually back in April, but it's just kind of being reported now. and So he was ah walking along the field, and he is a metal detectorist and a history and archeology enthusiast. I mean, he lives in Norway. I think kind of anybody lives in that area. Well, he's walking along a plowed field, and notoriously, plows kick up stuff. But he knows that, and he's specifically looking for old things. Exactly. You don't even need a metal detector when you're talking about a freshly plowed field. so Right. yeah And I don't know if they've got
00:06:52
Speaker
rules and flaws because I think I remember Scotland being like a right to walk country where you can just walk over people's land. Yeah. If you're transiting one place to the next, obviously you can't like trespass into buildings and stuff and damage things. But I guess he, I don't know if he's walking along this plot field or he just like, it's okay to just walk in somebody's plot field. I don't know what the deal was, but anyway, he's walking through this plot field. whatever it was Yeah, nobody seemed to care, yeah and he saw what he thought looked like bones. Human bones. Well, he saw what he thought looked like bones, took a closer look, and then to him they looked like human bones. yeah So he quote called the officials, and it's reminded me of last week where like Bulgaria or whatever it was, so and like, you know, archaeology team assembled. I want to be on that team. I know, right? I want to assemble. It's like Anchorman.
00:07:39
Speaker
So, yeah, so it's just like... just And then archeologists arrived. So they showed up, they identified some of the bones as, um well, they identified the bones as human and some of them as arm, leg, and ribs.
00:07:55
Speaker
so My notes say Riggs, you just realized. I was tried not to laugh at that. Anyway, so the archaeologists figured that these were probably part of an old grave, but they weren't sure. They didn't have a date. They didn't know who. And yeah you know, it's plowed. So like when the plow goes through and kicks stuff up, it sort of destroys them a little bit. So um it looks like it's in pieces when you look at the picture for sure. Right, right. And depending on like how deep the plow was going and where these were, it could have been dragged all across the field and out of context, too. So yeah you know it's hard to say. But it looks like these were all in one spot. but Yes, it does. Yeah. But it definitely does like kind of destroy the the context a little bit, although it's still important to like try to excavate and find the rest of it. Because you might have they might have just scraped the top layer of something, but you get the rest of it underneath it. And you never know what you're going to find underneath it. So yeah.
00:08:44
Speaker
So at the same time this was happening, I could only presume nearby because they were able to show up. It didn't actually say where this was and I didn't bother to look it up, but the Norwegian University of Science and Technology archaeology course was going on. So they sent students out, which talk about a golden opportunity. I know, right? Lucky. I know. They sent students out to the site to document the bones and um they also searched the surrounding area with metal detectors. And one of the things they found, there's actually a really good picture in the article yeah of this, they were calling it a metal buckle.
00:09:12
Speaker
Which they call it a buckle and I guess that's what it would have been called back then but to us nowadays it's more of like a Like a clothespin kind of thing. It looks like a barrette like
Analyzing the Viking Age Buckle
00:09:24
Speaker
I would I would imagine flipping it over and having the little barrette piece on the other side for it's not Obviously it's not that but that's the shape. That's right. It's giving me barrette feelings. But yeah, yeah but it's a buckle Yeah, they said it was like a modern safety pin kind of deal, used old fabric together. And they said typically linked to burials. And I'm like, well, I mean, they had to hold fabric together outside of burials too. Maybe it's just burials is, you know, we don't find living people. So, you know, so you don't find them. Yeah. Like what other context would you find them in? It would just be in a burial context fell over and died. I mean, and they had their buckled clothing. Yeah. I mean, of course we're going to find associated with burials, but I had to imagine they would have worn these things.
00:10:03
Speaker
like while they were living. Well, this one does look a little bit elaborate. Like you can see that there's a lot of decoration going on. Yeah. So maybe this was like, you know, the church buckle and then they got to wear it when they, you know, were buried. It's just the way that it was worded didn't elaborate. Didn't allude to the fact that it might've been fancy because it looked looked pretty dirty. I don't know if they had actually cleaned it up yet, it does but yeah yeah they just alluded to this kind of decoration was more.
00:10:26
Speaker
burial related. yeah i' I'm also like, okay, sure. I get it. But like how often do you find bodies that aren't burials? Yeah, exactly. Right. yeah So it would be unusual. so So, but they did date this too early on in the Viking age. So by I guess association, you can kind of guess at the bones. They said nearby and I don't know what nearby means exactly. nearby Can you associate this buckle with those bones? They probably needed to do more excavation before they can truly relate those things. But well, You read the bottom of this article, and it says is was used they used Google Translate to basically yeah translate this from Norwegian. So it could be that this was found very nearby, yeah because it sounds like they they are associating this with the remains. With the burial. And so they're calling it early Viking, which in this area is the eighth century, and which would be the 700s. So yeah that's what they're saying, which is the early Viking times. yeah so
00:11:23
Speaker
yeah They also said that since bones deteriorate quickly when exposed to air, it's clear that the remains have been buried all this time. And with the plowing, it is what pull them up. So, you know, they probably had to get them out of there quickly and get them into a preservation setting so they wouldn't, you know, decompose.
00:11:42
Speaker
Yeah, they said this person probably found them pretty soon after they were found, after they were uncovered by the plow. Otherwise they would have probably gone away pretty quickly. Yeah, they would, yeah, yeah, been lost. The other cool thing is the owner of the field has decided, has agreed to basically leave that area untouched. So I guess there won't be any veggies there. Yeah, so. Which is great, but like it could, that field could be hiding a whole entire cemetery and this is just the first one, you know? He's probably like, my God, please no. Yeah, probably.
00:12:10
Speaker
Which I totally get. It's hard when you're trying to make your living off the land and then the archaeologists come in and they're like, no, no, no. That's why people kind of hate archaeologists sometimes. You could look at the historical record, and I don't actually know the answer to this question. I haven't done enough research on it, but were there Viking cemeteries necessarily? Oh, that's true. I don't know if they did that like that.
Viking Artifacts: Historical Significance
00:12:31
Speaker
I know they use ships sometimes. That's all I know though. Ships.
00:12:36
Speaker
ship Oh, ship so he ships. Oh, yeah, ships. He said, chips. Look, do they bury him with Pringles? What's going on here? like yeah So anyway. yeah All right. So this is, if you're trying to locate this in Norway, this is actually really far north of Norway, near the small coastal town of Ostrat, which is about 350 miles north of Oslo. And that's getting pretty far up in Norway. yeah I mean, quite a ways up yeah up the coast there. So, yep yeah, we're looking at actually still kind of playing with the dates, but we're looking at possibly doing a cruise along the coast of Norway after we do our little Sweden adventure next March. So, which we'll talk about a lot more later on, but man, that'd be super cool. We've been going right by this town yeah and it tells the cruise like pops in and during the four days and I don't know where it goes. yeah Well, a lot of the cruises do, so yeah I doubt it hits this small town, but that would be really cool if we were somewhere near. yeah you know But it's just kind of neat thinking, taking a boat up and down the coast of, kind of like the west coast of Norway. Well, there's only a west coast of Norway. The east coast of Norway is Sweden. It's Sweden. It's not a coast. It's a border, but yes. I guess there's that little bit at the bottom. But yeah yeah so but just taking a boat and just thinking,
00:13:46
Speaker
you know doing it on like a cruise ship and thinking, man, Vikings did this too. you know and And lots of people have done this. And just the history behind it is so crazy. Like when we did it in the Adriatic and Greece and the different boats and historical figures that actually sailed those waters. And we learned that the Venetians ruined everything. yeah I think it's what we learned on that cruise at every port we stopped at. Exactly. Yeah. so Anyway. all right Well, let's find out what happens on the other side of the break when you wander away from your you know your responsibilities and you you know find a Roman campsite. I'm not sure that's an accurate description of what happened, but go on. See in a minute.
00:14:27
Speaker
Welcome back to episode 277 of The Archaeology Show. Rachel's laughing hysterically right now. She doesn't want me to say that because she's going to edit this out probably. Yep, it's gone. Done. Anyway. It's just like I'm done with that joke.
00:14:44
Speaker
All right. This one
Roman Campsite Discovery in the Swiss Alps
00:14:45
Speaker
is called volunteer notices buried structure on mountaintop and finds ancient Roman campsite while completely neglecting their duties and wandering around. not true yeah What happened? Yeah, this is a little, little different from, you know, somebody just like stumbling upon, you know, a site with a metal detector. I know. I'm just kidding. Yeah. I feel like this guy. Okay. So what happened is, is that somebody decided to look in another area that, you know, not to bury the lead or anything, but he decided to look somewhere else. and found some stuff to excavate the league. Oh, God. Yeah. Yeah, that. So but I think that that is less like stumbling upon something and more like following a hunch kind of, you know, so I think it's kind of cool. But basically in twenty twenty one, there's a project to study a Roman era battlefield in the Swiss Alps. It was a well-known battlefield and they just were there to excavate, study, learn all about Romans doing
00:15:41
Speaker
battle stuff, basically. I don't know who they were fighting. Anyway, so they don't exactly say who they were fighting, but I guess it doesn't really matter. The Romans were always fighting somebody at that point, right? yeah They fought whoever they could find. Whoever was trying to encroach, they were fighting them. Yeah. So yeah. Anyway, so archaeologists, university students and volunteers all together worked to learn more about what these guys were doing at this battlefield site. Yeah. So this one person decided to look at a spot that they hadn't actually looked in before, and it was the mountaintop Com La Runga.
00:16:22
Speaker
la runnga yeah i will said I couldn't get Runba out of my head. roomba Yeah, Com La Runga. It's not a vacuum. I know. The mountain of vacuums. That's what they were doing. No. Com La Runga.
00:16:34
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. It's a peak in the, oh, this is a good one, Garbunden region, yeah um which is a roughly 100 mile drive east of Zurich near the border with Italy. Yeah. And what's interesting about this is that the peak itself is located 3000 feet above the battlefield.
00:16:51
Speaker
and a total of 7,200 feet above sea level. So we're talking like some height here and well above where the battle took place, too. Who's like, hey, should we scan that peak 3,000 feet away? I know. Is everybody's like, listen, Charlie, we're doing a lot of work here. You want to take the lidar and head over there? You go right ahead. But if it's like right above the battlefield, I could see it being logical to look there because there might be scouts up there, lookouts, all kinds of different military guys doing military things. I don't know anything about the military, but yeah yeah. So this volunteer, he used LiDAR to scan the peak and in using the LiDAR, noticed buried structures up there. I feel like they should have been fairly obvious if they were walking around up there too. You can't do LiDAR from afar, can you? Okay, here's the thing. LiDAR is done from a plane.
00:17:41
Speaker
Oh, so they're flying around in an airplane doing this. Or a drone. Or a drone. There's LiDAR-oriented drones these days. That's a lot more expensive. So they didn't have to hike 3,000 feet up to this peak. They were doing it remotely, probably. You can't actually do like hand... Well, you actually, your phones phones have LiDAR these days. Oh, really? Yeah, you're like new our newer iPhones, after the last like three or four years, have LiDAR in them. when Lidar, all it is is light detection and ranging. That's what Lidar stands for. so It's using light to bounce off things and then to measure them. right But if you're doing something on a landscape scale, you're doing it from a height, which means you're doing it from a drone, you're doing it from a plane, you're doing it from a helicopter.
00:18:18
Speaker
so they must have had something to allow them to do this on the spot. They may not have just had ready lidar imagery. Interestingly enough, there are a lot of places, I don't know how other countries are doing this, but there's a lot of places in the United States that just have stock lidar imagery. Lake Tahoe is one of the ones that comes to mind. You can just find lidar imagery all around Lake Tahoe right now if you want to go look at it. I don't know if you have to pay for it, but it's with the US Geological Survey, I think.
00:18:48
Speaker
Either way, however they got it, yeah they they did use it to look for whatever structures, you know, evidence of the military presence, and they were able to identify a 2,000-year-old military camp on the top of this peak.
00:19:03
Speaker
Yeah, because one of the things if you guys aren't familiar that Lidar does is you've got a lot of vegetation and I mean, these are pretty sparse peaks. like There's not a lot of veg on top of them. There's some trees and stuff like that. But still, when you're like walking around, it's difficult to pick things out. It might be a rock formation or something like that. and But when you're up high, even without Lidar, when you're up high, you might say, hey, that doesn't look natural. like that line looks a little too straight or something. Nature can make some pretty straight lines, but still. yeah But when you use LiDAR, you can see really strip away that that kind of vegetative yeah layer, because the photons can make it through all those things, and they get down to the surface level. and Because of the the the thing that's shooting the LiDAR, whether it was a plane, a drone, or whatever, is moving. right yeah So it's constantly getting around all these things and painting this picture.
00:19:52
Speaker
And yeah, you can really see it's like getting right down to the skin level. A stone structure would become very visible with that technique, it sounds like. And that's what this was. They found three ditches and a rampart barrier. Yeah, like a wall. Yeah, like a wall, basically.
00:20:10
Speaker
Yeah, pretty cool. Yeah. And the thing that this article said is that this location sort of up above the battlefield and sort of high up in the mountains would have given them, quote, control over the surrounding valleys and passes. And
Roman Military Strategy and Finds
00:20:24
Speaker
I like, I took a little bit of exception to that word cause I'm like, how much control could a small military camp way up in the mountains have over anything? It's more of like a lookout situation, right? No, I don't know.
00:20:38
Speaker
they could notify the people down in the valley using the speed of light technology that they had. The speed of light technology? Yeah. You don't know? Oh, are you talking about Lord of the Rings? It's not even a joke. People used to do that. Lighting the bonfires. All you have to do is light a big signal fire. Yeah. And the minute you do that, somebody knows something's up. Yeah. But you're also signaling to whoever's invading that you have seen them, right? Obviously, you take a chance. But if the invading army is on one side of the valley and your signal fire is on the other side of the valley, or on the other side of the peak, where your people are, then maybe they won't see it. But of course, you're letting off a lot of smoke, so I don't know. You've got to figure out a way to do it.
00:21:21
Speaker
I would rather warn my people and and risk the other guys knowing as well. But also, now they know. And they know they've lost the element of surprise. right right so you know Well, I guess. I mean, it sounds like it was a pretty small camp up there. It's definitely like not super accessible being so high up. so But I guess. Speed of light technology. Speed of light. I should have known you were referring to that one scene in the One Lord of the Rings movie. It made me so happy because watching those fires go across the mountains yeah and they just let somebody know, I mean, presumably hundreds of miles away within, you know, 20 minutes that, I mean, it was probably within like an hour or two to light the fires, but still, I mean, to try for a message to travel that far,
00:22:07
Speaker
was just astonishing. That message is so vague to me, though, because it could be like, I'm hungry, can I have a cheeseburger? No. There's only one message that they're told to light that fire for. Like, I'm out of food. I need food. Somebody bring me a cheeseburger. Maybe the message was, I'm cold. I'm lighting a fire. Right. Vague messages. I don't think I can handle that. Like some new guy gets up there, hey, I'm going to go light the fire. No!
00:22:32
Speaker
okay All right, I guess I guess you've convinced me that that could have given them control maybe So they did do some excavation up there and some metal detecting because you know That's what you do at a Roman site and they found equipment and weapons like arrowheads Slingshots and nails that were clearly left behind by Roman soldiers. Yeah, they didn't need a med play.
00:22:53
Speaker
ah And those those artifacts that they found date to about 20 BCE, so right in the time frame that they're looking for. So yeah. Yeah. Thanks, LiDAR. You know when those guys got down off the ah gone ah down off the mountain, they went down in the village after they basically saved the village because they used their signifiers? And the villagers were like, so apart from the aqueducts. There it is. I expected that joke.
00:23:18
Speaker
The Faster Than The Light technology. What have the Romans ever done for us? The road? Did you say the roads? Well, they knew about the roads.
00:23:29
Speaker
All right. So on the other side of the break, more Vikings. Welcome back to archeology show, comma, the episode 277. Like more annoying.
00:23:44
Speaker
I just wanted us filed correctly. You can tell that it's like the end of a long day. We're a little bit delirious right now. I just want us to be filed correctly. OK. Yeah. In case this segment gets separated from the rest. I always sort it at the top, even though technically it's the archaeology show. Like always, it's just straight to the top. In what? Like on my files and stuff like that. and Like in your files of life. Like my computer files. but My brain files. You can't just sort your computer files wherever you want. It's going to sort naturally. Well, I just dropped it. I guess that's what I'm not including in that. I just drop it so it's at the top. Yeah. I don't think our other podcast hosts would appreciate that. Well, it's my show. Oh, OK. I got you. I'll allow you to be on my show, I guess.
00:24:29
Speaker
All right, well, this article is from the journal artnet dot.com.
Viking Silver: Discovery and Museum Ethics
00:24:33
Speaker
It's not a journal at all. It's not a journal. None of these stories are journals. They're all press releases. They are not. Yeah, this is some aggregator that wanted to click that we gave to them. Yeah, we did. That's fine, though. That's fine.
00:24:45
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, if they hadn't done it, I wouldn't have seen it. This is real life, though. Like, people find stuff like this all the time. And I think it's important to talk about it and to especially talk about it when they do it the right way. And this guy kind of did it the right way, as we will talk about it. Well, he's a student. We'll talk about it. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead.
00:25:03
Speaker
So, archaeology students stumbles, I don't like that word, but anyway, stumbles on a cache of Danish Viking silver. So, Gustaf Brunsgaard, who's a 22-year-old student from Denmark's Aarhus University, and we know somebody from Aarhus. We do? Yeah, I'm pretty sure.
00:25:21
Speaker
Our friend in Reno is actually from Arhus, not Copenhagen. yeah Working with metal detector near the village of Elstead, found a silver bracelet that dated to the Viking Age in Denmark. We'll get to the date a little bit later. yeah so yeah and he was now He is an archaeology student, so he knows about archaeology. He knows about things. and Apparently, just like metal detecting is a thing that you can do.
00:25:42
Speaker
And he was just doing it. It felt like it. I mean, you hear about these stories all the time. So yeah. But the thing that I was like, wait, what? Is that he returned a few times over the next few days and found six more bracelets. So I'm like, why did he keep returning and not like, you know, throw up a flag and say, Hey, I found something cool. Like maybe we should do an excavation. Yeah, when was he going to let people know about this? Unless he did, which is OK. This is, again, like a press release kind of thing. Yeah, it is. Like a town press release. I mean, he eventually, he brought all of them to the Molesgard Museum for further examination. So he did. Yeah. And he may have been bringing them one at a time, and they may have said, hey, go out there and see if you can find more. Yeah. Because I mean, where you find one, there might be more, basically. Sure. Because let's be honest, when I was talking in the beginning of this episode about
00:26:35
Speaker
here in the United States, how, you know, if you find something and you don't know who to call, contact a a local, you know, museum or not like an art museum, but like a natural history museum. If you can't find it in an archaeology museum or something that's even better, but, you know, university, something. But to be honest, they're probably not going to have time to deal with it. but They may not have the resources. That's true. They don't even have the people. Who knows, right?
00:26:57
Speaker
So, you know, they they might just be like, okay, so you're qualified, you're a student in archaeology, just go back and see what else you can find, because that's okay. You have permission on the land, you know what you're doing. Have at it, buddy. and And also, like, you know, we have an entire museum over here full of Viking stuff, so it's cool. yeah Anyway, but these do look really exceptional when you look at the picture They're they're nicely like laid out in the photo and you know, there's a couple more plain ones But there are some that are like really nicely decorated. So they yeah they look pretty fancy. Yeah, so what he found were bracelets Yeah, like it so like we said and he found he found what we said we said six of them, right? I think there's six or seven total. Yeah yeah
00:27:37
Speaker
Now they were called, actually back in the day, they were called bangles. We know them as like, bait bracelets. Hold on. We still call these kind of bracelets bangles. I don't know, I don't call them bangles. You go, you wouldn't, you don't wear them. Do I wear bangles? But if you, if you tell a woman like they were bangles, she'd like, yeah, okay, got it. I know exactly what that is. That's what these are, bangles.
00:27:57
Speaker
Okay, I thought Bangles was a band, but anyway. Yes, also that. Is Walk Like an Egyptian? Is that the Bangles? Maybe? I think so. no i i'll cut that I'll cut that out if I'm wrong. I'll leave it in if I'm right. You can probably leave it in anyway. We'll just insert Walk Like an Egyptian. Anyway, yeah yeah anyway they dated to about the 9th century, so still the Viking age in Denmark. yeah yeah which is crazy just after the founding of the town of Arhus itself. Oh, is it really? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That's cool. But Danish Vikings actually did wear a fair amount of jewelry. Yeah. And so, and a lot of this jewelry that we see here was decorated with engravings of spiritual and mythological significance, like images of Norse gods, like some of the big ones like Odin, Freya and Thor. Freya is not
00:28:47
Speaker
Freya's one I've heard of, but I don't really know Freya as much as like Thorin Odin, obviously. Yeah, and I'm looking at one of these, and it definitely looks like a snake. So who does the snake represent? Or were snakes just, I guess they could have just been important to the person or the region or the culture or something too. Doesn't that one that's real coiled up look like a snake? Kind of looks like a snake, yeah. But we can't really see the detail and things on this, and sometimes,
00:29:14
Speaker
things are represented in an abstract way and the people studying these probably did they know what it means. yeah yeah for sure anyway The cool thing is is these also probably had a deal with with showing how wealthy the Vikings were as well because these were made as the same material as Viking currency. and They must know this through their study, or they wouldn't have just said this. I feel like it would be kind of a stretch if it were the first time I was hearing it, but they said that because it's made of the same material as Viking currency, basically silver, it means it would have demonstrated the owner's wealth and could have functioned it as as a means of payment. Now, demonstrating wealth, I understand. yeah Made of silver, sure.
00:29:53
Speaker
but also demonstrated a function as a means of payment. Is it really something you'd have been like, well, will you take this? Yeah, that seems crazy. Could you use it as currency? I guess you could have if you just take silver. I'm sure anybody would take it as payment. Turn it away, probably. But if you're rich enough that you can make a bracelet out of coins and then walk around wearing that, that feels like the more important piece is that they could just wear coins rather than using them to buy things. But the thing I would wonder is,
00:30:22
Speaker
would something like that back then have been valued in the same way that say jewelry is valued today? Because jewelry today is is often way more value than its its weight in the jewels and the metal. yeah right That's true. Especially depending on who designed it, how old it is. There's a lot of value wrapped up in just the yeah the rarity of it or something like that, right? Or the designer of it. It's not just the materials. It's definitely not the material. yeah like We were having some ridiculous conversation. I don't even want to repeat about purses earlier. about like Some sort of like ridiculous purse that's worth like,000. The material's actually worth about probably $200. That's all about the designer. That's what we're talking about though. so I'm wondering back then, like if you were would they be like, oh, so here I've got this silver. You can weigh it with your little scale there.
00:31:13
Speaker
but like this was designed by. Yeah, but also this is like to the Norse god Odin and it's got this decoration on it. Or just like look how fancy it is. Yeah, I mean like all of that can make it worth a lot more, so yeah. Maybe, I don't know, was it though? Did they care, like merchants, you know? I don't know. Could you say it was more valuable? I don't know. Or is it just worth its weight? I mean I feel like it was more just like personal decoration. Yeah. And a way to show how wealthy you were to other people. Sure. That feels like the right thing, but yeah.
00:31:43
Speaker
Well, the interesting thing about this, too, is that bracelets didn't actually, or these bangles didn't actually originate with the Vikings. They got this idea from Russia and Ukraine. Oh, OK. Because they kind of invented all this apparently in that area. yeah And then a lot of this actually ended up in Ireland. so And this was after the Vikings. so they They mentioned in the article, this article being written by people over in Denmark, well not it was translated and written, you know this was ArtNet, whatever the hell, but the original article was written by people over in Denmark. And they're like, oh, it demonstrates the multicultural influences of their design and this expansive trading network. And I'm like, you know, i know Vikings weren't just all rapers and pillagers. I know they did trade, but come on. I mean, the Extensive Trading Network, I get it. But yeah i mean they did like but also a lot of like pillaging, too. But also a lot of pillaging. Did they go to Ireland and be like, hey, you want to trade for some of this? Or did they just drop a bracelet by accident when they were like destroying an entire village and then another person picked it up and i was like, hey, that's pretty cool. yeah I'm going to make something like that now. I know. Since my entire village burned down, I think I'll just take this. Right. No, we shouldn't disparage Vikings like that. No, no, no. And the transmission of information and ideas like that certainly did happen. And to see it go from Russia all the way across Europe and then over into Ireland is really cool. like that That is like a really important yeah thing to see in in these items. you know Right. It's pretty cool. Yeah, that's really neat.
00:33:15
Speaker
So we'll have these on display for a little while in the Mulsgard Museum in Jettland for a bit. And then later they'll be transferred to the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, which would be cool. Yeah, that's great. And this is like the outcome you want for somebody who is just out metal detecting, right? Like he found some stuff, he did the right thing, he called the right people, and now it's gonna be in a museum. And he can go to that museum and be like, I found those. right I think that is so cool. I love that. And and some people in this country might be thinking,
00:33:45
Speaker
Not everybody, especially probably people who are listening to this show, but there's a lot of people that do try to find stuff for profit, right? And some people might be thinking, well, this is why I would never tell the country or whatever about what I find, because now I can't sell it, blah, blah, blah. And some things, you're right, you actually can't sell them. But there was another article I saw, I only kind of skimmed it. It was a little short, so I didn't really put it in the show. but And i it was over,
00:34:09
Speaker
god I want to say it was England actually but I can't remember where it was but somebody was metal detecting again and they found a hoard of coins. Oh and I can't I can't remember where it was somewhere over in that that direction but they found all these coins and they found so many that the council the town council took some, this museum took some, this other one took some, and the person who originally found them was left with what was left, and they estimated that at auction, they could get about 75,000 British pounds wow for these coins yeah if they sold them. So they were they weren't left with nothing. right right Now if you just find artifacts,
00:34:47
Speaker
I mean, chances are these are going to a museum, and they're probably not going to compensate you for that. Yeah, well, it depends on the country and the laws, right? I think there is a finder's fee or whatever in some countries. It just depends. Yeah, so it kind of depends on who you are, too. This archaeology student probably wasn't looking for money.
00:35:04
Speaker
No, I mean there's a lot of hobbyists out there for sure that are just trying to find cool things and then they you know don't necessarily want to keep them, which I think is is really cool. But don't sell it. Don't add to the black market. yeah When you add to it, then it just makes people go out and want to find more things and then the market just continues to exist and that's why we have this whole black market of artifacts out in the world that we shouldn't be participating in. so which is crazy because I do want people to go out and find more things, but I want them to want to do the right thing and have it so we can learn from it, document it, and yeah tell somebody where it is so we can go find more about it and learn more and do
Ethics and the Artifact Black Market
00:35:42
Speaker
stuff. And if there just wasn't a monetary value to these things, but we knew there was a cultural value to it, then. Well, the black market is, it drives the monetary value. well to some extent so like and So the more there is there, the the higher the monetary value is. And it's like a never ending cycle though. I don't really know how you break it. You break it by shaming people to have that stuff displayed because the only reason there's a black market is somebody wants it displayed on their mantelpiece or or in their house and say, look what I've got. But if you walk in and be like, I can't believe you have that displayed, you're an idiot. yeah And if you just say that to them,
00:36:13
Speaker
you know I mean, you can't say it to like your grandpa because your grandpa probably has an arrowhead display framed up on their wall, right? But but that was back in the day, right? But I'm just saying, yeah a lot of people probably have an older relative that has something like that. yeah But again, that was something found in a plowed field you know or you know just like on their land. and And there's not much we can do about that. But somebody who's You know, ask them about it. And somebody who's got something in a glass display case with a light shining down on it or something, you're like, oh, where'd you get that? Oh, I picked that up a year ago when I was ah a year ago. Yeah. Are you kidding me? Yeah. Do you know? Blah, blah, blah, blah. You're a terrible person, ah Grandma.
00:36:53
Speaker
I mean, okay, we're not shaming people. We're just trying to educate on the right way to do things. No, you actually slap them and then you send them to the garage. Oh, no. yeah No, I'm just kidding. yeah Yeah, you're right. Educate them, but education they they really shouldn't leave it. right yeah And the minute they know that that's like a bad thing, they won't hopefully go out and buy another one. And then there's no black market.
00:37:15
Speaker
Yeah, i so that's a really a market i it's a really rosy easy view of how to get rid of the black market. I'm just saying, there's only a market if people want it. It's a little harder than that, I think, but yeah, I mean, we should all be working towards getting rid of it for sure. All right. Well, that's really hard, but it's not hard to get rid of this podcast.
Conclusion and Credits
00:37:32
Speaker
So I'm done with it. No, I'm not done with it. don this episode I think we're done. Yeah. Okay. See you next week. Bye.
00:37:48
Speaker
Thanks for listening to The Archaeology Show. Feel free to comment and view the show notes on the website at www.arcpodnet dot.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.
00:38:11
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.archapodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.