Category: Archaeology

Wine ‘Warehouse’ at Oplontis

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Found this one in the Wine Spectator:

Harvest season may have been their busiest time of year, but wine was the last thing on the minds of the 54 people huddled in a room of Oplontis Villa B in A.D. 79 as they looked out to sea in vain for a ship. In happier times, boats likely docked there frequently to pick up wine for export or drop off imports; on that day, none arrived before the deadly gas and fumes of Mount Vesuvius’ terrible eruption. “They were waiting to be saved,” said Dr. Michael Thomas, codirector of the Oplontis Project near Pompeii and director of the Center for the Study of Ancient Italy in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin. To California wine lovers, Thomas is known for the outstanding Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir and Syrah made under his Wrath label. But planting Falanghina—”one of the most ancient Italian varieties”—in California is just one way Thomas is exploring the Romans’ wine legacy. In his day job as an archaeologist, he and his team have been freshly appraising two Oplontis villas, mostly excavated in the 1970s and ’80s but never fully studied. When the team turned to Oplontis B last summer, they realized that the large edifice was no villa at all, but most likely an ancient distribution center for wine. “It’s almost like a co-op where everyone brings their wine, dumps it off, they make a huge bulk wine out of everybody’s grapes and then they redistribute it,” said Thomas, explaining their working theory, presented at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America in January. The Oplontis team will be analyzing the site for three more years, but a picture is already emerging of an operation not unlike the co-op and négociant models of today. The most obvious clue was a cache of 400 amphorae, terracotta vessels used by the Romans to transport liquid. The residue inside is awaiting analysis, but these jars are a design almost always used for wine in the region. “A lot of these big villas had working vineyards,” Thomas told Wine Spectator, and probably sold off some of their wine. “You probably had these vineyards scattered all over and even up fairly high on Vesuvius.” There are smaller tells as well. Fire pits in evidence would liquefy pitch, which the Romans used to seal amphorae. Digging below the A.D. 79 street level, to older construction, the team found paving in the courtyard, suggesting it was well-trafficked by carts making or picking up deliveries. The place is littered with pomegranates, which were used by the Romans to treat leather; wine was carried over land by cart, in a big leather sack called a culleus. “They filled up the cowhide with wine because amphorae were too heavy to transport by cart,” explained Thomas. Once local wines came into Oplontis B, were they blended? The team has discovered some evidence of waterproof concrete, but a more conclusive answer will call for some Indiana Jones maneuvering. “There’s one area that we’re going to try to excavate, but there’s also some danger, some stuff collapsing, so we’re going to have to be careful. But if we can excavate it, one of the possibilities is there’s some sort of vat over there.” Finished wines went into amphorae and out to sea. The full picture never came together during the first excavation largely because no one realized that Oplontis B was right on the water, but Thomas’ team did tests with coring and radar to determine its situation. (The ancient shoreline can be difficult to map because the sands of time have literally silted it over.) A stash of Cretan amphorae suggests the owner of Oplontis B may have been in the import business as well. “The Cretan wine for their own consumption makes sense because nearby are these luxury villas, and Cretan wine certainly had a reputation as a luxury item,” said Thomas. What about drinking local? “Campanian wines did not have the reputation of some of the other wines from not too far away, like Falernum,” Thomas considered. Pliny the Elder, writing in his Natural History just a few years before Vesuvius’ blast, noted that some of the wines were finding their groove. “In Campania, more recently, new growths under new names have gained considerable credit, either owing to careful cultivation, or else to some other fortuitous circumstances,” he wrote, but cautioned: “As to the wines of Pompeii … they are found to be productive of headache, which often lasts so long as the sixth hour of the next day.” (The terroir famously proved Pliny’s final headache: He was killed in a daring attempt to rescue friends from the eruption.) By all appearances, Oplontis B had been doing brisk business. “The owner had a strongbox that had all sorts of coins and jewelry in it. He had a big crew that was working there,” as the body count indicates, according to Thomas. So who was buying the wine? Rome topped 1 million people at around this time, and “tons of wealth poured into the city, so it was a big-time consumer city at that point. My guess would be that taking any wine up the coast would be a no-brainer,” said Thomas. Culty Falernian wine may have been the fashion of the day, but “these could’ve been less expensive drinking wines that you could find in a tavern.” We are awash in evidence that the Romans had a hearty wine culture. (At one Pompeii site, Bacchus is depicted as a grape cluster “sort of like the Fruit of the Loom commercials where the guy is dressed as a grape” with Vesuvius in the background.) But if Oplontis B functions as the team thinks it does, it would be the first distribution center of its kind discovered. And perhaps proof that even humble bulk wine has pedigree after all.

Plans for the Gladiator Tomb! (maybe)

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

If you’ve been hanging around rogueclassicism and/or my twitterfeed, you will be aware of the campaign to save the so-called ‘Gladiator Tomb’ from being reburied. The campaign was spearheaded by the fine folks at the American Institute of Roman Culture, which started a petition. Well, according to La Stampa, it appears all that attention has had an effect (at least they’re talking about it again) …ecce:

La fine di marzo era una stagione meravigliosa nella villa di Livia, moglie dell’imperatore Augusto. La villa era circondata da un paesaggio che non aveva eguali nei dintorni di Roma: colline, prati e il Tevere. Si trovava lungo la via Flaminia, l’arteria più importante tra la capitale dell’impero e le regioni settentrionali. Capitava che Livia si ritirasse lì e che l’imperatore andasse a trovarla quando si liberava dagli impegni. Dal centro di Roma era un piccolo viaggio ma la distanza era ripagata dalla bellezza del paesaggio costellato di importanti mausolei e distese di dolci prati.

L’anno prossimo saranno 2 mila anni dalla morte di Augusto: si sta mettendo a punto il programma delle celebrazioni ma quel pezzo della sua vita difficilmente potrà essere ricostruito se non con una buona dose di fantasia. Eppure la Soprintendenza Archeologica ha nel cassetto un progetto per trasformare la Flaminia in una nuova Appia antica. E’ un’idea talmente semplice da sembrare la scoperta dell’acqua calda. Sfrutta il vantaggio che la Flaminia ha rispetto alle altre rinomate strade consolari: la linea ferroviaria, la Roma-Viterbo.

Avete mai provato a raggiungere l’Appia senza un’auto privata? Da perderci la testa. La via Flaminia, invece, ha un trenino con le fermate che sembrano studiate da un archeologo per quanto sono vicine agli antichi siti. Quando fu scritto il progetto, c’era anche qualcos’altro: un paesaggio ancora non troppo diverso da quello attraversato dall’imperatore. Bastava unire questi elementi per avere un Parco archeologico, affermarono i fautori del progetto, sostenuti da Italia Nostra.

Non bastava, invece. «Quel progetto era innanzitutto un sogno, perché noi archeologi siamo dei sognatori», racconta Marina Piranomonte, una delle responsabili degli scavi lungo la Flaminia per la Soprintendenza Archeologica di Roma che aveva ideato il Parco insieme con il collega Gaetano Messineo.

La realtà è diversa. Si sale sul treno a piazzale Flaminio, appena fuori piazza del Popolo. La Roma-Viterbo è seconda nella lista nera delle ferrovie italiane stilata da Legambiente: treni vecchi, sporchi, affollati a dismisura, corse che saltano di continuo. E per fortuna nella classifica non è contemplato il paesaggio, un’orgia di discariche, baracche di senzatetto, industrie abbandonate.

La prima fermata utile da un punto di vista archeologico è «Due Ponti». Si scende in un agglomerato compatto di case Anni 60. Alcuni anni fa su uno dei pochi terreni rimasti liberi il proprietario, il costruttore Bonifaci, decise di costruire altri tre palazzi: dovette fermarsi perché dagli scavi preventivi era emersa la Tomba del Gladiatore, il mausoleo di Marco Nonio Macrino, probabilmente il personaggio a cui era ispirato il film «Il Gladiatore». Era il 2008, la notizia fece il giro del mondo e la fermata conquistò un posto di rilievo che fino ad allora non aveva nel Parco Archeologico. Quattro anni dopo la Tomba è lì, coperta da un geotessuto, ma nessuno ha idea di quale futuro avrà. È stato speso un milione per tirare fuori la preziosa Tomba nascosta a sette metri di profondità e restaurarla, ma ne sarebbero necessari altri tre per creare un museo e renderla visitabile. «Si studia come recuperarli. Siamo aperti a qualunque possibilità» – chiarisce Daniela Rossi, responsabile per la Soprintendenza del sito.

La fermata successiva è Grottarossa. Un segnale indica la presenza di un sito archeologico, ma è più facile trovarlo seguendo la discarica lungo la ferrovia. Attraverso un cancello arrugginito si entra in una necropoli con due mausolei imponenti della fine del periodo repubblicano, un tratto della via Flaminia molto ben conservata, e una vasca. L’area è ampia ma l’erba è alta. I mausolei sono chiusi e coperti di muschio, i pannelli che raccontano la loro storia sono a terra e i resti di vestiti e cibo lasciano capire che di notte qualcuno dorme lì. «Non è trascuratezza, è una questione di priorità – racconta Marina Piranomonte – dopo anni abbiamo da poco ottenuto l’esproprio dell’area. I fondi per il 2013 verranno utilizzati per rimettere a posto il sito. Mi impegno a farlo rimettere a posto entro un anno».

Superata Saxa Rubra, si scende di nuovo a Labaro. Nascosto tra una selva di cavalcavia e discariche, c’è un ponte romano, lo stesso usato da Augusto quando andava a trovare la moglie nella sua villa e dalle truppe di Massenzio durante la battaglia contro Costantino. E’ stato liberato nel 2005 da una parte di rifiuti e l’Anas aveva promesso di creare un Parco archeologico. Parole finite nel nulla.

L’ultima fermata è La Celsa. Fuori dalla stazione, dal lato opposto rispetto al Tevere, non si può non vedere un enorme sperone di tufo, un Mausoleo dove i romani scavavano i loro monumenti funerari. Alla base ci sono delle fornaci dove veniva prodotta la terracotta. Due anni fa il sito – già in passato rifugio per clochard – è stato rimesso a posto: costo dell’operazione 300 mila euro. Oggi, infatti, la parte alta della roccia è molto bella e ben visibile. All’interno delle grotte nella parte più bassa, però, sono tornati a vivere i senzatetto.

Sembra un gioco dell’oca, in cui si corre il rischio di tornare sempre alla casella di partenza e di rendere la via Flaminia solo la strada delle occasioni mancate. «Sono ottimista – risponde Daniela Rossi – per me la Flaminia è la strada delle occasioni da recuperare. Lo faremo, anche con l’aiuto dei privati. Possiamo farcela, il progetto del Parco non è morto». «Tutte le nostre risorse e il nostro impegno sono dedicati a quest’obiettivo», conferma Marina Piranomonte.

If you want a reasonable English summary, check out Worldcrunch … the idea of a series of sites one could visit by train is definitely interesting if the funding can be found …

Relocating the Hanging Gardens of Babylon

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Very interesting item, somewhat on the periphery of our purview, in the Independent:

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, weren’t in Babylon at all – but were instead located 300 miles to the north in Babylon’s greatest rival Nineveh, according to a leading Oxford-based historian.

After more than 20 years of research, Dr. Stephanie Dalley, of Oxford University’s Oriental Institute, has finally pieced together enough evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the famed gardens were built in Nineveh by the great Assyrian ruler Sennacherib – and not, as historians have always thought, by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.

Dr. Dalley first publicly proposed her idea that Nineveh, not Babylon, was the site of the gardens back in 1992, when her claim was reported in The Independent – but it’s taken a further two decades to find enough evidence to prove it.

Detective work by Dr. Dalley – due to be published as a book by Oxford University Press later this month – has yielded four key pieces of evidence.

First, after studying later historical descriptions of the Hanging Gardens, she realized that a bas-relief from Sennacherib’s palace in Nineveh actually portrayed trees growing on a roofed colonnade exactly as described in classical accounts of the gardens.

That crucial original bas-relief appears to have been lost in the mid 19 century. When it was discovered by the British archaeologist, Austin Henry Layard, in the 1840s, it seems to have already been in such poor condition that its surface was, in all probability, rapidly crumbling away. Alternatively, it may have been amongst a group of Layard’s UK- bound Nineveh carvings which were lost when the boat carrying them sank in the River Tigris. Luckily, however, an artist employed by Layard had already drawn the bass-relief – and that drawing, recently recognised by Dr. Dalley as portraying the garden, had been reproduced in Layard’s book about Nineveh published in London in 1853.

Further research by Dr. Dalley then suggested that, after Assyria had sacked and conquered Babylon in 689 BC, the Assyrian capital Nineveh may well have been regarded as the ‘New Babylon’ – thus creating the later belief that the Hanging Gardens were in fact in Babylon itself. Her research revealed that at least one other town in Mesopotamia – a city called Borsippa – was being described as “another Babylon” as early as the 13 century BC, thus implying that in antiquity the name could be used to describe places other than the real Babylon. A breakthrough occurred when she noticed from earlier research that after Sennacherib had sacked and conquered Babylon, he had actually renamed all the gates of Nineveh after the names traditionally used for Babylon’s city gates. Babylon had always named its gates after its gods. After the Assyrians sacked Babylon, the Assyrian monarch simply renamed Nineveh’s city gates after those same gods. In terms of nomenclature, it was clear that Nineveh was in effect becoming a ‘New Babylon’.

Dr. Dalley then looked at the comparative topography of Babylon and Nineveh and realized that the totally flat countryside around the real Babylon would have made it impossible to deliver sufficient water to maintain the sort of raised gardens described in the classical sources. As her research proceeded it therefore became quite clear that the ‘Hanging Gardens’ as described could not have been built in Babylon.

Finally her research began to suggest that the original classical descriptions of the Hanging Gardens had been written by historians who had actually visited the Nineveh area.

Researching the post-Assyrian history of Nineveh, she realized that Alexander the Great had actually camped near the city in 331BC – just before he defeated the Persians at the famous battle of Gaugamela. It’s known that Alexander’s army actually camped by the side of one of the great aqueducts that carried water to what Dr. Dalley now believes was the site of the Hanging Gardens.

Alexander had on his staff several Greek historians including Callisthenes, Cleitarchos and Onesicritos, whose works have long been lost to posterity – but significantly those particular historians’ works were sometimes used as sources by the very authors who several centuries later described the gardens in works that have survived to this day.

“It’s taken many years to find the evidence to demonstrate that the gardens and associated system of aqueducts and canals were built by Sennacherib at Nineveh and not by Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon. For the first time it can be shown that the Hanging Garden really did exist” said Dr. Dalley.

The Hanging Gardens were built as a roughly semi-circular theatre-shaped multi-tiered artificial hill some 25 metres high. At its base was a large pool fed by small streams of water flowing down its sides. Trees and flowers were planted in small artificial fields constructed on top of roofed colonnades. The entire garden was around 120 metres across and it’s estimated that it was irrigated with at least 35,000 litres of water brought by a canal and aqueduct system from up to 50 miles away. Within the garden itself water was raised mechanically by large water-raising bronze screw-pumps.

The newly revealed builder of the Hanging Gardens, Sennacherib of Assyria – and Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon who was traditionally associated with them – were both aggressive military leaders. Sennacherib’s campaign against Jerusalem was immortalized some 2500 years later in a poem by Lord Byron describing how “the Assyrians came down like a wolf on the fold,” his cohorts “gleaming in purple and gold.”

Both were also notorious for destroying iconic religious buildings. Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon destroyed Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem and according to one much later tradition was temporarily turned into a beast for his sins against God. Sennacherib of Assyria destroyed the great temples of Babylon, an act which was said to have shocked the Mesopotamian world. Indeed tradition holds that when he was later murdered by two of his sons, it was divine retribution for his destruction of those temples.

Bizarrely it may be that the Hanging Gardens were the first of the seven ‘wonders’ of the world to be so described – for Sennacherib himself referred to his palace gardens, built in around 700BC or shortly after, as “a wonder for all the peoples”. It’s only now however that the new research has finally revealed that his palace gardens were indeed one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Some historians have thought that the Hanging Gardens may even have been purely legendary. The new research finally demonstrates that they really did exist.

Greco-Roman Remains Along the Suez Canal

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

From Al-Ahram:

An Egyptian excavation mission from the Ministry of State for Antiquities (MSA) uncovered on Thursday a complete industrial area that can be dated to the Graeco-Roman era.

The discovery was found during routine excavation work at the archaeological site of Tell Abu-Seifi, located east of the Suez Canal and south of Qantara East.

The industrial area includes of a number of workshops for clay and bronze statues, vessels, pots and pans as well as a collection of administrative buildings, store galleries and a whole residential area for labours. Amphora, imported from south of Italy, was also unearthed.

“It is a very important discovery that highlights Egypt’s economical and commercial relation with its neighbouring countries on the Mediterranean Sea,” MSA Minister Mohamed Ibrahim told Ahram Online. He added that it also gives a complete idea of the Egyptian labours’ daily life.

For his part, Mohamed Abdel Maqsoud, supervisor of the excavation mission, pointed out that among the newly discovered objects is a very important Roman engraving that provides detailed information on the military importance of Tell Abu-Seifi and the army divisions in this area.

Tell Abu-Seifi is one of the most important historical military sites of Egypt on the Al-Bilozi Nile branch, where three Ptolemaic and Roman military castles are located.

The archaeological site of Tell Abu-Seifi is found on Egypt’s eastern gate, where a great military group was once located, Abdel Maqsoud told Ahram Online in a telephone interview.

The newly discovered engraving shows how and where soldiers were divided and distributed in different locations inside the castles, he explained.

A collection of bronze coins dated to the eras of King Ptolemy II and IV were also unearthed as well as terracotta (burned clay) statues of the god of war Bes.

This discovery came within the framework of routine excavations along the Belozi Nile branch, which is now non-existant, to discover the Horus Ancient Military Road once used by King Ahmose to expel the Hyksos.

Abdel Maqsoud pointed out that Egypt’s MSA is applying a new training system for junior archaeologists and approximately 200 have joined the excavation mission to train them in excavations and restorations.

Until now, our mission has trained 600 archaeologists in five years, Abdel Maqsoud concluded.

… the original article has a couple of photos/slides of the industrial area and the little terracotta Bes …

Africans in Roman Britain

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ 1 Comment

Saw this in something called The Voice:

AN INTERACTIVE website for children highlighting the diversity of Roman Britain will be launched tomorrow in a bid to challenge lessons on the current history curriculum.

The Romans Revealed project – a collaboration between race equality think tank the Runnymede Trust and archaeologists from the University of Reading – will be officially launched at the Museum of London on April 25.

It will act as a learning resource for teachers and parents to show children about a lesser-known side of the historical period.

The interactive website allows children to ‘dig up’ graves and read stories by children’s author Caroline Lawrence told from the perspective of four people living in Roman Britain.

It follows a research project from the university, A Long Way Home: Diaspora Communities in Roman Britain, which examined over 150 skeletons to find out about patterns of migration.

Dr Hella Eckardt, senior lecturer in Roman Archaeology at the University of Reading, said: “Our analysis of excavated skeletal remains of people living in Roman Britain such as the ‘Ivory Bangle Lady’ and others like her show that multicultural Britain is not just a phenomenon of more modern times.”

By analysing skeletons facial features, skull measurements, the chemical signature of food and drink and burial goods, archaeologists were able to learn more about Roman times and migrants of African descent who came to Britain.

The ‘Ivory Bangle Lady’ was a high status young woman of North African descent who remains were buried in Roman York (Sycamore Terrace).

Dated to the second half of the 4th Century, her grave contained jet and elephant ivory bracelets, earrings, pendants, beads, a blue glass jug and a glass mirror.

Dr Debbie Weekes-Bernard, who is leading the Romans Revealed outreach project, said: “The University of Reading research results showed that people came to Britain from many different parts of the Roman Empire, including North Africa. In some of the larger towns like York and Winchester, up to 20 per cent of the Roman Britain population may be classed as ‘non-local’ or ‘incomers’.

“This research is really important, providing evidence to challenge the current curriculum as taught in schools and highlighting the diversity of Roman Britain.”

According to the National Archives, the official archive for the UK Government, people of African descent have had a presence in Britain for the past 2,000 years.

In Roman times, black troops were sent to the ‘remote and barbaric’ province of Britannia – the ancient term for Great Britain – with many settling permanently even after the Roman legions left.

via: Children’s website tells stories of Roman Britain’s Africans (The Voice)

… you can check out the Romans Revealed website here … if you’re interested in some of the finds which probably contributed to this project:

I know there was something (at rogueclassicism) involving a burial of an African woman in Britain that was also connected with Caroline Lawrence (i.e. she wrote about it too), but my search engine divinities appear to have gone to visit the blameless Ethiopians or something …