Denmark's Archaeology Experiment Is Paying Off in Gold and Knowledge

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/denmark-let-amateurs-dig-for-treasure-and-it-paid-off/

by sohkamyung • 1 year ago

209 106 1 year ago

wslh• 1 year ago

For anyone who hasn't seen the detectorists, it gives a very British perspective on this sort of work, and is one of the best British comedies of the last ten years: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detectorists

atombender• 1 year ago

Agreed, it's fantastic. It's not just a brilliant and warm comedy, it's also apparently a really accurate and well-researched depiction of the metal detecting world.

4ndrewl• 1 year ago

The British perspective on this is really the Portable Antquities Scheme at https://finds.org.uk/ which has been running for over 20 years.

You'll find details of research papers and the Staffordshire Hoard, probably one of the largest collections of Anglo-Saxon metalwork ever found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staffordshire_Hoard

louky• 1 year ago

So does Time Team, and they're back making new episodes.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtpbubYLW2fdf9ySyCS0f...

Nursie2• 1 year ago

Really? Amazing.

I loved time team back in the day and I’ve just started rewatching some of them (one of the streaming services has series 13-17 here in Aus).

Might not be the same without Tony, but I see he did pop in for a cameo…

jvm___• 1 year ago

Detectorist was the perfect "the world is a normal place" show during the early days of the pandemic.

jl6• 1 year ago

This show is a great example of how good TV comes from good writing, not high budget.

walthamstow• 1 year ago

Succession had both and it was damn near perfect

ggm-at-algebras• 1 year ago

Absolutely the best fictional story of the genre. Lovingly made, with nuance and some sadness: Diana Rigg, real life mother of Rachael Stirling, (who was cast as her daughter in this series) died during its later series, reflected in plots.

The theme music by Johnny Flynn and Dan Michaelson is perfect.

ascorbic• 1 year ago

Mackenzie Crook also made (and stars in) Worzel Gummidge, which despite being a kids' show about a talking scarecrow, feels like very much a partner of the Detectorists and is just as lovely. Toby Jones appearing as every member of the bonfire committee is a particular treat.

BurningFrog7• 1 year ago

Impressed that people turned in "1.5 kilograms of Viking Age gold artifacts".

That gold is worth about $160k!

If I ran the program I would pay at least the metal value to anyone turning artifacts in. To remove the temptation that doubtless keeps some finds away from the science.

colechristensen2• 1 year ago

Once properly documented, I have some skepticism that it's really necessary to hold every historical artifact found, inside some museum archive basically never to be seen again.

AlotOfReading• 1 year ago

It isn't, but it's impossible to know what will be useful for research again in the future, so historical researchers make an effort to preserve what they can and avoid excavating if possible.

BurningFrog7• 1 year ago

You can probably do a detailed 3d scan and retain 95% of the scientific value.

southernplaces72• 1 year ago

What else should be done with the artifacts? And also why not? It's like storing your data. If you can keep it relatively inexpensive, why not keep it around just in case some future need or curiosity makes it worthwhile?

ambentzen• 1 year ago

How would law abiding citizen Joe Random from Nowhere even know where to offload that on the black market?

It's a bit like internet piracy, make it easy and convenient to follow the law and most people will do it.

thrance• 1 year ago

You'd be surprised of how easy it is for "Joe Random from Nowhere" to sell their illegaly sourced priceless artefacts. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lava_Treasure

BurningFrog7• 1 year ago

Can't say I've tried, but I think it's pretty easy to find buyers for gold.

Melting it removes the legal risk.

protocolture3• 1 year ago

How would law abiding citizen Joe Random from Nowhere even know where to offload that on the black market?

Considering the state of copper theft, the large number of videos on facebook and youtube describing how to melt metals into bar stock, and the low cost of the tools I dont know why this would be considered specialist knowledge.

Maybe if they needed aqua regia or something.

kefal• 1 year ago

It's Denmark, of course they will turn it in.

bazoom423• 1 year ago

Crime and theft happen in Denmark as in other countries. But finders get compensated for the metal value so unless they are collectors or have contacts to private collectors, there is not a lot to gain.

I know a guy who found a gold treasure on a field and he was contacted by a private collector after appearing in local news (he turned them down). So who knows how often it happens? But I don’t think finds are common enough that detecting and selling can be a lucrative business. It is usually enthusiasts with an interst in history.

simonask• 1 year ago

It's enthusiasts - hobbyists willing to invest in metal detection gear, spending their free time doing this. If their aim was to get wealthy, they would be doing basically anything else.

Digging for gold artifacts and treasure is not a great strategy to become rich - these people are obviously much more interested in the history, and maybe the recognition. Of course they will turn it in.

fudgybiscuits• 1 year ago

Whether that's good or not really does depend on how much gold was found though, could be that 10kg was kept for all we know!

southernplaces72• 1 year ago

could be that 10kg was kept for all we know!

Doubtful. Finding such a hoard and reporting it to the authorities for formal examination by default means showing where you found it so the site itself can be examined by archaeologists. They'd likely be able to tell if you'd found more than you reported in the cache site. It's like forensics, but for ancient artefacts and ruins, pretty sophisticated at times.

tokai5• 1 year ago

The budget to pay for these finds is regularly exceeded already. Paying the gold price would fleece the National Museum.

BurningFrog7• 1 year ago

Understood. But it's also true that you get what you pay for.

olalonde• 1 year ago

If I understand correctly, they were paid $150k for it.

Aagaard, Dreiøe and their friend the late Poul Nørgaard Pedersen discovered nearly 1.5 kilograms of Viking Age gold artifacts near the modern town of Fæsted, including armbands that archaeologists have interpreted as oath bands [...] Aagaard, Dreiøe and Nørgaard received just over a million kroner for the oath ring treasure, the equivalent of about $150,000.

BurningFrog7• 1 year ago

So they already have a system like I suggested!

I'm glad to hear it!

Less glad that I missed this fact reading the article :)

bazoom423• 1 year ago

You do get compensation for the metal value.

thaumasiotes12• 1 year ago

Ginnerup dug up 14 glittering gold disks—some as big as saucers—that archaeologists say were buried about 1,500 years ago
the real showstopper is an amulet called a bracteate with two stylized designs: a man in profile, his long hair pulled back in a braid, and a horse in full gallop. An expert in ancient runes says she was awestruck when she finally made out the inscription on top: “He is Odin’s man.”
These embossed runes are the oldest known written mention of Odin, the Norse god of war and ruler of Valhalla. Ginnerup’s bracteate, which archaeologists describe as the most significant Danish find in centuries, extended the worship of Odin back 150 years

I don't think this is right. The first mention of Odin by a Germanic source could date to 500 AD. But the Romans wrote about the Germanic gods several centuries prior to that. They used the equivalence we still use today, calling Odin "Mercury". But what they say about the Germanic gods is compatible with what we know from Germanic sources; there's no reason to believe there was a change in the gods.

I note that the image on the bracteate features a pretty prominent swastika. Maybe Hitler was accidentally on to something after all.

tokai5• 1 year ago

It's the oldest mention of Odin in Denmark. The sciam journalist lost that detail somewhere. That is why the find pushed worship of Odin in Denmark back 150 years.

eesmith4• 1 year ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odin#Roman_era_to_Migration_Pe... says "The earliest clear reference to Odin by name is found on a C-bracteate discovered in Denmark in 2020."

So, "written mention of Odin" seems to mean written as "Odin', and not as "Mercury".

It also mentions some debate over if the Goths actually worshiped Odin/Mercury, but I am too ill-informed to make sense if that's relevant.

I did manage to find a scholarly reference to the topic at https://helda.helsinki.fi/server/api/core/bitstreams/c11e69e... ("Pre-print papers of THE 18TH INTERNATIONAL SAGA CONFERENCE SAGAS AND THE CIRCUM-BALTIC ARENA. Helsinki and Tallinn, 7th–14th August 2022")

The problem of Mercury
Despite lack of Germanic evidence for the existence of a cult of Wodan/Óðinn before the fifth (or perhaps even the sixth) century, as presented above, many scholars maintain ancient roots. For example, disregarding critical scholarship on various individual sources, Schjødt reiterated that “taken together, they strongly indicate that Óðinn, although not exactly the same as the god that we know from the Nordic sources, has roots reaching far back in time, probably as early as the Indo-European era (at least 3000 BC)” (Schjødt 2019: 67). ...
The reading of interpretation romana maintains that Tacitus’ famous description of Germanic deities, Deorum maxime Mercurium colunt, should be understood to signify Wodan/Óðinn. Of course, it has already been shown by Karl Helm that this was a historical trope copied from Herodotus, and/or Caesar’s Commentarii de bello gallico (Helm 1946: 7-12). The fact that Caesar was talking about Celts, and his description of religion among the Germani mentions worship of the sun, moon, and fire, does nothing to secure the reliability of such ‘historical’ sources. Either way, the argument that the foremost deity interpreted by Tacitus as a ‘Mercury-type’ must be Wodan/Óðinn is a projection of the latter’s supremacy in Old Norse material onto a Germanic society several centuries older. This becomes a circular argument and cannot be leading.

thaumasiotes12• 1 year ago

Tacitus isn't the only interpretation of the Germanic gods. He is thought to refer to Thor as Hercules, but there are other references where a Jupiter is mentioned. There is a Roman complaint that the Germanic peoples see Mercury as the father of Jupiter when it should be the other way around.

And while it's possible, it would be extremely surprising for Odin to be a new addition to the Germanic pantheon when we find him attested under that name in the 5th/6th century. He's in charge of the whole thing! The norm is for gods - all gods - to have very deep roots. Where we can prove that a god is novel, we can also often show that it's a borrowing of a foreign god with deeper roots (e.g. Adonis < Tammuz) or that it is an explicit deification of a human (e.g. if you go to the temple of the city god in Shanghai, there's an informative plaque explaining that the city god was posthumously appointed to the position by an emperor of the Yuan dynasty).

I do understand that after cassava or maize was introduced somewhere in Africa, anthropologists documented a new goddess associated with the crop. Innovation exists. But pantheons are very conservative overall. "Several centuries" is not an amount of time where we expect to see pantheonic turnover.

never_inline2• 1 year ago

“taken together, they strongly indicate that Óðinn, although not exactly the same as the god that we know from the Nordic sources, has roots reaching far back in time, probably as early as the Indo-European era

A reader might be interested in Kris Creshaw's "The One-eyed god" which reiterates Odin's similarities with other Indo-european analogues, specifically Apollo and Vedic Rudra.

Indeed, much of the Odin's acts and characteristics find similarities in the deeds of Rudra or Indra in Vedic myth. The Vedics even had a conception of afterlife similar to Valhalla, where the most excellent people and fallen warriors reach Indra's realm, carried by Apsaras.

Indra is also god of sacred verse, "vipratamo kavinam", which is similar to odin mastering the runes, giving a dual priest-king and warrior king function.

The efficacy of "several great deeds" is emphasized for both. Eg: The Havāmal: "140. word following word, I found me words, deed following deed, I wrought deeds.". The Rig Veda (1.101.4) - Praised, he is firm at every deed of his.

ethan_smith• 1 year ago

Roman accounts using interpretatio romana (equating Germanic deities with Roman gods) aren't the same as direct written evidence naming "Odin" specifically. The bracteate's significance is that it contains the actual name in runic form, not a Roman interpretation or equivalent.

thaumasiotes12• 1 year ago

Sure, but claiming that it pushes back the date of Odin's worship back 150 years is wrong. It hasn't made any change to our beliefs about when Odin was worshiped, or where, or by whom.

HK-NC• 1 year ago

I'm not sure who decided that Hitler stole the swastika from the Hindus, but it's false. The symbol appeared in the decorations of his childhood church IIRC and wasn't an alien symbol to germans elsewhere.

thaumasiotes12• 1 year ago

Where do you think he got the term "Aryan" from?

wewewedxfgdf• 1 year ago

"The swastika design next to the man's head predates the adoption of this symbol by the Nazis."

1,500 years ago!

WaitWaitWha• 1 year ago

This saddens me that this had to be written.

Reasoning2• 1 year ago

Did it have to be written? Who's the hypothetical person who is confused that a 1,500 year old gold disk is older than the Nazi era.

roger_• 1 year ago

Do the detectorists get a certificate or something for their honesty?

tokai5• 1 year ago

They get a payment and they get to be a part of the archaeological process. I have a colleague that had a significant find recently. Her and her "crew" did the dig, cleaning, initial description and cataloguing, and surveyed the area around the site. With supervision from professional archaeologists. Without this system they would get to handover any finds to the landowner.

biophysboy• 1 year ago

Denmark has a fantastic maritime museum right by the Kronborg castle with hundreds of model ships, wreckage artifacts and high-quality underwater photos. Would recommend visiting on a Copenhagen trip

trhway• 1 year ago

how about hanging metal detector from a drone or just plain autonomous RC car. I think once such massive de-mining starts in Ukraine, the tech would trickle down into archaeology and the like fields.

flemhans2• 1 year ago

Mount the equipment on the plows that anyway traverse the fields

CrazyStat• 1 year ago

Most farmers would probably not want to stop plowing to check out whatever the detector pings on.

comrade1234• 1 year ago

I live in Switzerland and I know an ancient forest where I go every year and pull out about 20kg of chanterelle and 10kg of toten trumpeten. These mushrooms come back every year, potentially for thousands of years.

One year I found a big piece of a clay cooking pan in the area where the chanterelles grow.

There are also tons of ravines, potential caves but I won't know until I climb down the ravines, but about 20 km away there are tourist caves where you can pay to enter them, part of the same ridge system.

I wanted to see if I could use a metal detector to find treasure, like in the article but it's illegal here. I suppose I could go in at night with the equipment but it's probably not worth it since while the Roman's were very active in Switzerland they weren't in this very specific region.

But still, where did the clay cooking pan come from?

mhb• 1 year ago

Why is a metal detector illegal?

timonoko3• 1 year ago

Or rather "what constitutes a metal detector"? I could have such double-resonating circuitry in my shoe connected to earplug via bluetooth.

"Officer, this equipment is for detecting needles in the Geneva playground".

pjc50• 1 year ago

To stop amateurs finding antiquities.

fnordian_slip• 1 year ago

Top stop people destroying the context, as laypeople can't (or won't even know about the need to) properly document the layers and non-metal finds around the metal. This makes dating a lot harder, and often destroys 90% of the scientific value of the find.

mycatisblack• 1 year ago

One of the projects I intend to make some day is a metal detector with 2 pickup coils(*), one in or around the sole of each shoe. Instead of an auditory signal, a vibrating element strapped to my leg or ankle. That way you can metaldetect difficult terrain/non-stop/inconspicuously.

(*) they each work independently, like two metaldetectors. Not the detector type with an RX and TX coil.

is_true• 1 year ago

Can't you say you lost a ring or something?

Just cover holes properly. Please. With love, my ankles.

nkrisc• 1 year ago

Does the law say it’s permitted if you lost a ring? That would be a useless law - everyone would be losing rings.

erk__• 1 year ago

There is also a version of Danefæ for non-human made things called Danekræ

https://samlinger.snm.ku.dk/en/danekrae/

There is a lot less specimens in that collection as it only includes specimens that are deemed important in some ways, right now there are 1054.

They can be viewed online here: https://collections.snm.ku.dk/en/search?dataset=5b5305ae-35d...

(edit: That online collection only seem to contain biological specimen, meteors and geological specimens are not included as far as I can tell)

Denmark's Archaeology Experiment Is Paying Off in Gold and Knowledge

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