The Germans Have Left the Building … er Troy
From Hurriyet: A team of German archaeologists, conducting excavations for nearly 25 years in the ancient city of Troy in Turkey’s northwest, are set to turn over their positions to U.S. archaeologists, daily Hürriyet reported. The German team is leaving the excavations to the Americans because of financial problems, Professor Ernst Pernicka, the head of [...]
Caistor St Edmund Dig Update
A very nice report from the Evening News … note the link at the end to the project’s blog: They have been excavating for just a week, but already members of an archaeological team at a Roman town on the outskirts of Norwich have found “huge quantities” of artefacts. A thousand visitors have been to [...]
Rethinking the ‘Domus of the Dancing Cherubs’ at Aquileia
This probably won’t last long at ANSA: Archaeologists working on the remains of an ancient dwelling in northern Italy have reassessed their ideas about the site after uncovering lavish decorations and imposing architectural features. The building in Aquileia, which previously appeared to be a normal Roman villa, has now emerged as a majestic mansion complex, [...]
Roman Socks and Sandals Rereredux
Newspapers in the UK are starting to get agog over a recent find … the Telegraph seems typical: New evidence from an archaeological dig has found that legionnaires wore socks with sandals. Rust on a nail from a Roman sandal found in newly discovered ruins in North Yorkshire appears to contain fibres which could suggest [...]
Pre Roman Remains at Brading Roman Villa
From the County Press: THE third phase of the Big Dig at Brading Roman Villa may well have been one of the toughest excavations eminent archaeologist Sir Barry Cunliffe had ever undertaken but it has yielded some treasures and a greater understanding of Brading’s history up to its Roman occupation. With the three-week dig ending [...]
Major Temple Site from LeMans/Vindunum
From the Guardian: Excavations near the antique city of Vindunum (now Le Mans) have revealed a vast religious site dating from the first to the third centuries AD with remarkably well-preserved offerings. Sometimes archaeology requires imagination. And you need it to conjure up the vast complex of temples that stood nearly 2,000 years ago on [...]
Major Find (Maybe?) From Apollonia
Here’s one Tim Parkin (and others) and I have been chatting about on Facebook … AFP via PhysOrg: Archaeologists unearthed a Roman bust from the 2nd century AD hailed as the most important archaeological find of the last 50 years in Albania, experts said Friday. “It is an exceptional discovery, the most important in the [...]
Hekatomnus’ Tomb Found(?)
I’ve already griped about how my low-bandwidth situation while visiting my mother was incredibly annoying when there was big archaeological news, so by way of praeteritio, I won’t mention it again. Even so, another example of which were reports of a tomb find in Milas, Turkey. The initial English report brought back by my spiders [...]
Manicure Set from Myra-Andriake (Turkey)
The only version in English that I can find of this (in multiple newspapers) has the story tied to that Swedish phallic thing that was in the news for most folks last week. Here’s what’s important for us: Archaeologists have uncovered an ancient Roman personal care set at Myra-Andriake in Antalya’s district of Demre, Turkey. [...]
Statue of Artemis from Zajecar?
Tip o’ the pileus to Adrian Murdoch for this one: At the site of the ‘Felix Romuliana’, an imperial palace near the Town of Zajecar, German experts of the Archeology Institute in Frankfurt, together with the colleagues of the Archeology Institute in Belgrade have discovered a sensational sculpture, unique in this area of the Balkans. [...]
Roman Wall Paintings from Bulgaria
Image via Wikipedia I’ve been waiting for my spiders to bring me this one … but they seemed to have stopped at Francesca Tronchin’s first (tip o’ the pileus). Brief item from Balkan Travellers: An archaeologist has discovered unique wall paintings in an ancient residence in the late Roman town of Novae, located in northern [...]
Questionable Antiquities in Madrid
Way back when the ‘museum case’ was just getting under way I wondered why the focus seemed to be only on American museums … now, it appears, with the trial of Gianfranco Becchina commencing, European museums might be coming into view. Here’s a very interesting item on same from the Art Newspaper: Madrid’s National Archaeological [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Buckinghamshire’s Earliest ‘Recorded’ Resident
Here’s an incredibly interesting followup to that purported brothel/infanticide story from t’other day which likely isn’t going to make it beyond the local press: A ROMAN woman living around 150-200 AD has become the earliest named Buckinghamshire resident ever to be recorded, Archaeologists say. Siitomina, who is thought to have lived at the Yewden Villa [...]
Another Gladiator Grave Claim — This Time Female?
The BBC seems to be first off the mark with this one, and it will likely be picked up: Archaeologists in Herefordshire have uncovered the remains of what could possibly be a female gladiator. Amongst the evidence of a Roman suburb in Credenhill, they have found the grave of a massive, muscular woman. She was [...]
Christian Necropolis from Bitola?
Image via Wikipedia The headline suggests — once again — that archaeologists are a rather clumsy lot: During the reconstruction works of the Tumbe Kafe stadium and recreational zone in Macedonia’s south-western town of Bitola, archaeologists have found necropolises, most likely dating to the third century. “All construction activities have been halted in order to [...]
Temple and Bridge from Near Apamea
This one from Sify/ANI is annoyingly lacking in details … I can’t find a name for al-Bahred in ancient times, but it seems to be the right distance away from Apamea to be a mansio at least …: Archaeologists have unearthed an archaeological temple dating back to the Hellenistic and Roman eras. They have also [...]
Infanticide at Buckinghamshire Brothel? I Doubt It …
As is typical, when life is most hectic comes the time when the most interesting bloggables start flashing past me on Twitter, Facebook, and in email. I can’t get to them all today, but I do want to quickly comment an item from the Telegraph regarding possible evidence of infanticide associated with remains of a Roman [...]
Roman Fort in Cornwall?
Image via Wikipedia From the Telegraph: Pottery and other evidence suggesting the presence of an ironworks have been found at the undisclosed location near St Austell, Cornwall. Experts say the discovery challenges the belief that Romans did not settle in the county and stopped in neighbouring Devon. The site had previously been regarded as an [...]
More from Sofia/Serdica
On the heels of last week’s announcement of the opening of a major Roman site to the public, the Sofia News Agency tells us that archaeologists are on the trail (they hope) of Constantine’s palace there too: A large ancient building located under the St. Nedelya Cathedral in downtown Sofia might turn out to be [...]
Gladiators in York: Followup
Image via Wikipedia Brief item from York Press: A SKELETON – thought to be the remains of a Roman gladiator – has gone on display in York. The skeleton is on display at the Jorvik Viking Centre from today. It is one of 80 skeletons unearthed in the city by York Archaeological Trust over the [...]
Roman Remains in Sofia
AFP seems to be the only one covering this … I can’t find that we’ve mentioned anything about this before either: The remains of an ancient Roman town were on Thursday unveiled to the public in the centre of the Bulgarian capital Sofia. Excavation of the site — which currently includes a Roman palace, baths [...]
Gladiator Graveyard?
From the Times … seems to be hyping an upcoming TV documentary: Archaeologists believe that they may have discovered a Roman gladiator cemetery near York city centre. About 80 remains have been found since the investigation began in 2004, with more than half of them decapitated. Researchers believe they may form part of the world’s [...]
