Melvadius

I understand that there are indications that at least in several instances the impluvium contained porous and non-porous stones in its base so that any water falling into it would slowly drain away and be naturally filtered into the cistern lying below it. This system would probably leave a little water in the impluvium, usually not enough to be used directly for washing floors except after a storm, which would slowly evaporate and have a cooling effect. Water in the cistern, as I indicated above, could be drawn out in a small bucket when needed through a draw-shaft which usually had a puteal (well-head) above it so people wouldn't fall into the access to the cistern. As to fountains I don't think that they were a common feature in villa's but if you have enough of a fall in height between the reservoir and where the water comes out then you can create a fountain just by the force of gravity - using 'siphons' as you suggested. The Roman's also made extensive use of siphons in their aqueducts principally when crossing some deep valley's. I haven't checked explicitly for this answer but in Pompeii the street 'fountains' were all linked to cisterns located at the highest point of the town where the aqueduct came into the town so they could have had enough pressure available to have 'true' fountains built in. In some of the richer villa's there is evidence that they had elevated 'header' tanks while others probably bought their own access to the public water supply (as indicated in Frontinus) and by photographs at this site which shows valves on lead piping whcih could have been used to regulate the flwo of water to a fountain or other water feature turing it on or off when required. Some of Pompeii's residents therefore would likely also have had enough pressure to create 'true' fountains if they wished inside their villa's.

The whole topic area is a 'religious' minefield where most of the scholars traditionally have had a religious agenda be it Jewish, Christian, Muslim or one of the the numerous sects split from the main religions. Irrespective of that you are heavily dependent on writings that in many (but not all) cases were primarily religious in intent so often less interested in providing details of the events recorded in the 'relatively' scarcer secular writings relating to the Roman province. Josephus in this instance is one of the writings which seem to deliberately cross both areas of interest. BTW I understand that 'Jesus' is considered one of the prophets in the Muslim faith therefore belief in him as a 'real' person as already implied extends well beyond the 'religious' Christian sphere.

Just to expand slightly on Klingan's answer generally the composition of the ground being excavated will vary slightly eg with more or less sand or other inclusions in it such as clay. Where there is a noticable variation it is generally recorded as a new 'context'. There may be other variations such as distinctive pieces of pottery or other artefacts such as coins or brooches which can be used to give an approximate date for each context - the terminus post quem (date the layer can be no earlier than). When excavating we build up the stratigraphic relationship by numbering each context and then working out their relationship - in the UK usually using a visual representation based on a Harris Matrix which depending on the area excavated or as a factor of the quantity of finds can get increasingly complex such as in this example. Contexts which can be determined as lying immediately on top of each other should be older than the layer/ context below while those which cut into a lower context would indicate a later feature such as a pit which has been dug and then refilled. Presumably in the case above the excavators found the footprints in close association with material which could be dated to the Roman period therefore assume it to be most likely to be Roman rather than later or earlier.

Sky News are carrying what they claim as an exclusive story about the discovery of a Roman period child's footprints during excavations in 2010 during a dig at Healam Bridge, North Yorkshire. Although it is also being carried by World News Media here which also carries links to the Highways Agency Flickr site with some additional general images from the excavations. Unfortunately the footprints mentioned in both stories proved to be real ephemera as they could only be recorded on film. The main excavations were reported in August 2010 including this article in the Mail Online and a photostrip the BBC here

Just to get things started I would guess that despite the palm tree it is probably not a North African location. Somewhere in the Eastern Med does seems a possibility so I would guess we are looking for somewhere in Turkey.

As Viggen has already posted the reasons for your initial problems, let me add my welcome to the forum nonconformistNeo.

Kosmo, I have just tried and in the Vacatio forum you have to click the option at the bottom of the page to use 'the full editor' and that should bring up the image browse function you are looking for. However this doesn't seem to happen on all of the fora - this forum (Consilium Comitiorum) is one where even if you click 'the full editor' option the browse function doesn't open. Maybe Viggen or Primus Pilus can advise if it is deliberate or another of the 'undocumented features' of the last upgrade.

I suspect that it is almost exactly as you may suspect however, my own Latin is too flaky to really be certain when answering this so hopefully one of the others can help out. Just to confirm that as you have asked for the 'original pronounciation' I assume that you really do wish the Republican/ Early Principate pronounciation rather than Church Latin or one of the other later variants.

Personally there are two Romano-British sites I would recommend as well worth a visit which are reasonably near to Chichester: Butser Farm And Bignor Roman Villa - OK not an 'authentic' location but well worth it for the recreation of an Iron Age settlement when I was there and possibly the Roman 'villa' reconstruction which was built since - I wish they could have finished Peter's original attempt rather than demolishing and starting again Then on the military side there is of course Portchester Castle just the other side of Portsmouth.

I would only add that in much of the literature on the topic there is no clear agreement on defining what public buildings will occur in every instance or indeed what constitutes a 'town' and in which period. It is a well attested fact that many well established and populous 'towns' had few if any public buildings while others had numerous examples for a minimal population. On your other related topics we have extensively covered the fact that both the assignation of names to locations and their classification has occured over several hundred years in multivarious publications utilising a wide variety of sources. Yet despite this there are notable exclusions from our knowledge base which have never been fully resolved. If you have a particular location you wish to research then your best course of action would seem to be to find a good Classics library and see what published etymological, archaeological inscriptional or other material they hold on the site which could possibly relate to its name. I suppose the real question is why you think that there can be any public interest or value in trying to determine 'missing' names in Gaul or Germany from your suggested approach. As has already been pointed out 'names' for locations can change over time and in many cases at best may only survive in a very fragmentary or corrupt format from a single phase of use. I would have thought that if you had a particular location you wished to determine a name for that a rigerous check of what was already known about the site would need to be carried out through European rather than English language sources. Apart from anything else simply guessing a name for a location is open to no end of academic challenges

Hope you have a good time today

One does begin to wonder 'family heirloom' from where?

Thanks for confirming Byraxis Hecatee's and Caldrail's initial translations Klingan - it really seems a case of watch this space....

Agreed that cavalry could travel by ship if required - although probably unhappily. The presence of a parade mask - if that is what it is - does not require a comlete unit to be present - how about a retired cavalry auxilliary with a souvenir of his military service? As to blocked eyes there only appears to be one eye position surviving intact and it is unclear how thick the 'mask' is or if there is any evidence for fixing straps on the back. Agreed that if both eye positions are blocked then interpretation as a parade mask is somewhat tenuous to say the least. Is it possible that rather than a parade mask this is actually the remains of a statue head? Hopefully the analysis it will now have done on it will provide more of an answer to such questions

No joy with translation but by searching on Romersk bronsmask I found several which seem to be later articles including this one from the same source. It appears that sverigesradio (Swedish Radio?) even if no one else (is Swedish really that much of a ghetto language?) have been talking about it and posting articles on their web-pages for several days.

It is difficult to say anything conclusively as there is no fixed scale in your images. I would agree that several of the earlier images of large blocks appear more likely to be modern conglomerate blocks possibly of concrete (and one at least more like tarmacadam) so unlikely to be part of the original Roman road. Images taken where water has cut through archaeology are notoriously bad at initial interpretation (until a 'clean' cross-section cut has been created) especially if material has been scattered over a wide area but the size of cobbles in the image look plausible as part of the Portway. Gravel is also a material that would have been used in the construction by the Romans so again may be remain of a road surface but both could also be from later Medieval activity. Regarding your mystery object you haven't said if it is metal or slate. The flaking and possible puncture hole for a nail makes it look more like a broken slate or stone 'tile' possibly much smaller than it would have been originally. On the other hand if it is metal it looks too big to have been part of armour so may be a broken piece of agricultural equipment again if so probably more likely to be modern. BTW Who is running the excavation?

Antonia, This looks like you are being asked to do a school project; you will find some general information on slavery here but the key points have already been mentioned. How slaves were treated changed over time and depended to a great extent on what work they were being told to do and who owned them. A few could eventually buy their freedom to become freedmen and a few became very wealthy but not all. While any children they had after they became free could become full citizens of Rome although children they had while slaves also automatically became slaves. For a Roman citizen being able to own a slave meant that you did not have to do some things for yourself and you did not have to pay someone to do it for you

Past Horizons also carried this story. However they were much less convinced by the Stratford Observer's presumption of a possible military association, ending their report:

I suppose the 'revelation' is the fact they have tried to indicate the population densities by appropriately swelling or shrinking different parts of the map.

Well the underlying statistics are apparently based on work by Angus Maddison (2003) The World Economy: Historical Statistics, who was leading Economist/ Economic Historian rather than an archeologist. As his book is only available by subscription, which I am unwilling to fork out just for this, I am not certain how he derived his Economics based data and have no way of telling how good an indicator it may really be for ancient populations. I do know that the archaeological record is incomplete for the period and there is a lot of continuing 'debate' about how large a population there was in Rome let alone the rest of the World. The one exception is New Zealand where the datable archeological records only seems to start around AD 1285-1300 as this article from American Scientist - based on work by Wilmshurst et al, indicates, when the first evidence for a particular type of rat (the commensal Pacific rat) being present has been found. The assumption is that humans could not have arrived without bringing the rat with them - QED they probably did not arrive until some time after AD 1200 so New Zealand's human population in Year 1 was, as indicated above, zero.

I would have thought only marginally different if at all from one correct guess - how do you compute vanishingly small?

Please don't compound this fallicy on Wiki Answers by using names that have already been used in fiction. The more different names circulating the better - apart from anything else it can lead to years of arguments in the next editions of Trivial Pursuit

Hawass is quoted in Ahram online as saying that the earlier reports of damage to museum artefacts were in some instances such as the 'Royal mummies' mistaken while 70 items which were damaged are currently being restored and apparently will be back on display within the next week.

The worrying aspect of this is that if you Google the names the earliest datable reference seems to be from 12 Jan 2010 in Yahoo Answers which claims to have found the names on a website. I suspect that the 'real' source is a Teen literary magazine which has a 3 part story propounding these names that classifies itself as 'Teen Ink: magazine, website & books written by teens since 1989'..... Oh boy what a super-duper literary source that turns out to be!

I think if I had been sitting in one of his, apparently over-subscribed class lectures, I would have made an effort to ask the good Professor to cite precise sources for several of the opinions on Rome and Democeracy et al he scattered through this interview.