Coins and weapons have been found buried in the floor of a home in the medieval city of Kastritsi in northeastern Bulgaria.

According to associate professor Valentin Pletnyov, head of the Regional History Museum in Varna, the treasure consisted of a small jug dating back to the 14th century, containing 166 silver coins from the era of Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria and his son Mihail, Focus reported.

The archaeologists also unearthed parts of utensils and swords.

“We hope that more artefacts will be discovered during the excavation works ahead,” Pletnyov said.

According to the professor, this is one of the biggest medieval treasures found in Bulgaria in 2010.

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A 600-year-old roof finial, an ornament at the top of a spire or gable, has been found in the River Thames.

The object, which dates from the late 12th Century or 13th Century, is in the shape of an animal and would have embellished the ridges of tiled roofs.

It is thought the object was made in the Woolwich area and brought to the city with other pots and roof tiles.

The object was found by the Museum of London during a survey.

Roy Stephenson, head of archaeological collections and archive, said: “This find is relatively rare in the collections of the Museum of London.

“It gives a fascinating insight into the lost roofscape of medieval London, which we know relatively little about.”

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The medieval castle of King Erik Menved has been found on the Danish island of Samsø.

The discovery of the castle of King Erik Menved, who reigned between 1287 and 1319, helps to fill in a hundred-year gap in the island’s history, according to Nils Engberg, head of the National Museum, and the person who headed the dig.

Speaking to national broadcaster DR, he said that there were few written sources from that period of Danish history. ‘The find is a very significant one for the history of Samsø and it is by far the biggest find we have made during our three years working here,’ he added.

When the archaeologists uncovered foundations measuring 20 metres square, they thought that it belonged to a minor building. But as they continued the dig they realised that the initial find was just a small part of a larger complex.

The researchers dated the find to 1290, and concluded that the castle was a replacement for a previous fortress on the island that was destroyed around 1289.

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An 1,600-year-old synagogue has been found outside of Galilee in Israel at Horvat Kur.

To the east of the monumental wall, the researchers found a totally different situation, indicating that this space was inside the building: Here a low bench made of hewn stones and covered with grey plaster runs alongside the wall, interrupted only by an entrance roughly in the center of its excavated part. The floor was made of grey hard plaster. It will need to be checked in the future if there are additional floor layers below.

Taken all the available evidence together, it seems very likely that the Kinneret Regional Project 2010 has discovered a part of the western wall of yet another ancient Galilean synagogue. Together with the well-known synagogues at Capernaum and Chorazin (both around the fifth and sixth century AD, the new synagogue at Horvat Kur — tentatively dated to the fourth or fifth century AD — adds new evidence for a very tight net of synagogues in a relatively small area on the Northwestern shores of the Lake of Galilee.

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The Fortean Times has posted an interesting article investigating who the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

In the year of 1284, on the day of Saints John and Paul, the 26th of June, 130 child ren born in Hamelin were seduced by a piper, dressed in all kinds of colours, and lost at the calvary near the koppen.”

The town of Hamelin hasn’t forgotten this loss. The street where, supposedly, the children were last seen is called Bungelosen strasse: street without drums”. Even so many years after the event, no one is allowed to play music or dance there. Oral tradition preserved and enriched the story until the Brothers Grimm included it in their compil­ation of German legends, Deutsche Sagen (1816–18).

In the Grimms’ version, mediæval Hamelin is hit by a plague of rats. A seemingly hero-like figure appears, in the shape of a mysterious stranger dressed in red and yellow clothes. He promises to rid the town of the vermin, and the townsmen promise him money in exchange. The rat-catcher has a strange, almost supernatural gift: he plays a tune on his pipe that lures the rats into the river Weser, where they all drown. But, blinded by their greed, the townsmen refuse to honour their promise and pay the Piper his fee. The Piper leaves the town, plotting his revenge. When he returns to Hamelin, he wears the attire of a hunter. He plays a melody that hypnotises the children, who follow him to the mountains, never to be seen again.

The cruelty of the denouément strikes us doubly, because it surpasses our expect ations. What initially looks like a classic ‘Overcoming the Monster’ plot turns into a nightmarish tale of disproportionate revenge. The Piper’s retribution oversteps the boundaries, suggesting society’s ultim ate taboo: child murder. This twist is so shocking that many versions have been tempered, with the Piper orchestrating the disappearance of the children only to get the money he is owed; the children go back to Hamelin and the townsfolk learn their lesson. Far from simplifying the story, this presents the Piper as a more interesting hero, a complex, modern one – someone who has to challenge the establishment in order to survive in difficult times.

And yet the tale’s elements of greed, revenge and infanticide send us back to the Middle Ages, a violent period of deep contrasts. The legend contains enough material to have inspired the popular and the poetic imagination for centuries – but what really happened on that fateful day in 1284, and who was the mysterious Pied Piper?

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