#roman-archaeology

#roman-archaeology

Out of more than 200 brick-built burials discovered in the area of the ancient city's northern necropolis over the years, only two have been discovered intact and unlooted. The city market area is known to have bordered the necropolis, so a preventative excavation was ordered before construction. This spring, archaeologists have unearthed 44 graves, but last Tuesday they found the first one that had not been looted in antiquity.

The calibration plate, intended for stretching and thinning metal wires, is considered an exceptional find that may reveal how Roman armor was manufactured. Its rusted holes could contain traces of metal wires, which are crucial for understanding ancient metalworking techniques.

The key find is a stretch of pavement made of slabs of Montjuic stone (rock extracted from the Montjuic mountain that overlooks Barcelona and has been the source of building material and infrastructure for the area since the pre-Roman Iron Age). It dates to between 15 and 10 B.C., the earliest founding years of the Roman city. It is made of precisely cut rectangular blocks, the largest of which are 1.48 long by 1.18 meters wide (approximately 5 by 4 feet).

It was the summer of 2020, and researcher Walter Crist was wandering around the exhibits inside a Dutch museum dedicated to the presence of the ancient Roman empire in the Netherlands. As a scientist who studies ancient board games, one exhibit stuck out to Crist: a stone game board dating to the late Roman Empire. It was about eight inches across and etched with angular lines that roughly formed the shape of an oblong octagon inside a rectangle.

What makes this canopy special isn't just that it uses 3D printing technology, though that's certainly impressive. It's the way the designers thought about the entire system. Rather than simply throwing a roof over the tombs and calling it a day, they created what's essentially a climate-control system disguised as architecture. The canopy features a double-layer envelope that does way more than keep rain off ancient stone. Built into this roof are ventilation and air extraction components that actively regulate temperature and humidity.

The House of the Griffins, one of the most significant luxury homes on Rome's Palatine hill to survive from the Republican era, is opening to the public for the first time since its discovery more than a century ago with a livestreamed on-site video tour. Visitors will stay in the atrium while a guide equipped with a video camera descends into the rooms below. The live video and audio will be shown on a state-of-the-art micro-perforated mesh covering on the wall.

A gold wedding ring from the Roman era has been discovered in the ancient city of Bononia (modern-day Vidin) in Bulgaria. It weighs a hefty 26.63 grams and dates to the second half of the 2nd century A.D. The central plate of the ring is oval and contains an image of a couple, typical iconography in this period for marital fidelity rings which were exchanged between newlyweds.

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

Set on the North African coast, Tunisia is home to some of the finest Roman ruins in the Mediterranean. After the fall of Carthage, Rome transformed the region into the prosperous province of Africa, enriched by its fertile plains and bustling cities. This land, shaped by dramatic events that influenced ancient history, has left behind an extraordinary archaeological legacy with ruins scattered across the rolling countryside, largely untouched by mass tourism.

"The fact that it was in Latin that really just gave us pause, right?" said Daniella Santoro, a Tulane University anthropologist. "I mean, you see something like that and you say, 'Okay, this is not an ordinary thing.'" Intrigued and slightly alarmed, Santoro reached out to her classical archaeologist colleague Susann Lusnia, who quickly realized that the slab was the 1,900-year-old grave marker of a Roman sailor named Sextus Congenius Verus.

The inscription reads: D(is) M(anibus)/S(e)x(to) Congenio Vero/mi(liti) cl(assis) p(raetoriae) Mi(senensis) natio(ne) Bes(so)/vixit an(nis) XLII mi(litavit) an(nis)/XXII, Tutela ((triere)) Asc(l)epio/fece(runt) Atilius Carus/et Vettius Longi/nus heredes/b(ene) m(erenti) (To the spirits of the dead for Sextus Congenius Verus, soldier of the praetorian fleet Misenensis, from the tribe (natio) of the Bessi, (who) lived 42 years (and) served 22 in the military, on the trireme Asclepius. Atilius Carus and Vettius Longinus, his heirs, made (this) for him well deserving.)

Bronze objects were usually melted down for later reuse, so it is rare for one of this size to survive. It is the largest bronze artifact from Roman Salzburg found since 1943. The object was unearthed last year during excavations of the Neue Residenz in the historic site, the site of the new Salzburg branch of the Vienna Belvedere Museum.

The remains of a wooden bridge built over 2,000 years ago have been discovered in Aegerten, Switzerland. More than 300 oak piles from the bridge spans over the Zihl river were unearthed, preserved in the waterlogged soil of the silted-over riverbed. Archaeologists had found remains of Roman military structures on both banks of the Zihl 40 years ago, so when construction was planned in the same area, a team from the Archaeological Service of the Canton of Bern excavated the site.

Built around 50 AD, with an internal diameter of 15 m [50 feet], it had to be more than 6 m [20 feet] high to be visible to all those passing through or arriving in the Roman colony of Vienne, particularly from the Rhone River. This shows the importance of the person whose burial place it was, who, even in death, must still have been present in the world of the living.