Melvadius

Being in America you may not have had the pleasure of having your TV signals switched from analogue to digital broadcasting which is currently being rolled out across the UK. BTW welcome to our recent new members 'please forgive this breakdown in normal service' - we usually keep the sillier postings to the 'Hora Postilla Thermae' (after hours baths)

Our only almost contemporary written source is Tacitus who mentioned the revolt twice but had his own political and familial agenda. Cassius Dio provides a more 'colourful' but much later account so is probably a much less reliable secondary source. On this basis we very definately do not have all of the 'facts'. The situation is not helped by archaeological evidence for destruction of towns difficult to pin down to precise dates and some additional Roman towns such as Silchester, not mentioned by either ancient writer, showing similar evidence for destruction in the same period. The lack of a known battle site is not uncommon for ancient battles but for many researchers is very frustrating as without the precise site and timescales for location destruction it is basically impossible to work out plausible sizes of forces involved and their possible advance or retreat routes with any real certainty. To play devils advocate one unknown issue with mutiple ramifications is if the British forces were united or advancing along multiple routes. The consequence of this knowledge is identifying if really was all decided by one major deciding battle or if the reality was a series of skirmishes against different groups and leaders. If Tacitus is correct as to the number of men brought to Britain after the revolt from Germany then the Roman battle casulties at least, so far as the legions are concerend, seems to be about correct for a vexillation of the Ninth being destroyed rather than the entire legion.

Some of us have switched over already or are switching over this month so no analogue please

There is a chance that something more may be available at the Acropolis Restoration Service (YSMA) site who apparently carried out the survey. Unfortunately this site appears to be written entirely in Greek, which I do not read, so I have been unable to determine the extent of, or indeed if there is, any further information available there.

BBC is carrying a report of ongoing work by Glasgow School of Art and Historic Scotland to digitise major historic sites around the world as an aid to future conservation work.

Past Horizons is carrying a report of the latest archaeological research near the Bannockburn visitors centre in advance of landscaping work in this case tree planting. This article points out some of the problems with managing battlefield realted sites as although Tony Pollard and Neil Oliver, a few years back, identified the actual battle site as probably being some distance from the modern visitors center and now partially under housing. However there remains a strong suspicion that somewhere in close proximity to the visitors centre the site was a major camp site used by the Scots before the battle, presumably with lots of middens containing potentially interesting medieval material. For this reason archaeologists have to assess each area being 'managed' around the visitors centre in case there may be any evidence for this medieval activity.

An interesting insight from Brooklyn Museum into some of the technical problems archaeologists encounter using C-14 dating methods. In this case trying to confirm a suspected date for a major Egyptian papyrus scroll.

Strangely enough this sports related (Rugby Six Nations) article in the Guardian really does provide some insight into Roman burial practices although mainly aimed at the sporting fraternity. BTW I wonder what the percentage chance is of the archaeological team being allowed to extend the excavations a little bit more 'that away' under the stadium

Good guess. Now for where.

Getting Colder

Not Morocco

Hopefully somewhere not too easy:

Roamn Britain.Org has some information on the Roman fort of Nidum here. This fort is the third location on Itinery XII of the Antonine Itinery as shown here. Despite the mid-2nd century date for the mention of Nidum in the Antonine Itinery, the interesting point is that the recent excavations seem to be indicating a first century date for the fort which would fit in with the Roman occupation of this part of Wales. Nidum appears tpo have been intended to guard a harbour so this would fit in some suggestions that the Roman navy supported the conquest of Wales. Possibly it was also used as a base for troops who could be landed behind the Silures lines as raiding parties in an area where land travel was difficult.

Priene (prienia)?

M&C is carrying a report of the discovery of fragments from five of the Parthenon friezes reused in the walls of the Acropolis:

If not Ephesus how about Pergamon?

Weird stuff and the moon reminds me of the time, a good few years back, when I was at a Science Fiction convention and some of us felt that we could write better made-up stories than the Daily Star. for anyone who doesn't know this is a poor excuse for a tabloid newspaper primarily interested only in sex, made up stories and politics (OK only so far as who one of our politicians is currently sleeping with). We spent about an hour dissecting some of their more outrageous stories - B25 bomber found on the moon (excuse me that crater it is sitting on is actually a mile across), Elvis found alive and well in.... you know the sort of thing. Anyway we then spent half an hour making up a silly story about a taxi driver chasing NASA for an unpaid fare to the moon and back - a shaggy dog story involving an astronaut who missed his flight (extra payment for his backpack) and a device plugged into his cigarette lighter to make it fly so he could catch his spacecraft. This fabrication was duly submitted it to the paper via one of our group to see if we could get some free publicity for the convention. Anyway the upshot of this was they ran a story about an entire weekend 'conference of boffins' (sic) who were unable to disprove their 'strange but true' stories. Score one for them but we still managed to slip the name of the convention into the story as the 'conference' spokesman

Traditionally and I suspect even today, as Sonic and Viggen suggest, books are sold under licence in different countries and it is common practice for some American publishers to use different titles from British publishers and vice- versa. In some cases the differences in titles, particularly with ficton books, occur because of dialect differences/ usages of slang which could be offensive in some countries although not in others. Alternatively some publishers already have published a book with a similar or the same title so wished to 'rebrand' new books keeping them separately identifiable from their exisiting publications list. With republication, again traditionally, books had to be retypeset which could lead to differences in page lengths while in the modern digital world some publishers prefer different font sizes, different page sizes, or to group all of the illustrations together in different ways to previous publications. They sometimes even request additional or fewer illustrations particularly regarding colour plates. Any of these changes can lead to differences in book lengths and consequently page numbers.

This may explain why when I drafted postings in word, including HTML links, then copied them onto the forum amongst several other issues I found that what had been typed as " came out as ? and ' as ? effectively messing up the links.

I was Mind you the fact that my one and only attempt at Skiing was in Scotland when the only available snow was in a corrie at the top of the mountain on the first day followed by a white-out on the second which made skiing impossible may have had something to do with it

With those trees, the soil and that hillside in the background I would suspect somewhere much further east and south - possibly Greece

Dorothy Vitaliano is credited on Wikipedia with coining the term geomythology back in the late 1960's a term which in recent years, following the publication of your own works on this topic, has gained an increased profile both on TV and in other publications. However in your original period of research, before the publication of The First Fossil Hunters in 2000, did you find many individuals at libraries or other institutions who had either come across the term or even if they had considered it when researching their own archives?

Well I think the Last Post info has slightly improved in so far as it is now showing as a date unfortunately all posts within individual fora now seem to be showing the same date. I have only looked at a couple of fora and the dates were different so possibly the date is whenever the last posting was made within each forum.

Thanks for bringing this up Caldrail, I agree that there is often a problem with how we perceive ancient monuments although I would personally add a 'where' and possibly a 'when' to the 'what' you have already suggested. Neil Oliver's programme pointed up some of the alignements which can occur, using examples around Maes Howe and the Rings of Brodgar. Here existing structures and landscape features seem to have been 'respected' or acknowledged by later structures in effect building up a sacred landscape. This respecting extending to particular times of the year and locations where the sun crossed the horizon. The Greensands Quarry up in the hills of Cumbria, also mentioned in the programme, provides a slightly different example where there is no obvious reason for the quarrying and roughing out of stone axes occuring in an area remote from nearby settlements where the actual finishing of the stone axes took place. The same stone formations could be found in more easily accessible locations closer to the settlements. I heard recently the suggestion that this seperation of place and function rather than having a 'ritual' origin may simply be an early example of 'men in sheds' travelling away from the family home to somewhere private where they could have a good gossip out of the hearing of their families. If this particular suggestion holds true when coupled with the Maes Howe example above then it could give a whole new interpretation to the origins of 'ritual' activities which now provide sometimes less than convincing explanations for activities and structures at many locations including the well known Stonehenge.

If it's not Roman then I am totally at sea. The only thing it reminds me of is one of the mud-brick sections of the Great Wall of China.