Ancient Roman City Rises Again

[Melvadius]

By Andrew Curry

ScienceNOW Daily News

30 July 2009

 

'From the ground, a 100-hectare site just north of Italy's Venice airport looks like nothing more than rolling fields of corn and soybeans. But it's actually home to a buried Roman metropolis called Altinum, considered the precursor of ancient Venice. Now, using sophisticated aerial imagery, researchers have brought this city to life once again.

Archaeologists have known for decades that Altinum, a Roman trading center that thrived between the 1st and 5th centuries C.E., lay below these farm fields. Raised 2 to 3 meters above the surrounding marshy lagoon by centuries of human habitation, the city was approximately the size of Pompeii. Its history could stretch back to the Bronze Age, and it dominated the region for at least 600 years before it became a part of the Roman Empire.

 

But all traces of Altinum's buildings have long since disappeared, either stolen as building material or swamped by rising water levels in the surrounding lagoon. So how to map a city with no visible ruins? In July 2007, during a severe drought, Paolo Mozzi, a geomorphologist at the University of Padua in Italy, and his team took aerial photos of the site in several wavelengths of visible light and in near-infrared, with a resolution of half a meter.

 

When the images were processed to tease out subtle variations in plant water stress, a buried metropolis emerged. The researchers discovered that the crops planted on the land were in different stages of ripening, thanks to differences in the amount of water in the soil. Lighter crops traced the outlines of buildings--including a basilica, an amphitheater, a forum, and what may have been temples--buried at least 40 centimeters below the surface. To the south of the city center runs a wide strip of riper crops. They were growing above what clearly used to be a canal, an indication that Venice's Roman forebears were already incorporating waterways into their urban fabric. ....'

 

Continued (including Aerial images of the ancient city of Altinum) at :

 

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/conte...009/730/1?rss=1

 

Edit for some additional links:

 

BBC video 'flyover' image at:

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8177308.stm

 

Additional photographs can be seen at this site:

 

http://io9.com/5326114/aerial-photos-of-it...t-city/gallery/

Edited July 31, 2009 by Melvadius

[Northern Neil]

A wonderful discovery, indeed. A look at this site on Google Earth Shows nothing which is obviously Roman, although using the map as a comparison you can just about make out a semicircular blur where the theatre is, and the walls and ditches. The local village of Altino (obviously the name, if not the buildings, remained in use) is just to the North East, and one can use it as a reference point for seeing the Google Earth image.

[sylla]

If we rely on the Historia Augusta ("Julius Capitolinus"), Altinum was where the unlucky Lucius Vero (Marcus Aurelius' co-emperor) died:

 

"But not far from Altinum, Lucius, while in his carriage, was suddenly stricken with the sickness which they call apoplexy, and after he had been set down from his carriage and bled, he was taken to Altinum,and here he died, after living for three days unable to speak."