A DISCOVERY BY ARCHAEOLOGISTS FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI COULD REWRITE HISTORY
A DISCOVERY BY ARCHAEOLOGISTS FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI COULD REWRITE HISTORY
By Lisa Murtha - July 31, 2018
In 2015, in a work trailer at the site of an archaeological dig in Pylos, Greece, conservator Alexandros Zokos was meticulously cleaning artifacts with distilled water and ethanol when he came across a tiny sealstone, 1.4 inches long, made of agate. The brown-and-white marbled stone, one of more than 2,000 items that Cincinnati-based husband-and-wife archaeologists Jack Davis and Sharon Stocker had extracted from a 3,500-year-old gravesite nearby, closely resembled a bead, smooth and unadorned on one side and encrusted in calcium and lime on the other. On the Greek island of Crete, such stones would have been pressed into soft clay sealings on boxes, baskets, or rolls of papyrus, or used to mark a high-ranking person’s identity. But here on the Greek mainland, where society is thought to have been less evolved at the time, they were often repurposed in jewelry. This particular stone had been found face-down in the dirt near the skeletal remains of a man’s right arm, many other sealstones, and four gold signet rings.
As the limestone dissolved, Zokos realized this was no ordinary stone. Davis recalls him saying something like, “This looks really interesting.” It may have been the understatement of the dig. Carved on one side of the stone and barely visible to the human eye was a miniature fight scene between one warrior and a rival, with a second rival lying dead at the warrior’s feet. Later, enhanced photography would reveal that the scene was incredibly—almost impossibly, considering the stone’s hardness and age—detailed, showing every flowing curl on the warrior’s head (which itself measured just 0.29 centimeters), a piece of jewelry on his wrist (an unfathomable 0.045 centimeters), and even astounding details of human anatomy, including what one BBC narrator later called “rippling biceps.”
Historians and archaeologists were already blown away when Stocker, a University of Cincinnati senior research associate, and Davis, head of UC’s classics department—“both well-known figures in the archaeological world,” says University of Missouri–St. Louis professor of archaeology Michael Cosmopoulos—found the circa 1450 B.C. grave in the first place, in an area where iconic UC archaeologist Carl Blegen had dug test trenches in the 1960s and “found squat,” says Davis. They were amazed again, just two months later, when Davis and Stocker revealed the discovery of those four pristinely preserved signet rings beside the remains of a man who had since been nicknamed “The Griffin Warrior” (for an ivory plaque with a griffin, a mythical mashup of lion and eagle, that the pair found between his leg bones). Now, they were astounded at the discovery of this extraordinarily small and precise piece of artwork, the likes of which had never been seen before.
Until now, historians thought Greek artists weren’t capable of creating such realistic and detailed art, let alone on such a small scale, until at least 500 B.C. The existence of this tiny stone (now known as the Pylos Combat Agate) 1,000 years earlier blew that theory out of the water. It also began raising more questions: Why had no one ever discovered the grave before? Who was this man, to have been buried in his own personal grave alongside such riches? And how did someone make something as detailed as the Combat Agate as early as 1450 B.C.? Add in the fact that Davis and Stocker, who have worked on digs in the area for three-plus decades, really hadn’t expected to find anything like this in their lifetimes—certainly not on this particular site—and you have a tale both epic and irresistible that’s tinged with mystery and fully capable of altering history as we know it.
More:
http://www.cincinnatimagazine.com/features/a-discovery-by-archaeologists-from-the-university-of-cincinnati-could-rewrite-history/
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