Friday Archaeology Blogging
Interactive Edition

Gentle readers, I am need of your aid. I've been working on a little project related to Greek mythology, and in the course of it I came across this image:


Click the image for a truly gigantic version.

The provenance of the piece is unknown, although it originally decorated the base of a statue of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, and probably dates to the third century A.D. The statue was part of the collection of Cardinal Albani, and was set up in his villa at Porta Salaria in about 1763. When the Papal States capitulated to Napoleon in 1797, the piece was seized under the terms of the Treaty of Tolentino, and taken to France. Although it was formally returned to the Vatican in 1815, Louis XVIII of France re-purchased it along with several other confiscated works of art, and it resides today in the Louvre.

What is depicted on the relief is the creation of the human race from clay by the Titan Prometheus. He is seated, in the shade of a tree, on the right hand side of the image, and is just finishing the moulding of a male figure. On the left side of the image is the goddess Minerva, easily recognizable by her helmet and spear, and by the gorgon's head on her breastplate. Between them a number of newly created people are cavorting about.

My question for you folks is this: What is Minerva holding in her right hand, and what is she doing with it? It looks a little bit like a bird (her iconic owl, perhaps?), but if so she's holding it in a very strange way. Anyway, post theories, speculation, ideas, etc. in the comments! Also, if you have any thoughts on who the being in the tree is, I'd love to hear those as well! For the record, the project was simply to find images of Prometheus; I'm interested in the Minerva figure out of mere curiosity.

Friday Archaeology Blogging
Close to Home Edition

First off, Happy New Year to everyone!

Now, down to business! We've had archaeological happenings right here in Edmonton over the past few days! The city is in the midst of extending the LRT (that's the subway, in case anyone's wondering, although the current stretch is above ground) into the south side of Edmonton, and the other day the construction crews managed to turn up human remains. These were quickly deemed to be "historical," and the anthropologists have been called in.


Yet unidentified human remains

The city has since decided to do exactly the right thing, and proceed with great care and caution in the area involved:

City halts LRT work
Archeologist called in after human remains unearthed
By ANDREW HANON, SUN MEDIA

Native activists breathed a sigh of relief after the city halted construction on a controversial stretch of the south LRT extension until an archeologist can be hired to supervise the work.

City hall announced the move yesterday, four days after human remains were discovered by excavation crews working near 111 Street and 43 Avenue.

Now, the main question revolves around the identity of the body found. Chances are quite good that is a member of the group of Cree who settled in the area under Chief Papaschase in the 1850s. For awhile, they lived on a reservation of about 40 square miles in what is now the southern section of the City of Edmonton, but, in the later years of the 19th century, a combination of famine and bureaucratic slight-of-hand saw them removed from that land and merged rather abruptly with the Enoch Cree to the west (they were actually treated quite shabbily by various levels of government, and there has been recent litigation over this). Interestingly, one of the major inciters of the removal of the Papaschase Cree was Frank Oliver, one of Edmonton's early movers and shakers, and a man who now has an entire neighbourhood named after him. There is a great deal more information about the Papaschase Cree here.

One other issue has been raised by the discovery of these remains, and it's the problem of what to do when development and archaeology butt heads. Edmonton is not, for example, Rome, where long experience has led to the creation of laws and guidelines that allow development to proceed and archaeology to be done properly. It's a bit tricky; the laws must protect archaeology without tempting the developers to conceal, or worse, destroy archaeological sites (I should point out here that I'm not accusing all developers of being prone to that sort of thing; a recent development near where my father lives in Ontario turned up archaeological remains, and the developer immediately halted work, called in archaeologists, redrew the plans for the development to protect the site, and generally carried on as though he found the archaeological finds far more interesting than he did the construction of his building). No such laws exist in Edmonton, and it would be a good idea for City Council to sit down and draw some up, particularly as this particular Council seems very eager to embark on large construction projects!

Friday Archaeology Blogging
Arrrrrrrrrrrrrh, Matey Edition

Pirate of the Caribbean’s ship is discovered
James Bone in New York

The discovery of Captain Kidd's 300-year-old ship in the Caribbean could provide final proof that the Scottish privateer did not deserve to be hanged as a pirate and his rotting body left on public view.

The wreck of the fabled Quedagh Merchant has been located in 10ft waters off Catalina Island in the Dominican Republic, only miles from where Kidd left it when he sailed to Boston to try to clear his name in 1699.



The Quedagh Merchant (the larger of the two ships in the engraving above) was actually captured by Kidd in the Indian Ocean, and he converted it to his own use, as his previous vessel was borderline unseaworthy. Kidd then sailed the Quedagh Merchant to the Caribbean, where he left it when he turned himself in to fight charges of piracy. He was subsequently executed in England, and the vessel was later scuttled, as the article indicates, at Catalina Island.


Map of the Dominican Republic - Click to see larger version. Catalina Island is the tiny island right on the 69th meridian south of La Romana.

“It would confirm that he was telling the truth,” said Richard Zacks, author of The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd. “He has the reputation as a terrible fearsome pirate, when he considered himself an honourable privateer.”

I'm not so sure about this. Kidd was a legal privateer, having been given a letter of marque allowing him to harass French vessels. However, the problem seems to have been that he wasn't very good at it. In fact, his expedition to the Indian Ocean had been pretty much a failure until the Quedagh Merchant hove in view. Only in a very narrow, legalistic, view was the ship in fact French; it was, more realistically, Armenian, and was in fact captained by an Englishman. Furthermore, after taking the Quedagh Merchant, Kidd apparently traded with a known pirate, something prohibited strictly under the law. Kidd's attempts to explain away these matters in court were extremely unconvincing, and led to the fairly inevitable end for people convicted of piracy.

There are, of course, still some doubts about whether the discovered vessel is really the Quedagh Merchant, but its location and the fact that it shows signs of having been scuttled, make the identification likely. In and of itself, the discovery of the vessel is not terribly significant, but it must be admitted that finding an actual pirate ship, particularly one associated with as famous a name as Captain William Kidd, is pretty cool. The pictures below show divers from Indiana University at work on the wreck.


Click to see larger version

Friday Archaeology Blogging
No Romans This Time Edition

Archaeologists dig up 4300-year-old city
From correspondents in Beijing
December 04, 2007 05:56pm

CHINESE archaeologists have dug up what is believed to be a 4300-year-old city that could be the capital of China's oldest dynasty, state press said today.

The ancient city was believed to be part of the Liangzhu culture dated back to neolithic times between 4000 and 5300 years ago, the China Daily said.


Map of China showing location of Zhejiang Province, where the recently discovered ancient city is situated.


Detail map of Zhejiang Province, click to see larger version.

The Liangzhu is one a large number of neolithic cultures whose remains have been discovered in China. It seems to have begun in the mid-fourth millenium B.C., and lasted roughly 1500 years. Apparently, the Liangzhu people were extremely competent at agriculture (including animal husbandry and aquaculture), and seem to mark a transition from the earlier hunter-gatherer cultures to a less nomadic way of life. Liangzhu culture was extremely stratified, at least to judge from the archaeological remains, and was also very much into the whole human sacrifice thing. However, what the Liangzhu people are best known for is the extremely high quality jade artefacts that the culture produced.


Liangzhu jade "Cong", click to see larger version

Nobody can say with any great certainty was the Cong was used for; presumably it had some sort of ritual purpose, since it is very commonly found in Liangzhu tombs, along with numerous other jade artefacts.


Liangzhu tomb. Note the presence of Congs

Perceived similarity between the "monster faces" on some Liangzhu artefacts and Olmec art from what is now Mexico has caused speculation about the possibility of trans-Pacific trade. I must say that I can't see enough of a similarity myself to say "yes" to that notion with any certainty, but I would by no means rule it out.


Olmec were-jaguar head, 1200 B.C. to 400 B.C.

So, what is the overall significance of this putative city that has just been discovered? Well, if it does prove to have been a Liangzhu capital city, then it means that the Liangzhu people were in fact a "kingdom," rather than simply a group of culturally alike people living close together. Therefore, the Liangzhu would displace the Xia Dynasty as China's earliest known kingdom, and would in fact walk the origin of the Chinese dynasties back about 1500 years.

It Is To Weep

Q: What's worse than an ignoramus?

A: A stubborn ignoramus.

From the Huffington Post, via The Woodshed.

Friday Archaeology Blogging
Pre-Roman Italy Edition



So, I thought today that I'd babble on about some of the peoples inhabiting Italy prior to the Roman domination. There were quite a number, many of them ethnically or linguistically related to the Romans, and some of them definitely not. Here's a small sample, working roughly from the South of the peninsula to the North. I've provided only very brief notes about them - perhaps I'll take one of them and do a much fuller Friday Archaeology Blogging about them at another time.

Lucanians: A people related to the Samnites, the Lucanians took over the southern part of Italy during the 5th century B.C., expelling the previous inhabitants (the Oenotrii and Ausones on the map). They almost immediately lost the region of the Calabria to insurrection on the part of the Bruttii, however. The Lucanians fairly quickly got crosswise of the Romans, and suffered badly after backing Hannibal during the 2nd Punic War (218-202 B.C., roughly). Although they managed to get up again to fight the Romans in 90-88 B.C., during the so-called Social War, they were beaten badly again, and faded into insignificance.


The Lucanian sanctuary at Rossano di Vaglio - I was there this summer!

Samnites: Of all the indigenous peoples of Italy (leaving aside the Etruscans for the moment), the Samnites probably came closest to upstaging the Romans. In fact, they came very, very close. In 321 B.C., the Samnites inflicted upon the Romans a humiliating defeat at the Battle of the Caudine Forks in south-central Italy, forcing the defeated Roman survivors to pass under a yoke as a symbol of their surrender.

The Samnites inhabited the region of the Appennine Mountains, just to the South of Rome, bordering Lucanian territories, and spoke a language related to Latin. They warred with the Romans throughout the last half of the fourth century B.C., before being overcome early in the third. A brief rebellion in the 80s B.C. was, according to the sources, punished with extreme ferocity by Lucius Cornelius Sulla, and the Samnites basically fade from history at that point, although the name "Samnite" was given to a particular style of gladiator (there is, in fact, some evidence that the Romans copied the conept of gladiatorial combat from the Samnites).


A Samnite bronze helmet.

Umbrians: The Umbrians were a very, very old people, first attested archaeologically in the 9th century B.C. Dwelling in what is still called Umbria, to the East of the Etruscans, they spoke a language related to Latin. Although conquered by the Romans in the third century B.C., the Umbrians generally managed to avoid the kind of devastation that was visited on peoples like the Lucanians; they seem to have simply gradually romanized over time. They were granted Roman citizenship in 90 B.C., mostly as a reward for not opposing Rome too energetically during the Social War.

Etruscans: Ah, the mysterious Etruscans... Speaking a language that is most definitely not related to Latin, and in fact may even be non-Indo-European, the Etruscans exercised dominion over North-central Italy until the rise of Roman powers. Indeed, the Etruscans in fact at times held considerable power over Rome itself. Even after the end of Etruscan independance (more or less the beginning of the first century B.C.), ethnic Etruscans continued to occupy important positions in the Roman political hierarchy.

The main debate over the Etruscans, of course, revolves around who the heck they were. Some scholars have proposed a middle-eastern origin for them (the foundation myths of some Etruscan cities involve the fall of Troy), while others suggest that the Etruscans were in fact autochthonous, descendants of the earlier Villanovan culture. The jury is pretty much still out on this one.


An Etruscan fresco from Orvieto.

Non-Indigenous Inhabitants: A brief word is in order about those peoples who came to Italy from elsewhere before the rise of the Romans. The main group here is the Greeks, who had heavily colonized the southern part of the peninsula and Sicily beginning in about the 7th century B.C. Sicily, in particular, became a fairly major player in the Greek world before finally being absorbed by the Romans. They had significant contact, obviously, with the Lucanians, and there's a fair bit of research that's being done (some of it by a very good friend of mine), on exactly what that relationship was like. The influence of the Greeks on southern Italy cannot be overstated; to this day, there are remote communities in Calabria whose dialect of "Italian" is in fact ancient Greek.

The other non-indigenous group roaming around Italy during the pre-Roman period that bears mentioning is the Celts. The Celts, at various times, passed through and even settled in parts of Italy. In fact, in 390 B.C. they sacked and burned the city of Rome, in retaliation for the Romans having opposed them in an earlier fight against a different city. The only reason, according to legend, that Rome survived at all, was that many of its inhabitants took shelter in the town's citadel, a relatively defensible position. An attempted night raid on the citadel by the Celts had the misfortune to stumble into an enclosure containing sacred geese, who objected loudly to this intrusion and woke the defenders. One group of Celts who are known to have been in Italy is the tribe known as the Boii, who inhabited the Adriatic coast for a while. Upon being driven from Italy, the moved North, and settled in the area of modern Slovakia, a region to which they gave the name "Bohemia."

I realize here that I have not even barely scratched the surface of the topic of pre-Roman Italy; indeed, there are scholars who base their life's work on minor aspects of even one of the cultures listed above (or of one of a number of other pre-Roman cultures - I've by no means been comprehensive here!). However, I think it's worthwhile just to get the names out there, and to remind people that the Italian peninsula was not a monolithically Roman geographic entity!

Friday Archaeology Blogging
Slightly Less Late Edition.

Some time ago, we did a post on the discovery of Lupercale, the cave wherein the ancient Romans believed that Romulus and Remus had been nursed by a she-wolf. Well, we finally have pictures!



As you can see, the mosaic decorations in the cave are extremely elaborate, as would befit a place with that type of ritual significance. However, wait a second:

Italian expert skeptical of sacred Roman cave
Sat Nov 24, 2007 12:47am IST
By Silvia Aloisi

ROME (Reuters) - A leading Italian archaeologist said Friday that the grotto whose discovery was announced this week in Rome is not the sacred cave linked to the myth of the city's foundation by Romulus and Remus.

Now, archaeologists disagreeing is not really news, and some extremely reputable archaeologists (Andrea Carandini among them), have opined that the cave is in fact Lupercale, so I would hesitate to leap in and claim that this fellow has a point. Furthermore, he bases his argument against the identification of the cave as Lupercale largely on the writings of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a first-century B.C. historian who may be interpreted as having situated the Lupercale elsewhere on the Palatine Hill. While Dionysius has a decent reputation as a historian, it's always a bit dodgy to base archaeological hypotheses ancient written sources. So, it will be interesting to see how this all plays out! In the meantime, we'll look at the pretty mosaics...

Friday Archaeology Blogging
On Monday Edition.

My favourite type of Roman pottery is the shiny red fineward known technically as "Italian Terra Sigillata", usually abbreviated to "ITS". Yes, I have a favourite type of Roman pottery. Anyhoo, ITS (also known as "Arretine Ware" or "Samian Ware") first developed in Etruria, in and around the Roman city of Arretium (modern Arezzo) roughly during the middle of the first century B.C. Later, its manufacture spread throughout northern Italy and southern Gaul, before the pottery was finally replaced as the dominant form of fineware in the early second century A.D.

ITS pottery had a number of basic forms. Among them were moulded "chalices," often portraying extremely intricate designs showing scenes from mythology, erotica, bucolic scenes, and the like:


ITS Chalice - Click for larger image.

However, a great many ITS forms were what are generally referred to as "plainware" - pieces of extremely high quality, but without the extensive moulded decoration. Such decoration as exists on these pieces is often applied rather than part of the original moulded vessel. However, the vessels could be completely undecorated, as was often the case with the large platters which were a signature form of ITS:


ITS Platter, top view - Click for larger image.

Helpfully, ITS potters were not shy about stamping their names on their products. Originally, these stamps took a simple rectangular form, as below:


Maker's Stamp of Gaius Sertorius Proculus (or possibly from the workshop of Gaius Sertorius, which the actual craftsman being a slave named Proculus), from Arezzo, 15 B.C.-A.D.5. Click to enlarge.

However, during the later history of ITS, the so-called "foot stamps" became very popular, as well as evidence for a rather whimsical sense of humour. With foot stamps, the maker's name is actual enclosed in the shape of foot, a nod to the stamp's usual location on the foot of the vessel.


Maker's Stamp probably of Quintus Castricius (the meaning of the "VE" at the end is unknown), location unknown, but dating to the latter half of the first century A.D. Click to enlarge.

So, why do I like ITS so much? Well, it is genuinly beautiful pottery, with a smooth, strong glaze. It's also the signature Roman fineware; even though it went out of general use relatively early, it continued to exert stylistic influence over what came after it. Finally, it's one of the forms of pottery with which I am really familiar, which is a weak reason I know, but still...

Craving Forgiveness

Friday Archaeology Blogging will be along this weekend at some point, but not today, since, ironically, I'm off to the reunion party for this summer's dig crew. Anyway, F.A.B., when it does occur, will be about pottery.

In the meantime, enjoy this archaeological video (Watch out for the surprise ending!):

"Raaaaah! I'm Friday Archaeology Blogging, and I'm back from the dead!"

Friday Archaeology Blogging
More Mummies Edition

So, what better way to revive this dormant franchise than through a chat about everybody's favourite ancient Egyptian thing, the redoubtable mummy. We have blogged about mummies before, but for this once we're going to concentrate on the well-known Egyptian variety.

The practice of mummification began very early in Egyptian history, possibly as early as 3300 B.C., and was probably originally accidental. One famous early mummy is one jokingly named "Ginger," on account of his hair colour, who is on display at the British Museum. It used to be, and perhaps still is, common practice among veteran security guards there to send new recruits to "take a cup of coffee to Ginger in the Egyptology department." One assumes that hilarity ensues.


"Ginger"

However, within about seven centuries (!), Egyptians had begun to preserve their dead deliberately, through a process that took over two months, and involved removal of internal organs, packing of the body cavity with a particular type of salt, and a number of other things besides. In the 5th century B.C., the Greek historian Herodotus described the Egyptian process of mummification as follows:

"There are men whose sole business this is and who have this special craft. [2] When a dead body is brought to them, they show those who brought it wooden models of corpses, painted likenesses; the most perfect way of embalming belongs, they say, to One whose name it would be impious for me to mention in treating such a matter; the second way, which they show, is less perfect than the first, and cheaper; and the third is the least costly of all. Having shown these, they ask those who brought the body in which way they desire to have it prepared. [3] Having agreed on a price, the bearers go away, and the workmen, left alone in their place, embalm the body. If they do this in the most perfect way, they first draw out part of the brain through the nostrils with an iron hook, and inject certain drugs into the rest. [4] Then, making a cut near the flank with a sharp knife of Ethiopian stone, they take out all the intestines, and clean the belly, rinsing it with palm wine and bruised spices; [5] they sew it up again after filling the belly with pure ground myrrh and casia and any other spices, except frankincense. After doing this, they conceal the body for seventy days, embalmed in saltpetre; no longer time is allowed for the embalming; [6] and when the seventy days have passed, they wash the body and wrap the whole of it in bandages of fine linen cloth, anointed with gum, which the Egyptians mostly use instead of glue; [7] then they give the dead man back to his friends. These make a hollow wooden figure like a man, in which they enclose the corpse, shut it up, and keep it safe in a coffin-chamber, placed erect against a wall." (Herodotus, Histories, II.86)

Interestingly, it was not only humans who were mummified. Mummified animals included:

Cats,


Cat Mummy

Dogs,


Dog Mummy

Crocodiles,


Mummified Crocodile

Birds,


Mummified Hawk

Monkeys,


A mummified monkey of some sort

and even Gazelle:


Mummified Gazelle

Why mummify animals? Well, reasons related to Egyptian religion, and its focus on animals, are a strong possibility, but no stronger, in my opinion, than the "beloved pet" explanation.

The word "mummy" itself first appears in English with its modern meaning in the 17th century, having drawn on Medieval Latin and Arabic sources. It is likely that the word has descended from an ancient Persian word meaning "wax."

So why bring all this up now? We'll, I'll admit that part of it involves getting back into the swing of blogging. However, mummies have been in the news in the past week or so as well, as the mummified body of the Pharaoh Tutankhamon, who reigned from 1333 B.C. to 1323 B.C., has gone on public display for the first time ever, in Luxor, Egypt.


Head of King Tutankhamen

That's all, archaeology-wise for this week, but there will be more on a variety of topics as we get this thing back up and running!

Friday Archaeology Blogging: Lost & Found Edition

Catching up on a few bits of archaeological news that occurred while I was away...

FOUND:



Hatshepsut was fat and bald
8 Jul 2007, 0017 hrs IST,ANI

WASHINGTON: Queen Hatshepsut, Egypt's greatest female Pharaoh was fat, balding and had beard. (She wore a false beard along with men's clothing when she proclaimed herself the Pharaoh of Egypt).

Back in June, DNA testing confirmed that a mummy in the Cairo museum was in fact that of the Pharaoh Hatshepsut, who reigned during the 15th century B.C. Much has indeed been made of the fact that she wore a false beard (as portrayed below), although this ignores the fact that a beard was standard part of pharaonic regalia, and it might actually have been odder if she hadn't worn one (in fact, Ancient Egyptian has no separate word for a female ruler; Hatshepsut is referred to as "king" on inscriptions). Despite the horrendous condition of her health at death (there is evidence that she was suffering from some or all of diabetes, liver cancer, bone cancer, arthritis, osteoporosis, rampaging tooth decay, and an unidentified skin ailment), she was, in her day, considered a ravishing beauty. She was also an energetic and competent pharaoh, particularly in the area of building projects, and may also have taken part in a number of military excursions.


Click to enlarge

A brief word on the tooth decay issue. According to the ancient sources, Egyptian bread was extraordinarily hard on one's teeth, due to the presence of sand in the dough, and abcesses like the one that actually killed Hatshepsut must have been fairly common.


Ancient Egyptian teeth

On final extract from the article:

Findings revealed that Hatshepsut was balding in front, but let the hair on the back of her head grow really long. The Egyptian Queen also sported black and red nail polish, a rather Goth look for someone past middle age, reports LiveScience.

Archaeologists have so far failed to find Hatshepsut's storied collection of KMDFM albums.

FOUND:



Well, they didn't find the lake - they knew that was there. It was what was in it that was interesting:

UK divers find 'underwater village'
7/18/2007 2:29:00 PM - Erinn Piller

A team of divers have come across building remains in a lake in Wiltshire that may help solve the mystery of the lost village of Bowood.

Legend has it that the village was 'drowned' 250 years ago when Lancelot 'Capability' Brown, a famous English landscape gardener, flooded the area to make way for a new design he had envisioned for the area.

I'm interested here in how a village that was only "lost" a couple of centuries ago managed to get completely forgotten. One would think that some sort of record would have survived, somewhere.

FOUND:



Father and son discover 10th century Viking hoard buried in field
By Arifa Akbar
Published: 20 July 2007

The most important Viking treasures to be discovered in Britain for 150 years have been unearthed by a father and son while metal detecting in North Yorkshire.

David and Andrew Whelan uncovered the hoard, which dates back to the 10th century, in Harrogate. The British Museum said yesterday that the treasures were of global significance and could shed new light on the period.

Jumping ahead a bit:

After transporting the hoard to their home, they left it on their kitchen counter while they went to report it to their local finds liaison officer in Leeds. It was transferred to the British Museum where conservators carefully examined each item over months.

The British system for monitoring amateur archaeologists works extremely well, most of the time, and there is comparatively little friction between "professional" diggers and the folks who haul their metal detectors around on weekends. There is, in fact, a formal code of conduct, agreed upon by both amateurs and pros, and since it went into effect, the number of reported finds has skyrocketed. What's more, these finds are getting processed properly, with their provenances recorded, as opposed to simply sold off on the black market. This is a very good thing.

This is not:

LOST:



No, they didn't actually lose the Trevi Fountain; as far as I know, it's still there. However, the ancient aquaduct which supplied it was damaged in the course of a construction project:

Pipe blunder robs Trevi's supply

Water is being diverted to the Trevi from another ancient aqueduct
A builder's mistake has cut off the water supply to one of Rome's most famous fountains - the Trevi.

Water company Acea said the wall of an ancient Roman aqueduct which supplies the fountain was damaged by builders constructing an underground garage.

The aquaduct in question is the Aqua Virgo, built originally in the late first century B.C. under the auspices of the same Marcus Agrippa whose name adorns The Pantheon. It was restored in the 8th century A.D., and then again during the Renaissance.



The Aqua Virgo carried 100,000 cubic metres of water per day over a course whose net downslope was about a tenth of a degree, which is pretty snazzy engineering when you think about it. Understandably, the locals are fairly pissed over the damage done to the aquaduct:

"The Aqua Virgo aqueduct was one of two Roman water channels built underground. It was one of the few to escape being destroyed by the barbarians and to survive intact," Mr Signore said.

"Unfortunately, it has been destroyed by their descendants," he added.

Word.

Friday Archaeology Blogging

This is what happens when you take a break from blogging; you forget what you're supposed to be doing on Friday afternoons.

Anyway, as mentioned in the last post, I'm heading off across the water next week, to do a couple of months' worth of what Alison from Creekside referred to as "bones-bothering." I'll be here, more or less:


Lake Trasimene - Click for larger version

We've got a number of projects on the go this summer. Excavation will continue at a Roman villa site we've been digging since 1992, but we've also got a couple of interesting survey projects starting up. In both cases, the sites involved are suspiciously flat-topped hills, with not much growing on top of them. We're going to go and wander around and see what's lying on the ground on both these hills. My betting is that we'll find more Etruscan stuff than Roman, but that's just a guess at this point.

However, the area is significant to Roman history and archaeology, and I know precisely what the Umbrian Archaeological Superintendency wants us to find; they're hopeing that we'll over definitive proof of the location of the Battle of Lake Trasimene, fought in 217 B.C. This battle was one of the worst disasters ever suffered by Rome; the Roman army was lured into a massive ambush by the brilliant Carthaginian general Hannibal, and pretty much annihilated. Oodles of circumstantial evidence exists suggesting that the battle was fought along the western half of the north shore of the lake, although the battlefield itself has never been precisely identified.


Hannibal

We're not going to be particularly interested in finding the battlefield this time out; if we do, it will be more or less by accident. What we are interested in doing is studying the transition in the area between the Etruscan civilization and the Roman, a somewhat nebulous process usually referred to as "Romanization." For my part, my own interests lie somewhat later, in what scholars have referred to as the
"Third-Century Crisis." The mid-3rd century A.D. has usually been portrayed as a time of economic depression and depopulation in the rural areas of central Italy, but archaeological evidence is starting to argue against that, at least near Lake Trasimene. What I'm interested in discovering is whether this evidence is an aberation, or part of a larger regional pattern, and I'm hoping that our hill-walking this summer will provide at least some clues concerning the third century.

Friday Archaeology Blogging
Short, smelly edition.

Aphrodite perfumes sniffed out
22nd March 2007, 8:45 WST

The world’s oldest perfumes have been found on Cyprus by a team of archaeologists.

The perfumes were scented with extracts of lavender, bay, rosemary, pine or coriander and kept in tiny, translucent alabaster bottles. The remaining traces found in Pyrgos, in the south of the island, are more than 4000 years old.

As the article goes on to point out, it's appropriate that the material was found on Cyprus, given that that island is the traditional site of the birth of Aphrodite, Greek goddess of love.


The birth of Aphrodite

Anyway, the interesting thing here is that not only were Bronze Age Cypriots making perfumes, they were apparently doing so in bulk; the size of the recently discovered "perfume factory" is about 43,000 square feet. This is not terribly surprising - perfume in the ancient world was as much a luxury item as it is now.


An elaborate bronze-age perfume bottle

Perfume maintained its popularity through the age of Classical Greece; the infamous courtesan Lais of Corinth (10,000 drachmas per "appointment", apparently!), is said to have developed her own perfume from orange blossoms and oyster shells in the 4th century B.C., a perfume which has never been successfully duplicated. The Romans, too, were very into perfumes; some figures from the time of Augustus indicate that roughly 3,000 tons of frankincense was used in Rome per year.


Ancient Roman perfume bottles

Friday Archaeology Blogging
Grab bag o'Roman stuff edition.

A couple of recent developments in the world of Roman archaeology:

Roman settlement found next to 'devil's hill'
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor

Evidence of a Roman sacred site has been discovered at the foot of a man-made hill created thousands of years before the Romans arrived in Britain, it was announced yesterday.

That would be Silbury Hill:


Click to see larger version

It's a massive construction, originally terraced, with a presumably ceremonial walkway to the top. It's surrounded by a sort of moat, bridged by two causeways (the material used to build the hill was originally dug out of the moat). It was probably built in about 2600 B.C., roughly contemporary with some of the early phases of Stonehenge. Various myths and legends have arisen about the hill; according to one tradition, it is the tomb of the legendary King Sil and his golden horse. Another tale, the source of the "Devil's Hill" moniker, relates that the devil was carrying a load of earth to drop on a nearby town. When he was stopped by some priests from Avebury, he dropped the dirt, creating Silbury Hill. Although various theories have been put forward (e.g. an enormous sundial), the truth is that we have no idea whatsoever what that hill was built for, or how it was used in neolithic times.

Returning to the Romans, it's not at all surprising that they would build a religious site there. Contrary to what one might expect, the Romans were extremely open-minded about other religions (they tended to outlaw religions only in cases where there were issues of pubic order), to the point where they made a practice of adopting the worship of "foreign" gods. A prime example of this is the Egyptian goddess Isis, whose cult became very popular in Roman Italy.


The Temple of Isis at Pompeii - click to enlarge

The main question, yet to be answered, about the Roman site at Silbury Hill is to which deity it was devoted. It remains distinctly possible that it was actually a Celtic deity whose worship was promoted at the site.

Anyway, moving along, awhile back I did a Friday Archaeology Blogging on the insignia of Maxentius. There have been further developments:

Scepter from Roman emperor exhibited
Telegraph, 27 February 2007

The scepter, which is topped by a blue orb that represents the earth, was discovered at the end of last year and is believed to have been held by Emperor Maxentius, who ruled for six years until 312AD.


This is the best picture of the scepter that I've been able to find so far.

Hopefully, we'll get a chance to see the rest of the insignia soon.