[HN Gopher] Denmark's Archaeology Experiment Is Paying Off in Go...
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Denmark's Archaeology Experiment Is Paying Off in Gold and
Knowledge
Author : sohkamyung
Score : 69 points
Date : 2025-06-18 12:13 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scientificamerican.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scientificamerican.com)
| wslh wrote:
| https://archive.is/ra5se
| countrymile wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| So does Time Team, and they're back making new episodes.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtpbubYLW2fdf9ySyCS0f...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| 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.
| colechristensen wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| You can probably do a detailed 3d scan and retain 95% of the
| scientific value.
| heikkilevanto wrote:
| No, at some point they want to analyze the impurities in
| the gold, or the isotopes, or something else we don't know
| yet...
| delusional wrote:
| I'm pretty sure more than 5% of the scientific value is in
| the actual physical material. You can't examine the physics
| of the thing from a 3d scan.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Can't say I've tried, but I think it's pretty easy to find
| buyers for gold.
|
| Melting it removes the legal risk.
| dwattttt wrote:
| Melting it removes _a_ legal risk. I'm sure if someone
| looks they can find a risk or two still there somewhere.
| kefal wrote:
| It's Denmark, of course they will turn it in.
| fudgybiscuits wrote:
| 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!
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| >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.
| tokai wrote:
| The budget to pay for these finds is regularly exceeded
| already. Paying the gold price would fleece the National
| Museum.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Understood. But it's also true that you get what you pay for.
| tokai wrote:
| In this case it bought the most productive amateur
| archeology community in Europe :)
| jopsen wrote:
| Getting a cut is probably better.
|
| Spending gold you can't document the origin of is most
| decidedly going to be a hassle. Certainly not without risk.
| And you probably don't have money laundering connections.
|
| And you'll sleep better at night.
| olalonde wrote:
| If I understand correctly, they were paid $150k for it.
|
| > Aagaard, Dreioe and their friend the late Poul Norgaard
| Pedersen discovered nearly 1.5 kilograms of Viking Age gold
| artifacts near the modern town of Faested, including armbands
| that archaeologists have interpreted as oath bands [...]
| Aagaard, Dreioe and Norgaard received just over a million
| kroner for the oath ring treasure, the equivalent of about
| $150,000.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > 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.
| tokai wrote:
| 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.
| eesmith wrote:
| 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/Odinn 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, Schjodt reiterated that "taken
| together, they strongly indicate that Odinn, 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)" (Schjodt 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/Odinn. 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/Odinn
| 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.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| 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.
| wewewedxfgdf wrote:
| >> I note that the image on the bracteate features a pretty
| prominent swastika. Maybe Hitler was accidentally on to
| something after all.
|
| Nazi scientists time travelled Hitler in 1942 to ancient
| Denmark in an attempt to win World War 2 before it started.
| Obviously.
| ethan_smith wrote:
| 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.
| wewewedxfgdf wrote:
| "The swastika design next to the man's head predates the adoption
| of this symbol by the Nazis."
|
| 1,500 years ago!
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| This saddens me that this had to be written.
| wewewedxfgdf wrote:
| Oh they were there all right, 1,500 years ago.
|
| They're always there.
|
| Even in Mesopotamia they were there.
|
| Ancient Nazi Vikings from Denmark. They came in UFOs. With
| Elvis.
| roger_ wrote:
| Do the detectorists get a certificate or something for their
| honesty?
| tokai wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
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