Roman Fort Discovered Hidden Beneath English Bus Station

The local town council reported that archeologists surveying Exeter, England, a bus station had found evidence of a defensive fort dating back to Britain’s Roman conquest.

Per a press release, workers excavating the structure—built during the early 1960s and scheduled to be replaced by a new station and accompanying leisure complex—found three ditches said to represent a previously unknown Roman compound, as well as coins, pottery and imported Samian tableware presumably used by troops based at the site.

According to the Telegraph’s Mike Wright, the fort likely served as a satellite of Isca Dumnoniorum, a military fortification garrisoned by 5,500 legionaries tasked with pacifying the fiercely resisting local populations in the region.

Established soon after the Romans’ invasion of Britain in 43 A.D., Isca Dumnoniorum was supported by a series of smaller forts located along connecting roads.

The newly discovered structure is the first recorded along an eastward road; previously, evidence of smaller forts was limited to roads leading south of Exeter.

Stephen Rippon, a landscape archaeologist at the University of Exeter, tells BBC News the find was a “complete surprise.” He adds, “There was no evidence known of [the fort] at all.”

As the council statement notes, the ditches found at the site are typical of those seen in Roman military compounds: One, a V-shaped trench featuring an “ankle breaker” pit designed to deter converging soldiers, was situated on the outer edge of the fort, while another, so steep it was nearly vertical, contributed to inner defenses and was placed directly below a rampart.

If any enemy attackers reached this point, the steep slope would have ensured that defenders firing from the rampart above had the upper hand.

Although the press release suggests the inside of the fort was located west of these trenches, Rippon says it is difficult to make an exact prediction regarding the compound’s size or location in relation to the ditches.

Andrew Pye of the Exeter City Council says the discovery demonstrates “just how pivotal a role the Exeter area played in the first decades of the Roman conquest and subjugation of Britain.”

Describing the fort as a “very important and completely unexpected” discovery, Pye notes that its unveiling testifies to “just how much of the city’s history can still survive in unlikely places,” including those damaged by wartime bombing and modern concrete foundations.

Previous archaeological discoveries in the area include the 1970s unearthing of an ancient fortress and bathhouse, as well as the identification of multiple forts of varying size and significance.

Roman forces left Isca Dumnoniorum and its network of smaller forts around 75 A.D. when the army shifted its attention to southern Wales.

Exeter, now acting as the region’s capital, was transformed into a civilian town, with improvements including public baths and defensive stone walls introduced over the coming decades.

By 360, Abbie Bray writes for Devon Live, the village had started to shrink, and in 410, the Romans abandoned Britain completely. Exeter remained sparsely occupied until 928 when settlers once again returned to the area.

Breakthrough in Translating Proto-Elamite, World’s Oldest Undeciphered Writing

Specialists claim that the world’s oldest undeciphered writing system will be decoding 5,000-year-old secrets

Jacob Dahl, a fellow at Oxford Wolfson’s College and director of Ancient World Research Cluster, said, “I hope we’re actually about to make a breakthrough.

Live Science has confirmed that Dahl’s secret weapons can see this writing more clearly than ever.

In a room high up in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, above the Egyptian mummies and fragments of early civilizations, a big black dome is clicking away and flashing out the light.

This device is providing the most detailed and high-quality images ever taken of these elusive symbols cut into clay tablets.

It’s being used to help decode a writing system called proto-Elamite, used between around 3200 BC and 2900 BC in a region now in the southwest of modern Iran.

The Oxford team thinks that they could be on the brink of understanding this last great remaining cache of undeciphered texts from the ancient world.

Dahl, from the Oriental Studies Faculty, shipped his image-making device on the Eurostar to the Louvre Museum in Paris, which holds the most important collection of this writing.

The clay tablets were put inside this machine, the Reflectance Transformation Imaging System, which uses a combination of 76 separate photographic lights and computer processing to capture every groove and notch on the surface of the clay tablets.

It allows a virtual image to be turned around, as though being held up to the light at every possible angle.

So far Dahl has deciphered 1,200 separate signs, but he said that after more than 10 years study much remains unknown, even such basic words as “cow” or “cattle”.

Dahl believes that the writing has proved so hard to interpret because the original texts seem to contain many mistakes – and this makes it extremely tricky for anyone trying to find consistent patterns.

“The lack of a scholarly tradition meant that a lot of mistakes were made and the writing system may eventually have become useless,” Dahl said.

Unlike any other ancient writing style, there are no bi-lingual texts and few helpful overlaps to provide a key to these otherwise arbitrary looking dashes and circles and symbols.

Proto-Elamite writing is the first-ever recorded case of one society adopting writing from another neighbouring group.

However, when these proto-Elamites borrowed the concept of writing from the Mesopotamians, they made up an entirely different set of symbols. The writing was the first ever to use syllables, Dahl said.

Dahl added that with sufficient support within two years this last great lost writing could be fully understood.

Celtic shield buried with Bronze Age warrior 2,000 years ago is ‘UK’s most important find’

Archeologists uncovered an amazing Iron Age shield within a 2,200-year-old tomb together with a cart and two ponies hidden in a springing location, in what archeologists call one of the UK’s biggest discoveries.

The grave in the vicinity of Pocklington was found by a group of archeologists headed by Paula Ware of MAP Archaeological Practice Ltd.

Ware told Yorkshire, “The shield, which has a diameter of approximately 30 inches, but its true glory was only revealed recently once conservation was completed,” Ware told Yorkshire post.

The restoration revealed that the shield is decorated with a series of complex swirls and what looks like a sphere protruding from its center. 

The grave also held the remains of a man who was in his 40s when he died. In addition to the chariot and two “leaping” ponies, the site was filled with several pig joints and a feasting fork attached to a pork rib, Ware said.

Two small brooches — one made of bronze and the other of glass — were also found in the tomb. The elaborate nature of the burial indicates that the deceased man must have been “a significant member of his society,” Ware said. 

Ware agreed with what other media outlets have suggested about the significance of the find: It is one of the most important ancient discoveries ever made in the U.K. “Yes, especially as it has been excavated under modern archaeological conditions,” she told Yorkshire post. 

Ancient chariots are not altogether uncommon in burials. A 2,000-year-old Thracian chariot was discovered in 2008 alongside the bones of two horses and a dog in what is now Bulgaria, Yorkshire post previously reported.

The practice of burying noblemen near chariots in Bulgaria was especially popular during the time of the Roman Empire, which lasted from about 2,100 to 1,500 years ago.

Some 2,500 years ago, a Celtic prince in what is today France was buried in a lavish tomb complete with gorgeous pottery, a gold-tipped drinking vessel and… a chariot,  Yorkshire post reported.

Archaeologists announced in 2014 that they had discovered a 4,000-year-old burial chamber holding two four-wheeled chariots and plenty of treasures in the country of Georgia, in the south Caucasus.

The newfound grave and chariot were discovered when the archaeological team was excavating an area where homes were going to be built. The researchers plan to submit a paper describing the finds to a scientific publication.