Smithsonian.com

On August 30, while metal-detecting in Djurhamn, Sweden, archaeologist Martin Rundkvist unearthed a real treasure: a 36-inch 16th-century sword. The double-edged, single-hand grip weapon was “unusually designed,” Rundkvist wrote on his blog, Aardvarchaeology, “but similar in details to the so-called rikssvärden, or ’swords of the realm,’ ceremonial weapons commissioned by King Gustaf I.” (Read more about how his team dug it up.)

Since then, conservationists at the Studio Västsvensk Konservering, in Göteborg, have been cleaning up the sword, and in the process, learning more about its history. The photograph above was recently taken by the studio’s Vivian Smits. “The blade bears traces of at least three ‘fresh’ sword blows,” she told Rundkvist, indicating that the weapon was probably lost during combat (that is, before its owner had a chance to repair it.)

Moreover, since 16th-century Djurhamn was a large and busy harbor, Rundkvist guesses that the sword’s owner dropped it into water from a nearby bank. (Today the area is a marshy forest.)

Makes sense…though one of Rundkvist’s commenters proposed an intriguing alternate theory:

After a night of drinking and partying in the Atlantic City of 16th century Sweden, the owner of the sword found that he had lost his cabin key when he went abord his ship. In anger he banged the sword repeatedly on whatever he was nearest which awokened the big burly ship mate, who wrestled the sword from the inebriated aristocrat and hurled it overboard.

(Vivian Smits)

The Plaza de las Tres Culturas, in Mexico City, is so named because it showcases the new, the old, and the very old. As shown above, modern offices of the Mexican foreign ministry (upper right) not only neighbor the 17th-century Templo de Santiago church (center), but ruins of Aztec temples built hundreds of years before that (foreground left).

Last month, Mexican archaeologists unearthed the ruins (36 feet tall!) of an 800-year-old pyramid that suggests the ancient Aztec city of Tlatelolco is at least a century older than previously believed. “The (Aztec) timeline is going to need to be revised,” archaeologist Patricia Ledesma said at the site on Thursday, Reuters reported.

Fifteen years ago, a different pyramid finding dated Tlatelolco to 1325. But the newly found pyramid is 100 to 200 years older. The scientists also found a sculpture of a god (representing either Tlaloc, a rain god, or Tezcatlipoca, god of the sky) and five skulls.

Check out Reuters 48-second video clip of the ruins.

(Flickr, via schizoform)

German scientists recently unearthed the fossilized claw of an 390 million-year-old sea scorpion. The finding was, literally, huge: the claw was 18.1 inches long, making the beast that used it longer than 8 feet!

The scientist who actually found the claw, Markus Poschmann of the Mainz Museum in Germany, describes what happened when he was excavating a quarry in Prüm, Germany:

I was loosening pieces of rock with a hammer and chisel when I suddenly realised there was a dark patch of organic matter on a freshly removed slab. After some cleaning I could identify this as a small part of a large claw. Although I did not know if it was more complete or not, I decided to try and get it out.

The fossil analysis, published last week in the journal Biology Letters, identified the claw as sea scorpion Jaekelopterus rhenaniae, an extinct species that gave rise to modern scorpions and possibly all arachnids.

I’ll leave you with an intriguing question about the scorpion posed by a reader on Carl Zimmer’s blog, The Loom: “Would it taste like lobster?”

(Above, an Egyptian deathstalker scorpion, Leiurus quinquestriatus, under blacklight. Flickr, by furryscaly)

On Friday, Hugh wrote about scientists who used DNA analyses to trace sawfly evolution. New research from relics of an ancient Greek shipwreck shows that traces of DNA might also help us learn more about ancient trading economies.

In 2005, researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research drudged up a 2,400-year-old shipwreck near the Greek island of Chios. They gleaned from the wreckage, among other booty, two amphoras (above). As published October 10 in the online version of the Journal of Archaeological Science, scrapings from the inside of these ceramic jugs held genetic traces of olive oil, oregano and mastic, a shrub used in ancient times to preserve wine. (Apparently Mediterranean culture hasn’t changed much over two millennia…)

As the first study to show that ancient DNA can be extracted from underwater artifacts, the research team writes that the discovery “opens a new field of molecular archaeology.”

(Courtesy of the WHOI/Hellenic Ministry of Culture, Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities)

The mummy of Egypt’s most famous—and most provocative—female pharaoh was identified this week. Queen Hatshepsut, who ruled Egypt for two decades in the 15^th century B.C., was most likely obese and diabetic judging from her mummy, scientists said.

Her mummy had actually been discovered in 1903, but was deemed unimportant and laid in storage until the Discovery Channel funded a $5 million DNA lab at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Hatshepsut is probably best known for her habit of wearing men’s clothes, sometimes with a ceremonial beard (to emphasize her authority, some Egyptologists say), but she was also a skillful ruler under whom the Egyptian empire expanded and erected numerous monuments.  (more…)