Studenda Mira

When considering the problem of modern archaeological plunder, I'm probably not alone in reflexively picturing stubbly-faced Bulgarian men with metal detectors, spades and flashlights, rummaging through the Italian countryside at night in search of illegal antiquities. I don't know how accurate that image is, but I've spent so much time trying to learn about the cradles of Western civilization that I often overlook the fact that my country, too, has an archaeological record, and that it can also fall prey to looters . What I find interesting about that case is that the grave robber, since deceased, was apparently an enthusiastic amateur historian and was regarded as a local authority on the subject. It's not tough to imagine him believing, misguidedly, that he was somehow acting as a preservationist for a Civil War cemetery that otherwise might have been forgotten in a dusty archive. Though I don't doubt the good intentions of the real preservationists who've ...

The Irish Examiner has an item about the discovery of a 20-acre ring fort in County Cork, Ireland: Radiocarbon dating shows that the ringfort was constructed about 1200BC, confirming it as the oldest known prehistoric ringfort in Ireland, according to Prof William O’Brien of University College, Cork. This puts its importance on a par with prehistoric sites such as Dún Aengus on Inishmore and Mooghaun, Co Clare. Hat tip to Archaeoblog .

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are the new owners of a French vineyard that supplied ancient Rome. Château Val-joanis is located near the old Via Domitia , and the remains of the Roman villa are supposedly visible on "the lower part" of the property. I'm not sure whether that means "topographically lower" or "south." Here's the modern winery on Google Maps. I can't see anything that's obviously the villa site, but the image resolution varies over the area. Maybe a more discerning eye can spot it.

Last week's discovery of a huge Hadrian statue in Turkey has filtered down to the mainstream news outlets. Here is National Geographic's take, and here's the Beeb. All the hubbub inspired Tony Keen to reflect upon our modern perceptions of Hadrian . Update : Yet more coverage at The Independent .

Via rogueclassicism , this astonishing find from Turkey: fragments from a 5-meter statue of the emperor Hadrian . As the RC notes, there's no English coverage yet, but here is a brief item in French. Pardon my rough, paraphrased translation: A team of archaeologists from the KUL has discovered fragments of an exceptional statue of the Roman Emperor Hadrian during an excavation in Sagalassos, Turkey , reports the VRT (Belgian state TV). Part of a leg was found with sandals, which indicate that the wearer is an emperor. Part of a thigh and a nearly intact, 70 cm head were also found. The complete statue would have measured 4-5 meters in height. It appears to date to the second century. According to professor Marc Waelkens , who leads the team, it is one of the most beautiful representations of the Emperor Hadrian. For comparison, here's a bust of Hadrian from the Capitoline Museum in Rome. Update : Archaeology Magazine now has an online feature on the find. Update #2 : L...

Via Alun Salt's nifty Historyscape feed comes this LiveScience article about Rhakotis , a town on the site of what would later become Alexandria. Sediment cores from the harbor suggest that there was a "flourishing urban settlement" more than 700 years before Alexander marked out his city's limits. Archaeology is usually a grimy business, but the Smithsonian's Jean-Daniel Stanley says that getting these cores set a new standard in that regard: Collecting these samples underwater proved challenging. "Alexandria now is home to as many as 4 million people, and we were in the unfortunate position of having to deal with their discharge—human waste, municipal waste, industrial waste—which got released into the harbor," Stanley said. "It's not funny, but you have to sort of laugh." The Smithsonian's magazine ran a more extensive piece on this dig back in April. ETA: Apologies to David Meadows for inadvertently stealing the title of his ent...

Popping up everywhere, as AP bulletins do, is this story about a bath complex once owned by Quintus Servilius Pudens, a buddy of the emperor Hadrian. It was unearthed at the big Parco degli Acquedotti dig site, in the suburbs south of the old city. The American Institute for Roman Culture , which runs the dig, has a page which suggests this was actually discovered last year (assuming this is the same "imperial" bath complex mentioned on that page). With a hat tip to Adrian Murdoch , here's a Google Maps link to the Parco degli Acquedotti. Many previously excavated areas are visible, and if you pan back, the American school's presence is betrayed by the baseball fields (!) to the south. So much for "when in Rome..."

A quickie as I head out the door this morning... Archaeologists working on the medieval castle in Rochester, Kent—founded by the Romans as Durobrivae shortly after the invasion in 43—have stumbled upon the remains of a Roman-era city wall . Graham Keevill, an archaeologist on the dig, was enthusiastic about the condition of the accidental find: "We don't have many Roman city walls surviving in England. To get an unexpected one like this is fantastic. It is also a perfect example." He said the wall had "high-quality" facing stones on each side, and its rubble core, made up of stone, flint, sand, and gravel, would have been poured in "to set hard almost like concrete, to bind the whole wall together".

This is one of the more thorough news articles I've seen on the c. 400 Roman man under Trafalgar Square. Over at the Huffington Post, Byron Williams compares Jerry Falwell to Constantine . Smintheus at Unbossed.com opened a discussion on The Golden Ass , the only (if I'm not mistaken) surviving novel from the Roman imperial period. ...finally, a shout-out to Clioaudio for linking to the Serapeum entry. A needed jolt after an unplanned, six-week hiatus. Thank you!

Illyrian ships found under a swamp near Capljina, Bosnia-Herzegovina date to the 2nd century B.C. and were apparently shipping wine, according to a preliminary analysis of the remaining amphorae.

Archaeologists have uncovered a Roman-era tomb on the Greek island of Kefalonia. The AP report is vague, but there's a photo of seating in what looks like a theatre of some kind. The caption implies that this is in the same area as the tomb. More details in the coming days, hopefully.

The "Burning Bush" at St. Catherine's Monastery, Egypt. Photo by piddy77 . The NYT's Michael Slackman reports today on the doings of Egypt's chief archaeologist in the Sinai peninsula. His team has recently unearthed a military fort which dates to the period of the Exodus, but he doesn't think much of the Exodus itself: “Really, it’s a myth,” Dr. Hawass said of the story of the Exodus, as he stood at the foot of a wall built during what is called the New Kingdom. Whatever the official position of the state, local tourism businesses remain happy to capitalize on eager believers: In Egypt today, visitors to Mount Sinai are sometimes shown a bush by tour guides and told it is the actual bush that burned before Moses. It's unclear whether Slackman is referring to the bush in Saint Catherine's Monastery , which has enclosed the purported site of Moses' vision since the third century. In any case, pointing out the bush to wide-eyed religious ...

The conventional wisdom is that Homer's Ithaca is the modern island of Ithaki, off the coast of Greece in the Ionian Sea. British archaeologist Robert Bittlestone is challenging that assumption, and modern science will be at his disposal .

There is news from India today on continued archaeological efforts to identify the site of the ancient Indian city of Muziris, one of the most important ports for trade between India and Rome. Traders from Alexandria and the rest of Roman Egypt would wait until July to set out for India. Under typical conditions, it was a two month journey, but departing any sooner would place a ship off India's southwest coast during the most dangerous sailing conditions of the year—even modern maritime insurers are reluctant to offer summer coverage in the area. For the wealthy, high-powered Alexandrian merchants who could afford to underwrite such expensive voyages, the payoff was enormous. Arriving in India in September and leaving in December, the traders would ride home on the winds of the northeast monsoon, hulls packed with incense, myrrh, ivory, spices, silk, wild animals, pearls, and other luxuries of the Far East. After they docked at the Red Sea ports of Berenice or Myos Hormos, cara...

Two rooms in the House of Augustus on the Palatine Hill will be reopened to the public later this year, acccording to this tourism story . Of course, if you talk to the right people, you can get in right now . The Italy Magazine piece says the site is being "reopened" for the first time since 1961, but if that's accurate, the first opening must have been a very limited engagement. Time Magazine's online archive includes a 1961 story on the discovery and original excavations .

Artifacts from the recent find of Maxentius's treasure hoard went on display today at the National Roman Museum in Rome.

Mary Beard has some additional observations on the Chester amphitheatre buzz, and I found myself nodding to this excerpt: "But my main argument was that historians and archaeologists, as well as journalists, have wildly over-estimated the importance of gladiators in the ancient world. It’s us who is obsessed with the arena, not (so much) the Romans...The inhabitants of Roman Chester would have been lucky to see a handful of B team gladiators twice a year. The more interesting question for us is what went on in these amphitheatres on the other 360 or so days." I think this rings true, but on the other hand, we wouldn't make such a big deal of the Super Bowl (the annual American football championship game) if it were held on a monthly basis. Infrequency doesn't translate to a lack of interest, and it may have had the exact opposite effect, ensuring that the place was packed to the rafters with excited fans when those poor B-team gladiators filed in. ETA : Tony Keen co...

The Roman amphitheatre in Deva (modern Chester, England), constructed in the late first century, was the largest amphitheatre (that we know of) in Roman Britain. It may have been used for as little as 20 years before being converted into a municipal trash pit, then enjoyed a renovation and brief period of reuse in the late third century. Local amateur historians have entertained the idea that the site hosted gladiatorial combat, but this morning, the Telegraph reports official confirmation of that purpose from the archaeological team that's been digging up the site for the past couple of years. I was fortunate enough to be able to visit the site last summer, and I took the photos below. Please compare them with the artist's conception in the Telegraph story; it's a good study in the kind of imagination one needs to use when visiting some of these sites.

Last weekend's Wall Street Journal had a piece about the recent truce between Rome's subway operator, Roma Metropolitane SpA, and the city's preservation office. Metro wants to provide subway service to the tourist-clogged old city, but in most of that district, you can't plant a sapling without hitting a piece of antiquity with your spade. In the past, city planners got things done by trying to hide projects from the archaeological community until it was too late to do anything about it. In the most egregious example, under Mussolini, builders of a canal alongside the ruins of the Forum trucked out their excavated dirt, artifacts and all, without pausing to examine any of it. Then they clipped a corner off the foundation of the Colosseum. Work continued uninterrupted. When city preservationists asserted themselves in the 1950s, the result was gridlock. When construction of the Metro A line began in 1962, it ran smack into the Baths of Diocletian (much of which we...

Maxentius, the Roman usurper primarily known for his defeat at the hands of Constantine (another usurper) in 312, hid his treasure on the Palatine Hill before heading off to the fateful battle at the Milvian Bridge. This week, archaeologists announced that they've found it . *** Lars Brownworth's lectures on Byzantine history are free on iTunes, and are apparently quite good. So far, I've only listened to the introductory episode, but he has an appealing mixture of familiarity, enthusiasm and humility which I appreciate. *** The thousand-year-old library of the Abbey of St. Gall is being digitized and put online for free . I don't have the expertise to appreciate the full significance of the material available there, but the fact that it's now available for blokes like me to closely examine—no cotton gloves, academic credentials or letters of recommendation necessary—is really exciting. (Lifted from Gypsy Scholar )