Melvadius

The article provides an interesting overview of the metal finds from this site up to 1997 and appears to form the basis of a catalogue from an exhibition held then. As I don't have any knowledge of Eastern European languages it is a pity, although perfectly reasonable for the catalogues purpose, that most of the technical descriptions of the finds appear to be in Croatian. Personally it is also interesting to note the references to 'Copper Age' (Eneolithic) in the IV-III Milennium B.C.' in the literature. Although the 'copper Age' is an important and separate period in Eastern and Mediterranean archaeology it is probably one which many people in the rest of Europe may not recognise as the terms used to refer to human development in Europe differ slightly as it could take 1000 yerars for some of the core technologies to spread across the whole of europe. As the article indicates in archaeological terms the comparable period of the IV-III Milennium B.C.in Britain (and much of North West Europe) would be the Early Neolithic.

I have copies of the other books mentioned in her 'bio' and Duckworth have a good reputation for producing more academic treatments of subject matter's from the Classical world so I would definately be interested.

Given that this was a site originally excavated several decades ago I suppose the questions I would like to see addressed in the new research is what combination of finds came from the original excavation. Depending on the composition is it possible to interprete these as relating to a purely domestic situation or are there any other interpretations possible including are there any finds which could have specific religious or even medical connotations. Looking at the evidence in the round, rather than making unsupportable assertions of 'there is only one possible explanation', may not make good copy but is often the case when interpreting any archaeological site so in many ways I would prefer to be able to read the full report rather than watch what will probably be only one of several possible interpretations which the documentary makers have chosen to highlight in the programme. Obviously any interpretation must be dependent on what was actually found so until I have more information here are a couple of 'blue sky' alternative to consider: Should particular types of medical instruments have been found along with an adult cemetary, or at least a few female bodies ideally buried with neo-nate children, this could lead to an alternative hypothesis that rather than being a 'brothel' the site may have been used as a sort of maternity hospital/ religious retreat for difficult or unwanted births. Alternatively if there was too much inbreeding going on between close relatives at an isolated villa this could have led to a lot of sickly children who quickly died and were then disposed of locally. The problems with either alternative and indeed the original premise are that: they apparently have not completed analysis of all the remains found, from the original excavators notes some remains of infants seem to still be missing, and unless there was a long term medical condition affecting bone or more general skeletal development, most ailments which could kill an individual or child are unlikely to show up in the skeletal remains anyway making cause of death problematical to determine.

A very interesting article which unfortunatley doesn't really attempt to explain the cause of the mumification process, except indirectly. If I have read it correctly this seems to have mainly been a natural mumification process aided by the continuing flow of air into the chambers and the inclusion of sawdust to draw off moisture from the bodies. The 'moisture' referred to is probably actually the escape of internal fluids from the internal guts/ stomachs of individuals which I believe normally aid, or actually cause the decomposing process to start. I suppose the question's we will never be able to completely answer is how it was first discovered that bodies were being preserved in this way and who started to promote this form of burial amongst the elite. Personally I would suspect that monks or priests looking after burials must have realised that burial chambers built to a particular pattern and especially those with internal air ducts seemed to create natural mummies possibly this occured when they tried to remove bones to an ossary to create space for more burials only to find 'uncorrupted' bodies. They then had a problem; either moving a 'complete' body and then watch it quickly decompose outside the original chamber or else find some way to repeat the original process and market the idea - they obviously seem to have taken the second choice as more appealing to some of their possibly 'protestant' customers.

Personally I wouldn't expect to find very much written on this subject with any degree of authority although there may well be religous sites who debate such points I suspect that physical written evidence from the period may be much harder to find. Even if such records could have survived from Roman times I doubt very much if the Roman's kept written records going into such minutea of detail about which particular tools were used for the task beyond 'a' or 'b' were nailed to a cross/ crucified. Their main concern was probably simply to make a point with the act of crucifiction while treatment of the body afterwards could well have been down to local decisions about when or even if the body would be returned to anyone. As far as removal of nails are concerned; pretty much like in modern carpentry the Romans had pliers and crowbars which could pull nails from wood so they probably used whatever tools were available. Worst case if they didn't want to reuse the crossbar and couldn't get the nails out any other way they had saws, adzes and axes so they could have simply sawn or cut through the crossbar as appropriate and left whoever claimed the body to decide on how to deal with any wood still attached before burial/cremation.

I thought that was (filmically) from a POW camp rather than from a concentration camp?

Thanks Viggen. Sorry about the broken link, I normally double check after posting for that very reason

...they are just as bad as the rest of the favourites (exept argentina) but that is for me the indication that they are particular dangerous then hehe here the nice overview from Fifa http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/standings/index.html I don't really follow this but I understand from the office sweepstake that currently the team with the longest starting odds through to the next round is Slovakia (originally 400/1) although that may change if Honduras (1000/1) manage to cream Switzerland and get through as well.

This article under the (spoof?) title 5000-year-old Planning Application Holds Final Clue to Solve Stonehenge Riddle on the Heritage Key website is too good not to pass on although this is a condensed version of the full Newsbiscuit article:

Or if their interpretation is correct possibly more likely the result of several centuries of 'activity' on the same site. [Edit] Mind you the Heritage Key Blog questions the viability of the site as a brothel being a villa a long way from any significantly sized settlements:

The BBC reports on the discovery of a possible Roman 'baby' cemetery The discovery will form part of a new TV series to be broadcast in July/ August 'Digging for Britain'.

An interesting contention, elements of which I have already indicated I would tend more to agree with than disagree. I have no problem with a view that small quantities of what analysis has shown is effectively 'steel' were created for specific tasks by blacksmiths in ancient times, even if not by 'modern' mass production method. Where we differ however is that you have not provided either firm evidence for the Romans having a specific term for steel or sources for your statement that the Romans used Nor(d?)ic 'steel'. With this last can you confirm the ancient sources say 'steel' as opposed to 'iron' or is this a modern interpretation of available literature/ analysis?

When excavating Roman sites we find any number of bone (and a few metal) hair pins so these were obviously very common items used across the Empire. In Britain the bone pins can be roughly dated depending upon how much decoration there is on them such as inscribed lines around the circumferance of the pin. As far as fibulae are concerned I believe that both men and women would have used them for fastening clothing. I'm not sure if anyone has any evidence for differences in fibulae shape based on sex as opposed to the obvious variations in design due to changes in fashion over time pointed up by the Wikipeadia article already referred to.

Although I don't have a Latin version to check; my copy of N.P. Milner's translation of Vegetius: Epiiiitome of Military Science IV.8 states on page 124 that 'For making arms, iron of both tempers and coal are kept in magazines.' (N.B. Sim incorrrectly referred to this as being in Vegetius De Architectura in his book 'Iron for the Eagles] Now in the footnotes Milner clarifies the reference to 'iron of both tempers' as: 'iron and steel, it remains unclear whether Roman blacksmiths knowingly added carbon to harden iron into steel , although they managed to produce it.' On the basis of this quotation I would say that the Roman's did know how to produce some quantities of steel BUT it probably was only done by a few specialists as a difficult process which they only thought of as producing 'differently tempered' pieces of iron. If they had a specific name for 'steel' rather than as a type of tempered iron it has not been identified in surviving Latin texts.

This has been touched on already in some of the earlier postings but from a purely practical viewpoint an oval shield has a couple of advantages over a large rectangular shield in 'open' and opposed to 'close order' combat. I would define - 'close' order formations as the typical early Principate legion working in a tight formation, with almost overlapping shields and using their gladii to make short stabs diagonally to their opponents on their right from behind the protection of their shields. In comparison 'open' order formations tend to be much looser with each man basically defending himself, moving forward or back as he wishes but also needing a larger area to swing his weapons. The oval shape provides good, or at least reasonable, body protection in either formation. However in 'open order' combat, which the later legions adopted and auxilliaries usually employed, anyone using a hand held weapon can swing it either over the top or under the bottom of the shield in a slashing motion with reduced risk of catching either it or their arm on the shield's edge. An oval shield can also be easily rotated, by using the elbow as a pivot point, across the body to block slashing attacks from several directions without needing to move the whole arm out from the body improving defensive actions. The shape of the rectangular scutum makes this harder to achieve with an economy of motion. The rectangualr scutum also makes slashing strokes by longer edged weapons, such as the spartha adopted by the later Imperial armies, harder to achieve easily. The question may be the extent to which the change in tactics was led by a change in equipment or vice-versa. Possibly with the Imperial armies becoming more static in the later Empire. the Romans found that when needed to respond to emergencies their main armed forces couldn't get into contact with raiding parties before they got away so to improve the manouverability of the later field armies gradually moved over to tactics and equipment previously only used by lighter (auxilliary) troops.

The latest stages in the ongoing investigations of the Nile Delta by a team of Austrian archaeologists have been highlighted with the release of satellite and radar images of the ancient town of Avaris which is believed to be the summer capital used when the Hyskos ruled Egypt. Picking up on recent Associated Prerss announcements several newspapers including the Telegraph reports that: This article Providing a Map of Avaris, from Egyptian Archaeology, provides much more detail of this project including some good charts and images of the study area.

Bryaxis, I think this may be a slight mistranslation from your native languagefibulae are normally referred to as broaches in English - although some of them are highly decorated and may even be 'jewelled' with precious or semi-precious stones that is fairly uncommon. I believe the name may originally have referred to one of the basic Roman shapes for fibulae where they look like a bent knee and originally would have had a hinged pin (usually lost or broken) which swings across to close the gap.

Thanks for this Viggen, it gave me a necessary lead and with some further checking it appears that although VERA is using Bayesian calibration to constrain their results there are still issues with it. Another document gives some more information as in part it states: The problems with exisiting radiocarbon dates appear to derive in part from the 'ABA' process which was traditionally used by laboratories, at least recently, VERA were still using this method to remove contaminants from samples before they are tested. Oxford is developing a number of improved methods ,including single amino acid dating, as the 'ABOx-SC' technique for removing contaminants from carbon is apparently giving vastly improved results. N.B. as I've mentioned elsewhere contaminants can affect C14 dating as can the presence of 'older' or 'younger' C14 in the samples being tested so smaller samples may in future generate better and more relaible results. It is a bit outside our normal area of interest but I was recently told that during retesting by Oxford using their new methodology rather than the ABA preparation method approximatley 70% of published dates for the Middle Paleolithic to Aurignacian Transition in Europe 9around 30,000-40,000 BP) appear to be wrong. If the new Oxford results are correct then, even though from a more recent period in history, it argues the case that the dates derived for Tell el-Daba may also need to be retested using the same methodology.

I always feel uncomfortable with pronouncements made about the relative intelligence or otherwise of particular societies on the basis of a 'perceived' improvement in results from IQ testing. The underlying issue with modern IQ tests are that they are heavly culturally influenced as well as really only testing individuals against a standardised set of (usually) written questions. Many of these questions seem to be used in a variety of forms now not just when students are being taught at school or college but also regularly featuring in newspapers and in the various 'brain training' games available. It is patently obvious to me that an increasing percentage of people are becoming attuned to these style of questions. In a mainly non-literate or at best semi-literate society, which some argue Rome was, most people are unlikely to have come across these types of questions or at least not in the same quentity so would not know where or how to start answering them - even if they could read or understand the underlyign principles of the questions. An 'apparent' improvement in IQ in my view is effectively a self-fulfilling prophecy being derived not from increased intelligence but increased practice.

I found the closing paragraphs interesting ,where differences of opinion on the dating methodology came to the fore, with radiocarbon and historical dating by University of Vienna's Manfred Bietak being questioned by Sturt Manning at Cornell University, Unfortunately with a quick check I couldn't find out if Bietak's team dating of Tell el-Dab'a in Egypt was derived using the more accurate Bayesian methodology, increasingly being used for deriving probable dates oif sites, or if it was derived using the previous less accurate 'uncalibrated' radiocarbon dating methodology. I suspect it was through earlier methods as at least one report on the web seemed to indicate a 2006 date for some work there. Although a useful dating method, previously published radiocarbon dates generally have a lot more uncertainty than is understood by the media. There ahs been a tendency to only publish the 'central' possible date rather than making clear that radiocarbon dating gives a date range which could be several hundred years wide . As is now being seen by laboratory analysis in some cases the previous most likely 'core' dates are hundreds if not thousands of years adrift from what is now being suggested using bayesian methodology. The bayesian dates also tend to have a smaller degree of uncertainty so rather than plus or minus a few hundred years the potential range may drop to plus or minus a few tens of years.

There are several works on Roman burial practices which show that within the confines of the empire the precise method used varied from period to period and indeed area to area. At different times a wide range of burial practices were undertaken - cremation is the best known and often cited but was not universally practiced eg the recent theread mentioning the discovery of clay coffins in Cyprus. Inhumations were increasingly popular from the second and third centuries onwards but were also practiced in earlier periods. In some cemeteries. such as Larkhill near Winchester, methods can be seen to vary over time (as did the alignment of inhumation grave cuts - whether n/s or w/e). N.B. Variations in the presence of and nature of grave goods and other burial practices can often be used as a good indicator of possible dates even without scientific ananlysis. Within this spectrum the use of lead 'caskets' is a rare feature of a relatively few 'rich' burials which are primarily found in areas like Britain and Germany, where lead was more readily available than in Italy, thus the interest in this particular burial.

The Universirty of Bristol press release on the discovery with a few more photographs can be read here and the BBC news article with a couple of other photographs and a link to their earlier more speculative report from January 2010 here

Not strictly Roman or archaeological but a scientific paper based on evidence from Pompeii has just been published on PLoS One on the subject of Lethal Thermal Impact at Periphery of Pyroclastic Surges: Evidences at Pompeii which may interest some people. The abstract reads:

Referring to his magazine as 'BAR' as far as I am concerned is deeply confusing because I normally only associate BAR with the British Archaeological Reports series of publications which started in 1974. That said Hershel does deserve a lot of kudos for his efforts to make availabile the Dead Sea Scrolls to a wider readership and also for not always taking the bible too literally as archaeology often provides contradictory evidence.