Tourists dive into underwater archaeological Roman party town
Fish dart across mosaic floors and into the ruined villas, where holidaying Romans once drank, plotted and flirted in the party town of Baiae, now an underwater archaeological park near Naples.
Statues which once decorated luxury abodes in this beachside resort are now playgrounds for crabs off the coast of Italy, where divers can explore ruins of palaces and domed bathhouses built for emperors.
Rome’s nobility were first attracted in the 2nd century BC to the hot springs at Baiae, which sits on the coast within the Campi Flegrei — a supervolcano known in English as the Phlegraean Fields.
It was where “old men behave like young boys, and lots of young boys act like young girls,” according to the Roman scholar Varro.
But by the 4th century, the porticos, marble columns, shrines and ornamental fish ponds had begun to sink due to bradyseism, the gradual rise and fall of land due to hydrothermal and seismic activity.
The whole area, including the neighbouring commercial capital of Pozzuoli and military seat at Miseno, were submerged. Their ruins now lie between four and six metres (15 to 20 feet) underwater.
‘Something unique’
“It’s difficult, especially for those coming for the first time, to imagine that you can find things you would never be able to see anywhere else in the world in just a few metres of water,” said Marcello Bertolaso, head of the Campi Flegrei diving centre, which takes tourists around the site.
In this photograph taken on August 18, 2021 a dive guide shows tourists a copy of the original statue preserved at the Museum of Baiae, representing Dionysus with ivy crown in the Nymphaeum of punta Epitaffio, the submerged ancient Roman city of Baiae at the Baiae Underwater Park.
“Divers love to see very special things, but what you can see in the park of Baiae is something unique.”
The 177-hectare (437-acre) underwater site has been a protected marine area since 2002, following decades in which antiques were found in fishermen’s nets and looters had free rein.
Divers must be accompanied by a registered guide.
A careful sweep of sand near a low wall uncovers a stunning mosaic floor from a villa which belonged to Gaius Calpurnius Pisoni, known to have spent his days here conspiring against Emperor Nero.
Explorers follow the ancient stones of the coastal road past ruins of spas and shops, the sunlight on a clear day piercing the waves to light up statues. These are replicas; the originals are now in a museum.
“When we research new areas, we gently remove the sand where we know there could be a floor, we document it, and then we re-cover it,” archaeologist Enrico Gallocchio told AFPTV.
“If we don’t, the marine fauna or flora will attack the ruins. The sand protects them,” said Gallocchio, who is in charge of the Baiae park.
“The big ruins were easily discovered by moving a bit of sand, but there are areas where the banks of sand could be metres deep. There are undoubtedly still ancient relics to be found,” he said.
Mexico’s Teotihuacan pyramid has 2,000-year-old floral offerings, discovered by archaeologists
Nearly 2,000 years ago, the ancient people of Teotihuacan wrapped bunches of flowers into beautiful bouquets, laid them beneath a jumble of wood and set the pile ablaze.
Now, archaeologists have found the remains of those surprisingly well-preserved flowers in a tunnel snaking beneath a pyramid of the ancient city, located northeast of what is now Mexico City.
The pyramid itself is immense and would have stood 75 feet (23 meters) tall when it was first built, making it taller than the Sphinx of Giza from ancient Egypt.
The Temple of the Feathered Serpent at Teotihuacan, Mexico
The Teotihuacan pyramid is part of the “Temple of the Feathered Serpent,” which was built in honour of Quetzalcoatl, a serpent god who was worshipped in Mesoamerica.
Archaeologists found the bouquets 59 feet (18 m) below ground in the deepest part of the tunnel, said Sergio Gómez-Chávez, an archaeologist with Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) who is leading the excavation of the tunnel.
A digital reconstruction of the tunnel running under the pyramid at Teotihuacan.
Numerous pieces of pottery, along with a sculpture depicting Tlaloc, a god associated with rainfall and fertility, were found beside the bouquets, he added.
The bouquets were likely part of rituals, possibly associated with fertility, that Indigenous people performed in the tunnel, Gómez-Chávez told Live Science in a translated email. The team hopes that by determining the identity of the flowers, they can learn more about the rituals.
One of the 2,000-year-old bouquets is prepped for research.
The team discovered the bouquets just a few weeks ago. The number of flowers in each bouquet varies, Gómez-Chávez said, noting that one bouquet has 40 flowers tied together while another has 60 flowers.
Archaeologists found evidence of a large bonfire with numerous pieces of burnt wood where the bouquets were laid down, Gómez-Chávez said.
It seems that people placed the bouquets on the ground first and then covered them with a vast amount of wood. The sheer amount of wood seems to have protected the bouquets from the bonfire’s flames.
The tunnel that Gómez-Chávez’s team is excavating was found in 2003 and has yielded thousands of artefacts including pottery, sculptures, cocoa beans, obsidian, animal remains and even a miniature landscape with pools of liquid mercury. Archaeologists are still trying to understand why ancient people created the tunnel and how they used it.
Teotihuacan contains several pyramids and flourished between roughly 100 B.C. and A.D. 600. It had an urban core that covered 8 square miles (20 square kilometres) and may have had a population of 100,000 people.
Spinning Tools Recovered from 2,000-Year-Old Grave in Poland
Archaeologists have uncovered a 2,000-year-old grave containing human remains lying one on top of the other, spindle whorls and the remains of distaffs during barrow excavations in the Sarbia forestry district.
The remains are thought to date back to the Wielbark culture and according to researchers the presence of the weaving materials suggest that the bodies had similar professions.
Spindle whorls are weights attached to a spindle, they prevent the threads from sliding and maintain the speed of the spin. They have a hole in the middle. They are usually made of clay, less frequently of stone. In both graves, there were also silver, S-shaped clasps, and similar bowls.
Head of the research project Professor Andrzej Michałowski from the Faculty of Archaeology at the Adam Mickiewicz University, attempted to reconstruct the funeral ritual and the reason for finding two burials under the barrow.
He said: “The body of the deceased was already in a wooden boat, which she used to take to cross to the other bank of the river… It seemed as if she was napping after work, dressed in her best robes. Her chest decorated with a rain of beads made of glass, amber and bone… Pendants sparkling in the necklace. The silver sparkle of the S-shaped clasp on her neck.”
During the excavation, the remains of a box placed at her feet were also discovered.
Michałowski said: “It contained her beloved work tools. A set of professional whorls and two distaffs, so that in the afterlife she would be able to weave the most delicate fog that would move over the valley of the river. Or heavy stormy clouds racing over the edge of the valley… Favourite pins to catch her unruly hair that disrupted her work.”
He added that in his opinion, the spinner’s apprentice attended the funeral and during the ceremony threw a pebble with a carved face outline into the grave (archaeologists found such a pebble during excavations).
He said: “She missed her. She, too, wanted to go where the Great Spinner went. Touch the threads again together and magic them into the weaving of fabrics.
Since the death of the Master, she knew that she would no longer be able to do this magic with her as before. She saw only one goal… The next day, a fisherman walking towards the river saw a small body floating on the waves.”
After the apparent suicide, the spinner’s apprentice was buried in the same barrow where the Great Spinner had been buried.
Michałowski said: “For her journey, she received her whorls, reminiscent of flowers or stars hanging on the riverside sky on a summer night, and a small distaff. A small S-shaped clasp glimmered in her burnt remains. A small bowl rested in a dug pit.”
He added: “Only the stone with a face really knows the truth.”
1,500-Year-Old Industrial Agriculture Site Unearthed in Israel
Archaeologists in Israel have discovered a wine press, a rare gold coin and other artefacts linked to a settlement that stood in what’s now the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Ha-Sharon some 1,500 years ago.
The wine press dates to the Byzantine period.
Paved with a mosaic floor, the large wine press is a key indicator that the site was home to agricultural-industrial activity during the Byzantine period, reports i24 News. Archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) also found the foundations of a large structure that may have served as a warehouse or farmstead.
“Inside the buildings and installations, we found many fragments of storage jars and cooking pots that were evidently used by labourers working in the fields here,” says excavation leader Yoel Arbel in a statement. “We also recovered stone mortars and millstones that were used to grind wheat and barley and probably also to crush herbs and medicinal plants.”
Arbel adds that most of the stone implements were made of basalt from the Golan Heights and Galilee, located 50 to 100 miles northeast of Ramat Ha-Sharon.
As Stuart Winer reports for the Times of Israel, the coin was minted in 638 or 639 C.E. under the authority of Byzantine emperor Heraclius. One side shows the emperor and his two sons.
The hill of Golgotha in Jerusalem, identified as the site of the crucifixion of Jesus in Christian gospels, appears on the reverse. Someone scratched an inscription, likely the name of the coin’s owner, onto its surface in Greek and possibly Arabic, according to Robert Kool, a coin expert with the IAA.
“The coin encapsulates fascinating data on the decline of Byzantine rule in the country and contemporary historical events, such as the Persian invasion and the emergence of Islam, and provides information on Christian and pagan symbolism and the local population who lived here,” says Kool in the statement.
The coin shows Emperor Heraclius and his sons.
Among the discoveries made at the site was a bronze chain that may have been used to suspend a chandelier—an artefact typically found in churches, writes Rossella Tercatin for the Jerusalem Post.
Other items dated to the early Islamic period, which began in the seventh century C.E. These included oil lamps, a glass workshop, and a warehouse with large vessels used to store grain and produce.
“In this period, people were not only working at the site but also living there, because we discovered the remains of houses and two large baking ovens,” says Arbel in the statement.
Archaeologists think the site remained in use until the 11th-century C.E.
The team conducted excavations in advance of the construction of a neighbourhood at the site.
“This is the first archaeological excavation ever conducted at the site, and only part of it was previously identified in an archaeological field survey,” says IAA Tel Aviv District archaeologist Diego Barkan in the statement. “The Israel Antiquities Authority views this as an excellent opportunity to integrate the ancient remains into plans for the future municipal park.”
Ramat Ha-Sharon’s mayor, Avi Gruber, says in the statement that local authorities are working with the new neighbourhood’s developers to integrate the archaeological site into the development.
“I want all our residents to enjoy learning about life here in antiquity and in the Middle Ages,” he adds.
At the site of a new apartment building, a mass burial of 18th century plague victims was discovered.
An 18th-century cemetery containing the remains of plague victims has been uncovered during an apartment build in northern Poland. The grim discovery was made after builders stumbled upon human remains during work at the site in Mikołajki in the Warmian-Maurian Voivodeship.
The grim discovery was made after builders stumbled upon human remains during work at the site in Mikołajki in the Warmian-Maurian Voivodeship.
The find included two cemeteries, one dating between the 17th -19th century and a second from the 18th century when a plague swept through the Mazurian region.
The find included two cemeteries, one dating between the 17th -19th century and a second from the 18th century when a plague swept through the Mazurian region.
Archaeologist Agnieszka Jaremek vice-president of the Dajna Foundation said: “It is mentioned in sources that there was not enough space in the cemetery by the church and that’s why victims were buried by the road leading to Mrągowo.
“Everything points to the fact that we have uncovered that place.
“Many graves conceal whole families – both adults and children.”
The find included two cemeteries, one dating between the 17th -19th centuries and a second from the 18th century when a plague swept through the Mazurian region.
So far the remains of 100 people have been uncovered in 60 graves.
Known as the Great Northern War plague of 1700–1721, the epidemic swept across what is now northern Poland and other parts of Central Eastern Europe killing hundreds of thousands.
By the time the plague had faded out by December 1709 in the then city of Danzig, around half of its inhabitants had been killed.
After the plague, near to the graves of victims, further dead were buried and burials could have taken place there until the start of the 19th century.
In these graves, archaeologists uncovered items such as buttons.
Joanna Sobolewska, director of the Department for the Protection of Monuments in Olsztyn said that the uncovered human remains would be subjected to tests and anthropological analysis and after the end of tests, they would probably be buried in a communal grave. “The issue of the exact burial place is a question for the future”, she said.
The human remains will now be subjected to tests and anthropological analysis before being buried in a communal grave.
The site also concealed the remains of a Neolithic settlement and during works lasting several weeks, archaeologists from the Dajna Foundation in the name of Jerzy Okulicz-Kozaryn discovered remains from the Roman period.
Archaeologists think it is possible that the site was chosen for a settlement due to its proximity to a lake on one side and flat terrain on the other and according to estimates, the settlement could have occupied an area of 30-50 acres.
The Dajna Foundation’s Jaremek said: “Among the artefacts which we found are elements of ceramic plates as well as a blue glass bead.”
An ancient statue of the mythological goddess Hygieia – seen as the guardian or personification of health – has been discovered in an ancient city in western Turkey, according to a researcher.
“We unearthed a statue of Hygieia, known as the goddess of health and cleanliness, the daughter of Asclepius, the god of health in Greek and Roman mythology,” Gökhan Coşkun, who coordinates the dig in the ancient city of Aizanoi, told Anadolu Agency.
Noting that the marble statue’s head is missing – the fate of much ancient statuary – Coşkun, an archaeologist at Dumlupinar University in central Turkey, said: “Unfortunately, it hasn’t survived to the present day, but in its current form, we can see that this statue is about the size of a human.”
“During past digs in Aizanoi, finds related to Hygieia were also found,” he said. “This situation makes us think that there may have been some construction and buildings related to the health cult in Aizanoi during the Roman era.”
Located near the town of Cavdarhisar in the Kutahya province, the site is also home to one of the best-preserved temples in Anatolia dedicated to Zeus, the thunderbolt-wielding king of the Greek Olympians.
Groundbreaking ancient site
Seen as boasting a history rivaling Ephesus, another iconic ancient city in Turkey, Aizanoi was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List in 2012, with excavation efforts ongoing now for almost a decade.
Coşkun said that around 100 workers and 25 technical personnel are working on digs at the nearly 5,000-year-old site.
“We’re trying to reveal the columned galleries on the west and south wings of the agora (bazaar) and the shops right behind them,” he added.
Coşkun added that the statue of Hygieia – related to the modern word “hygiene” – was unearthed inside the columned gallery on the south wing of the agora.
Located 57 kilometres (35 miles) from the Kütahya city centre, the ancient site saw its golden age in the second and third centuries AD and became “the centre of the episcopacy in the Byzantine era,” according to the website of the Turkish Culture and Tourism Ministry.
Recent excavations around the Temple of Zeus indicate the existence of several levels of settlement in the city dating from as far back as 3000 BC. In 133 BC, it was captured by the Roman Empire.
In 1824, European travellers rediscovered the ancient site.
Between 1970 and 2011, the German Archeology Institute unearthed a theatre and a stadium, as well as two public baths, a gymnasium, five bridges, a trading building, necropolises and the sacred cave of Metre Steune – a cultist site thought to be used prior to the first century BC.
Since 2011, Turkish archaeologists have been carrying out the work at the ancient site. This year, the excavations were transferred to the Kutahya Museum Directorate.
Revealed: The ‘lost’ Anglo-Saxon monastery discovered next to Cookham church
Archaeologists from the University of Reading have excavated a ‘lost” Anglo-Saxon monastery, in the present-day Berkshire village of Cookham, England. Despite being mentioned in a historical text, the location of the monastery had remained a mystery, with contemporary records placing it under the rule of a royal abbess: Queen Cynethryth, the widow of the powerful King Offa of Mercia.
Queen Cynethryth was the only Anglo Saxon queen to appear on her own on a coin.
Excavations were conducted by archaeologists from the University of Reading on the grounds of Holy Trinity, where they uncovered the remains of timber buildings that would have housed the inhabitants of the monastery, alongside artefacts providing insights into their lives.
Dr Gabor Thomas, the University of Reading archaeologist who is leading the excavation, said: “The lost monastery of Cookham has puzzled historians, with a number of theories put forward for its location.
Excavations of the lost monastery presided over by Queen Cynethryth.
We set out to solve this mystery once and for all. “The evidence we have found confirms beyond doubt that the Anglo-Saxon monastery was located on a gravel island beside the River Thames now occupied by the present parish church.
“Despite its documented royal associations, barely anything is known about what life was like at this monastery, or others on this stretch of the Thames, due to a lack of archaeological evidence.
The remains of the monastery led by the Anglo-Saxon ruler Queen Cynethryth were found near the banks of the Thames, in a field next to the parish church.
The items that have been uncovered will allow us to piece together a detailed impression of how the monks and nuns who lived here ate, worked and dressed. This will shed new light on how Anglo-Saxon monasteries were organised and what life was like in them.”
A network of monasteries was established on sites along the route of the Thames to take advantage of what was one of the most important trading arteries in Anglo-Saxon England, enabling them to develop into wealthy economic centres.
The stretch of the Thames in which Cookham falls formed a contested boundary between the kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex, so the monastery here had particular strategic and political importance. In spite of this historical background, the exact location of the monastery has been long debated.
Wealth of evidence
The excavation, in August, sought to answer this question by investigating open spaces straddling the churchyard of Holy Trinity Church, which still stands today.
The team have discovered a wealth of evidence including food remains pottery vessels used for cooking and eating, and items of personal dress including a delicate bronze bracelet and a dress pin, probably worn by female members of the community.
Clear evidence has emerged for the layout of the monastery which was organised into a series of functional zones demarcated by ditched boundaries.
One of these zones appears to have been used for housing and another for industrial activity indicated by a cluster of hearths probably used for metalworking.
‘Influence and status’
Dr Thomas added: “Cynethryth is a fascinating figure, a female leader who clearly had genuine status and influence in her lifetime. Not only were coins minted with her image, but it is known that when the powerful European leader Charlemagne wrote to his English counterparts, he wrote jointly to both King Offa and Queen Cynethryth, giving both equal status.
“We are thrilled to find physical evidence of the monastery she presided over, which is also very likely to be her final resting place.”
Cynethryth joined a religious order and became the royal abbess of the monastery after the death of her husband, King Offa, in AD 796. Before his death, he had ruled Mercia, one of the main Anglo Saxon kingdoms in Britain, which spanned the English Midlands.
King Offa is considered by many historians to have been the most powerful Anglo-Saxon king before Alfred the Great. He is known for ordering the creation of the earth barrier on the border between England and Wales, known as Offa’s Dyke, which can still be seen today.
Cynethryth is the only Anglo-Saxon queen known to be depicted on a coin – a rarity anywhere in Western Europe during the period. She died sometime after AD 798.
South Africa’s Bandit Slaves And The Rock Art Of Resistance
Not all South African rock art is ancient; some dates back to the colonial period – and was created by runaway slaves. It tells a remarkable story.
With the founding of the Cape Colony in 1652, European colonists were forbidden from enslaving the indigenous Khoe, San and African farmers. They had to look elsewhere for a labour force. And so slaves, captured and sold as property, were unwilling migrants to the Cape, transported – at great expense – from European colonies like Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, the East Indies (now Indonesia), India and Sri Lanka.
Far cheaper was the illegal trade in indigenous slaves that grew in the borderlands of the colony. Khoe-San people were forced into servitude as colonists took both land and livestock. Together with immigrant slaves, they were the labour force for the colonial project.
Louis van Mauritius (a) led a rebellion of 300 enslaved people in 1808 and ‘Portrait of Júli, a Faithful [Khoe-San]’ (b) by William Burchell, 1822.
Desertion was their most common form of rebellion. Runaway slaves escaped into the borderlands and mounted stiff resistance to the colonial advance from the 1700s until the mid-1800s. In most cases, the fugitives joined forces with groups of skelmbasters (mixed outlaws), who themselves were descended from San-, Khoe- and isiNtu-speaking Africans (hunter-gatherers, herders and farmers).
Thus, we find recorded examples of mixed bandit groups hiding out in mountain rock shelters, within striking distance of colonial farms. Using guerrilla-style warfare they raided livestock and guns. In their refuge, they made rock art, images within their own belief systems that relate to escape and retaliation.
These sites can be reliably dated because they include rock art images of horses and guns. In our most recent study of rock art in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, we see that this art also provides us with the raiders’ perspective. Our fieldwork enables us to view something of the slave and indigenous resistance from outside the texts of the colonial record.
The paintings
These mountainous regions house many rock shelters with paintings of the traditional corpus of ‘San rock art’ (antelope and dances) that have become world-famous. But owing to almost 2,000 years of contact with incoming African herders and farmers, the hunter-gatherer art changed in appearance, if not in the essence of its meaning. The ‘disconnect’ was most stark, however, during colonisation. The artists’ societies were deeply affected, disrupted and decimated. Where any art continued it was that of the mixed outlaws, often referred to simply as ‘Bushmen’ but who was actually a composite of many cultural backgrounds.
In the colonial borderlands, paintings with (a) horses and guns and (b) ostriches and baboons.
The paintings themselves are also mixed – some brush-painted, some finger-painted – but are united by subject matter pertaining to spiritual beliefs concerning escape and protective power. Certain motifs, including baboons and ostriches, continued to be used, but now appearing alongside motifs such as horses and guns. This suggests some continuity in the recognition of these animals, mystical or otherwise, as subject matter pertinent to people’s changed circumstances.
Despite these changes, bandit groups, however mixed they were, held onto, and even highlighted, some specific traditional beliefs.
Ritual specialists
The location of one band of mixed outlaws, in the Mankazana River Valley in today’s Eastern Cape, comes from the record of the 1820 settler, poet and abolitionist Thomas Pringle. During our fieldwork in this area we found rock paintings of horses, riders with guns and cattle raids that can be reliably dated to approximately when Pringle was writing.
That diverse groups of bandits painted depictions of cattle raids suggests that raiding was a fundamental concern for these groups. If we have learnt anything from the last five decades of southern African rock art research, it is that images are not the mere depictions of what the artists saw around them. Rather, they are of what ritual specialists see while travelling through the spirit world.
In the case of bandit groups, the ritual specialist often performed the role of war-doctor, who supplied traditional medicines to ensure protection in dangerous situations, including cattle raids and the flight from servitude.
Finger-painted and fine-line horses attest to the mixed nature of bandit groups, note the baboons beneath the black horse.
It is telling that these images also include motifs relating to protection during raids as can be seen in the appearance of certain animals, especially baboons and ostriches.
Baboons are associated with protection across Khoe-San and African farmer society. The |Xam San people of the 1800s claimed that the baboon chewed a stick of so-/oa, a root medicine which would alert the user (animal or human) to approaching danger and keep it safe. Among the Xhosa there is a cognate belief in uMabophe – arguably the same root medicine. Like so-/oa, uMabophe was supplied by ritual specialists to those who wished to exert supernatural influence over projectile weapons, including turning ‘bullets to water’.
Protective animals
Many of these images are painted with a fine-line, unshaded technique. But there are also images that are finger-painted in black or bright orange pigment, which have a distinctly Khoe-speaker inflection. In technique they strongly resemble the art of the Korana raiders, to the north of the colony, who were known to take in runaway slaves.
Further into the hinterland, as if to mark the fighting retreat of bandit groups as the colonial frontier expanded, we discovered rock shelters in the Stormberg and Zuurberg that exhibit yet more features of an indigenous resistance idiom. In one are images of people with horses and guns, as well as baboons and ostriches.
The ostrich was recognised by Khoe-San groups as particularly adept at escaping danger. It could outrun most predators and leap over hunters’ nets. Khoe-San would, and still do, tie the tendons from ostrich legs to their own legs to combat fatigue. Ostrich eggshell was recognised as a medicine that could be ground and consumed as a fortifying tonic. In the art of bandits, images of ritual specialists transforming into ostriches or baboons attest to them drawing on the powers of protective animals to ensure their own escape from former captors or following stock raids.
The bandit’s view
Although never officially recognised as slaves, the Khoe-San were uprooted from their land and lifeways by European settlers and forced into bondage. This brought them into contact with immigrant slaves, alongside whom they often escaped. In defiance they raided their former captors and other settlers and in rocky hideouts they painted their concerns.
The rock art of bandit groups is bound up with beliefs in the ability to call upon the protection of the supernatural. Baboons and ostriches, painted with images of livestock and people on horseback with firearms, were heralded for their associated powers pertaining to escape and protection while raiding. For these runaway slaves, rock art was one of several crucial ritual observances performed to prevent the likelihood of ever returning to a life of oppression.
