by Sarah Parcak
New Dating Evidence
Greg and I returned home with our samples to post them out to specialists, and Greg then spent hundreds of hours doing the postseason write-up and data analysis. Later that winter, we got back the radiocarbon dating results from the rock-top bulk carbon sample. To obtain it, we had scraped the carbonized material from the top and side areas of the rock that had clear evidence of burning. No other rocks on-site had anything like it.
With a 95 percent probability, we got a date range of 1255–1287 AD, which fell within the period we would hope for Norse activity. It was 250 years later than L’Anse aux Meadows, in fact, leaving room for speculation about just how long the Norse were in Canada. We also got a radiocarbon date of 764–886 AD. A withered tree root sample from below the ground surface gave us a date in the early 17th century, which meant that the tree took root before any Europeans were known to have occupied that part of Newfoundland and the ground had been undisturbed since.45
We asked a geologist at my university, Scott Brande, to analyze the similar “burnt” material from around the rock top, and bog ore beside the bottom of the rock, to determine if the separate areas reflected the same time period and activity. And indeed, they did. Additionally, as a longtime Birmingham resident, Scott had studied the city’s iron industry in detail and told us that a temperature of 1,250 degrees Celsius would be needed to smelt iron, way outside the range of a grass fire.46 Also, some of the bog ore and rock-top residue samples he tested had an iron concentration of 75–85 percent, quite rich and useful for smelting.
After consulting with a Norse metallurgy specialist at Aarhus University in Denmark, Thomas Birch, we learned that we had not found slag, as we had initially thought, but what preliminary indications suggested to be the first part of the smelting process, roasted bog ore. If you put bog iron directly into a hot fire, it will explode, due to its water content. Gently roasting out the water at a lower temperature prepares the ore for the next stage. This seemed to explain why some of our bog iron, which would normally fall to pieces in your hands with gentle pressure, displayed bubbling and was difficult to break.
Yes, it appeared we had indeed discovered the first clues to potential Norse activity at Point Rosee. But this is science. And science can be cruel.
Back to Newfoundland
After sharing our results with several Norse specialists and Martha Drake’s office, we returned with soil scientists, Norse settlement specialists, an authority on ancient plant remains, an archaeological-dating specialist, pollen specialists, and an additional surveyor. We spent months designing the excavation and survey plans, making sure they met with the approval of the experts.
And then the cards of the house we had built fell one by one. As we expanded the unit around the “furnace,” what had initially appeared as a turf wall, matching the width of the satellite data perfectly, kept going. And going. It turned out to be not a turf wall after all, but instead a rare soil feature caused by a combination of water movement and bedrock gradient, the likes of which our enthusiastic local archaeologist Blair Temple said had never been seen in eastern Canada before. We were hugely disappointed. Quite soon, Blair’s resilient good cheer was all that kept us going.
The “furnace” feature, given how badly it had been waterlogged the summer we first uncovered it, had lost all evidence of what we believed to be charcoal. At the time, we had to bail out our units several times a day, which is about as destructive a process as archaeology can experience. The feature had nothing more to give.
We found a lot more bog iron, which had been densest around the furnace, but it spread out over a larger area than expected, having formed there naturally. All the other features that had been suggestive of walls in the satellite imagery turned out to be natural, as did one clear, rectilinear dark-green patch of vegetation. The imagery had let us down, and we ended the season very low in spirits.
Samples, endless samples—we took half of Newfoundland back to be tested in labs. Chiefly, we sent five “burnt” sandstone and quartz samples contained within the bog ore to a top University of Washington lab run by James Feathers, for dating using thermoluminescence (TL) and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL).47 These techniques are invaluable for archaeologists. TL dating tells archaeologists when a mineral was last heated to more than 500 degrees Celsius, which would indicate that something was burned intentionally. OSL can be used on quartz in a similar way.
Up until spring 2018, we had only radiocarbon dates from the “hearth” feature. We knew that if the OSL and TL dates taken from the same context had virtually identical date ranges, then we could say someone intentionally burned bog iron in a roughly 40-centimeter-wide, naturally occurring bowl. We could see no other discernable “burning” outside the bowl, which would have been present with, say, a broader brush fire or a lightning strike.
In late April 2018, we received OSL and TL dates back from Dr. Feathers via email. I admit, after the disheartening 2016 season, I had written them off and braced myself for more bad news.
Except it wasn’t quite what we expected. The first OSL date from the finer-grained samples had a calendar age of 921 ± 130 AD, which means a possible date range of 791–1051 AD. The second series of samples, taken from courser-grained material, had a date range of 1200 ± 300, or 900–1500 AD. Alas, the OSL analysis did not confirm any distinct burning against the boulder itself or in an adjacent area beside the “hearth.” Thus there was no conclusive evidence for the ore or the feature we hoped might have served to heat or process it.
Norse, or No Norse?
That confusing bombshell allows us to say we have four dates from the same archaeological context, all independent and closely matching, from 764 to 1500 AD—admittedly, in addition to several earlier radiocarbon dates. The best “Norse”-linked material coating the rock top is indubitably associated with the lower “hearth” feature.
I have no idea why the vegetation gave such misleading readings, and we are still looking for answers. For some reason the grasses growing across the site and the strange “turf wall” soil were a bit healthier and displayed some linear patterns. Something in the soil perhaps, a mineral content or interaction between plants; the striped soil type did seem to retain more water than the surrounding soils. Perhaps it was just sheer chance that the promising longhouse shape in the northern part of the site was the same size, shape, and orientation as other known longhouses. It’s important to push boundaries and figure out why things appear or do not. We still have a lot of pondering to do.
There is enough evidence here to suggest that one or more groups came to Point Rosee 1,000 years ago, more or less, at the latest, and may have displaced or gathered sufficient bog iron to coat the rock top and fill a stone-edged hollow. Our initial observations suggested enough heat to burn or embed a fair amount of iron into the rock, using charcoal, despite none of it surviving well. I know what I saw with my own eyes.
Maybe we found the first evidence of the local Amerindian or Dorset groups burning bog iron purposefully. That would be groundbreaking. Alternatively, we may have found ephemeral evidence of the Norse pulling up, roasting enough bog iron to smelt elsewhere for a few nails to repair their ships, and then retreating. It would not leave much to be found.
Birgitta Wallace of L’Anse aux Meadows fame was kind enough to come and visit Point Rosee with her husband, Rob. They are just fabulous human beings. Birgitta is one of the grandes dames of archaeology—kind, generous, and wise, and responsible for mentoring several generations of archaeologists. She sat me down for a chat at the end of our season and told me that while the site was not what we had hoped for, we had created a very high bar for future archaeological investigations in the area to jump over.
“It doesn’t matter what you found,” she said. “You used state-of-the-art technology and an excellent digging strategy, and you brought together interested experts. You threw the kitchen sink at the site. That’s what every search for new Norse sites recently has lacked. H
old your head high.”
This gave me food for thought. If Point Rosee had turned out to be an obvious Norse settlement, it would have meant years of work at the site, major funding applications, and close work with the Canadian government to develop the area for tourism, none of which would have been a bad thing. We still need to run additional analyses of the possible roasted bog ore and strange-patterned vegetation. But for now, the site is suggestive at best, and it may always be.
After all this work, I feel that Vinland was not a single place, but Newfoundland and the Gulf of Saint Lawrence in its entirety. Using an aerial laser mapping technology like LIDAR might reveal Norse campsites or even settlements farther inland, near good farmland, and potentially near Point Rosee, but presently hidden beneath vegetation.
Science has its foundations in an approach to experiments that can be replicated in the future, not just impressive findings. With advances in mapping technology, an accidental discovery, or just more searching, I believe that more Norse sites will be found in Canada in the next decade. It is equally likely that some of the modern settlements along the western coast of Newfoundland cover Norse sites. After all, settlers 300 or more years ago would have chosen the best possible locations just as the Norse may have done, and people usually continue to live where people have always lived.
Both Greg and I are sorely tempted to return to Newfoundland. If the windmill is shiny enough, I’ll charge. Armed with LIDAR, and knowing what we know now, I think we could do far more rapid testing of potential sites. Yes, I am inviting more risk and potential failures, but I do so with lots of experience. My colleagues have told me that this search has reignited interest in archaeological surveys of the area for potential Norse sites, and this is great for its warm, hospitable people, who were excited to learn more about Newfoundland’s past. The game is afoot. Expect surprises.
5
Digging in the Wrong Place
Sometimes you get an archaeological site on the brain, like an earworm, but nestled deeper, and impossible to budge. Aside from National Geographic Magazine and library books, I first got to “see” archaeology in action on TV, from occasional documentaries on public television to movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark. I obsessed about Egypt. For a seventh grade project, I made a sarcophagus out of a refrigerator box, correctly decorated, and wrapped myself in toilet paper. I rose out of the box and proceeded to showcase my mummified organs to a class half horrified, half amused. Instead of getting professional help, I opted for the profession, period.
When watching Raiders as a child, what I loved most was the Tanis scene—a map room, a lost city laid out, hiding the secret site of the lost Ark of the Covenant. And despite the Nazis’ evil plots and sweeping excavation, Indy’s friend Sallah can write off their archaeology with one pithy line:
“They’re digging in the wrong place.”
You could say I’ve had Tanis on my mind for some time, simmering away in the place where you store childhood dreams.
The Story of Tanis
Hollywood didn’t quite get Tanis right. Tanis, biblical Zoan, is located in the eastern part of Egypt’s Delta, about a three-hour drive north of Cairo. It grew along the Tanitic branch of the Nile, south of the Mendesian branch where Tebilla is located. We know from textual evidence that occupation of its nearby predecessor Pi-Ramesses at Qantir started in Dynasty 19 (1296–1186 BC), but we have virtually no archaeological data at Tanis prior to Dynasty 21 (1070–945 BC).1
Location of Tanis [MAP COURTESY CHASE CHILDS]
Through the streets and alleys of San el Hagar, the modern community overlying part of ancient Tanis, twisting and turning by car, you have no idea you might be above a long-abandoned metropolis. Outside town, what looks like a rambling white vacation house greets you. Lush pink bougainvillea line the walkway to the entrance. When you reach the veranda out back … your breath leaves you. A seemingly endless ocean of dusty hills spreads out. At their base, white stones form a large temple complex.
Few sites like Tanis are left in Egypt. Shaped like a tilted South America as seen on Google Earth, the site defies all large adjectives: it is a decaying megalopolis. Measuring more than 2 kilometers long and 1½ kilometers wide, the site has an aboveground volume I would estimate at 22 million cubic meters. At a rate of 4 units per season, it would take archaeologists working in standard 10-meter-square units over 55,000 years to excavate.
General landscape of Tanis [PHOTO BY THE AUTHOR]
As you approach the middle of the site, mud-brick debris comes into view, piled 10–15 meters tall in places. The soft layer of silt that covers the site can make it hard to walk, especially in the rainy season when you end up with pounds of mud making platform shoes of your hiking boots.
The main sacred area is in the northern end of the site, where the topography rises gently. It has temples to Amun-Re, Mut, and Khonsu—a typical god-goddess-son triad—and is possibly a cult center for Re.2 There, a promenade of upright 4-meter-tall statues and stelae greets any tourists who make the special day trip.
Tanis was the capital of Egypt for more than 350 years, from 1070 to 712 BC, home to two dynasties of Egyptian kings, 21 and 22, at the dawn of the Third Intermediate Period.3
As Egypt’s great age of empire, the New Kingdom, fizzled out, Libyan tribes began to enter Egypt’s Western Desert. Anxious people fortified their towns against increasing unrest.4 Ramses XI, the last king of Dynasty 20, ruled from Pi-Ramesses some 20 kilometers south of Tanis,5 and high priest Smendes was his right-hand man in the Delta.
When Ramses XI’s reign staggered to an end, Smendes assumed the kingship of northern Egypt, thus launching the Twenty-first Dynasty. He moved the capital to Tanis and practically took the lightbulbs: the Tanite architects robbed Pi-Ramesses for blocks and other building materials so thoroughly that archaeologists long mistook one city for the other.6 Later in the dynasty, King Psusennes I (1039–991 BC) made his own innovations, building his tomb inside the temple complex at Tanis to take advantage of extra security and the associated royal cults. By ancient Egyptian standards, this was pretty radical.7
Sheshonq (945–925 BC)—Shishak in the Bible—the first ruler of Dynasty 22, built a new royal residence at Tanis8 despite civil war in Egypt and a power grab by the Libyans at Mendes and in the western Delta. It was all going wrong. In Dynasty 24, ca. 712 AD, Tanis was no longer tenable as a capital city.9
Early Exploration at Tanis
The site has an incredibly rich history of exploration, starting with Napoleon’s savants in the early 1800s. An archaeologist named Pierre Montet continued the tradition of French excavation by making what I and others in my field consider to be one of the greatest Egyptological discoveries of all time.10
In the early part of the 20th century, Montet and his team had toiled away at Tanis for 11 seasons, hoping to find Pi-Ramesses—as I said, a mistaken urban identity. He noticed that the outer enclosure wall of the temple of Amun did not run neatly parallel to the temple wall, but instead veered to the southwest. That seemed, well, radical. Exploring mud-brick structures in that corner, he and his team found nine tombs, five of which belonged to kings. The deeper his team dug, the more they uncovered.
Psusennes I’s tomb was among them, not only inventive in its construction, but largely undisturbed. This was the age when pharaohs were laid to rest in coffins of silver; unlike gold, which could be imported from ancient Nubia, silver had to be imported from the eastern Mediterranean or western Asia, making it much more valuable.11
Montet found a solid silver sarcophagus. While the Tanite mummies had decayed in antiquity and there had been some looting, the tombs contained innumerable treasures and jewelry every bit as beautiful as Tutankhamun’s.12 Gold bowls, offering tables, necklaces, bracelets, and pectorals, which hung from the neck like Olympic gold medals: it was the stuff archaeologists’ dreams are made of. Most had fine inlays of lapis lazuli, carnelian, and turquoise, detailing hieroglyphs or scarabs. My favorite piece is a gold falcon pecto
ral with individual inlaid feathers.13
But Montet had terrible timing. This was 1939, just as Nazi Germany absorbed the world’s attention and stole Tanis’s thunder.
By the time the world began to recover from the horrors of war, Tanis was a distantly remembered news story. Today, when tourists visit the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo, they often miss the Tanis display, tucked behind King Tut’s treasures. It’s the hidden crown jewel of the collection, but then again, I am a bit biased.
Compared to other known capitals in ancient Egypt—take Memphis, Amarna, or Pi-Ramesses—we know little about the settlement of Tanis. Usually, at a site like this, we deal with multiple phases of occupation, either layered or jumbled together like a mixed-up puzzle. Without knowing the layout, it is that much harder to make hypotheses about the city’s settlement, administration, population, class structures, and daily life. Trying to get a grip on the site’s importance is like trying to understand the Eastern Seaboard of the United States without maps of New York or Washington, DC.
However, unlike so many sites, the Tanite settlement evidence is not beneath a modern town. Out in the open and largely unsurveyed, Tanis opens the door to possibility.
Tradition both grounds us and holds us back in archaeology, especially at large and complex sites like Tanis. Until the 1970s, Egyptologists mainly worked on excavations of temples, tombs, and pyramids. An archaeologist focusing on everyday life in Egypt was a rare beast. Then, with shifts in archaeological thought and practice, archaeologists started delving into settlement archaeology, or the study of ancient settlements,14 and more projects focused on Egyptian cities, even if most stuck with temples and tombs. As settlement work developed, we gained a new understanding of what it was like to live in ancient Egypt. This 50-year-old subfield still presents many complexities, as the hundreds of individual layers on a site are never easy to reconstruct. But that’s what makes it fun.