New insights come on anniversary of Cromwell’s death and ahead of the final part of the ‘Wolf Hall’ trilogy which hits West End later this year.

The magnificent London mansion of Thomas Cromwell has been revealed for the first time in an artist’s impression, following a new study which examines the building in unprecedented detail.

Dr Nick Holder, a historian and research fellow at English Heritage and the University of Exeter, has scrutinized an exceptionally rich source of information, including letters, leases, surveys and inventories, to present the most thorough insight to-date on “one of the most spectacular private houses” in 1530s London.

Published in the peer-reviewed Journal of the British Archaeological Association, his findings* – which have informed the artist’s impression created by illustrator Peter Urmston – include floor plans for the mansion, which had 58 rooms plus servants’ garrets, and a large garden.

The plans have been released before but the evidence behind them hasn’t been presented until now.

Together with an accompanying room-by-room analysis of another of Cromwell’s London homes, it provides a fascinating new insight into the life and personality of a man who was one of the architects of the English Reformation and helped engineer the annulment of Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon, allowing him to marry Anne Boleyn.

Cromwell, who as Henry VIII’s henchman was the most powerful man in England, still captures the public imagination – and inspires novels, including Hilary Mantel’s award-winning Wolf Hall series, plays and TV series – today, almost 500 years after his death.

The mansion, next to the Austin Friars monastery in the City of London, cost Cromwell at least £1,600 to build, including around £550 on the land.

Cromwell had lived in Italy and spoke Italian and it is “very likely” the architecture contained fashionable new Italian Renaissance features, says Dr Holder.

Construction began in July 1535 and, like many building projects, there were hitches, including a delay in October the following year when the 80-strong team of workmen was sent to Yorkshire to fight the rebels of the Pilgrimage of Grace uprising.

Cromwell also seems to have undertaken a “land grab”, confiscating a 22-foot strip of land to enlarge his garden, which may have had a bowling alley and tennis court.

The mansion, which boasted bedding made cloth of gold, damask and velvet, acted as a family home, an administrative base and a venue for entertainment. It may even have been designed in the anticipation, or perhaps fear, of a visit from the king.

Prestigious visitors would have been guided up the large stair tower to one of the sumptuous first-floor halls, the parlor or the ladies’ parlor. The heated halls were decorated with tapestry hangings and one had three distinctive oriel (bay) windows.

The mansion was also a store for Cromwell’s personal armouy – in reality enough for a small army. This included several hundred sets of “almayne revettes” (German plate armor for infantry), nearly 100 sallets and bascinets (head-pieces and helmets) and weaponry including 759 bows, complete with hundreds of sheaves of arrows.

Cromwell would, however, have had little time to enjoy his spectacular new home before he was executed for treason in 1540.

He had moved to the mansion from a 14-room neighboring townhouse, for which he probably paid £4 a year in rent. Documents, including two inventories from Cromwell’s tenancy, provide a room-by-room description of this home and its contents, which included 28 rings, three of which Cromwell was wearing at the time of the inventory. They also give an intriguing glimpse into his religious outlook.

Dr Holder says: “We think of Cromwell as Henry VIII’s henchman, carrying out his policy, including closing down the monasteries, and we know that by about 1530 Cromwell became one of the new Evangelical Protestants.

“But when you look at the inventory of his house in the 1520s, he doesn’t seem such a religious radical, he seems more of a traditional English Catholic.

“He’s got various religious paintings on the wall, he’s got his own holy relic, which is very much associated with traditional Catholics, not with the new Evangelicals, and he’s even got a home altar. In the 1520s he seems like much more of a conventional early Tudor Catholic gentleman.”

The coats of arms of his patron Cardinal Wolsey and former patron, Thomas Grey, which were on display in the townhouse, meanwhile, reveal a sense of loyalty beneath Cromwell’s ruthless exterior, says Dr Holder.

The exceptionally detailed analysis was made possible thanks to a “treasure trove” of documents held in the archives of the Drapers’ Company, the trade group that bought Cromwell’s mansion after his death.

Dr Holder adds: “These two houses were the homes of this great man, they were the places where he lived with his wife and two daughters, where his son grew up. It was also the place he went back to at night after being with Henry VIII at court and just got on with the hard graft of running the country.

“No one else has looked at these two houses in quite as much detail comparing all the available evidence. This is about as close as you are going to get to walking down these 16th-century corridors.”

*https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00681288.2021.1923812

Featured image: Artist conception of the Cromwell home. Peter Urmston

Provided by Taylor & Francis Group 

A new study finds forensics researchers use terms related to ancestry and race in inconsistent ways, and calls for the discipline to adopt a new approach to better account for both the fluidity of populations and how historical events have shaped our skeletal characteristics.

“Forensic anthropology is a science, and we need to use terms consistently,” says Ann Ross, corresponding author of the study and a professor of biological sciences at North Carolina State University. “Our study both highlights our discipline’s challenges in discussing issues of ancestral origin consistently, and suggests that focusing on population affinity would be a way forward.”

Race is a social construct – there’s no scientific basis for it. Population affinity, in the context of forensic anthropology, is determined by the skeletal characteristics associated with groups of people. Those characteristics are shaped by historic events and forces such as gene flow, migration, and so on. What’s more, these population groups can be very fluid.

In practical terms, that this means that race can be wildly misleading in a forensic context. For example, a missing person may have been listed as Black on their driver’s license because of their skin color. But their skeletal remains may not indicate they were of African descent, because their bone structure may reflect other aspects of their ancestry.

“Like many disciplines, forensic anthropology has been coming to terms with issues regarding race,” Ross says. “Some people in the discipline want to do away completely with assessing an individual’s place of origin. Others say that conventional approaches still have value in helping to identify human remains.

“In this paper, we are recommending a third path. This study is focused on finding ways to evaluate human variation that give us valuable information in forensic and anthropological contexts, but that avoid clinging to the use of outdated defaults such as race.”

In one part of the study, the researchers looked at all of the papers published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences between 2009 and 2019 that referenced ancestry, race or related terms. The goal of this content analysis was to determine if the terms were being used consistently within the field. And they were not.

“The Journal of Forensic Sciences is the flagship journal for forensic sciences in the U.S., and even there we found inconsistencies in how our field uses these terms,” Ross says. “Inconsistent terminology opens the door to confusion, misunderstanding and misuse within the discipline.”

In a second part of the study, the researchers used geometric morphometric data and spatial analysis methods to evaluate the validity of terms such as “European” or “African” to describe the ancestral origin of human remains.

Altogether, the researchers evaluated nine datasets, comprising data on 397 people. The datasets were of human remains collected in Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Guatemala, Panama, Puerto Rico, Peru, Spain and a population of enslaved Africans that had been buried in Cuba. All of the remains, except for those of the enslaved Africans, were from the 20th or 21st centuries.

“Regarding the data we have on the remains of enslaved Africans, we want to acknowledge the value that data collected from such samples can contribute to discussions of human variation, while also noting that the history and ethics of human skeletal collections, in general, is often dubious,” Ross says. “Such body harvesting all too often occurred under the umbrella of scientific racism, without the permission of the deceased or next of kin, and disproportionately targeted marginalized populations.”

In their review of recent papers, the researchers found that forensics experts often still referred to remains as being of African, Asian or European origin.

“But our analysis of these nine datasets shows that this approach is wrong, because it’s not that simple,” Ross says.

“Let’s use Panama as an example,” says Ross, who is from Panama. “There have been huge movements of people into this area from all over the world over the past 500 years: indigenous peoples who predate colonialism, colonizers from Europe, slaves from Africa, immigrants from Asia. The contemporary remains we see in Panama reflect all of those influences.”

Ross also noted that the analysis of the nine datasets also highlighted a flaw in the contemporary idea of “clines.” The idea of clines is basically that, while there are changes from one group of people to another, populations who are geographically close to each other are more similar than populations that are geographically distant. However, the researchers found that this assumption can be misleading.

For example, Panama and Colombia share a border, but very different historical forces have acted on Panama and Colombia in recent centuries – so the skeletal characteristics of remains from those two countries are much less similar than one would anticipate.

“All of this is important for multiple reasons, such as taking meaningful steps to reduce racism in our field, and ensuring that we are communicating clearly with each other within the discipline,” Ross says. “It is also important because marginalized people are most often the people whose remains go unidentified. Labeling them as ‘Hispanic’ or ‘Black’ is misleading. We, as forensic anthropologists, need to change the way we think about origin. We need to begin thinking about physical markers in the context of population affinity and how we can use that to both communicate clearly and to help understand who we are seeing when we work with unidentified remains. We need to ensure that we are not contributing – even inadvertently – to structural inequities and racism.

“This also means that we are faced with a wide range of new research questions. As a field, much of our work has focused on looking at data from the remains of historic populations. I think we need to begin doing more work that can help us better understand the ways in which historical events have helped to shape the skeletal characteristics of modern populations.”

The study, “Ancestry Studies in Forensic Anthropology: Back on the Frontier of Racism,” is published open access in the journal Biology. The paper was co-authored by Shanna Williams, a clinical associate professor of biomedical sciences at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville.

Provided by NC State

A team of geneticists and archaeologists from Ireland, France, Iran, Germany, and Austria has sequenced the DNA from a 1,600-year-old sheep mummy from an ancient Iranian salt mine, Chehrābād. This remarkable specimen has revealed sheep husbandry practices of the ancient Near East, as well as underlining how natural mummification can affect DNA degradation.

The incredible findings have just been published in the international, peer-reviewed journal Biology Letters.

The salt mine of Chehrābād is known to preserve biological material. Indeed, it is in this mine that human remains of the famed “Salt Men” were recovered, dessicated by the salt-rich environment. The new research confirms that this natural mummification process – where water is removed from a corpse, preserving soft tissues that would otherwise be degraded – also conserved animal remains.

The research team, led by geneticists from Trinity College Dublin, exploited this by extracting DNA from a small cutting of mummified skin from a leg recovered in the mine.

While ancient DNA is usually damaged and fragmented, the team found that the sheep mummy DNA was extremely well-preserved; with longer fragment lengths and less damage that would usually be associated with such an ancient age. The group attributes this to the mummification process, with the salt mine providing conditions ideal for preservation of animal tissues and DNA.

The salt mine’s influence was also seen in the microorganisms present in the sheep leg skin. Salt-loving archaea and bacteria dominated the microbial profile – also known as the metagenome – and may have also contributed to the preservation of the tissue.

The mummified animal was genetically similar to modern sheep breeds from the region, which suggests that there has been a continuity of ancestry of sheep in Iran since at least 1,600 years ago.

The team also exploited the sheep’s DNA preservation to investigate genes associated with a woolly fleece and a fat-tail – two important economic traits in sheep. Some wild sheep – the asiatic mouflon – are characterised by a “hairy” coat, much different to the woolly coats seen in many domestic sheep today. Fat-tailed sheep are also common in Asia and Africa, where they are valued in cooking, and where they may be well-adapted to arid climates.

The team built a genetic impression of the sheep and discovered that the mummy lacked the gene variant associated with a woolly coat, while fibre analysis using Scanning Electron Microscopy found the microscopic details of the hair fibres consistent with hairy or mixed coat breeds. Intriguingly, the mummy carried genetic variants associated with fat-tailed breeds, suggesting the sheep was similar to the hairy-coated, fat-tailed sheep seen in Iran today.

“Mummified remains are quite rare so little empirical evidence was known about the survival of ancient DNA in these tissues prior to this study,” says Conor Rossi, PhD candidate in Trinity’s School of Genetics and Microbiology, and the lead author of the paper.

“The astounding integrity of the DNA was not like anything we had encountered from ancient bones and teeth before. This DNA preservation, coupled with the unique metagenomic profile, is an indication of how fundamental the environment is to tissue and DNA decay dynamics.

Dr Kevin G Daly, also from Trinity’s School of Genetics and Microbiology, supervised the study. He added:

“Using a combination of genetic and microscopic approaches, our team managed to create a genetic picture of what sheep breeds in Iran 1,600 years ago may have looked like and how they may have been used.

“Using cross-disciplinary approaches we can learn about what ancient cultures valued in animals, and this study shows us that the people of Sasanian-era Iran may have managed flocks of sheep specialised for meat consumption, suggesting well developed husbandry practices.”

Featured image: The mummified sheep leg from which DNA was obtained. Image courtesy of Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum and Zanjan Cultural Heritage Centre, Archaeological Museum of Zanjan. © Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum and Zanjan Cultural Heritage Centre, Archaeological Museum of Zanjan.

Provided by Trinity College Dublin

Researchers from Pompeu Fabra University and the University of Leicester have discovered at the site of Çatalhöyük (Anatolia, Turkey) a wide variety of hitherto unknown wild resources. The study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, has used an innovative approach, based on the analysis of microscopic plant remains extracted from grinding implements from different domestic contexts.

A study conducted by researchers from the UPF Culture and Socio-Ecological Dynamics research group (CaSEs) and the University of Leicester (UK) has provided a highly dynamic image surrounding the use and importance of hitherto unknown wild plant resources at the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük (Anatolia, Turkey). The researchers carried out their work combining the analysis of microbotanical remains and use-wear traces in various stone implements recovered from the site, which in the past hosted one of mankind’s first agricultural societies.

The researchers carried out their work combining the analysis of microbotanical remains and use-wear traces in various stone implements recovered from the site

Çatalhöyük is a world heritage archaeological site located in Anatolia (Turkey), which was inhabited during the Neolithic, between 7,100 and 6,000 BC. This site has received worldwide attention due to its size and because it is one of the first urban centres with a high density of agglomerated dwellings, to which entry was gained through the roof and which contained elaborate wall paintings inside. The settlement was studied continuously for nearly three decades and provided a wealth of archaeobotanical remains (charred remains of plants) and a wide range of stone artefacts and tools used to process plant resources.

An innovative approach that analyses residue trapped on the surface of grinding implements

Despite the extensive research conducted in the area, much of what is known about agricultural practices and the use of plant resources, both at Çatalhöyük and in many other archaeological settlements, is based on the study of charred remains. However, these remains occur causally, either when cooking food or due to accidental fire, which gives a limited image of the use of plant resources in the past.

“We recovered residues trapped in the pits and crevices of these stone artefacts that date back to the time of being used, and then carried out studies of microbotanical remains and thus reveal what types of plants had been processed with these artefacts in the past”

The study, led by Carlos G. Santiago-Marrero, a predoctoral researcher with the Culture and Socio-Ecological Dynamics (CaSEs) research group of the UPF Department of Humanities, together with Carla Lancelotti and Marco Madella, ICREA-UPF research professors and members of CaSEs, and Christina Tsoraki, of the School of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Leicester (UK), used an innovative approach based on the analysis of microscopic remains taken from grinding implements from three domestic contexts, attributed to the Middle (6,700-6,500 BC) and Late (6,500 -6,300 BC) periods of occupation.

“We recovered residues trapped in the pits and crevices of these stone artefacts that date back to the time of being used, and then carried out studies of microbotanical remains and thus reveal what types of plants had been processed with these artefacts in the past”, the researchers explain.

Among the microscopic remains studied by the researchers are phytoliths, from the deposition of opal silica in plant cells and cell walls, that provide clues about the presence of anatomical parts, such as the stems and husks of plants, including wheat and barley. Another residue studied are starches, glucose compounds, created by plants to store energy, which are found in large quantities in many edible parts of plants, such as seeds and tubers.

Thanks to combining these two lines, the researchers have shown that although the community of Çatalhöyük was based on an agricultural economy by definition, growing cereals and vegetables (wheat, oats, peas), there continued to be much exploitation of wild resources outside the spectrum of domestic resources, which had not yet been found at this site.

Use of wild plant resources to diversify the diet, through complex processing

“Microbotanical evidence has contributed to our knowledge about the plants used in the past and helped identify the presence of wild plants and various aspects related to possible strategies to exploit these resources, both to diversify the diet and to replace any calorie deficit that may have arisen in times of scarcity”, the researchers assert. These wild plant resources were as important as domestic ones, and were most likely used regularly to supplement the core diet.

These wild plant resources were as important as domestic ones, and were most likely used regularly to supplement the core diet.

“Among our findings we have shown that the community used a wide range of tuberous plants, many of them belonging to potentially toxic taxonomic families, which require complex processing or use. This shows the great phytocultural knowledge possessed by this community”, the authors underscore. And they add: “Many of these tuberous plants had highly restrictive seasonal life cycles, which has helped us to infer the possible means of organizing and exploiting the plant environment at different times of the year”.

Moreover, another important aspect revealed by the study is the processing of wild millet seeds, which had never been found among the charred remains of plants on the site.

Use-wear traces on the surfaces of processing implements denoting various uses

The analysis of use-wear traces on the surfaces of plant processing implements, produced by use in various activities, has allowed the researchers to infer different tasks for which the tools were used.

Thanks to these analyses, they have discovered very diverse life histories of these implements and the close relationship with various aspects related to the processing of plant resources and other domestic activities. “By combining microbotanical evidence with use traces, we have discovered processes such as grain husking, the milling of legumes, tubers and cereals, and even the use of these implements in other activities not related to plant processing”.

Featured image: A) Set of stone tools, storage area of building 52; B) Use-wear trace observed on the surface of stone implements; C) Wheat inflorescence phytolith; D) Wheat starch grain. © UPFB

Reference article: Santiago-Marrero, C., Tsoraki, C., Lancelotti, C., and Madella, M. (June 2021). “A microbotanical and microwear perspective to plant processing activities and foodways at Neolithic Çatalhöyük”. PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252312

Provided by Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona

Archaeologist relates the facts about some of the most ancient cities in the world.

The great Step Pyramid of Djoser in Egypt is popularly touted as the first and oldest ancient monumental pyramid ever built.

But think again.

Even before the ancients raised their massive stones in place in Egypt, more than 7700 miles to the southwest, on another continent, ancient people were constructing massive monumental structures, including pyramidal edifices in what is today known as Peru. At sites like Caral, Bandurria, Aspero, Huaricanga, and Sechin Bajo, all located within the north/central coastal region of Peru, massive construction requiring organized, community effort was underway as early as 3500/36000 BCE. That’s nearly 1,000 years before the Djoser pyramid and about 500 years before the Sialk zigurrat, the oldest Mesopotamian zigurrat, located in present-day Iran.

Dr. Kimberly Munro, an Andean archaeologist, has been exploring and investigating ancient sites in Peru for over a decade. She is the director of the Cosma Archaeological Project, a long-term research project involving excavation and survey in the Andean central highlands. “For the Andean region specifically, the origins of state development has long been debated,” writes Munro in an article recently published in Popular Archaeology. “The Andes is a peculiar case study, given that unlike the other 5 “cradles of civilization” located throughout the rest of the Prehistoric world, Andean state development did not rely entirely on an agricultural revolution. Large scale public monuments are found along the coast by at least 3700 BCE, and many early centers, especially in the highlands, predate intensive agriculture.”

Notwithstanding these early site discoveries, she maintains, there is room to question the suggestion by many archaeologists that this early development arose first in the coastal and lower river valley regions. There may be reason to seriously consider looking eastward toward the highlands, as well, to sites like Kotosh, near the town of Huánuco in the central highlands. She also points, for example, to a site known as La Galgada, located on the Tablachaca branch of the upper Santa River Valley at 1,100 masl (meters above sea level) in Peru’s Department of Ancash region. La Galgada features massive dual mounds, temples, and a sunken circular plaza.  “Dates for La Galgada range from 3000 to 1700 BCE,” she wrote to Popular Archaeology. “However, the base of the mound and presumably earliest constructions were never reached, indicating there may be earlier structures deep within the complex.”

Munro relates what is known to date about these ancient Peruvian cities in a major feature premium article now published at Popular Archaeology. She also plans to lead groups of interested participants on special tours/treks of these ancient sites, and many more, in the future. Anyone interested in participating in this activity may send an email expressing interest to populararchaeology@gmail.com. As these activities are developed, interested potential participants will be informed of the details and provided the opportunity to register with the group. Readers can also follow Dr. Munro’s archaeology updates on Instagram: @the.field.professor. Pictured here, Dr. Munro is on location at La Galgada.

Cover Image: Top Left: View of the pyramids of Caral. Kimberly Munro

Provided by Popular Archeology