Unearthed! in Spring 2025, Part 1

The first part of our springtime edition of Unearthed! for 2025 features so many updates! There are also finds related to Egypt and artwork.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argentix. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:35Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 1:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  down memory lane for season two, sharing lessons on life, love, and loss. These are the kind of insights that only come from experience. So tune in to Silver Linings with The Old Gays on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Workplace chaos. We've all been there. Deadlines are slipping, projects are piling up, and suddenly you realize the missing piece is the right person. That's when you say, this is a job for Sponsored Jobs. With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, your job post gets a boost so you can connect with quality candidates faster. In fact, Sponsored Jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95% more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored jobs. Spend less time searching and more time interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Get

• 2:04Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 2:14Holly Frey?

  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 2:24Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

• 2:27Holly Frey?

  And I'm Holly Frey.

• 2:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  I'm not sure how time has already rolled us around to this point, but here we are with our quarterly unearthed episodes again. If you're new to the show, this is when we talk about things that have been literally and figuratively unearthed over the last few months. And as usual, this unearthed is a two parter. And this time around, I want to start by acknowledging that while I was working on these episodes, I was struggling. I'm still struggling, to be honest. And normally, this is the kind of stuff that we would talk about in our Friday behind the scenes, but not today. It's not what we're doing today. First, the day I started working on these episodes, plainclothes federal agents grabbed PhD student Ramisa Oz Turk off the street in Somerville, Massachusetts, as she was

• 3:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  on her way to break her Ramadan fast. I lived in Somerville for five years. And Tufts University, which is where she was studying, that was in walking distance of my apartment in Somerville. So even though I don't live in Somerville anymore, she feels like my neighbor. So that happened on March 25. It was still weighing heavily on my mind on March 27, when President Trump issued an executive order called Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, which, among other things, characterizes the Smithsonian Institution and its museums as needing to be saved from, quote, "improper ideology." Basically, following the descriptions and the language in this executive order, our

• 3:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  podcast is insane and full of improper ideology, because we talk about ways that racism and sexism and oppression have always been part of American history. And that followed another executive order called Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling. That was on January 29. And those two executive orders have a lot of common themes. Based on that January 29 one, our podcast is also not appropriate for use in K-12 schools for pretty much the same reason that it's, quote, "insane." And also because we recognize that trans people exist and we try to talk about trans people with respect, compassion, and dignity.

• 4:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  I sound angry because I am. The next thing that also happened just recently was the continuing the reduction of the federal bureaucracy executive order from March the 14th. That one eliminated the Institute of Museum and Library Services to the maximum extent allowed by law. That's like a way to shut it down without going through Congress to shut it down, which would normally be how that would work. It was reported that the entire staff of the Institute of Museum and Library Services was placed on leave as I was doing the final read-through of this outline before sending it to Holly last night.

• 5:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  There have also been other executive orders and actions by the Department of Government Efficiency that have cut other funding for scientists and other researchers. And then there's the removing the names and accomplishments of Black people and Indigenous people and Japanese Americans and women and LGBTQ people and others from an array of historical sites and museums and Arlington National Cemetery and on and on in the wake of executive orders about ending DEI. This is not even a tenth of what has been going on with this federal administration, and it might not even be a tenth of only the things that have directly impacted my friends and family in negative ways.

• 6:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  But this is some of what's been happening that has most directly been connected to our work, and it's made it kind of hard to focus. We do a lot of episodes that contextualize current political and social issues, and a lot of what we talk about is inherently political, but we have not really made a ton of explicitly political statements on the show.

• 6:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  Even without explicitly political statements, it really should be obvious to anybody who listens to us that our approach is rooted in a core belief that oppression is bad and we're all human beings and we all deserve dignity and equal rights. And a lot of history all over the world has not really lived up to that ideal. That is also true of the present, but this is a history podcast and not a current events show. These executive orders and other directives are calling for a view of history that is focused only on patriotism and the idea of American greatness. But you can only arrive at such an interpretation of history by willfully ignoring a lot of stuff.

• 7:16Tracy V. Wilson?

  It is not anti-American to acknowledge these realities and it is absurd to try to pretend that they don't exist and don't still influence the world today. Executive orders are not laws and we are not federal employees. So in terms of what we write and say on the show, we can just say, no, we will not be doing that. But also, we rely on the work of museums and libraries and researchers from a range of disciplines, including the sciences for our show. That doesn't just apply to Unearthed, but it especially applies to Unearthed because these episodes draw so heavily from newly published research. Basically, I tried to pull these episodes together

• 8:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  while the institutions I rely on to do it and the people who work at those institutions were actively under attack. I don't know what will happen to these episodes as researchers in the United States lose their funding and as that loss of funding ripples through the entire academic community here and as universities and other institutions scale back on work that's focused on people who are not cisgender, straight, white men because of these executive orders about DEI. It is obvious to me, though, that we will be poorer for it.

• 8:37Tracy V. Wilson?

  That was the longest introduction I've ever written for one of our shows. And as far as what was unearthed this quarter, we're starting, as we usually do, with the updates.

• 8:46Holly Frey?

  So in May of 2024, we did an episode on Filipina food scientist Maria Arrosa, whose most famous food invention today is banana ketchup. That episode ends very sadly because Arrosa was killed in the Battle of Manila in 1945. When we recorded that, her burial place was not exactly known because she was buried in a mass grave at Malate Catholic School with others who were killed over the course of the battle.

• 9:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  That has now changed after a five-year project involving that mass grave, which was underway as we recorded our episode on her. On February 13th, Arrosa and others were laid to rest in the crypt of the San Agustin Church in Manila after a funeral mass that honored her and other World War II heroes. The other people who were re-interred with her included a doctor at the hospital where she was working, along with hospital volunteers and civilian patients. The identity of Arrosa's remains had been confirmed through both DNA testing and physical examination. Also, thank you to listener Dandy for sending us this story. It was not really widely reported beyond the Philippines,

• 9:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  and I don't really think I would have heard about it without that listener email.

• 10:03Holly Frey?

  We did a two-parter on Harriet Tubman in June of 2016. And in 2023, we talked about archaeological work being done at the likely site of the home of her father, Ben Ross. At the time, that work was ongoing. Now, the Maryland Department of Transportation has launched a virtual museum detailing their findings and showcasing some of the objects from the site. It's an unwieldy URL to read off, but it's easily findable by searching "Ben Ross Home Place."

• 10:33Tracy V. Wilson?

  This archaeological site is in Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. And one of the reasons for a virtual museum is that the site of the home place is not an area that's accessible to the public. Also, the whole area is at risk of destruction due to sea level rise. So they wanted to really preserve and document it. The virtual museum has pages for the home place, the archaeology, kitchen items, personal items, and native people's artifacts. The native people's artifacts are things that are mostly very, very small. They're like fragments of pottery, projectile points, and flaked stones.

• 11:11Holly Frey?

  Next, we talked about the Viking era Galloway Horde in one of last year's installments of Unearthed. A metal detectorist found this horde in Scotland back in 2014, and research into it has been ongoing. There's a lot that's still unknown, like why the horde of metal objects also includes wrapped balls of dirt. We don't know who it belonged to or why it was buried.

• 11:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  This horde contains four armorings that are marked with runes. And that had led to some speculation that this was the combined wealth of four different parties. But only three of those armbands had Old English name elements in the runes. The fourth band, which has the longest runic inscription, had not been decipherable.

• 11:58Holly Frey?

  There's still some uncertainty about this fourth armband, but one possible interpretation is that they're basically saying the horde was community property. That interpretation only works, though, if part of the inscription is misspelled. But researchers have been pointing out that we shouldn't necessarily assume that every region and dialect was using the same spellings of words. We see this in English all the time.

• 12:24Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, we've talked about times that spellings of things were not standardized, or sometimes people just misspell things when spellings are standardized. We're going to take a quick sponsor break and then have some more updates.

• 12:40Speaker 03

  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 12:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hey, everybody. It's Tracy from Stuff You Missed in History Class. That's Alan Goya, a planning engineer at AT&T. He's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, defining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.

• 13:03Speaker 03

  It was going to rival anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.

• 13:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.

• 13:17Speaker 04

  Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.

• 13:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.

• 13:26Speaker 04

  To actually see the whole stadium light up and data is flowing is a beautiful thing.

• 13:31Speaker 03

  What the fans experience is incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.

• 13:34Tracy V. Wilson?

  AT&T, connecting fans to what they love.

• 13:37Speaker 05

  Connecting changes everything. AT&T.

• 13:40Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 14:22Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 14:47Holly Frey?

  We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.

• 15:29Holly Frey?

  Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 15:50Tracy V. Wilson?

  Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy

• 16:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 16:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  There's been some new stuff unearthed at Pompeii, which was the subject of a 2009 episode of the show and is just also a regular feature on Unearthed. First, in Pompeii, homes with private baths were really only for the rich. And the bath complex that has just been discovered there was for the really rich. There are only three other villas in Pompeii that have been discovered so far that have comparable bath facilities. And it's, you know, still being studied, but it's likely that this one is even bigger than those. It may have belonged to Alis Rustius Veris, who was a politician and would

• 17:37Tracy V. Wilson?

  have hosted large numbers of guests at home.

• 17:41Holly Frey?

  This was a multi-room complex. It had a changing room that could accommodate about 30 people, plus separate rooms for hot, warm, and cold bathing, which people would progress through from hot to cold. That final cold room had a plunge pool more than a meter deep. And of course, all of these rooms were impressively decorated, including frescoed walls and inlaid marble floors. This bathing facility was also connected to the banquet hall, so it seems likely that if guests came for a banquet, they might also be treated to a luxury bathing experience.

• 18:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  In another Pompeii discovery, a set of frescoes depicting the initiation rites of the cult of Dionysus has been found on the walls of a banquet hall. These frescoes are really enormous. They're depicted at almost life size, and they cover three walls of the room. They depict the person who's being initiated into the cult, as well as several women. Some of the women are dancing, and some of them are dressed as hunters. The hunters carry a goat and its entrails, and there are also satyrs with flutes and wine. These depictions were probably created sometime between 40 and 30 BCE, and they are similar to those at Pompeii's Villa of the Mysteries, which is not very far away. While they're shown in these frescoes,

• 19:05Tracy V. Wilson?

  these rites were also secret. So these newly discovered frescoes corroborate some of what we know about religious practices in the cult of Dionysus. Moving on, in March of 2020, we talked about the discovery of some glassy matter at Pompeii, which turned out to be part of a person's brain. Subsequent research concluded that this glassy matter contained neurons, and research that was published in February offers a hypothesis on how that glassy material came to be. Like, how does someone's brain turn into glass? According to the researchers, the only way this could have happened would have been for the person's brain to have been exposed to extremely high temperatures,

• 19:50Tracy V. Wilson?

  hotter than the pyroclastic flow that buried the city, but that it could only be exposed to those temperatures for an extremely short time. So their hypothesis is that this person was exposed to a cloud of superheated ash ahead of that pyroclastic flow, with that ash then dissipating and everything cooling off very quickly.

• 20:12Holly Frey?

  This is very different from my guess that a James Bond-era villain was somehow involved.

• 20:19Holly Frey?

  And in Pompeii-adjacent news, archaeologists working in the Salerno area have found footprints of people and animals running away from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, not from the eruption that destroyed Pompeii, but from one that happened around the year 2000 BCE. The footprints included those of adults and children, some in bare feet and some wearing shoes.

• 20:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  Moving on from Pompeii, previous hosts of the show did an episode on the Bayeux Tapestry, which is really an embroidery that was back in 2011, and it's also come up on Unearthed, including in our year-end 2024 episodes. Two of the scenes depicted in the tapestry show King Harold Godwinson at his residence in West Sussex. Archaeologists working there believe they may have found the location of that residence. This conclusion follows a lot of different work, including analysis of historical maps and reexamination of the findings of some archaeological work that happened back in 2006.

• 21:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  One of the things that was unearthed in that archaeological work was a private latrine, which would not have been common at the time, and helps back up the idea that this might have been one of the structures at Harold's residence. Because who else, besides the king, would have had a private latrine?

• 21:43Holly Frey?

  There's also a piece of the Bayeux Tapestry that has been rediscovered in state archives in northern Germany that's now being repatriated to France. While this embroidery depicts the Norman conquest of Britain, it is considered to be a French cultural asset. The Bayeux Tapestry is currently undergoing a major conservation project, and it's going to be taken off display later this year because the museum where it is housed will be undergoing its own renovation. The museum is going to close on August 31st, 2025, and it's expected to reopen in 2027.

• 22:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  Next, there's graffiti in the basement of the Lincoln Memorial, also called the Undercroft. This was first found in 1984. And according to statements given to The Washington Post earlier this year, the subject of that graffiti might be past podcast subject, Thea Barra. We covered her on May 4th, 2022. The evidence that this is who is being depicted is described as compelling but circumstantial. This is a drawing done in carpenter's pencil. It shows someone in profile, smoking a cigarette with curly hair and pretty pronounced makeup, considering that it's done in carpenter's pencil, including

• 23:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  dramatic lipstick and blush and eye makeup. And then next to that image is the word vamp in Loopy's script.

• 23:09Holly Frey?

  Next, in our Spring 2024 Unearthed, we talked about the discovery of a bog body in Balaji, Northern Ireland, which was nicknamed the Balaji Boy. When this body was first discovered, people thought it was a recent murder victim, but it was estimated to actually be somewhere around 2,000 years old. Subsequent research has confirmed that approximate date, but osteological studies suggest that the person was female. A significant majority of bog bodies that have been found from this period are male, which makes this one unusual. They also found cut marks at the neck vertebrae that suggest that this person was intentionally

• 23:48Holly Frey?

  decapitated before being put in the bog. The skull is not present. Researchers are now calling this bog body the Ballymacombe's Moor Woman.

• 23:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  And in our last update this time around, Josephine Baker, who prior hosts it an episode about on March 8th, 2010, wrote a memoir which was originally published in French in 1949.

• 24:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  This was not available in English until now. It is titled Fearless and Free. It's been translated, as I said, into English for the first time. It has been published by Tiny Reparations Books, which is an imprint of Penguin Books.

• 24:27Holly Frey?

  Moving along, we have quite a few finds related to Egypt in some way. First, a 4,100-year-old burial in the Saqqara necropolis appears to be that of a royal doctor. It's possible that this doctor served under Pharaoh Pepe II, who was also entombed at Saqqara. Like many other tombs at Saqqara, this one had been looted long before archaeologists found it. But its intricately painted walls have led to its being described as an exceptional discovery. In addition to being a royal doctor, this person was also a dentist and an expert in medicinal plants and venomous bites.

• 25:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  Next, an international interdisciplinary team of researchers has concluded that skeletal remains that were speculated to be that of Arsinoe IV, the half-sister of Cleopatra, belonged to someone else. This person does seem to have died at around the same time that Arsinoe did, but it's more likely that the skull belongs to a male child, likely between the ages of 11 and 14, with what the paper described as showing evidence of developmental disturbances. Those disturbances included asymmetry in the bones, which could have come from a variety of different causes.

• 25:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  This person also likely came from Italy or Sardinia rather than northern Africa.

• 25:55Holly Frey?

  In February, a team led by British archaeologist Piers Litherland discovered the rock-cut tomb of Tutmos II. The tomb itself was largely empty because it had been flooded at some point. It was built under a waterfall, and this probably happened within a few years of it being built. But there is still a lot of debris inside, including chunks that have fallen from the ceiling, pieces of wall decorations, fragments of wooden shafts, and other objects. This includes some alabaster fragments with Tutmos's name on them. Tutmos II was both half-brother and husband to Hatshepsut, and we talked about both of them in our episode on Hatshepsut and the voyage to Punt.

• 26:37Tracy V. Wilson?

  Not long after that find was announced, Litherland announced that he may have discovered another tomb, also belonging to Tudmos II, which may have been the one where his mummy and grave goods were housed. I wasn't able to find more updates about that second discovery.

• 26:54Holly Frey?

  And speaking of Hatshepsut, archaeologists in Luxor have found more than 1,000 intricately decorated blocks at the entrance to her funeral complex, as well as a collection of limestone and quartzite tablets. These blocks are brightly decorated with paint that is still vivid and are described as showing the artistic mastery of this era.

• 27:16Tracy V. Wilson?

  In addition to those tomb discoveries, a different team, working at the ancient necropolis of Anubis Mountain in Abydos, have found a pharaoh's tomb, but which pharaoh is not yet known. This tomb is about 3,600 years old and excavations there are ongoing.

• 27:34Holly Frey?

  Tracy had really thought that we talked about some research similar to what we're about to mention recently on the show. But looking back, she did not see any such thing. I know I talked about it on a different project not that long back. Researchers at University College London have investigated the aroma of well-preserved Egyptian mummies, finding that they smell, in the words of the news release, pretty good. They were characterized with words like woody, spicy, and sweet, as well as having some floral notes. This work involved chemical analysis and human beings just smelling the mummies. This, of course, doesn't necessarily reflect what they smelled like at the time they were mummified.

• 28:17Tracy V. Wilson?

  This was not just for fun, even though that, to me, does sound like kind of a fun project, getting people to sniff mummies. But odors can help researchers determine how well-preserved a mummy is without invasive testing. And odors can also help- Pinpoint which substances were used in the mummification.

• 28:36Holly Frey?

  And our last Egypt find is kind of more Egypt adjacent. A leather suitcase belonging to Howard Carter has been rediscovered in England. Carter is the person who's credited with finding the tomb of King Tut. After its rediscovery, this leather suitcase sold at auction in February for £12,000. That's roughly $15,000.

• 29:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  Let's take another little sponsor break and then we're going to talk about some art.

• 29:09Holly Frey?

  We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep, but what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers and real people trying these trends.

• 29:51Holly Frey?

  Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 30:12Tracy V. Wilson?

  Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with Veev Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jessa have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing Things stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So, listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you.

• 30:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 31:12Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 31:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  find people who can help drive results. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. Get your $75 sponsored job credit today at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now, then this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

• 32:24Speaker 06

  Livrite, publishers of John U. Bacon's New York Times bestseller, The Gales of November, a chronicle of the S. S. Edmund Fitzgerald's 1975 shipwreck. Never has it been told better than by Mr. Bacon in this colorful book, writes John J. Miller of the Wall Street Journal, while author Hampton Sides proclaims that it's destined to be a classic. The Gales of November, now in paperback.

• 32:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  There is so much artwork to talk about in this installment of Unearthed. Just so much. I love art, so it's great. So much art to talk about that it's going to be the entire rest of this episode. First, a painting that was bought for $10 at a thrift store outside of Philadelphia has turned out to be the work of William Henry Dorsey. Dorsey was a free Black man born in Philadelphia in 1837. And in addition to being an artist, he was a coin collector and a scrapbooker and an art collector, especially focused on the work of other Black artists. I have put him on the list for a future episode of his own because he sounds very interesting to me.

• 33:43Tracy V. Wilson?

  This painting depicts a Black man fishing by the edge of a river next to a mill with its own water wheel attached. Andy Robbins, who bought this painting at the thrift store, has given it to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, where it is now on display.

• 33:59Holly Frey?

  A double-sided portrait by 18th century artist Ami Phillips was discovered in an abandoned storage unit back in 2024, but it made headlines at the start of this year when it went up for auction. It's not known who the sitter is, but it's believed that the same person is shown on both sides of the painting. Her pose is similar on both sides, and there's a small birthmark on her face in each of them. She's sitting in the same chair, wearing the same dress and the same necklace, with her left arm on the same book. But the face doesn't look the same between the two portraits. On one side, blondish hair is covered by a bonnet, and on the other, brown hair is up in a bun.

• 34:45Holly Frey?

  The face shapes and mouth shapes are different. Are these two different people or two different versions of the same person? It's a bit of a mystery.

• 34:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  This artist was an itinerant portrait painter who worked in a range of portrait styles, and his career spanned for more than 50 years, in that time producing as many as 2,000 portraits.

• 35:08Holly Frey?

  It could be the original Doublemint Twins.

• 35:12Tracy V. Wilson?

  I was looking at it, I was like, are these sisters, cousins?

• 35:15Holly Frey?

  Right.

• 35:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  Best friends? I don't know, or the same person in two different drafts?

• 35:21Holly Frey?

  Back in 2023, we did an episode on Venetian painter Canaletto, who was known for his large-scale cityscapes, which are spectacularly beautiful. And we talked about how one of his assistants was his nephew, Bernardo Bellotto, and how Bellotto became really skilled at copying Canaletto's technique and would sometimes even sign Canaletto's name to his own work. Well, one of the paintings that had been attributed to Canaletto has now been reattributed to his nephew. That is "The Grand Canal with San Simeon Piccolo" from 1737.

• 35:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  This determination came through research for a new book called "Canaletto and Guardi: Views of Venice", which was published by The Wallace Collection. Part of this attribution about who actually did the painting came from the way the painting uses color and light, because Bellotto was known for being sort of colder and less vibrant in the color that he used than his uncle was.

• 36:22Holly Frey?

  Speaking of artists that we have covered on the show, we are now to Lavinia Fontana, who we covered in 2022. A miniature portrait of an Italian noblewoman came up for auction in Texas, which used to belong to another past podcast subject, Horace Walpole. Walpole displayed the painting at Strawberry Hill House. It is believed to depict Bianca Capello, Grand Duchess Consort of Tuscany and wife of Francesco I de Medici, who Walpole had a fascination with.

• 36:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  Walpole also believed this painting had been created by a different artist, Mannerist painter Bronzino, who lived in the 16th century. But after this portrait was found at auction, it was reattributed to Lavinia Fontana. This miniature has been loaned to Strawberry Hill House, and it will be on display there until April 23 of this year, which is 2025, if you're listening, when this episode is actually publishing.

• 37:24Holly Frey?

  Also, another painting has also been reattributed to Lavinia Fontana. This one was previously attributed to Flemish Renaissance artist Peter Purbus, but it was reattributed after an expert spotted the painting in a storage room at the Musée de la Chartreuse in Douai, France. This one depicts a family with a girl passing flowers to her father and a servant behind them with a basket of fruit. This painting is going to go through restoration before becoming part of the museum's permanent collection.

• 37:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  Next up, conservators in France have digitized and analyzed a set of cathedral wall paintings that have been hidden for centuries. These date back to the 13th century, and they cover seven bays in the apse of Angers Cathedral. And based on research that was involved in this project, two different groups originally created them. Then back in 1451, the cathedral was damaged by a fire and the walls were whitewashed. That's probably why these paintings were not destroyed during the French Wars of Religion. Then in the 18th century, wooden choir stalls were built in front of those whitewashed walls.

• 38:38Holly Frey?

  These wall paintings were rediscovered back in the 1980s, but it took a decade just to remove the whitewash before they could be conserved. This whole process was made more difficult and time-consuming because the choir stalls are backed by tall wooden panels, which cannot be removed. So, everything had to happen in this very narrow space between the wood panels and the wall.

• 39:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  It sounds very awkward and tedious from the descriptions.

• 39:07Holly Frey?

  It sounds like that whole thing of like building your spite house an inch from the house next to it. Like, how do you get anything done in there?

• 39:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  How are you gonna repaint that wall, ever?

• 39:16Holly Frey?

  Never.

• 39:17Tracy V. Wilson?

  Digitizing these paintings involves taking more than 8,000 total photographs, which then had to be stitched together into one image, and that was a whole other multi-year process. These paintings depict the life and works of Saint-Maurice, who was the bishop of Angers in the 5th century.

• 39:35Holly Frey?

  Next, researchers working with a 13th century fresco in Ferrara, Italy, have published research suggesting that one of the things depicted in the fresco is a tent from the Islamic world. The fresco is in the apps of a church and it's believed that it depicts a real tent that was used in that church to conceal the altar, either all the time or during particular parts of the liturgical year.

• 40:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  This tent is brightly colored, it's covered in jewels, and the round shape of it matches the curve of the apps. Its borders feature sort of a pseudo-Arabic style of inscription, and there are color combinations that were really popular in 13th century Andalusian silks. The depiction in the fresco is similar to surviving fragments of those silks and to artistic representations of tents like these being used in the Islamic world.

• 40:31Holly Frey?

  This research suggests that textiles made their way from the Islamic world to Christian churches, possibly through the textiles being taken as spoils of war and then gifted to churches or church leaders. Popes are known to have gifted altar curtains to churches, going back to at least the 9th century. So it's possible that this tent was a gift to the church from the pope or another high-ranking person within the church. Or this also could have been a gift from a wealthy family.

• 41:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  Moving on, we have kind of a saga about art attribution. Back in 2018, someone who had bought a painting at a garage sale in Minnesota for $50 submitted an inquiry to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam about whether this painting might be that artist's work. The following year, the museum said, "No, it wasn't, quote, 'based on stylistic features.'" From there, a data science company called LMI Group bought the painting and did its own analysis of it. LMI Group was co-founded by Maxwell L. Anderson, who's an art historian and has served as the director of a number of museums.

• 41:45Holly Frey?

  LMI Group concluded that the painting was Van Gogh's work. The name Elmar is in one corner of the canvas, which has been adopted as the painting's name. And LMI Group speculates that it's a reference to a character in Hans Christian Andersen's 1848 novel, The Two Baronesses.

• 42:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  LMI sent its conclusions to the Van Gogh Museum, which maintained that it still did not believe that this work was Van Gogh's. On January 31st, LMI Group gave a statement that read in part, quote, "We are puzzled why the Van Gogh Museum invested less than one working day to summarily reject the facts presented in our 456-page report, without offering any explanation, let alone studying the painting directly rather than looking at it reproduced as a JPEG."

• 42:36Holly Frey?

  LMI Group has published this report on its website, and that PDF is indeed more than 450 pages long. Obviously, we cannot go through a document that long here, but it looks at where the painting would fit in Van Gogh's oeuvre: material science, DNA analysis, including on a hair found on the painting, and a comparison of the handwriting used to write Elmar to other words that appear on Van Gogh's paintings.

• 43:05Tracy V. Wilson?

  This dispute is currently unresolved, but there are other experts who have offered a completely different alternative explanation, and that is that Elmar is not a reference to a Hans Christian Andersen character, but is the name of the artist who made the painting. That's Danish artist Henning Elmar, who died in 1989.

• 43:27Holly Frey?

  Mysteries. Uh, hopefully we'll find out. A man in northern Greece found a headless statue in the trash and turned it over to authorities. And that statue has been confirmed to be roughly 2,000 years old, dating back to the Hellenistic period. It's made of marble and it's about 30 inches tall and it is missing its head and arms. It depicts a woman in flowing garments and since statues of human women during this period were more likely to be made of other materials like wood, this likely represented a goddess. Based on its size, it may have been a votive statue from a temple. Authorities in Greece, including the Cultural Heritage Protection Office, are trying to

• 44:09Holly Frey?

  learn more about the statue and find out how it came to be in the trash.

• 44:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  Speaking of things found in the trash, an 18th century sketch by English portrait painter George Romney was pulled out of a dumpster in Hudson, New York last year. The ID on who made this one was not all that difficult. In addition to having Romney's signature on it, his studio stamp is on the reverse side of the sketch. A private collector bought this at auction in March.

• 44:40Holly Frey?

  This sketch is believed to be of Henrietta Graville, Countess of Warwick, possibly in preparation for the oil painting of her and her children that he painted in the late 1870s. This doesn't look at all like the oil painting though, since it's a very basic sketch, a person who didn't recognize the name would probably think this was just scribbles.

• 45:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, if, if you don't sort of know the context of, uh, what his work sketches looked like, you could look at it and think a child did this, a small child, just learning how to hold a crayon. It absolutely does not surprise me that it would have wound up in the trash. In 1974, a painting called Woman Carrying the Embers by Peter Bruegel the Younger was discovered to have been stolen from the National Museum in Gdansk, Poland.

• 45:32Tracy V. Wilson?

  It had been replaced with a magazine cutout, which was discovered when a worker accidentally knocked it off the wall. Now that painting has been found in the Guda Museum, where it was being described as being on loan from a private collection.

• 45:48Holly Frey?

  This discovery was made with the help of art detective Arthur Brand, and it started after the Dutch arts magazine Vind covered an exhibition at the museum. A photo of the painting in Vind looked like a photo from an article about the theft, which also involved another painting, which had been published back in 1974. It is not currently clear how the theft originally happened or how the painting wound up on loan to the Guda Museum. I have thoughts.

• 46:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, it does seem very lucky or very lucky that somebody like recognized the similarities to something from a publication from back in the 70s. Next, a portrait that has gone on display at Rest Park in England may depict Lady Jane Grey. And if so, it may be the only portrait painted of her before she was executed. Our episode on Lady Jane Grey and the nine days she spent as queen ran on March 5th of 2017. This painting was added to the collection at Rest Park way back in the early 18th century. And at that time, it was described as a painting of Lady Jane Grey, who had died in 1554.

• 47:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  But eventually, that identity was called into question.

• 47:05Holly Frey?

  The English Heritage website frames this return to the interpretation that it does depict Lady Jane Grey as still somewhat speculative. This conclusion has involved tree ring dating of the wood panels it was painted on, X-ray fluorescence studies and infrared reflexology, plus the work of historical experts who have pointed out similarities between the painting and portraits that were painted after her death. And they use words like compelling and possible.

• 47:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  And lastly, we have previously talked about how in the ancient Greek world, marble statues that appear white today were painted in vibrant colors. They were also clothed and adorned with jewelry. And according to recent research, some of them were perfumed. So people's experiences with these statues would have been both visual and olfactory.

• 47:59Holly Frey?

  That sounds lovely.

• 48:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, would have spelled nice, not overwhelming. I can be a little sensitive to fragrances.

• 48:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  So whether I would enjoy that would kind of depend on what the fragrances were.

• 48:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  So that is the first part of our two parter on Unearthed for today. And I have a little listener mail. This is from Joni. Joni wrote after our, uh, our episode on Exum Clement and said, hello, Holly and Tracy. I love your show and I'm a longtime listener. While not a first time writer, I am definitely an infrequent one. While I was listening to the March 10th episode on Exum Clement, you made a comment about being a bit confused by her being referred to as Brother Exum by the other legislators. I don't know the real story behind the brother reference, but I do have a story from my own past that may or may not be relevant. When I was in college, I joined a fraternity called Alpha Phi Omega.

• 49:00Tracy V. Wilson?

  APO is a national coed service fraternity that is focused on leadership, friendship and community service. All members were called brothers, as opposed to brothers and sisters, in the spirit of acknowledging that we are all equal members. As a woman, I appreciated and preferred being called a brother. I have no idea if Exum Clement would have felt the same way, or if the rationale behind her being called brother was the same. I just wanted to share that perspective. Thank you so much for everything you do. Your podcast is among my favorites. I often listen when I am working out or doing chores around the house. All the best, Joni. Thank you so much for this email. I like that little bit of perspective.

• 49:40Holly Frey?

  Yeah, we kind of talked about a similar thing, but from a fictional world. Cause I think I mentioned how on Star Trek, people call even the women captains sir.

• 49:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, everyone's sir.

• 49:50Holly Frey?

  Yeah. So yeah. Kind of fundamentally the same concept.

• 49:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  If you'd like to send us a note about this or any other podcast, we are at [email protected].

• 50:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  And you can subscribe to our show on the iHeart Radio app and anywhere else you'd like to get your podcasts.

• 50:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 50:28Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 50:59Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 51:34Speaker 06

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• 52:02Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 52:32Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.