Melvadius

There are some arguments that despite the mitigation work, which has already started in some countries (e.g. the UK and EU targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions), the effects of climate change are already upon us which is why adaptation measures also need to be considered. It is highly likely to get worse before it gets better and issuing every tourist to Venice with water wings or a wet suit and breathing apparatus is unlikely to be greeted favourably.

="Bad money drives out good" (under legal tender laws) = Gresham's law. Or in Theognis of Megara's words: "Nor will anyone change the good that is there to something worse". The

I understand both mechanisms are operative in Venice and other places of the north Adriatic; one of them does not exclude the other. In this view Sylla is correct as can be seen from this article on the Nova site: Sinking city of Venice The operative section is in the second section 'a city awash' which states: As I have already indicated, that it will probably take centuries or millenia for Venice to totally submerge but if it does the rest of the world will probably have other concerns associated with rising sea levels given how large a percentage of both arable and heavily populated land surface already lies within a few meters of high tide levels.

As a followup to the previous thread Huge Anglo-Saxon gold hoard found BBC news have just announced the valuation of this major metal detectorist find which was properly reported through the Portable Antiquities Scheme. The Midlands museums now have the unenviable task of revising their fundraising target by over 300% so they can buy and display it in the area in which it was found.

Whatever anyone may think of the legality or otherwise of the situation and under what authority or towards what purpose the original archaeological work was carried out this hopefully is a step in the right direction towards some kind of settlement in this unhappy area.

Whatever the problem was it may have been resolved. Admittedly I haven't checked deeper into the site as I don't know which page you weere looking for but I have just got onto the home page at: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/home.html

Under the title: 'So that's what the Romans gave us

Over what timescale precisely? Enough said.

I could argue the point of but will accept you didn't mean it the way it looked. Which has not been argued against on this thread simply the misleading representation of it on the link you supplied. As you have said it is not an exact science, but geology and climate change will affect and eventuallly change the face of all standing archaeology as we know it surviving today, so enough said on that issue here. You are welcome.

Going slightly off topic, but I gotta love that the map is set to +7 as default. That's what I call serious global-warming-mania. I love the speckle effect across some of the higher areas of Venice even at '0m'. Now I know that Aqua Alta is a concern in Venice when St Mark's Square can be flooded but when I tried zooming in and with different settings that was one area which seemed to survive even a 3 or 4m rise in sea levels - while the train station along with its raised causeway and the raised docks in the west of the main city started to sink beneath the waves. Pssibly the third paragraph should have been a giveaway to its 'accuracy': 'This map is not a carefully surveyed and extremely accurate presentation. It is intended to provide a visual impression of which geographic areas might be flooded if global warming and climate change continue unabated. '

I wouldn't necessarily say it is terrible if you go out of the main tourist periods, on our first visit we went for a weekend in late October and there were some good events on which we could get to from a reasonable hotel on the main islands and with realtively few tourists about. We then made the mistake of going during Carnival when it sometimes seemed to be a case of only being able to move in some of the narrower passageways when someone breathed out.

Here's another story and a video...but the video is only available to folks in the UK. J The first 9 minutes or so of the programme are devoted to this find, with the more telling discussion coming at the end when Richard Brewer raises the possibility (as I previously suggested) that rather than a 'classical' villa, this may have been an administrative building associated with Roman mining activities in the area. Lead and silver as well as copper seem to have been mined nearby in the Roman period and administrative buildings have been identified or suspected in a number of other areas including the Weald of Kent, where for a period there was a major Roman metal smelting operation under the control of the Classis Britannica. For this reason one of the issues arcaheologists have to be aware of when initially investigating any similarly sized Roman building is that without excavation it is usually impossible to determine if it was purely a rural residence or if it could have had any number of other functions including religious, farming or as now suggested a mining related. N.B. 'classic' villa's intended to be solely residential are actually not as common as items in the press may lead people to believe. Many of the sites investigated in recent years have either been shown to be multifunctional or at least have had changes of use throughout their periods of occupation.

I didn't post this before as it isn't Roman realted but if you are interested in general 'sewer' archaeology there has recently been further investigations of the medieval drain at Paisley Abbey as a follow up on 1991 excavations which found extensive vegetable matter throughout the drain and a slate containing someof the earliest musical notation found in Scotland. Some background on the recent excavations can be found at: http://heritage-key.com/blogs/malcolmj/arc...goes-down-drain The Herald article at: http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-ne...ldmine-1.919426 The dig blog is at : http://www.paisley.org.uk/active/index.php...=8&id=39523 Publications related to the earlier dig include: Food, medicinal and other plants from the 15th century drains of Paisley Abbey, Scotland by Camilla Dickson Check out pages 2 for a short article relating to a 1999 conference about the original discoveries but especially page 4 of this short article which specifically mention the musical notation found along with plugging the conference book (which I think has several papers worth reading including ones on the vegetable remains by both Camilla and Peter Dickson): http://www.maybole.org/community/organisat...%20Feb%2009.pdf Details at: http://www.springerlink.com/content/j7v71l3510560888/

Times online report what could potentially be quite an important undertaking - a survey of the Roman drain at Bath (Aqua Sulis). It is obviously early days yet and nothing has so far been found so although not strictly 'news' this is probably one to keep an eye on for future reports: Under the title: 'Quest to find out what the Romans dropped down the drain' the Times report:

Wales online report the discovery of arcaheological evidence for a Roman villa in mid-Wales an area long believed to have primarily been a military area rather than civilian. I would like ot have seen the magnetometry result but from the description it does sound like a form of building which is often described as a 'villa' even if in some instances the actual function is not always as clearly defined as agricultureal or even civilian.

I have now spoken to a couple of archaeometallurgists about the bronze dagger, which is shown in the photographs and it seems we are all wrong . If the damage had been due to erosion then the dagger would have shown distinct signs of rounding rather than the extensive 'etching' which has occured. This type of 'etching' can occur in any burial and is part of the 'normal' process involving [to quote their description] 'bodily fluids'. In fact they expressed suprise that it didn't show more signs of 'etching', as they have seen much worse from burials. If the reports are correct and a sword in good condition was found in proximity to the same burials then it probably had not come into as much contact with 'bodily fluids' as the dagger had.

Recent archaeological reports in Japan have fueled a long running debate about the precise location of the lan once ruled by Queen Himiko, one of the major figures from 3rd century Japan, which just goes to show if it was needed that aercaeological debate is an international past-time : From http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/...0911120147.html (a couple of photographs are attached to the original article) Telegraph article at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/...discovered.html Kyodo News has an aerial photograph of the location: http://home.kyodo.co.jp/modules/fstPhotos/...p?photoid=40542

I suspect that only two of the interviewees were actually members of Canterbury Archaeological Trust who were contracted to carry out the excavation (one of whom based on a different interview for 'Your Canterbury') was probably Jon Rady who acted as project manager. c/f http://www.yourcanterbury.co.uk/kent-news/...nkent29852.aspx

I would also add a note of caution here. Although I haven't been able to access the video so far, the slideshow seems to indicate a 'mass burial' rather than a column of soldiers overcome by a sandstorm. If this is a mass burial it seem to indicate that contrary to Heroditus (not necessarily unknown) at least some evidence of the army was subsequently found and/ or earlier casulties of the storm were buried while others were still capable of doing so. A lot of the answers to precisely who the casulties were and when they come from will probably depend on the accurate plotting of the human remains along with any associated finds and subsequent analysis. I am however a bit suprised at the amount of degredation seen from the 'bronze' weapon in the slideshow. This is an apparently arid area where I probably wouldn't have expected to see so much degredation, even over several millenia, so I intend asking a couple of experienced metallurgists about that on an upcoming visit to my local archeological research laboratory.

An article in the New York Times has just been published linking to an exhibition which may be worth a visit if anyone is in Rome over the next couple of months or so: 'The Painting of an Empire' at Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome. Through Jan. 17.

The crux of the following announcement from 'round town news' seems to be that a child burial has been found in an amphora which has expanded the known area of the Roman cemetery at Albir but also evidence for higher status burials which has implications for both the importance of the area and how much information archaeologists may be able to obtain through further excavations in the cemetery and surrounding area. Quote below from: http://www.roundtownnews.co.uk/index.php?o...2&Itemid=31

Leicester University have just completed excavation of what is potentially a very important Meolithic flint tool manufacturing and possible settlement site in a period when there were no real settled communities in Britain. Consequently in the period little in the way of physical remains of human activity remains except for the occasional find of flint or even less tangible traces of structures found in soil: From the Leicester Mercury at: http://www.thisisleicestershire.co.uk/news...il/article.html

The Press and Journal reports a major find on skye - from the banner there is apparently six cists (slab lined burial chambers) and 6 cremation pits although the actual report only mentions 3 cist burials (which in my experience depending upon period could have contained either inhumation or creamation burials) but it is still a significant find for the area: A PREHISTORIC burial ground has been discovered on Skye. Six slab-lined graves and six cremation pits have been unearthed on the excavation site close to Armadale pier on the Sleat peninsula. Experts say it is one of the most significant archaeological finds yet made in the Highlands. Flint tools and urns were found inside the graves, although skeletal remains had been damaged due to the tide. The contents of the burial site are being removed by a team of archaeologists from Inverness and Skye. They could be reconstructed and relocated to a new site at Armadale. Archaeologist Mary Peteranna said she had no inkling that the raised shingle beach overlooking the Sound of Sleat would contain a treasure trove of remains when work started in September. Two