Ok maybe not invisible, as in the invisible you might think. But in the architectural frame of reference, the winning bid for the new Athens Archaeological Museum is a structure built almost completely underground, under an existing park in the area of Athens known as Academia Platonos, or Plato’s Academy.

 

The Archaeological Museum of Athens at Plato’s Academy will be housed in a 14,362m2 building constructed with sustainable materials, will be fully accessible to people with disabilities and include a 500-seat open-air amphitheater. It will be the first dedicated exclusively to the history of Athens.

Last August, the mayor of Athens announced an architectural contest for this new museum– also the country’s first ‘green museum’ to be built in one of the city’s less-privileged neighborhoods.

 

 

The winning design by Tsolakis Architects was revealed and the computer-generated images that were part of the proposal show a stunning new addition to the cultural life of Athens, not to mention a great way to expend the city’s cultural reach into a neighborhood that many Athenians, let alone tourists, never visit.

From Tsolakis Architects:

The new Archaeological Museum of Athens focuses on the harmonious symbiosis of two regional conflicting forces. On the one hand,
the impenetrable and continuous mass of the city and on the other the enclosed grove of the Plato Academy with the archaeological excavations.

The building program of the museum presupposes the construction of a large volume that will be imposed on the grove, limiting the surface of the valuable public space. Instead, the majority of the museum’s surface is developed underground and locally affects the terrain, creating smooth outcrops and pits that enhance the horizontal topography. The museum interacts with the existing field and is harmoniously transformed into a building-ground.

The architectural approach supports the innovation of the museum as it emphasizes topography, urban planning and public archaeology, since it creatively integrates both the axes of the landscape and the urban planning of the city, while embracing on the one hand the archaeological finds within the space, on the other hand relationship of open and closed, public and private. The city and the grove interact in the center of the plot creating a hub of swirling movement that acts as a centripetal and at the same time a centrifugal force of flows and activities.

The polar etching creates a rectangular rift in the center where it slices the space into four distinct wings. The roofs emerge from the ground, presenting sloping, walkable surfaces, extending the existing planted area of the grove while at the same time ensuring comfortable conditions of natural lighting and ventilation, for both visitors and employees.

The clarity and flexibility of the exhibition spaces acknowledges the basic principle that the city is a living organism, which is constantly mutating. The alternation of closed and open spaces, the possibility of viewing the interior of the museum from different perspectives and to a different degree aim to create a relationship of intimacy between the museum and the visitor that will lead even non-visitors to feel comfortable walking through the museum’s doors or share his messages.

The proposal emphasizes the design of a public space that includes the museum, archaeological excavations and recreational and sports areas, encouraging participation. The design principles of the new Archaeological Museum project the vision of the Athens of the future.

A city that relates the building infrastructure to the natural terrain and landscape, a city that respects, highlights and coexists harmoniously with nature and its history, including all its citizens.

 

 

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Athens is Getting a New, 'Invisible' Archaeological Museum - The Pappas Post

ATHENS: New National Archaeological Museum will house 125,000 ancient treasures and cost €300

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ATHENS: New National Archaeological Museum Will House 125,000 Ancient Treasures And Cost €300 Million! (greekcitytimes.com)

 

 

Steel tools were believed to have only become widespread in Europe during the Roman Empire, but a recent study challenges this assumption. It was conducted by an international and interdisciplinary team headed by Dr. Ralph Araque Gonzalez from the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Freiburg. The study shows that steel tools were already in use in Europe around 2,900 years ago, during the Final Bronze Age.

The researchers conducted geochemical analyses on ancient Iberian stelaes — upright monuments typically inscribed with information in the form of text, images, or a combination of the two — and found these were made of silicated quartz sandstone. The implications were immediately resounding.

“Just like quartzite, this is an extremely hard rock that cannot be worked with bronze or stone tools, but only with tempered steel,” says Araque Gonzalez.

To confirm their hunch that these monuments were etched with steel tools, the researchers analyzed an iron chisel found in Rocha do Vigio, Portugal, which also dates back to the Final Bronze Age. They discovered that the chisel was made of heterogeneous yet astonishingly carbon-rich steel, which was necessary to work with the hard silicated quartz sandstone. The researchers also conducted an experiment involving a professional stonemason, a blacksmith, and a bronze caster to attempt to work the rock that the stelae were made of using chisels made of different materials. Only the chisel made of tempered steel was able to engrave the stone.

The study has important implications for the archaeological assessment of iron metallurgy and quartzite sculptures in other regions of the world. Until now, it was assumed that it was not possible to produce suitable quality steel in the Early Iron Age and certainly not in the Final Bronze Age.

 

The earliest known production of steel is seen in pieces of ironware excavated from an archaeological site in Anatolia (Kaman-Kalehöyük), which are nearly 4,000 years old, dating from 1800 BC. However, iron and steel didn’t become abundant materials until around 500 BC when most Bronze Age civilizations collapsed, paving the way for the huge empires of Rome and Han China.

The discovery of the chisel from Rocha do Vigio and the context in which it was found suggest that iron metallurgy, including the production and tempering of steel, were probably indigenous developments of decentralized small communities in Iberia, and not due to the influence of later colonization processes. It’s unclear why steelmaking didn’t spread from this region of Iberia to other parts of Europe.

The archaeological record of Late Bronze Age Iberia is fragmentary in many parts of the Iberian Peninsula, with sparse remains of settlements and nearly no detectable burials, but the western Iberian stelae with their depictions of anthropomorphic figures, animals, and selected objects are of unique importance for the investigation of this era. The discovery of the use of steel tools during this period sheds new light on the technological advancements of ancient communities and their ability to work with challenging materials.

 

 

Article

Archaeologists stunned by 2,900-year-old steel tools in Portugal (zmescience.com)

 

 

Tuesday, December 6, 2022

 

(Juan J. Negro/Museo de Huelva, Spain)

 

MADRID, SPAIN—According to a CNN report, Victor Díaz Núñez de Arenas of the Complutense University of Madrid and his colleagues suggest that 5,000-year-old pieces of slate engraved with images of owls, which are found in tombs and dwelling sites across Spain and Portugal, may have been made by children. It had been previously thought that the owl plaques served a ritual purpose, but Díaz Núñez de Arenas explained that many of them have been found without a clear ritual context, and many have an informal appearance. He and his colleagues documented the traits of owls depicted on 100 of the plaques, such as tufts of feathers, feather patterns, beak, wings, and a flat facial disk. They then compared what they recorded on the ancient owls with 100 drawings created by children in an elementary school in southwestern Spain. “The similarity of these plaques with the drawings made by children of our days is very remarkable,” Díaz Núñez de Arenas concluded, adding that prehistoric children may have used perforations in the plaques to insert real feathers. The practice of engraving owl plaques may have been used to teach children needed tool-making skills, and may have allowed them to contribute to ceremonies for the dead, he added. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Scientific Reports. To read about a Roman owl brooch unearthed in Denmark, go to "A Rare Bird."

 

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New Thoughts on Prehistoric Owl Plaques - Archaeology Magazine

 

 

 

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Intricate 2,900-year-old engravings on stone monuments from what is now Portugal in the Iberian Peninsula could only have been made using steel instruments, archaeologists have found. The discovery hints at small-scale steel production during the Final Bronze Age, a century before the practice became widespread in ancient Rome.

 

The 5-foot-tall (1.5 meters) rock pillars, or stelae, are made of silicate quartz sandstone and feature carvings of human and animal figures, weapons, ornaments and chariots. 

"This is an extremely hard rock that cannot be worked with bronze or stone tools," Ralph Araque Gonzalez(opens in new tab), an archaeologist at the University of Freiburg in Germany and lead author of a new study describing the findings, said in a statement(opens in new tab). "The people of the Final Bronze Age in Iberia were capable of tempering steel. Otherwise they would not have been able to work the pillars." Tempering is the process of heat-treating steel to make it harder and more resistant to fracturing.

The team also analyzed an "astoundingly well preserved" iron chisel that dates to around 900 B.C. and was unearthed in the early 2000s from a site called Rocha do Vigio in Portugal, the researchers wrote in the study, published online Feb. 10 in the Journal of Archaeological Science(opens in new tab). Not only did the chisel contain enough carbon to be considered steel (more than 0.30%), but the researchers also found iron mineralization within the settlement site, suggesting that craftspeople may have sourced the material locally.

"The chisel from Rocha do Vigio and the context where it was found show that iron metallurgy, including the production and tempering of steel, were probably indigenous developments of decentralized small communities in Iberia, and not due to the influence of later colonization processes," Araque Gonzalez said.

The researchers worked with a professional stonemason to imitate the ancient engravings with tools made from different materials, including bronze, stone and a tempered steel replica of the 2,900-year-old chisel. The steel instrument was the only one able to carve the rock, according to the study. A blacksmith had to sharpen it every five minutes, however, which suggests craftspeople from the Final Bronze Age knew how to make carbon-rich, hardened steel. 

 

The team also noted that the experimental carvings were remarkably similar to the original ones if they accounted for rock weathering.

Up until now, the earliest record of hardened steel in Iberia was from the Early Iron Age (800 to 600 B.C.). Widespread steel production for weapons and tools probably only began during Roman times, around the second century A.D., although the low carbon content of excavated objects points to their mediocre quality. It wasn't until the late medieval period that blacksmiths across Europe learned how to achieve high enough temperatures to make good quality steel. 

 

Article

Bronze Age craftspeople tempered steel more than 1,000 years before the Romans did it | Live Science

Iberians were probably the first people to produce steels but there were several Romans that lived in the Iberian region around this time also and it's possible that they themselves were the ones that produced it.   

The Most Incredible Undersea Treasures Ever Found

Tina Donvito Updated: Jan. 24, 2023

 

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The Most Incredible Undersea Treasures Ever Found | Reader's Digest (rd.com)