Welcome back, everybody!  This is Rick Pettigrew.  Coming up are four top news stories that came out this past week on Archaeologica.  Send us feedback on The Archaeology Channel Facebook page or post a message on our social networking site, ArchaeoSeek!

An ancient runestone in Sweden now appears to refer to climate catastrophe.  A wider search is under way in Florida for unmarked African-American graves.  Many cuneiform tablets from Iraq apparently have not been returned by Hobby Lobby. And a manuscript written in 1350 is the oldest known drawing of the city of Venice.

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And now, here’s Laura Pettigrew with the Audio News from Archaeologica.  We hope you find this to be a valuable part of your day.

Welcome to the Audio News from Archaeologica!  I’m Laura Pettigrew and these are the headlines in archaeological and historical news from January 5th through the 11th. 

In our first story, an interdisciplinary Swedish team claims the message on a famous Viking runestone is not about a battle against invaders, but instead speaks of the fight against a climate disaster.  This was reported by the University of Gothenburg.

The 9th century Rök stone comes from East Gothland near Lake Vattern in central Sweden, and carries what is believed to be the longest known runic inscription in the world.  It comprises more than 700 runes, which are the letters of old Germanic language alphabets.

Scholars have long believed the Rök stone, weighing 5 tons and roughly 2.5 meters, or 8 feet, tall, was a memorial to a dead son, with inscriptions about the heroic battles of Viking kings.  But the passage could never be connected to any historic wars.  Now, the research suggests it’s because the Rök stone speaks about a different kind of battle, the conflict between light and darkness, warmth and cold, life and death.

Per Holmberg, professor in Swedish at the University of Gothenburg, who led the study, stated that the key to unlocking the inscription was an interdisciplinary approach involving textual analysis, archaeology, history of religions, and runology.  The new archaeological research shows how badly Scandinavia suffered from a climate catastrophe around AD 536 when lower average temperatures caused crop failures, hunger and widespread deaths across the region and around the world.

According to Bo Gräslund, professor of Archaeology at Uppsala University, before the stone was erected in the mid-800s, certain events had people fearing another climate disaster.  First, a powerful solar storm turned the entire sky red.  Then an extremely cold summer caused a steep drop in crop yields.  Finally, a solar eclipse blackened the sky and people began to fear another Fimbulwinter, or unbearably extreme winter.  According to Norse beliefs, such a winter would be the start of Ragnarök, the end of the world.

As reported by the AP and the University of Gothenburg, the new reading of the runestone shows the inscription consists of nine riddles.  The answer to five of these riddles is “the Sun.”  One riddle asks, who was dead but now lives again?  The remaining four riddles are about Odin and his warriors.

The powerful elite of the Viking Age saw themselves as guarantors of good harvests.  They were the leaders of the cult that held together the fragile balance between light and darkness.  And finally at Ragnarök, they would fight alongside Odin in the final battle for the light.

Reading the Rök stone for this larger meaning highlights several parallels to other Old Norse texts, which no one ever noted until now.  The new research was published in Futhark, International Journal of Runic Studies.

In the US, on the west coast of Florida, as reported by the Tampa Bay Times, another search is underway for a lost African-American cemetery, covered over in the development rush of the 20th century that saw many African-American neighborhoods and even burial grounds ignored under the Jim Crow segregation that ruled the era.  

The new search is for unmarked graves left behind in what was once the community of Clearwater Heights, near Tampa.  The marked graves in the unnamed 1-acre cemetery were moved in the 1950s, but former residents contend that many unmarked graves were not.  Those buried without headstones, they say, are still on the land that today is a 2-acre vacant lot beside a business.

Soon, they’ll know for certain.  Beginning January 21, the University of South Florida’s Florida Public Archaeology Network will survey the property for graves with ground-penetrating radar.

According to Zebbie Atkinson the Fourth, president of the Clearwater-Upper Pinellas NAACP, the hope is that nothing is there to find, but the reality is there most likely is.

The Florida Public Archaeology Network is part of the effort that has so far identified hundreds of lost graves from forgotten, or deliberately ignored, all-black cemeteries dating back to times even before the Civil War, but mainly from the early 1900s, during the era of segregation.  Last June, the Tampa Bay Times led this new move to uncover and rectify this part of the past through a series of reports identifying lost cemeteries.  Some were built-over starting in the 1920s, despite the families of those buried there still living nearby.  Others were officially moved, especially after the 1950s brought the beginning of the inclusion of black voices in public decision-making and efforts towards ending segregation.  But many unmarked graves were left behind, as the families of those buried in Clearwater contend.

Officials say they will decide on next steps after the archaeological search is done.  Ground-penetrating radar has located many graves below the modern ground surface in a number of former cemeteries across the region, but cannot identify them all, especially where buildings now cover former burial grounds.

According to Carlton Childs, one of many people looking for lost graves of loved ones, African-Americans didn't have a whole lot of voice and weren’t heard as they should have been.  Now, several decades after civil rights laws began ending segregation and exclusion of African-Americans from public life, those citizens have a little bit more of a voice, and they intend to be heard.  

We turn now to another continuing saga of theft from the past, this one from the ancient Middle East.  Hobby Lobby, a large US company whose co-owner helped found the Museum of the Bible in November 2017 in Washington, D.C., was already fined three million dollars in that year for illegally importing stolen Middle Eastern artifacts.  Now more evidence shows that not all of the stolen artifacts seem to have been returned.

About 1,400 cuneiform tablets possibly stolen from Irisagrig, a 4,000-year-old lost city in Iraq, have just been revealed.  Though archaeologists know the tablets originated in that lost Sumerian city, they don't know where the city is located.  Only looters know the location. 

The newly examined tablets describe the palace of Irisagrig and the animals kept on the grounds, including lions and dogs; the tablets also detail a festival held in a temple dedicated to a god of mischief.

The new find shows that Hobby Lobby had obtained far more cuneiform tablets than previously believed from this city and other sites in Iraq.

The 1,400 Irisagrig tablets, along with 600 cuneiform tablets from other archaeological sites in Iraq, are detailed in a book published in 2019 called, “Tablets From the Irisagrig Archive."  According to the authors, Marcel Sigrist, professor emeritus at the French School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, and Tohru Ozaki, a retired lecturer at the University of Shizuoka in Japan, they recorded the tablets by hand, but were not allowed to photograph them, between 2012 and 2016, in the Oklahoma storerooms of Hobby Lobby.  

As reported by Live Science, the origin and legal ownership status of the tablets were not made clear to the researchers.  In 2017, as part of their settlement for importing antiquities illegally from Iraq, Hobby Lobby forfeited about 450 cuneiform tablets and 3,000 clay bullae, which are seals.  According to a settlement statement from the U.S. Department of Justice, these were returned to Iraq.  

However, 223 of those 450 tablets were seized in January 2011 in Memphis, Tennessee, by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.   

Considering the 1,400 tablets from Irisagrig, 600 tablets from other sites in Iraq, and the tablets seized in 2011, the total number of cuneiform tablets once owned by Hobby Lobby exceeds 2,200. 

And now, after the study Sigirst and Ozaki, some appear to be missing.  According to John Marzulli, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice, aside from the 450 tablets mentioned in the 2017 statement that announced Hobby Lobby's fine and forfeiture of artifacts, he has no information about any other tablets once owned by them. 

A spokesperson for Iraq's antiquities minister said that about 3,817 artifacts once owned by Hobby Lobby have been returned to the Iraq embassy.  It's unclear how many of them are cuneiform tablets.  However, if 3,000 clay bullae were returned to Iraq, as the U.S. Department of Justice claims, that means that only up to 817 tablets out of the 2,200 that Hobby Lobby held could have been returned. 

Sigrist said that after 2016 he never received any communication from Hobby Lobby.  That’s why he decided to describe the tablets in a publication so that scholars could become aware of the artifacts' existence. 

The newly published tablets tell of numerous economic and administrative transactions that happened at Irisagrig.  Inscriptions describe how the rulers of the city kept lions and fed them the carcasses of cattle.  The "lion shepherds," those who took care of the lions, received rations of beer and bread, as did those who took care of the many guard dogs that were also kept in Irisagrig's palace.

The tablets tell of food given out at the festival of a king named Amar-Suen.  The event took place at the Temple of Enki, a god of mischief and wisdom.  The tablets also tell of the numerous officials who served the king, such as the "sagi," officials who were often cupbearers to the kings of Irisagrig.

According to Sigrist, the newly described tablets date to a time when Irisagrig was involved in few conflicts and things were fairly peaceful.  In later times, Irisagrig's territory fell victim to invasion and wars.  

For our last story this week, we go to Italy, where a manuscript from about 1350 shows the oldest known view of the city of Venice. 

The drawing of ships in a harbor surrounded by houses, churches and other buildings was found by Dr. Sandra Toffolo, a historian at the University of St. Andrews, during research for her monograph, "Describing the City, Describing the State. Representations of Venice and the Venetian Terraferma in the Renaissance," to be published in early 2020.

The image is part of a manuscript containing the travel account of Niccolò da Poggibonsi, an Italian pilgrim who traveled to Jerusalem between 1346 and 1350.  The manuscript probably was made shortly after he returned to Italy in 1350.  During his pilgrimage, Niccolò passed through Venice and his description of the city is accompanied by a pen drawing of Venice.

Dr. Toffolo, who specializes in the history of Venice in the Renaissance, discovered the image in May 2019 during her research in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence, and has worked on representations of Venice during the Renaissance for several years.

When Dr. Toffolo saw the image, she realized that it predates all previously known views of the city, except for maps.  The oldest extant map of Venice was made by Fra Paolino, a Franciscan friar from Venice, and dates from around 1330.  

A series of small pinpricks discovered on the original manuscript image suggests that the city view was more widely circulated.  This technique was used to copy images: powder was sifted through the pinpricks onto another surface, thereby transferring the outlines of the image.

According to Dr. Toffolo, these pinpricks strongly indicate that this city view was copied. Indeed, several images in manuscripts and early printed books are clearly based on the image in the manuscript in Florence.

She says that the discovery shows that the city of Venice long ago held great fascination for contemporaries.

That wraps up the news for this week!

For more stories and daily news updates, visit Archaeologica on the World Wide Web at www.archaeologica.org where all the news is history!

I’m Laura Pettigrew and I’ll see you next week!