Melvadius

Did I miss the Confederates, as well as the Ghostbusters?

In that case as ummidia quadratilla was the next closest with her suggestion of Sousse do you wish to post next?

I somehow get the feeling that there is a lot more behind this picture than the press report indicates. I am sure that there is someone, apparently dressed for 'Pirate's of the Caribbean', in the middle row on the right.

Otherwise known as Lamta. Over to you Maladict.

You are now very warm but need to look a few miles further to the south east.

OK it may not win awards for being 100% accurate (especially the gladiatorial action which I believe is probably done infinitely better by our own Medusa) but there is quite a fun video report on the BBC from their reporter Rajan Datar who reports on some reneactments during his visit to the Roman city of Jerash.

You are still about a hundred miles inland of this site. You need to go further east and slightly north. Another clue is that it had an unlikely (in some ways suprising) part to play in the later stages of Hannibal's fight against the Romans when he returned to Africa.

Out of curiosity I re-ran my previous result and as I suspected looking at it again and probably positioning the slider in different places it had all changed with one new name appearing in the top 5 and none of the surviving 4 names from my first attempt in the same position I'm not surte whether to count it as a good thing or a bad thing as evidence that we change over time

Past Horizons is carrying the story here of recent excavations which have revealed slightly more of Cantebury's Roman theatre than was revealed in Professor Sheppard Frere's early 1950's excavations.

I couldn't tell if there was a video report attached to Ursus' link so here is one from the BBC which includes a bit about the owner/ dog re-union.

In the view of several current experts on the period the particular objection to retain the 'Cark Ages' terminology due to a perceived lack of sources for the period has become increasingly untenable. As I understand it they counter this long held view by citing numerous sources across Europe as once you get away from Britain there really are significant quantities of original material available.

Hope you have a good day

I keep getting visions of a Roman take on an old Poul Anderson story 'The High Crusade'. Ignoring the apparently awful film the basic premise of the original book was a small group of Norman knights and their English serfs coming into contact with a rampaging Alien race getting lost in space and then finding out precisely how much damage nuclear bombs fired from trebuchets could do. Just picture the Roman reaction to the Kalkrisse disaster, amongst others, if they had nuclear capability - most of northern Europe and the near East would probably still be glowing in the dark

Just to check. Some of those recommendations at the end could be read as somewhat tongue in cheek or at least indicate some degree of sceptisism on the part of the reviewer. Are you sure this wasn't published on 1 April?

The Breeze article is interesting although as it was written in 1988 it does not address some of the more recent research and consequently latest theories about the Roman relationship with local populations in Britain exemplified in recent books such as UnRoman Britain by Russell and Laycock. In Russell and Laycock

It really depends what audience you are aiming for which would be good books to recommend. My problem in making a recommendation is that I don't tend to have many 'beginners' books and I haven't really 'read' those I do have. At one extreme you have books like the Usborne Roman Soldiers Handbook (2004)which although aimed at relatively young students it is still quite fun for an adult to pick up and browse through due to the cartoons and some good 'hard' information. As to general introductions to the period we seem to have managed to pick up three in recent years which are at least worth a look for the complete novice. In increasing order of complexity these are probably as follows: Lesley & Roy Adkins Introduction to the Romans (1996) Antony Kamm The Romans: an introduction (2nd Ed 2008) Kevin M. McGeough The Romans: an introduction (2009)

The BBC have a new article following up on this story with (to me not unexpected) indications that the DNA from the skeleton will now be used as part of research into the ethnic origin of 'modern' Britons.

Update (5 Apr '11) - the Independent seem to have finally realised their earlier mistake. The spurious image of the 'Broch of Gurness' has now been removed and replaced with the correct image of the 'Ancient City of Firuzabad' at position 5 (instead of 1) in the set of 10 'Persian' images here. Sad for anyone who missed it but fun while it was still incorrect Edit for anyone who missed the orignial image, which the Independent have now taken down, I have found another copy of it on the web here

Seems like time for another hint - apparently I did not like the idea of being adopted.

The Independent is currently carrying an article and associated images relating to a new book by Swiss photographer Georg Gerster which is quite interesting. However be warned about the first of the series of 10 images claiming to be of 'the Ancient City of Firuzabad' in Persia (Iran) it is actually the Broch of Gurness in Shetland. Firuzibad looks like this from the air. I don't know when the article was originally posted but I do wonder if this is an April Fools joke by either the Independent itself or even one by a member of their staff which has not been spotted by the Independent's management?

A few years back on another site I visited rather than making a map we attempted to put together a relatively simple spreadsheet with some of the better known Roman period town names and their modern equivalent but it was a major task and never really completed.

Too far north

Err Maty I may be wrong but unless there are two I believe that the Cirta which was the capital of Numidia is actually in Algeria. On that basis you are several hundred miles too far to the west of where I am thinking of - hint it is near the coast of Tunisia.

There have been several threads over the years which have discussed either North African or even sub-Saharan African's being identified as present in Britain. A few of these you might find interesting are: Roman remains in York are 'elite' African woman 1,700-year-old remains of an African man found in Stratford North Africans at Hadrians Wall As you will see from the threads there is a range of evidence for people of some form of 'African' descent being present in Britain from serving soldiers through possible slaves and even one individual who seems to have been of high status. As I understand it the main problem is that the Roman's did not seem to make a major thing of ethnicity in what they wrote about individuals and with citizens taking full Roman names there is a marked tendency to lose most of the linguistic evidence as well.

Tunisia it is