Ancient Roman jar full of holes baffles archaeologists. bit.ly/q9ZUTN #archaeology #roman— Owen Jarus (@ojarus) August 18, 2011 … might have to take the drive to look at this one … UPDATE (an hour or so of websurfing later): I don’t think the item in question is Roman … here’s some comparanda: 08-05-09/19 ISRAELITE VOTIVE GIFT [...]

Tip o’ the pileus to Vicky Alvear Shecter for this one … a very nicely-put-together article in History Today on the fire and the reactions to it: Galen and the Great Fire of Rome | History Today … for my part, I was unaware of the letter mentioned; not sure how I missed it.

The Vindolanda Trust tweeted this item from Law Pundit … seems Apple needs to do some Classical archaeology courses: LawPundit: The “Wafer Thin” Writing Tablets of Vindolanda Precede in Design the Thin Tablet Design Claim of Apple for the iPad2 by ca. 2000 Years: Does Modern Greed Know No Bounds?.

In contrast to some of the other ones posted yesterday, this video from the Royal Ontario Museum is pretty good. Christopher Smith of BSR fame gives us an intro to Roman Religion:

… just a few posts from the end of the day; gotta keep the info flowing: Rome: These Being the Words of Marcus Tullius Cicero August 17, 2011  (Juliette) Modern-Day Amazons. Love it! August 15, 2011 Yurie Hong Increasing Fertility in the Roman Late Republic and Early Empire August 17, 2011 History of the Ancient [...]

Hot off the Twitterfeed from the Caerleon dig (I’ll post some coverage on this dig later today, hopefully): Hobnail footprint in a tile from trench 1 twitpic.com/67xf58— Caerleon Dig (@CaerleonDig) August 18, 2011

Don Lavigne of Texas Tech tells us about his work with Archilochus (interesting ideas about performance in different contexts):

The BBC is really starting to bug me as regards coverage of archaeology. Of late, it appears the only things it feels worth covering are those which ‘happen’ to be associated with its Digging for Britain series. The problem is, of course, that there generally isn’t anything ‘new’ about it, but my email and social [...]

ante diem xv kalendas septembres 29 B.C. — dedication of the Temple of Divus Julius (and associated rites thereafter) 2nd century A.D. — martyrdom of Florus and Laurus in Illyria 328 A.D. — death of Helena, mother of Constantine