rogueclassicism

Roman Remains from Caistor

A late-Roman/Christian (?) cemetery … here’s some coverage:

ARCHAEOLOGISTS have found what is thought to be a late-Roman cemetery in a county village.

So far, a total of 46 human remains have been excavated and archaeologists say they expect to have found more than 50 by the time they finish next week.

The discovery was made during a five-week dig taking place as part of the development of a derelict pub in Caistor, near Market Rasen.

Specialists from Pre Construct Archaeological Services Ltd, say the cemetery is the first of its kind to be discovered in the area, branding the find as “significant”.

Director of the firm Colin Palmer-Brown said: “The graves are orientated from east to west, with the heads to the west which fits well with Christian tradition. There is an absence of grave goods, such as brooches or accessories, which is also consistent with Christian burials.

“Burial traditions change over time and the fact that these appear to be Christian suggests this cemetery dates back to the late Roman period, around the fourth century AD after the Emperor Constantine I legalised Christian worship in AD313.

“This find is very significant as little was known about Caistor. It isn’t near any known Roman road. One theory is that Caistor could have been part of the east coast defences in the late-Roman period and it was a supply base for a garrison.”

Shards of pottery found alongside the graves – although not left as memorial items – strengthen the case for it being a late-Roman cemetery, said Mr Palmer-Brown.

Teams from Pre Construct initially found six sets of human remains during the pre-planning process. That find then led to the discovery of men, women, teenagers, children and babies.

Archaeological site manager Fiona Walker said there is evidence that some of the bodies were in coffins. “We can see nails and even the remains of straps in some areas,” she said.

The former pub is being turned into a Lincolnshire Co-operative food store with a £1.3 million development. Contractors Taylor Pearson started on site in May and the store is set to open in November.

Special permission from the Ministry of Justice will allow the human remains to be exhumed, before being privately reburied.

They will then be cleaned and examined by Pre-Construct’s in-house osteologist, who will determine sex, approximate age and even whether they had suffered from any illness or injury.

via: Archaeologists discover late-Roman cemetery at site of derelict pub | Licolnshire Echo

The BBC also has a video report (without any commentary):

BBC News – Roman remains found in Caistor, posted with vodpod

More coverage from the BBC:

Roman cemetery found on Co-op development in Caistor | BBC

Posted in Archaeology, Romans in Britain | Leave a Comment

Roman Villa + Burial from Bredon’s Norton

A potentially-interesting find due to waterworks construction:

A 2,000-YEAR-OLD human skeleton has been unearthed alongside Iron Age artefacts near Tewkesbury.

Archaeologists uncovered signs of the ancient Roman villa in a field on the edge of Bredon’s Norton. It is thought the finds could be of national importance.

Metal detector hunts in recent years had led historians to suspect an ancient community might be found there.

That was confirmed when contractors who were laying a new water pipeline began digging.

Senior project manager Stuart Foreman is leading a team of archaeologists on a six-week excavation at the site.

Mr Foreman, of Oxford Archaeology, said thousands of pieces of masonry, nails, tiles, pottery and clothing will have been unearthed by the time the project is complete.

The area being examined is 200 metres long and 15 metres wide.

He said: “Whenever you find a new villa, it’s of national importance. It’s pretty unusual to find a new villa that hasn’t been recognised before. It’s an important local centre.”

He said large pieces of masonry and flagstone flooring had been found and it was well preserved.

He said: “Fragments of stone peg-tiles from the roof and sections of painted wall plaster indicate a building of high quality and status.

“The footings survive to a height of nearly 1m cut into the hillside.”

He said it did not rank as highly as the famous Roman Villa at Chedworth, near Cheltenham, but was still an important addition to a cluster of villas found in the Cotswolds and upper Thames valley.

Experts estimate that the villa is more than 1,700 years old.

They do not know yet whether the skeleton is of a male or female but believe it is at least 2,000 years old. It has been taken to Oxford to be analysed.

via Roman villa remains found at Bredon’s Norton | Gloucestershire news.

More coverage:

Cotswolds dig unearths Roman villa remains | Late Rooms

2000-yr-old human skeleton unearthed at Gloucestershire Roman villa dig | Sify

Posted in Archaeology, Romans in Britain and tagged Archaeology, Cotswolds, Roman villa, Tewkesbury | Leave a Comment

via Reflections on a Hedge-Fund Career | fins.com.

What To Do With A Classics Degree: Part ?

A financial blog called FINS has an interview with “HFM” who is described:

Meet “HFM,” an anonymous hedge fund manager who sat down for multiple interviews on the financial crisis from 2007 through 2009 with the literary magazine n+1. Those interviews have been collected and released as a book “Diary of a Very Bad Year: Confessions of an Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager.”

Here’s the beginning of the interview:

Julie Steinberg: How you become a hedge-fund manager?

Anonymous HFM: My academic background was, strangely enough, in classics (i.e., Latin and Greek). Not the most useful preparation for finance, except that I can attest with the certainty of a credentialed classicist that “vega” is not a Greek letter.

I was working at a strategy-consulting firm and was looking to move back to New York City. A college roommate had gone to work as a quant for a hedge fund. His firm had just opened a New York office and was looking for someone to assist him in building the emerging markets business.

This book just came out last month (not to be confused with a similarly-named novel by J. Coetzee), and the visual side of me can’t resist posting the thing Harper-Collins put together to hype it:

… who said Classicists were boring?

Posted in What to do with a Classics Degree | Leave a Comment

via: Fully preserved Thracian chariot discovered near Elhovo | Sofia Echo

Chariot Burial (and more) from Borissovo

I’m often asked how I find so much stuff to post on rogueclassicism and one of the sad things is that there actually is a lot more that I seem to get, file away, and forget about and only ‘rediscover’ while poking around looking for other things. A case in point is this brief item from the Sofia Echo way back in August of 2008:

A team led by archaeologist Daniela Agre of Bulgaria’s National Institute of Archaeology unearthed an ancient four-wheel chariot near the Borissovo village in the Elhovo region, dating back from the first half of the second century ACE, Focus news agency reported.

Along with the 1900-year-old chariot, in the funeral mound the team discovered shields, richly adorned in bronze, as well as table pottery and glass vessels. The finds led Agre to believe that she had come across the funeral of a wealthy Thracian aristocrat.

The chariot was fully preserved, which, the archaeologist said, was a rare circumstance and it was the first such case in Bulgaria.

Agre’s team also found the skeletons of two riding horses and some leather objects placed next to them, believed to be horse harnesses. The archaeologist suspected the horses have been sacrificed for the burial ceremony.

Agre has explained that the discovery could be traced back to the rule of Roman emperor Trajan (from 98 to 117 ACE), when Thrace was a Roman province. Thracian aristocrats, however, displayed loyalty by serving in the Roman army, and were able to preserve their privileges of nobility.

I discovered my lapse in reporting this one (which I had squirrelled away in Evernote for some reason) when my spiders brought back a more lengthy piece from something called Horsetalk (from New Zealand): Unearthed chariot provides spectacular detail, which actually turns out to be echoing a piece from Alphagalileo, which I missed back in May. The Alphagalileo piece provides a pile of more details, inter alia:

Because of the narrowness of the pit, the spokes of wheels had been broken, the wheels had been detached and placed at the walls of the pit. As a result of this action, the naves remained attached to the axles. In contrast to the wheels, the framework and the basket of the cart rested on their original places. The cart was supported by stones in order to be fixed in upright position. The fact that the axels, the framework and the basket of the cart were preserved in situ provided opportunity to define very precisely its type as well as the location of its parts.

The cart has no suspension; it is four-wheeled, with a short basket and a seat and is a very luxurious vehicle indeed. It was aimed to carry a charioteer (driver) and a passenger. At the front the basket was open; the two long sides of the basket are provided with timber beams, strengthened in the upper part with iron rims. The seat is at the back side of the basket.

All reconstructions of carts made until present were based on the assumption that this was a closed type of vehicle. The discovery of the Borissovo chariot offers the possibility to revise the reconstruction of this type of ancient vehicle. The surviving wooden and leather parts of the cart provide opportunity to define all details of its construction.

There is a boot (storage compartment) situated behind the back edge of the seat. It is a new element of the construction of this cart type. Until now it was believed that there were luggage boxes, which were attached to the four-wheeled carts. The boot found in situ proves that it was part of the Roman cart construction. Besides being there, the boot of this cart was full. A bronze ellipsoid pan and a set of a bronze ladle and a bronze strainer with long handles were lying on the bottom of the boot. There were also an iron grill on which were placed four prismatic and a large spherical glass bottles. Red slipped vessels – a small pitcher, a jar and a bowl – were placed in front of the bottles. A clay mortarium was found on top. The bronze artefacts are Italic imports. The bronze ladle is stamped on the handle with the name of the manufacturer. The four prismatic glass bottles were made by blowing in a mould and had been used for transporting and storing commodities. The large spherical glass bottle finds parallels in the Eastern Mediterranean and was most probably manufactured in a Syrian atelier.

The analysis of the position of the horses in front of the cart provided the conclusion that they had been killed in the pit. The horses were buried with lavishly decorated harnesses and a yoke. The iron bars were placed on the horses’ heads. The shape of the yoke can be reconstructed after the few traces of wood, the yoke rings found in situ and the silver ornaments of the horse collars. The yoke is abundantly decorated with bronze appliqués and has 13 bronze rings. The central ornament of the cart – an exquisite figurine of a panther on a solid bronze stand – was found on the shaft, between the skeletons of the two horses. A skeleton of a dog was unearthed behind the cart, tied up to it with a chain.

The chariot is dated back to the late 1st – the early 2nd century AD.

We also read of the contents of a second pit:

A second pit, which yielded two sacrificed riding horses of the Thracian warrior, was excavated immediately to the south of the first one. The horses’ skeletons were lying in an anatomical order next to each other. The iron bars were found between the horses’ teeth and the bronze halters and the ornaments of the horse collars were taken and thrown on top of their bodies. There were timber shields with solid bronze shield bosses placed on the lower part of the horses’ bodies. The shields are round, 1 m in diameter. They were covered with animal hide, fixed to the wooden part with bronze rivets.

East of the pit with the riding horses, the grave of the warrior, the owner of the chariot and the horses, was discovered under a special burial stone structure – a stone revetted tumulus, whose entrance faced the south. His body had been cremated there, in a two-stepped pit. The body had been placed on a special litter covered with a textile. The deceased had been buried in full armour: six iron spears, two swords, a poniard and spurs. One of the swards is double-edged and is 0.98 m long. It had been suspended on a leather strap decorated with gilded silver appliqués; its scabbard ends with a bronze tip with tracery patterns. On the knees of the deceased there were round bronze lamellae (probably used as greaves), which overlaid some kind of fabric. Two bronze silver-plated fibulae were found at the left shoulder and a highly patinated and burnt bronze coin was lying at the skull.

The medical and sporting accessories are represented by a bronze toilette box and two iron strigils. The strigils have iron strigil holders and before being placed into the grave pit, they had been wrapped into a textile. The toilette box has two bronze tubuses. In a special drawer of the box there are medications crushed into powder and medical instruments made from bronze.

Apart from being a warrior, the deceased had been a literate person. A ink-well, a bone tablet made of bone, a bronze stylus tied up with a chain to the tablet as well as a spatula, which would have been used to spread wax onto the writing tablet, had been laid beside the body.

After a ‘graph on some other grave goods, we read of the folks buried in this ‘family tomb’:

Seven burials were unearthed under a stone structure in the center of the tumulus. Three of them yielded skeletons of adults and the grave goods provide ground to suggest that these were females. The shallow, rectangular grave pits yielded cremation burials and the cremation ritual had been performed in them.

The central burial is a female one. The dead body had been placed on a timber stretcher covered with a textile. The deceased had been buried with a large number of bronze, ceramic and glass vessels as well as with bronze, glass and bone personal ornaments. All bronze vessels had been ritually cut into pieces (killed) before being placed into the grave pit. The bronze appliqués for toilette boxes comprise beautiful figurines of eagles and swans, masks of satires and deities, busts of deities, etc. The burials yielded remains of wallnuts and raisins.

The second female burial yielded a skeleton of a young woman, which also had been laid on a timber stretcher covered with a textile. The woman had leather shoes decorated with gold foil. The grave goods include ceramic and glass vessels, an exquisite bronze mirror, a bone spindle with a bone spindle whirl for fine spin, a bone comb, a bronze hair pin and a miniature bronze spoon. Pieces of textiles were found at different places of the grave pit. Various textiles were found in the rest of the burials of adults as well.

Three of the burials are children’s ones and contained bones of babies. They had been buried in timber coffins, placed in grave pits. The grave goods comprise glass and ceramic vessels as well as bronze mirrors. The fact that the children were the only ones who had not been cremated indicates that they had been treated with a special care.

The last burial in this group is the cremation burial of a juvenile. Part of the cremated bones had been gathered and placed in a krater-shaped vessel. An amphora was placed in the grave pit as a grave gift.

via: Family Cemetery in a Roman Period Tumulus near the Village of Borissovo, Elhovo Region | Alphagalileo

There is quite a bit more to read at AlphaGalileo as well as five very interesting photos … sorry for lateness on this one folks; it seems to be very important.

Posted in Archaeology, Bulgaria and tagged Archaeology, Chariot | Leave a Comment

via: Lord Byron’s ancient stones tell modern tales | The Age

How Can We Sleep When Our Ruins Are Crumbling?

That cryptic title is a vague reference to a song by Midnight Oil which is currently stuck in my head … whatever the case, we fairly regularly get an annual article that this or that particular monument is being neglected by authorities (e.g., most recently, e.g., a chunk falling off the Colosseum), but in the past week or so, if we believe journalists, the whole ancient world’s remains are in danger. First, e.g., we can read of the sad state of affairs in Athens, inter alia:

This week, as angry Greeks marched in mass resistance to economic austerity, the graffiti re-emerged with renewed vigour and vengeance.

On the hill of the Muses, west of the Acropolis, the Philopappos monument is now ringed by a rosary of plaintiffs and expletives. The eyesores descend all the way to the thyme-covered hill of the Nymphs where ”artworks” appear even around the rock on which the assembly of ancient Athens convened.

Taking my evening stroll, I bumped into a Melbourne man who couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.. ”Don’t the Greeks take any pride in their ancient heritage?” he blurted. ”Where I come from they’d call it disgraceful – and you know what, they’d be removed.”

Graffiti isn’t the only problem blighting Greece’s ancient masonry. Demands on the archaeological service are such that many sites now stand unkempt; shrouded by weeds. The Ottoman seminary beneath my home has been so overtaken by eucalyptus trees that roots threaten the foundations of the rare Roman walls bordering the site. Repeated attempts to alert authorities fall on deaf ears – with foreigners who raise such things being brushed off as a rare breed of eccentric.

The problem, like so many other afflictions that have brought the country to the point of near economic and social collapse, is simply ignored. Government functionaries declare that with the debt-stricken nation trying to make ends meet, the state can ill afford such luxuries. Greece’s cultural showpieces have long witnessed its ancient splendours and contemporary sadness – never more so than now in Byron’s ”land of lost gods and godlike men”.

Then there’s the state of affairs in Rome (inter alia, again):

Especially when some of the best of it is falling down. Exhibit A: the Domus Aurea, the Golden Villa that Nero built near the Colosseum, where a vaulted gallery fell this spring. Nobody was hurt, fortunately. That’s because the place has been closed since 2008, plagued by structural problems and humidity, which threatens the frescoes. To much fanfare, the city opened part of the site for tourists in 1999. Then heavy rain collapsed a section of roof, the site was closed, reopened a while later, then closed again.

A commission assigned to address the problem spent millions but didn’t forestall the latest mishap. Construction workers were fussing with earthmovers, bits and pieces of ancient columns, broken pots and scaffolding one recent morning. Fedora Filippi, a veteran archaeologist lately put in charge, pointed out where the roof gave way in what is actually an adjacent gallery built under Trajan, after Nero. Rain seeped from a park above, she said. Everybody has known about the leaking for ages. But the park is city-owned, and the Domus Aurea is national property, so the problem is no one’s to solve.

“Everyone is paralyzed,” Ms. Filippi said. “We have problems specific to this site and, yes, we have Italian problems, too.”

After the Domus Aurea gave way, some chunks fell off the Colosseum. Salvo Barrano, vice president of Italy’s Association of National Archaeologists, afterward listed threats to the aqueducts, the Palatine. The country is basically one giant archaeological site, Mr. Barrano said, with every town and region vying for resources, no politician willing to make hard choices, and too few qualified engineers and archaeologists in charge.

“The problem for the last 12 or 13 years is that the country has stopped investing in culture,” he said. “In cases like the Domus Aurea, there just isn’t a quick enough political payoff for politicians to invest more resources.”

via: As Rome Modernizes, Its Past Quietly Crumbles | New York Times

Finally, we read (again inter alia) of the impact of tourism on Pompeii:

Of course the de-construction of Pompeii has been going on ever since it was first uncovered. Pompeii’s marble was stripped for use in new construction, the frescoes were hacked off and carted away to the Archaeological Museum in Naples. The removal of the treasures made sense as a way of preserving them and allowing scholars to study them. Engravings published in 1781 show statuary and other treasures being hauled through the streets of Naples by teams of oxen to the museum which is still home to most of them. Due to cuts imposed by the Ministry of Culture, though, many of the galleries are today closed in rotation.

But what has happened to the site since the end of the Second World War is something quite different. Indifference, lack of resources, lack of good leadership and the numbing Italian state bureaucracy have conspired to accelerate the decline of Pompeii to the point that today it is questionable whether or not it can be salvaged.

The problem is us. We pour through Pompeii and its lesser-known sister site, Herculaneum, in such numbers, millions of us every year, that our impact is comparable to the impact we have on our own homes and streets and towns. The daily population of these sites, the activity on their streets, is not significantly less than it must have been 2,000 years ago.

The difference is that in our own homes we leap into action if the roof starts leaking. Our streets are cleaned, our sewers and roads maintained on a regular basis. But since 1945 Pompeii has been treated as if it has no need of attentions of this sort, simply because nobody actually lives there. Galloping decay is the inevitable result.

Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, the British archaeologist who has been leading a project to rescue Herculaneum for the past decade, says, “There is an assumption that by digging stuff up you have redeemed it, you’ve saved it. Except you haven’t. The laws of physics say it’s stable underground. Whatever trauma happened to it at the moment of the eruption, it reaches a stable state. And of course that’s why it comes out in such great condition.

“But the moment you excavate, you start the clock again – the clock that says, you built the house for yourself today, the maintenance bills start tomorrow. It comes back to life, which means it’s mortal again, so it starts dying.”

Pompeii’s years of glory culminated in the long career of Amedeo Maiuri, superintendent throughout the Fascist years. He turned both sites into great popular attractions, restoring many houses and shops to the sort of decorative state they were in at the point when they were inundated, and exhibiting the items found within them in showcases. He was helped by the fact that Mussolini saw in the sites a great source of patriotic propaganda, advertising the age and splendour of Italian civilisation.

But Maiuri’s retirement was followed by decades of apathy and incompetence, with the results that we see today: millions of tourists tramping through the few remaining gems that are still open to visitors, the House of Pansa, the House of the Little Fountain, the House of the Faun, with their flaking frescoes and reproduction statues, then getting back on their buses.

The concentration of such numbers on a handful of sites ensures that they, too, in their turn will soon have to be closed. And what will we all do then? Read our guidebooks in the sterile comfort of the Autogrill, toss our unfinished panini at the stray dogs, and hope that we are in time to make it to the museum in Naples before it closes.

via: Ashes to ashes: neglect takes its toll on Pompeii’s Roman ruins | Independent

Not a pretty picture and likely not about to change in the near future …

Posted in Athens, Pompeii, Rome | Leave a Comment

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Podcast: Pliny the Elder on In Our Time

If you can’t get the BBC iPlayer to work (I’m not sure it works outside of the UK; I thought it did), you can access this one via iTunes

Pliny’s Natural History | In Our Time (iPlayer)
Itunes link (I think this will take you there)

Posted in podcasts

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Citanda: Why Be a Classicist

Over at Provoking the Muse, Denis has a nice post which should start your week off right:

5 Reasons to be a Classicist | Provoking the Muse.

Posted in Classical Blogosphere

via: ‘Biggest canal ever built by Romans’ discovered | Telegraph

This Day in Ancient History: ante diem iv idus quinctilias

Image via Wikipedia

ante diem iv idus quinctilias

ludi Apollinares (day 7) — games instituted in 212 B.C. after consulting the Sybilline books during a particularly bad stretch in the Punic Wars; four years later they became an annual festival in honour of Apollo
100 B.C. (?) — birth of G. Julius Caesar
67 A.D. — martyrdom of Paulinus of Antioch
1536 — death of Erasmus
1922 — birth of Michael Ventris, who would decipher Linear B

Posted in TDIAH and tagged Julius Caesar, Michael Ventris, Punic Wars | Leave a Comment

11 Jul 2010

Major Roman Canal from Portus!

The incipit of a very interesting item from the Telegraph:

Scholars discovered the 100-yard-wide (90-metre-wide) canal at Portus, the ancient maritime port through which goods from all over the Empire were shipped to Rome for more than 400 years.

The archaeologists, from the universities of Cambridge and Southampton and the British School at Rome, believe the canal connected Portus, on the coast at the mouth of the Tiber, with the nearby river port of Ostia, two miles away.

It would have enabled cargo to be transferred from big ocean-going ships to smaller river vessels and taken up the River Tiber to the docks and warehouses of the imperial capital.

Until now, it was thought that goods took a more circuitous overland route along a Roman road known as the Via Flavia.

“It’s absolutely massive,” said Simon Keay, the director of the three-year dig at Portus, the most comprehensive ever conducted at the site, which lies close to Rome’s Fiumicino airport, 20 miles west of the city.

“We know of other, contemporary canals which were 20-40 metres wide, and even that was big. But this was so big that there seems to have been an island in the middle of it, and there was a bridge that crossed it. It was unknown until now.”

The subterranean outline of the canal was found during a survey by Prof Martin Millett, of Cambridge University, using geophysical instruments which revealed magnetic anomalies underground.

The dig, which is being carried out in partnership with Italian archaeologists, is shedding light on the extraordinary trading network that the Romans developed throughout the Mediterranean basin, from Spain to Egypt and Asia Minor.

The archeologists have found evidence that trading links with North Africa in particular were far more extensive than previously believed. They have found hundreds of amphorae which were used to transport oil, wine and a pungent fermented fish sauce called garum, to which the Romans were particularly partial, from what is now modern Tunisia and Libya.

Huge quantities of wheat were also imported from what were then the Roman provinces of Africa and Egypt.

“What the recent work has shown is that there was a particular preference for large scale imports of wheat from North Africa from the late 2nd century AD right through to the 5th and maybe 6th centuries,” said Prof Keay.

[...]

90 metres wide! That’s huge! Where did the water come from to fill it?

Posted in Archaeology, Ostia and tagged Archaeology, Roman Empire, Rome, Simon Keay | Leave a Comment

11 Jul 2010

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Vindolanda-like Archive from Fort Fectio (not Utrecht)

Richard Campbell and Lindsay Powell get the tip o’ the pileus treatment for alerting me to this one. Unfortunately the only current coverage appears to be in Dutch:

In Utrecht zijn vandaag circa honderd fragmenten van houten Romeinse schrijfplankjes gepresenteerd. De plankjes maakten waarschijnlijk deel uit van het militaire archief van het Romeinse fort Fectio in Bunnik-Vechten.

De vondst is vergelijkbaar met de beroemde schrijfplankjes uit het Romeinse fort Vindolanda bij de Muur van Hadrianus. Die leverden veel informatie op over het dagelijks leven van Romeinse legionairs, waaronder ook in Engeland gelegerde Bataven.

Mogelijk is in Vechten het archief door de Romeinen na een opruiming in de langsstromende Rijn gegooid. Dat moet zijn gebeurd tussen 5 en 270 na Christus, toen het fort Fectio in gebruik was als schakel in de Romeinse grensbewaking.

Amateurarcheologen

De houten plankjes zijn al in 1978 door twee amateurarcheologen gevonden. Ze hebben de plankjes ruim dertig jaar deels onder water en deels in de vriezer bewaard en nu staat het tweetal de vondst af aan de provincie Utrecht.

Oorspronkelijk waren de plankjes met was bestreken waarin werd geschreven. Soms werd daarbij de tekst ook in het hout gekrast.

De plankjes zijn inmiddels onderzocht door Wouter Vos van Hazenberg Archeologie en Ton Derks van de Vrije Universiteit van Amsterdam. Delen van ingekraste tekst blijken bewaard en te lezen, maar de precieze inhoud hebben ze nog niet kunnen achterhalen. Het gaat waarschijnlijk niet om brieven, maar om officiële documenten als oorkondes, schuldverklaringen, contracten en testamenten. De plankjes worden binnenkort door een Engelse expert onderzocht. Daarna zullen de plankjes waarschijnlijk in de buurt van het fort worden tentoongesteld.

Grensfortenreeks

De Romeinse grensfortenreeks om Utrecht loopt vanaf Wijk bij Duurstede, langs de Kromme en Oude Rijn uiteindelijk helemaal naar Katwijk (waar ergens in zee Fort Brittenburg moet liggen). De laatste jaren is er veel gevonden, vooral door de bouw van de vinexlocatie Leidsche Rijn. In 2002 werd daar een Romeinse wachttoren gevonden en in 2003 een 25 meter lang Romeinse schip. In Woerden werd in 2004 een 30 meter lang schip gevonden.

via: Romeins archief gevonden nabij Utrecht

The gist I get from Google’s translation is that the wooden boards were originally found in 1978 and since then have been sitting in the finders’ freezer or something like that. There was originally wax on the boards, but it doesn’t seem to have survived (?) but there are scratches in the wood. The boards have been examined at the Free University of Amsterdam but they’ve made no progress in figuring out what the tablets say; the tablets are on their way to the UK for further examination (and hopefully press coverage). Outside of that, they seem to date between 5 and 270 A.D. (?).

Another source includes a nice photo:

via: Romeins archief komt boven water in Utrecht

Nice photo if you want to show your students some Roman writing tablets. I’m not holding my breath on them getting anything useful, in terms of writing, from these particular examples …

UPDATE (the next day): I’ve changed the title of the post after reading Judith Weingarten’s useful comments …

UPDATE II (July 13): Pierre van Giesen has kindly sent in a translation:

Roman archive found near Utrecht

By Theo Toebosch

Rotterdam, July 9. In Utrecht today around a hundred fragments of Roman wooden writing tablets have been presented/shown. The tablets probably have been part of the military archive of the Roman fort Fectio in Bunnik-Vechten.

The find is comparable with the famous writing tablets from the Roman fort Vindolanda near Hadrian’s Wall. Those tablets led to a lot of information on daily life of Roman legionaries, amongst which Batavians that had been stationed in England.

Possibly in Vechten the archive has been thrown in the nearby Rhine by the Romans as part of a cleanup. That must have happened between 5 and 270 AD, when the fort Fectio was in use as a link in the chain of border-defences.

Amateur-archeologists

The wooden tablets had already been found in 1978 by two amateur-archeologists. For over 30 years they had kept the tablets partly under water and partly in a freezer and now the two hand over their find to the province of Utrecht.

Originally the tablets were covered with wax in which the writing would have been done. By doing so, sometimes the text was scratched in the wood.

Meanwhile the tablets have been investigated by Wouter Vos of Hazenberg Archeology and Ton Derks of the “Vrije Universiteit” of Amsterdam. Parts of the scratched-in texts appear to have survived, but they have not yet uncovered the exact contents. The tablets are probably not letters, but official documents like charters, contracts and testaments. The tablets will be investigated by an English expert soon, after which the tablets will be exhibited probably in the neigbourhood of the fort.

Chain of border forts

The Roman chain of border forts around Utrecht start at Wijk bij Duurstede, along “De Kromme Rijn” and “Oude Rijn” and ultimately to Katwijk (where, somewhere submerged in the northsea, fort Brittenburg must reside). Recently a lot has been found, especially at the building-activities for “Leidsche Rijn”-location. In 2002 a Roman watchtower has been found there and in 2003 a 25-meter long Roman boat. In Woerden a 30-meter long boat has been found in 2004.

Posted in Archaeology and tagged Utrecht

11 Jul 2010

Latest Arthurian Round Table with a Roman Connection?

: Image via Wikipedia

An item in the Daily Mail (hyping a television program, as often) seems to be causing some excitement:

His is among the most enduring legends in our island’s history.

King Arthur, the gallant warrior who gathered his knights around the Round Table at Camelot and rallied Christian Britons against the invading pagan Saxons, has always been an enigma.

But now historians believe they have uncovered the precise location of Arthur’s stronghold, finally solving the riddle of whether the Round Table really existed.

And far from pinpointing a piece of furniture, they claim the ‘table’ was in fact the circular space inside a former Roman amphitheatre.

The experts believe that Camelot could in fact have been Chester Amphitheatre, a huge stone-and-wood structure capable of holding up to 10,000 people.

They say that Arthur would have reinforced the building’s 40ft walls to create an imposing and well fortified base.

The king’s regional noblemen would have sat in the central arena’s front row, with lower-ranked subjects in the outer stone benches.

Arthur has been the subject of much historical debate, but many scholars believe him to have been a 5th or 6th Century leader.

The legend links him to 12 major battles fought over 40 years from the Scottish Borders to the West Country. One of the principal victories was said to have been at Chester.

Rather than create a purpose-built Camelot, historian Chris Gidlow says Arthur would have logically chosen a structure left by the Romans.

‘The first accounts of the Round Table show that it was nothing like a dining table but was a venue for upwards of 1,000 people at a time,’ he said.

‘And we know that one of Arthur’s two main battles was fought at a town referred to as the City of the Legions. There were only two places with this title. One was St Albans, but the location of the other has remained a mystery.’

Researchers, who will reveal their evidence in a television documentary this month, say the recent discovery at the amphitheatre of an execution stone and a wooden memorial to Christian martyrs suggests the missing city is Chester.

Mr Gidlow said: ‘In the 6th Century, a monk named Gildas, who wrote the earliest account of Arthur’s life, referred both to the City of the Legions and to a martyr’s shrine within it.

‘That is the clincher. The discovery of the shrine within the amphitheatre means that Chester was the site of Arthur’s court – and his legendary Round Table.’

via: King Arthur’s Round Table ‘found’ – except it’s not a table, but a Roman amphitheatre in Chester | Daily Mail

An interesting idea, but not exactly ‘new’. We recall that the Roman amphitheatre at Caerleon has long been similarly claimed to be the prototype for this ’round table’ of the Arthur King. Indeed, the National Museum of Wales seems to take it as a fact (if this page is associated with them). And before we get too excited, back in 2000 someone was suggesting a round building in Scotland. And a decade before that, the same round building location (Stenhouse) in Scotland was being cited by no less than Burke’s Peerage (and connected, sort of, to the Kennedy clan).

That said, if we think an ‘amphitheatre’ can be taken as a ‘table’ (I guess “knights of the amphitheatre” gives the wrong impression?), we can look at a list of amphitheater remains in the UK (besides Caerleon and Chester) we see there’s one at Cirencester … Arthur was supposedly crowned there (at Cirencester; not necessarily the amphitheatre); that seems to have a potential claim too. There’s one at Colchester, and Colchester is a Camelot candidate; that seems to have a potential claim too. There’s one at Wroxeter, and Arthur may have had a ‘base’ there; that seems to have a potential claim too. There’s probably more, but you get the picture … plenty o’ places are connected with Arthur (who may or may not have been an historical figure, of course … I won’t get into that here) and plenty o’ those places have remains of an amphitheatre of some sort. At best, though, I think we can charitably put this in the ‘imaginative suggestion’ category.

More coverage:

Historians locate King Arthur’s Round Table | Telegraph

(tip o’ the pileus to Dorothy King)

Posted in Claims, Romans in Britain and tagged Amphitheatre, Arthur King, Caerleon, Camelot, Round Table | Leave a Comment

CONF: Lutheranism and the Classics

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(please send any responses to the people/institution mentioned in the post, not to rogueclassicism!)

Lutheranism & the Classics, 1 and 2 October, 2010, Concordia Theological Seminary, Ft. Wayne, Indiana.

The Age of the Reformation was also the Age of the Renaissance, a period to which the birth of the modern discipline of classics may be traced. The classics provided a rich source for the thought, intellectual undergirding, and polemic of the era. Classics thus became part of the cultural DNA, as it were, of the Reformation and post-Reformation Church in the West. Of particular interest to this conference is the reception of the classics in the Wittenberg (Lutheran) Reformation. There, the darling of the Northern European Renaissance, Philipp Melanchthon, appropriated the classics in the service of the Gospel and drew them to the fore as an integral part of the reformational program in Saxony and much of Northern Europe. Papers at “Lutheranism & the Classics” explore this watershed period in the history of classics reception and its ongoing impact on the Evangelical Lutheran Church.

For more information, visit www.ctsfw.edu/classics. Inquiries may be addressed to one of the three organizers: John Nordling (john.nordling AT ctsfw.edu); Carl Springer (casprin AT siue.edu); Jon Bruss (jonbruss AT yahoo.com).

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Vomitorium: Another One Gets it Right

In my never-ending quest to ensure journalists ‘get it right’, from an ABC piece about eating disorders, inter alia:

Contrary to popular belief, vomitoriums were not used by the Roman elite to get rid of their stomach contents. The vomitorium is an architectural structure within the Roman amphitheatre, designed to alleviate crowds by allowing the audience to “spew out” after the show.”

While there have been some historical reports of Romans deliberately vomiting, this was certainly not part of a regular binge-purge cycle and there is no evidence that it was accompanied by a sense of loss of control, cognitive distortions, body shame, or feelings of low self-worth, as seen in those suffering from bulimia.

via ABC The Drum Unleashed – Look good by doing very little.

Kudos to Lydia Jade Turner! Clearly she did some research!

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d.m. Herbert H. Huxley

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From the Canadian Classical Bulletin, with the kind permission of John G. Fitch:

Herbert Henry Huxley, Professor of Latin at the University of Victoria from 1968 to 1979, died on 5 May in Cambridge, England at the age of 93. Educated at Manchester Grammar School and St John’s College, Cambridge, he held positions successively at the Universities of Leeds and Manchester before coming to Canada.

HHH had a wide-ranging interest in Latin verse of all periods, contributing, for example, a useful article on the Latin poems of George Herbert (1593-1633). In 1961 he published a school edition of Books 1 and 4 of Vergil’s Georgics. His real talent, however, lay in writing Latin verses (both translations and original compositions), in a variety of metres, quantitative and accentual. Though his verse is characterised chiefly by its elegance and wit, it takes on real poetic power on those occasions when it deals with love and loss, with mortality and with religious themes. His version of Landor’s “Well I remember how you smiled” is at least as good as the original. Guy Lee identified correctly the “inspired simplicity” of Huxley’s style in a poem like his “Eucharistic Hymn”. “If one can write like that,” commented Lee, “one has not lived in vain.”

Huxley’s mind turned unerringly to the quaint and recherché, perhaps as an antidote to a certain melancholy. Characteristic titles of his publications are “Two Sanskrit Epigrams & Epitaph on an Unknown Female Corpse (Kipling)” and “Sir Winston Churchill, Aeneid VII and the Vocative Case”. He claimed that his paper “It” had the shortest title of any learned article in Classics. Wit was characteristic of his conversation as of his writing. On one occasion a colleague who rejoiced in the surname Currie happened to be late for a faculty meeting. As we waited, “Currie a non currendo” murmured Herbert — a mot that survives though the topic of the meeting is long forgotten.

In relations with colleagues, alas, he could be fierce and even destructive. But he could be charming in company, and was amazingly patient and entertaining with children. He was particularly interested in “town and gown” relations, offering many non-credit courses for mature students and even co-leading a group to Greece. Shortly after coming to Victoria he co-founded the Classical Association of Vancouver Island, which has grown and thrived to this day and is his best Canadian memorial.

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d.m. Michel Janon

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From the Canadian Classical Bulletin, with the kind permission of Daniel M. Millette:

Michel Janon, Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Ottawa from 1986 to 1995, died on May 31st, in Marseilles, France, at the age of 72. He was educated in Algiers (History and Archaeology, 1964) and earned his doctorate at the Sorbonne (History, 1970). He held positions within the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) from 1965 to 1970 in Algiers, and from 1970 to 2010 in Aix-en-Provence. From 1995, he was a member of the Institut de Recherche sur l’Architecture Antique (IRAA), within the CNRS.

Janon was highly specialized in Latin epigraphy and architectural decor, particularly of Narbonensis. He published two seminal volumes: the first on the Latin Inscriptions of Narbonensis (Fréjus), with J. Gascou, in 1985, and the second on architectonic elements of Narbonne, in 1986. His other published work followed these research themes. A second principal area of interest was archaeology, first practicing in Algeria at Cherchell, Tiddis and Lambaesis, and eventually in France, at Fréjus, Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges, Gaujac and Orange. He was an authority on the urban plan and archaeology of Lambaesis, producing an innovative book, with J.-M. Gassend, in 2005.

Michel’s intellect was of the extremely independent kind. He defended his ideas fiercely, often remaining misunderstood and at times fuelling intense debate. He expected brilliant work from his students, resulting in high quality research. For his students and selected colleagues, he could be charming, displaying a joie de vivre that could only be matched by his love of debate. In his final years, he found happiness through his grandchildren, spending time with his wife Nancy, and painting from his homes in France and Spain.

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This Day inAncient History: ante diem vii idus quinctilias

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ante diem vii idus quinctilias

ludi Apollinares (day 4)
597 B.C. — a suggested date for Thales‘ eclipse (or so it was thought in several 19th century (and earlier) sources
118 A.D. — Hadrian finally arrives in Rome as emperor

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via Archaeologists Restart Excavations of Ancient City of Sagalassos | Balkan Travellers.

Sagalassos Dig Resumes

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This season’s excavations of the ancient city of Sagalassos, located in south-western Turkey, have begun, the head of archeological research project Dr. Inge Uytterhoeven announced recently.

This year’s excavations will involve 51 workers and 75 Turkish and foreign technical personnel, Dr. Uytterhoeven, who is also a lecturer at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, told media. In addition to local professionals, the site will also benefit from the expertise of people from Belgium, Italy, Slovenia, the United States, Bulgarian and Germany.

This year, the arcaheological team’s focus will be the restoration of the Fountain of Antoninus.

Dr. Inge Uytterhoeven started working on the excavations at Sagalassos in 1997, the World Bulletin reported. She began supervising the excavations of the late antique urban mansion in the eastern domestic area of Sagalassos in 1998, after she worked on the Upper Agora North and Bouleuterion sites. Since 2002, Dr. Uytterhoeven she has been fully involved with the Sagalassos Archaeological Research Project as a post-doctoral researcher.

The ancient city of Sagalassos was first discovered by the French traveller Paul Lucas in 1706, but it would be another hundred years before its name was understood to be Sagalassos. The realization that it was one of the leading settlements of the Western Taurus came only with the discovery of the city’s name from inscriptions in 1824.

Research in the region commenced with the arrival here of an English-Belgian team for the first time in 1985, among them Marc Waelkens from the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. Exactly four years after this surface investigation, the same team was given the go-ahead to undertake excavations.

Since then work at the ancient city of Sagalassos has been under way by experts from a wide range of disciplines. Thanks to the efforts of a large team consisting not only of archaeologists, but of architects, engineers, restorers, landscape architects, geologists, geomorphologists, and soil engineers, a major part of the city has been brought to the light of day in the last twenty years.

The settlement’s history goes back more than 12,000 years. Sagalassos became Pisidia’s second most important city in the Hellenistic period (333-325 BC) and the city’s power was further enhanced when hegemony passed to the Roman Empire in 25 BC.

If you’d like to follow the dig, the CUL has a nice website … not sure if the interactive dig at Archaeology Magazine will resume soon as well …

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Citanda: Radio Bremen’s Nuntii Latini

Nuntii Latini mensis Iunii 2010

via Nuntii Latini mensis Iunii 2010.

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Citanda: New Voices Journal – Issue 5

Seen on Classicists (please send any responses to the people/institution mentioned in the post, not to rogueclassicism!)

Issue 5 of the journal New Voices has now been published and is accessible from http://www2.open.ac.uk/newvoices.
Contents:
The Reception of the Ichneutai in the Modern Arabic World

Mohammad Almohanna, University of Nottingham
Myself, Split Open: Ovid, Rukeyser, and the Poetics of Orphic Re-Membering

Shawna Benston, University of St. Andrews
Staging Violence in Katie Mitchell’s Trojan Women

Elpida Christianiki, Simon Langton Girl’s Grammar School, Kent.
The Domestication of Classical Mythology in the Chronicles of Narnia

Juliette Harrison
Robert Bridges’ Masque Demeter and Oxford’s Persephones

Amanda Wrigley, Northwestern University
New Voices is a refereed electronic journal. Most of the ‘new voices’ are early career researchers such as recent post-docs and advanced graduate students or people who have changed research direction and are starting to publish their work in areas relevant to classical reception.
We now invite further submissions for the Issue 6 (to be published July 2011). Further details of how to submit are given on the New Voices website.

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