A cache of Roman and British coins found in the Netherlands seems to be associated with the emperor Claudius’ invasion of Britain in AD 43. Study of the hoard is shedding new light on the circumstances surrounding this major historical event.
The post Spoils of war? appeared first on World Archaeology.
The mutatio, on Ermin Street linking Silchester and Gloucester, would have provided a place for travellers to rest or change horsesAt Gloucester services on the M5, travellers are resting and refuelling, taking a break from the demands of the road.Just a few miles east, scores of archaeologists are completing a two-year project that has unearthed a forerunner of the site, a 2,000-year-old Roman take on the service station. Continue reading…
Archaeologists uncover Roman ‘service station’ during roadworks in Gloucester Read More »
Writing on PHerc. 172 papyrus, found at Roman mansion in Herculaneum, revealed after 3D X-rays and software competitionResearchers have peered inside an ancient scroll that was burned to a crisp in the volcanic eruption that destroyed Pompeii nearly 2,000 years ago.The scroll is one of hundreds found in the library of a Roman mansion in Herculaneum, a town on the west coast of Italy that was wiped out when Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD79. Continue reading…
AI helps researchers read ancient scroll burned to a crisp in Vesuvius eruption Read More »
A hoard of gold and silver Roman coins dating back to the reign of Emperor Nero have been found during building works in Worcestershire.The treasure, consisting of 1,368 Iron Age and Roman coins, includes the largest collection from the emperor’s reign ever found.Worcestershire Heritage, Art & Museums said the hoard was discovered in the Leigh and Bransford area, west of Worcester, in late 2023.It is expected to be valued at more than £100,000.Read the rest of this article…
FacebookXLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail image: Detail of the infrared image of the Papyrus Cottonview more Credit: (© Israel Antiquities Authority)Scholars from the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the University of Vienna and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem unveil a unique papyrus from the collections held by the Israel Antiquities Authority, offering rare insights into Roman legal proceedings and life in the Roman Near East. In a new publication in the international scholarly journal Tyche, the research team reveals how the Roman imperial state dealt with financial crimes – specifically, tax fraud involving slaves – in the Roman provinces of Iudaea and Arabia. The new papyrus furnishes a strikingly direct view of Roman jurisdiction and legal practice, as well as important new information about a turbulent era shaken by two massive Jewish revolts against Roman rule. Link to the photos: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1dkaUQW0HLLg7zkxkzMDBVtqcI2lHesAp?usp=sharingThe longest Greek papyrus ever found in the Judaean Desert, comprising over 133 lines of text, has now been published for the first time. Initially misclassified as Nabataean, the papyrus remained unnoticed for decades until its rediscovery in 2014 by Prof. Hannah Cotton Paltiel, emerita of the Hebrew University. “I volunteered to organize documentary papyri in the Israel Antiquities Authority’s scrolls laboratory, and when I saw it, marked ‘Nabataean,’ I exclaimed, ‘It’s Greek to me!’” recalls Prof. Cotton Paltiel. In recognition of her discovery, the papyrus has been named P. Cotton, in line with papyrological conventions.Recognizing the document’s extraordinary length, complex style, and potential ties to Roman legal proceedings, Prof. Cotton Paltiel assembled an international team to decipher it. The team, including Dr. Anna Dolganov of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Prof. Fritz Mitthof of the University of Vienna and Dr. Avner Ecker of Hebrew University, determined the document to be prosecutors’ notes for a trial before Roman officials on the eve of the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 CE), including a rapidly drafted transcript of the judicial hearing itself. The language is vibrant and direct, with one prosecutor advising another on the strength of various pieces of evidence and strategizing to anticipate objections. “This papyrus is extraordinary because it provides direct insight into trial preparations in this part of the Roman Empire,” says Dr. Dolganov. Dr. Ecker adds, “This is the best-documented Roman court case from Iudaea apart from the trial of Jesus.”The papyrus details a gripping case involving forgery, tax evasion, and the fraudulent sale and manumission of slaves in the Roman provinces of Iudaea and Arabia, roughly corresponding to modern Israel and Jordan. The main defendants, Gadalias and Saulos, stand accused of corrupt dealings. Gadalias, the son of a notary and possibly a Roman citizen, had a criminal history involving violence, extortion, counterfeiting, and inciting rebellion. Saulos, his collaborator, orchestrated the fictitious sale and manumission of slaves without paying the requisite Roman taxes. To conceal their activities, the defendants forged documents. “Forgery and tax fraud carried severe penalties under Roman law, including hard labor or even capital punishment,” explains Dr. Dolganov.This criminal case unfolded between two major Jewish uprisings against Roman rule: the Jewish Diaspora revolt (115–117 CE) and the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 CE). Notably, the text implicates Gadalias and Saulos in rebellious activities during Emperor Hadrian’s visit to the region (129/130 CE) and names Tineius Rufus, the governor of Iudaea when the Bar Kokhba revolt began. In the wake of prior unrest, Roman authorities likely viewed the defendants with suspicion, connecting their crimes to broader conspiracies against the empire. “Whether they were indeed involved in rebellion remains an open question, but the insinuation speaks to the charged atmosphere of the time,” notes Dr. Dolganov. As Dr. Ecker points out, the nature of the crime raises questions, as “freeing slaves does not appear to be a profitable business model.” The enslaved individuals’ origins remain unclear, but the case may have involved illicit human trafficking or the Jewish biblical duty to redeem enslaved Jews.The papyrus offers new insights into Roman law in the Greek-speaking eastern empire, referencing the governor of Iudaea’s assize tour and compulsory jury service. “This document shows that core Roman institutions documented in Egypt were also implemented throughout the empire,” notes Prof. Mitthof. The papyrus also showcases the Roman state’s ability to regulate private transactions even in remote regions. Likely originating from a hideout cave in the Judaean Desert during the Bar Kokhba revolt, its careful preservation remains a mystery, and the trial’s outcome may have been interrupted by the rebellion. JournalTycheDOI10.25365/tyche-2023-38-5
A new papyrus from Israel reveals a spectacular criminal case from the Roman empire Read More »
Studies of sediment cores from the sea floor and the coastal regions surrounding the Aegean Sea show that humans contaminated the environment with lead early on in antiquity. A research team led by geoscientists from Heidelberg University conducted the analyses, which revealed that human activity in the region resulted in lead contamination of the environment approximately 5,200 years ago – much earlier than previously known. Combined with the results of pollen analyses from the sediment cores, this contamination also offers insights into socioeconomic change in the Aegean, even reflecting historical events such as the conquest of Greece by the Romans.The Aegean region gave rise to some of the earliest cultures of ancient Europe. The research team investigated when and to what extent early human activities in the region affected ecosystems both on land and in the marine environment. To this end, the team analyzed 14 sediment cores from the floor of the Aegean Sea and the surrounding coastline. One core from a peat bog offered up the earliest known evidence of environmental contamination with lead. The researchers dated this lead signal to approximately 5,200 years ago, about 1,200 years before the previously earliest known evidence of environmental contamination with the heavy metal that is traceable to human activity.“Because lead was released during the production of silver, among other things, proof of increasing lead concentrations in the environment is, at the same time, an important indicator of socioeconomic change,” states Dr Andreas Koutsodendris, a member of the Palynology & Paleoenvironmental Dynamics research group of Prof. Dr Jörg Pross at Heidelberg University’s Institute of Earth Sciences. The sediment cores the Heidelberg scientists analyzed contained lead as well as pollen, which allowed them to reconstruct vegetation development in the Aegean region. The pollen content pointed to how the land was used. “The combined data on lead contamination and vegetation development show when the transition from agricultural to monetary societies took place and how that impacted the environment,” stresses Jörg Pross.Lead concentration rose significantly about 2,150 years ago, accompanied by intense deforestation and increasing agricultural use, as indicated by the composition of the pollen spectra. Starting then, lead contamination is also evident in sediment from the floor of the Aegean Sea – the earliest record worldwide of human-caused lead pollution in the ocean, emphasizes Andreas Koutsodendris. “The changes coincide with the conquest of Hellenistic Greece by the Romans, who subsequently claimed for themselves the region’s wealth of resources,” adds Heidelberg archeologist Prof. Dr Joseph Maran. The Roman conquerors thus pushed the mining of gold, silver, and other metals, with ore extraction and smelting also requiring wood.The sediment cores from the Aegean Sea were collected during expeditions of the METEOR and AEGAEO research vessels between 2001 and 2021. The German Research Foundation (DFG) and the European Union financed the research expeditions, with the DFG also funding the most recent research work. Along with researchers from Heidelberg University, scientists from Berlin, Frankfurt (Main), Hamburg, Hohenheim, Tübingen and Greece also participated in the studies. The results were published in the journal “Communications Earth & Environment”.
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The post Imperial Colors: The Roman Portrait Busts of Septimius Severus and Julia Domna appeared first on American Journal of Archaeology.
Imperial Colors: The Roman Portrait Busts of Septimius Severus and Julia Domna Read More »
The post Commodus: The Public Image of a Roman Emperor appeared first on American Journal of Archaeology.
Around 20 Roman villas have been excavated in the Limburg region of the Netherlands. The heyday for this work came in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when a succession of sites was investigated with antiquarian zeal. Now fresh research in the field, archives, and find stores is shedding intriguing new light on these villa estates and their inhabitants.
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New insights into our linguistic roots via ancient DNA analysisPeer-Reviewed PublicationUniversity of ViennaFacebookXLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail image: Fig. 1: Photo of Remontnoye (3766-3637 calBCE), with a spiral temple ring.view more Credit: Natalia Shishlina (co-author of “The Genetic Origin of the Indo-Europeans”)Where lies the origin of the Indo-European language family? Ron Pinhasi and his team in the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Vienna contribute a new piece to this puzzle in collaboration with David Reich’s ancient DNA laboratory at Harvard University. They analyzed ancient DNA from 435 individuals from archaeological sites across Eurasia between 6.400–2.000 BCE. They found out that a newly recognized Caucasus-Lower Volga population can be connected to all Indo-European-speaking populations. The new study is published in Nature.Indo-European languages (IE), which number over 400 and include major groups such as Germanic, Romance, Slavic, Indo-Iranian, and Celtic, are spoken by nearly half the world’s population today. Originating from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language, historians and linguists since the 19th century have been investigating its origins and spread as there is still a knowledge gap. The new study published in Nature, also involving Tom Higham and Olivia Cheronet from the University of Vienna, analyzes ancient DNA from 435 individuals from archaeological sites across Eurasia between 6400–2000 BCE. Earlier genetic studies had shown that the Yamnaya culture (3.300-2.600 BCE) of the Pontic-Caspian steppes north of the Black and Caspian Seas expanded into both Europe and Central Asia beginning about 3.100 BCE, accounting for the appearance of “steppe ancestry” in human populations across Eurasia 3.100-1.500 BCE. These migrations out of the steppes had the largest effect on European human genomes of any demographic event in the last 5.000 years and are widely regarded as the probable vector for the spread of Indo-European languages. The only branch of Indo-European language (IE) that had not exhibited any steppe ancestry previously was Anatolian, including Hittite, probably the oldest branch to split away, uniquely preserving linguistic archaisms that were lost in all other IE branches. Previous studies had not found steppe ancestry among the Hittites because, the new paper argues, the Anatolian languages were descended from a language spoken by a group that had not been adequately described before, an Eneolithic population dated 4.500-3.500 BCE in the steppes between the North Caucasus Mountains and the lower Volga. When the genetics of this newly recognized Caucasus-Lower Volga (CLV) population are used as a source, at least five individuals in Anatolia dated before or during the Hittite era show CLV ancestry.Newly recognized population with broad influenceThe new study shows the Yamnaya population to have derived about 80% of its ancestry from the CLV group, which also provided at least one-tenth of the ancestry of Bronze Age central Anatolians, speakers of Hittite. “The CLV group therefore can be connected to all IE-speaking populations and is the best candidate for the population that spoke Indo-Anatolian, the ancestor of both Hittite and all later IE languages,” explains Ron Pinhasi. The results further suggest that the integration of the proto-Indo-Anatolian language, shared by both Anatolian and Indo-European peoples, reached its zenith among the CLV communities between 4.400 BC and 4.000 BC.”The discovery of the CLV population as the missing link in the Indo-European story marks a turning point in the 200-years-old quest to reconstruct the origins of the Indo-Europeans and the routes by which these people spread across Europe and parts of Asia”, concludes Ron Pinhasi.
Missing link in Indo-European languages’ history found Read More »