Archaeology
New discoveries at Pompeii’s Regio IX
Archaeologists are conducting new excavations in Pompeii’s Regio X at a previously unexplored area .
Pompeii was a Roman city, located in the modern commune of Pompeii near Naples, in the Campania region of Italy. Pompeii, along with the Roman town of Herculaneum, were buried under 4 to 6 metres of volcanic ash and pumice during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.
The Vesuvian eruption spewed forth a deadly cloud of super-heated tephra and gases to a height of 33 km, ejecting molten rock, pulverised pumice, and hot ash at 1.5 million tons per second, ultimately releasing 100,000 times the thermal energy of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The excavation area is focused on Insula 10 of Regio IX, which occupies the central part of Pompeii, bounded to the north by the Via di Nola, to the west by the Via Stabiana, and to the south by the Via dell’Abbondanza.
Image Credit : Pompeii Sites
The site was first investigated in 1888 but was interrupted, which partly excavated two atrium houses built in the Samnite period when Pompeii was conquered by the Samnites, an Oscan-speaking Italic people.
The area was developed in the 1st century AD into product workshops and a fullonica (laundry), with work benches and basins for washing and dyeing cloths. Also constructed is a bakery with an oven, and rooms for the processing of food products.
Image Credit : Pompeii Sites
Excavations of the rooms have revealed three victims of the Vesuvian eruption, who had taken refuge but died when the structure collapsed. An anthropological investigation has identified that two of the victims are adults, while the third is a child approximately 3-4 years of age.
In the atrium of a house with an adjoining oven, two frescoes with scenes from Roman and Greek mythology have re-emerged, depicting Poseidon and Amimone in the first, and Apollo and Daphne in the second, in addition to traces of charred furniture due to a fire that broke out during the catastrophe.
Header Image Credit : Pompeii Sites
Archaeologists from the University of Warwick are conducting an underwater study to document the submerged Mesolithic site of Bouldnor Cliff before it vanishes due to erosion.
Bouldnor Cliff is situated in the Solent between the Isle of Wight and the southern coast of England. The site was first discovered in 1999 when divers observed a lobster discarding worked flint tools from its burrow on the seabed.
At a time when Britain was cut off from mainland Europe by rising sea levels, the area of the Solent was a river valley inhabited by an advanced Mesolithic community who developed a boat building technology 2,000 years ahead of their time.
The study aims to find new data on the nature of the late Ice Age environment during the development of the Mesolithic era, and the extent of the interaction between the inhabitants of Bouldnor Cliff and Europe, including the exchange of materials.
Professor Robin Allaby, who is leading the expedition, said: “This is an incredible opportunity to understand the lost world in which the Mesolithic developed using the latest techniques before our chance is gone.”
The study will involve a comprehensive palaeoenvironmental analysis, in addition to state-of-the-art techniques such as optical simulated luminescence for constructing ecological profiles. Furthermore, archaeologists intend to recover archaeological artefacts and environmental markers to reconstruct the past environment.
Dr Kinnaird adds: “This is an exciting research project to showcase the new innovations in luminescence dating, which can tell when an object was last exposed to the Sun. The relevance of this technique in writing the narratives for 4000 years of history, at the time that the British coastline was rapidly changing, is huge!”
According to the researchers, these discoveries carry the potential to significantly transform our comprehension of the era when Britain emerged as an island.
Header Image Credit : University of Warwick
Sources : University of Warwick
This content was originally published on www.heritagedaily.com – © 2023 – HeritageDaily
A study of the “Excalibur” sword found in Valencia has been revealed to have Islamic origins sometime during the 10th century AD.
Valencia is one of the oldest cities in Spain, founded under the name of Valentia Edetanorum by the Romans in 138 BC.
The city was conquered by the Moors in the 8th century AD, and was destroyed by Abd al-Rahman I of the Umayyad dynasty. Under Caliphate rule, the wider city area became known as Madînat al-Turâb (meaning “city of earth” or “sand”).
The sword was discovered back in 1994 in a house on Valencia’s Historiador Chabàs Street, where it was found standing upright in a grave beneath an Islamic era house.
Dubbed “Excalibur” due to the circumstances of its discovery, the sword is made from iron and has a hilt decorated with bronze plates. In mythology, Excalibur was the legendary sword of King Arthur and appears in various medieval poems describing Arthur pulling the sword from a stone.
However, the “Excalibur” from Valencia was found in a sedimentary strata from the 10th century AD and was likely the weapon of a cavalryman from the Andalusian Caliphate Era.
According to the archaeologists, the sword measures 46 centimetres in length and has a slightly curved blade towards the tip. Swords from this period are rarely found well-preserved due to the levels of oxygen and water in the soil that causes oxidation of the iron.
“It is the first Islamic sword that appears in the city of Valencia, with only one similar example being found during the excavations of Medina Azahara, the caliphal city of Abd al-Rahman III, in Córdoba,” said the Valencia City Council.
Header Image Credit : The Archaeology Service (SIAM) of the Valencia City Council
Sources : Valencia City Council
This content was originally published on www.heritagedaily.com – © 2023 – HeritageDaily
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