Galavanting in Carcassonne

The picturesque Cité de Carcassonne is as astonishing from the outside as it is on the inside. We spent Sunday trawling through the winding streets, taking in the hustle and bustle of the tourist shops and the stunning architectural features. The UNESCO World Heritage Site was originally occupied on a small scale by the Romans, and later expanded upon by the Visigoths (with significant restoration in the mid 19th century).  The site is still a living, breathing city with over 50,00 residents.

We were even nerdy enough to buy a Carcassonne set while there...

Upsetting Archaeology: The murder of newborns

It's a reality in archaeology that we deal with death on a regular basis, but telling the story of a life passed can give it new meaning and recall a past once lost. Sometimes though, death can be too painful for an archaeologist to come to terms with. That's what happened to one excavator, A H Cocks, back in the 1912.

At Yewden Villa, a brothel was uncovered by Cocks. The chilling discovery of 97 skeletons of newborns, both boys and girls, went near-ignored by the archaeologist, who focused on the pottery finds. The remains of the children were classified 'various' and stored in cigarette boxes at the Aylesbury Museum. In 2008, Dr. Jill Eyers, director of Chiltern Archaeology, found the bones and immediately became unnerved as they were all the same age (38 to 40 weeks gestation) and showed marks of foul play. For three nights, she was kept awake by nightmares, disturbed by how the children had met their end. She believes that Cocks was unable to face the truth of his findings.

At the time, 150AD to 200AD, there was no viable form of abortion. The prostitutes had no place for the newborns, so they were immediately killed at birth. Simon Mays, a paleontologist, spent a year measuring the bones and confirmed Eyers suspicions, countering the notion that the site was a birthing centre.

Read more here

Amazing Animals: Roman Mosaic from Lod, Israel

First unearthed in 1996 in a rescue excavation in Lod, ancient Diospolis, Israel, a large and extraordinarily detailed floor mosaic was recently lifted from its site and conserved. Found in a large villa believed to belong to a wealthy Roman, the exquisitely preserved floor dates to about AD 300. This glorious mosaic is in the United States for a limited time before it returns to Israel to become the focus of the Shelby White and Leon Levy Lod Mosaic Center. The Legion of Honor is one of only four museums to display this treasure before its final and permanent installation in Lod.

Exhibition curator Renée Dreyfus says, “Other Roman mosaics have been found in Israel, but this one is exceptional in its lively imagery and its excellent state of preservation. We are thrilled to be able to display such an amazing work of art in our museum and think about what a great city Lod must have been in Roman times. Each excavated work in the Holy Land reveals so much about the history and people who lived in this remarkable land.”

Read more here

Recycling Romans!

The 21st century's three Rs -- Reduce, Reuse, Recycle -- were all the rage in Britain during the last century of Roman rule, a compositional analysis of ancient Roman glass tableware has revealed.

According to the study, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, large quantities of glass were recycled in Britain during the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D.

The reason wasn’t exactly a desire to go green, but a shortage of raw glass in the northern regions of the Roman Empire during the last centuries of Roman rule.

“It appears much of the glass reaching Britain in the late Roman period was manufactured from recycled material,” Caroline Jackson, at the archaeology department of the University of Sheffield, U.K., told Discovery News.

Believed to have originated in Mesopotamia around 2500 B.C., the art of glass-making spread to Egypt, with the most significant technological revolution -- glass blowing employing a tube -- occurring in the 1st century B.C. in the area of Syria and Palestine.

The Romans exploited the technique, and glass-making spread throughout the empire, with glass becoming a common household material.

Made out of sand, glass takes on the color of the chemical elements present in raw material. For example, sand containing iron produces blue-green glass, while iron and sulfur elements make a brownish glass.

Skilled Roman craftsmen were able to control glass color through a careful selection of the raw materials, and produced colorless glass by adding a decolorizer, an element which oxidizes the chemicals in the sand to remove the color.

“In the Roman period, this element would have been antimony or manganese,” said Jackson.

Resembling crystal, colorless glass was much valued. According to the Roman author, Pliny, the emperor Nero (37-68 A.D.) gave 6,000 sestertia (roughly $250,000) for two clear glass cups of ordinary size, with handles.

A highly developed and successful industry, Roman glass-making still holds some mystery. It is unknown where colorless glass was produced, and scholars still debate how the glass industry was organized.

Read more of Rossella Lorenzi's article here (Discover.com)

As everyone knows, Hazel Dodge is a legend

And now even more famous, click here to find out more.

Titled “Roman Spectacle in the Greek East,” the free talk will take place at 7:30 p.m. in the Morgan Room of Poling Hall. It is sponsored by the MC Classics Department, in cooperation with the Western Illinois Society of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA).