Archaeologists say ‘catastrophic military event’ took place at site where 129 bodies have been found so farAs construction crews churned up dirt to renovate a football pitch in Vienna last October, they happened upon an unprecedented find: a heap of intertwined skeletal remains in a mass grave dating to the first-century Roman empire, most likely the bodies of warriors killed in a battle involving Germanic tribes.This week, after archaeological analysis, experts at the Vienna Museum gave a first public presentation of the grave – linked to “a catastrophic event in a military context” and evidence of the first known fighting in that region. Continue reading…

A rare 2,000-year-old Roman gold coin is now on display at the Trimontium Museum in Melrose. The aureus, dating from 114-117 CE, was unearthed at Newstead in the Scottish Borders and is now on loan from National Museums Scotland. The exhibition “Trajan’s Aureus” opens on 3 April and runs until the end of the year. […]
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With sandals that look fresher than last year’s Birkenstocks, gossipy messages recovered from writing tablets and 73,000 shards of pottery, London Museum’s new collection is like falling head-first into the first centuryArchaeologists don’t always get lucky when a site is redeveloped in the middle of London. People have been building in the city for millennia and, in more recent times, bombing it. But if the building before went too deep, or there has been too much exposure to the air by bomb damage in the past, there won’t be much to find. Things were especially bad before 1991, when there was no planning protection for anything but scheduled ancient monuments. “We used to have to beg to get on site,” says Sophie Jackson, archaeologist at Museum of London Archaeology (Mola).It’s not that developers are insensitive, says Jackson: “When we did the excavation at Barts hospital, [it] was functioning above us – we were right under the MRI machines. Developers recognise the social value.” It’s just that the stars don’t often align. Continue reading…

The detailed relics were found in a necropolis and experts believe the woman depicted could have been an important priestessTwo almost lifesize sculptures of a man and woman, who was believed to have been a priestess, have been found during the excavations of a huge tomb in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii.The detailed funerary relics adorned the tomb containing several burial niches built into a wide wall in the necropolis of Porta Sarno, one of the main entrance gates into the ancient city. Pompeii was destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79. Continue reading…

Source: Cleveland Museum of ArtThe Cleveland Museum of Art has agreed that the bronze figure acquired in 1986 will be returned to Türkiye. Scientific tests on soil samples appear to confirm that the figure was in fact found at Bubon and thus formed part of a series of imperial statues. For many years the headless statue was presented as a representation of the emperor Marcus Aurelius.The Manhattan DA presented this account of the looting:In the 1960s, individuals from a village near Bubon began plundering a Sebasteion, an ancient shrine with monumental bronze statues of Roman emperors and selling those looted antiquities to smugglers based in the coastal Turkish city of Izmir. Working with Switzerland-based trafficker George Zakos and New York-and-Paris-based trafficker Robert Hecht, they unlawfully removed the looted antiquities from Türkiye, transporting them to Switzerland or the United Kingdom, and then onward to the United States or other European destinations. Once the statues were in the United States, New York-based dealers such as Jerome Eisenberg’s Royal-Athena Galleries and the Merrin Gallery funneled the stolen Bubon bronzes into museum exhibitions and academic publications thereby laundering the pieces with newly crafted provenance. As the Bubon pieces graced the pages of exhibition catalogues and academic publications, the reputational value of the institutions who displayed the Bubon pieces increased and the financial value of the statues grew.George Zakos was linked to the Lydian silver treasure that was returned to Türkiye by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Zakos also handled the Sion Treasure that was acquired by Dumbarton Oaks, and three terracotta antefixes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art that appear to come from the Panionion on Mykale in Türkiye (1992.36.1; 1992.36.2; 1992.36.3).The research of Dr Elizabeth Marlowe on the Bubon material is acknowledged by the Manhattan DA. Press release:Cleveland Museum of Art: Cleveland Museum of Art and District Attorney of New York Reach Agreement on Draped Male Figure (the Philosopher) (February 14, 2025).Manhattan DA: Manhattan DA’s Office Announces Repatriation of Marcus Aurelius Statue to the People of Türkiye (February 14, 2025)

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A recent study by Dr. Ellen Green, published in the International Journal of Paleopathology, has revealed new insights into one of the most significant discoveries of ritual animal deposits in Roman Britain. The excavation at the former Animal Husbandry Center of Nescot College in Ewell, Surrey, produced evidence of an ancient Roman quarry pit that […]
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A hoard discovered in the Netherlands presents an extraordinary first for continental Europe. The contents of this cache combine coins minted by Rome and a powerful ruler in Britain: Cunobelin. This eye-catching mixture is just one of the clues that the hoard was amassed by a person or people with first-hand experience of Britain, most likely participants in the Roman invasion. Do these coins of Cunobelin, then, represent the spoils of war? In our cover feature, we explore what this hoard reveals about a major historical moment. Relics of conflict are also apparent deep underground in France. There, former quarries
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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.
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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…

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…