Live Science has an interesting article about a gold bowl that was discovered at an archeological dig in northern Iran back in 1958. The bowl, discovered in the burned-out remains of an Teppe Hasanlu, became something of a media sensation during the late 1950s, including appearing in a full-color spread in Life magazine.
The Live Science article largely covers the debate over whether the three dead soldiers found with the bowl were stealing it or protecting it (answer: probably stealing it), but there’s also an interesting aside about some of the emotional hazards of being an archeologist on this sort of dig:
The burn layer at Hasanlu suggests a surprise attack destroyed the citadel. Archaeologists who excavated the site in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s found corpses that were beheaded and others that were missing hands. [Boston University professor of archeology Michael] Danti said he has seen a fairly clear example of a person who was cut in half.
“The students that were working there would have nightmares at night, because they were spending hours and hours out there excavating murder victims,” Danti told Live Science. Many of the victims were women and children. And in mass graves on top of the burned layer, excavators found the remains of people who tended to be very young or old and seemed to have suffered fatal, blunt-force trauma head wounds. These victims likely survived the initial attack only to be killed when their captors realized they would be of little use as slaves, Danti said.