DIg It

1970: Archaeological Discoveries

The Halle State Museum houses the most important archaeology collection in Germany and this wonderfully preserved Germanic helmet from about AD500 is on display there.

Definitive 1960s "Queen Nefertari

Ones thoughts are drawn to Egypt when thinking of archeology and this stamp shows Queen Nefertari, one of the wives of Ramesses the Great, whose tomb is described as the most spectacular in the Valley of the Queens.

Princess of Tell-el-Amarna (about 1360BC)

In 1912 a dig located in the northern group of tombs near Cairo found a workshop and living quarters of a sculptor and his staff from the reign of Akhenaten and I think the stamp above shows one of the heads.  This is from a set of East German stamps called "Antique Art Treasures" issued in 1959 which also included

an Attic goddess from Greece (about 580 BC)

and the oldest artefact I show here on stamps which is the bronze horse of Toprak-kale, Armenia (present day Turkey) from the 7th Century BC.  These treasures are now in museums but I think that

many more treasures would be transported in the past along the road which starts from Chong'an (now Xi'an) and Luoyang, once capital cities of the Han (206BC-25AD) and Tang (618-907) which extends westwards to Europe and southwards to India from China.  This is "The Silk Road" set of of stamps China issued in 2012, no mention is made what the artefacts are but China Post have given the stamps suitably romantic titles Left to Right:
"Millennia old capital"; "The Magnificent Pass in the Desert"; "A Mysterious Kingdom" and lastly

"Extraordinary Scenery of the Western Region"

I do not have the miniature sheet which completes the set which is called "Exchange" but I imagine money was lost on this road and it seems to be a universal occurrence that it is coins which are things most likely to be found in the ground centuries later

1988: Ancient Chinese Coins (2nd Series)

It looks as though the  Chinese experimented with many different shapes of coins. I suspect their clothing did not have pockets for they all have holes which could perhaps be secured with cord.  The ones on the left and right are called shovel coins, the one in the middle has the descriptive title of  Monster Masque

Han Dan Shovel Coin and Pointed Head Knife Coin

 Ming Knife Coin, Jin Hua Knife Coin and lastly the Yi Liu Hua circular coin which is possibly the most familiar shape of old Chinese coins.

An entry to Viridian Postcard's Sunday Stamp theme of Archaeology or Anthropology here