Melvadius

Apparently this is an article (pg 85-6) entitled From Here to Eternity (Sex research in America) which relates to a 'new' book Adventures in the Orgasmatron: how the Sexual Revolution Came to America by Christopher Turner. Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 544 pages; $35. to be published in Britain in August as Adventures in the Orgasmatron; William Reich and the Invention of Sex by Fourth Estate;

There is a section on 'The Land' in The Roman Empire: economy, society, and culture by Peter Garnsey, Richard P. Saller which you should be able to read here, just scroll down to pages 67-68, regarding the latifundia which you may find of interest. I also found this article on Deep mining which has a good bibliography including several references to Greek and Roman technology: a sourcebook : annotated translations of Greek and Latin texts and documents by John William Humphrey, John Peter Oleson, Andrew Neil Sherwood . This last is a book I can recommend.

According to the Ostia antica site (bottom of the page) the difference between the 'A' and 'B' variants of opus vittatum mixtum is simply that the 'A' variant only has alternating single layers of 'ashlar' facing stones and tiles. The 'B' variant is every other combination.

The News International/ News Corp hacking scandal gets wider and wider what with the FBI now involved checking to see if 9/11 victims and families were hacked as well and another primary suspect finally resigning from the organisation but I think today's front cover from the Economist, with its shades of faded Imperial splendour, really sums it up. A copy of it can be seen here.

I may be wrong buyt I don't think there are links to any areas actually giving total numbers of towns as has been requested. On a general point the descriptions of what constitutes a 'town' is often fairly relative and from what I have read a lot of places which were considered settlements of note in the Roman period in modern parlance would probably hardly rate being large villages. Wikipedia seems to only list 83 towns and cities here however it only specifies two of these 'towns' as being on Sicily. If you read anything about the Punic Wars that is a ridicleously small number for the number of Sicilian 'towns' which were variously cited as being founded/ fought over/ captured/ destroyed and/or rebuilt.

Antiquities thieves have unwittingly led to the discovery of a major site associated with the Emperor 'Caligula' as well as a statue apparently showing him in his 'divine' aspect in the 'only one (work) that represents Caligula as Zeus' as this report from ANSA (although I've switched round the primary and secondary titles above)indicates:

I'm sure that if you approached Norfolk Archaeological Trust ofering your time and assistance for the next 40 or 50 years free of charge they would probably bite your hand off as it does take a considerable amount of time and effort to properly excavate even a small part of a 120 acre site which is what they are now the custodians of. They have done two seasons of excavations there recently along with the University of Notingham part of which appeared in a Time Team special back in May but probably haven't scratched the surface of what could be excavated if they had the time, money and other resources necessary. A bit more about the site and the purchase is on the Past Horizons site here.

The BBC has picked up on this story now under the rather catchy 'shortcut' title from their main page of Live and let sieve - man wins driving licence case (sic) although the main page of the article actually carries the headline of 'Austrian driver's religious headgear strains credulity' somebody at the BBC had fun thinking up those punning headlines.

I just did a search and one suggestion made on Roman Army talk (about 4-5 years ago) was that they were intended to represent the standard notice boards which were nailed up to make announcements since these 'tabulae were fixed at the walls of public buildings like templa, fora, etc.' The decorative patterns in the centre of the 'wings' are therefore probably originally intended to show where the nails were placed.

I'm preparing a review on it at present - a bit of a curate's egg so far Miles' Carthage Must Be Destroyed on the other hand is definitely

I did a quick search but couldn't find any appropriate images to reference but an 'off the top of the head' thought is could there be a possibility that originally it was intended to represent an open scroll? Later inscriptions could have followed the original patterns without necessarily realising what it was intended to represent. If I'm correct in this guess then by a stretch of imagination it may even have indirectly led to the development of the Jacobean 'linen fold' carving technique.

My concern is that the whole posting is anti-lion sexism. It presupposes that only male lions can take on midgets whereas everyone should be aware that it is lionesses who do all the hunting for their lazy good for nothing partners. Male lions just sit about in the shade until all the klilling has been done and then move in to eat their fill chasing off the lionesses who have done all the work up to then. Mind you on a point of strategy I suspect the midgets would actually have a very good chance of winning since a good for nothing male lion would wander off into a corner once they had enough around them to eat. After eating its fill it would fall asleep and then a sneaky group of midgets could get one of their number to dive headfirstdown its gullet and strangle the lion from the inside - game over.

BBC is carrying this report on new research into Medieval pottery production in Scotland which has called into question previous perceptions about its extent. NB. The illustration for the article seems to indicate that ceramic tiles were a main component in this research however as the Historic Scotland press release makes clear it also involved analysis of redware pottery.

Sounds like another thread scrabbling for attention dredged up along myth lines will be considered by the Triumvirii somewhat of a 'myth'take. I must admit I've found most of them less hit and more 'myth'

To some extent I

Topic split as requested but with a more appropriate title.

Initial estimate is in the articles.

Keep the police incident report in case you find you are being chased for costs/ or a fine for its removal if it gets abandoned somewhere and they don't make the connection with it being on a stolen vehicle report.

I may be misreading this topic but it seems very close to this one in which Ursus pointed out that 'Roman paganism doesn't proscribe sin or virtue.' The difficulty as far as I can see in ascribing what are 'Christian beliefs' onto Roman pre-Christian (therefore 'Pagan') belief systems or indeed almost any other faith is that the majority do not come from the Judeo-Christian tradition in which anything 'Pagan' must be 'demonic'. An example of this can be seen in the Lucifer God of the Morning Star thread. BTW Ursus recently did a review of a book on Roman Religion which you may find of interest

I should have included the Portable Antiquities Report which can be found here. It does contain an item of possible interest to the numismatists amongst us that The full article starts:

BBC news is carrying this report of the discovery of 92 coins and other artefacts dating from the 9th or 10th century, well before this north-western part of England was integrated into the unified kingdom. A longer article about this recent discovery can be read here in the Westmorland Gazette

Reading some of the articles on this topic he was told this particular licence combination has been withdrawn after it was reported as offensive. When this happened he was sent a replacement licence plate and offered a full refund which he has apparently refused. It is a funny story at present BUT he will probably find that if he ever gets involved in an accident he is driving an unlicenced vehicle so is uninsured. That is a whole world of grief he may well regret.

There were also a couple of programmes which came out a few years back about building siege weapons which may be of interest. Secret's of Lost Empires: Medieval Siege in which two different patterns of trebuchet were built - this appeared on Channel 4 a few years back although was part of a US Series. There was however in 2002 a BBC TV and the Discovery Channel

Siege equipment discussion split as requested.

In a lot of instances as much wreckage as possible was retrieved at the time for salvage if nothing else but this was complicated by exploding ordnance or the dynamics of the actual crash - whether a controlled glide or nose first impact, etc. Once everything salvagable had been retrieved from farmland or wherever the simple expedient was to push sufficient soil over any other remains and put the land back into use. However on some sites the planes went into soft ground such as amarsh on this occasion so drove down too deep on impact to be recovered with the technology of the day or else landed on water and sank to the bottom again in an unrecoverable condition. The Battlefield/ aerial recovery groups have been going back through flight loss records looking for sites where something may remain to be recovered. Apparently there is always a demand for more 'authentic' parts for reconstruction of original planes and/or to aid displays in museums often a significant proportion of metal and some other objects can survive in a reasonable condition over a 70 year period. Personally I think they are out of their trees, given how much unexploded ordnance and other nasties like fuel can remain around such crash sites. However if they want to do it and they get permission from the appropriate authorities/ landowners on their own heads be it and good luck to them.