Well-Preserved Human Remains Discovered in Pompeii Tomb

The partially mummified remains of an urbane Pompeii resident have been discovered in a tomb outside the city centre erected before the famous eruption that buried the town in ash. 

According to the inscriptions on the tomb, the deceased was a man named Marcus Venerius Secundio, who was in his 60s when he died and was, at one point, enslaved. Later in life, after being freed, Secundio became a well-off priest who conducted rituals in Latin and Greek. 

The tomb inscription referring to these Greek rituals is the first direct evidence of Greek performances being held in the Italian city. 

“That performances in Greek were organised is evidence of the lively and open cultural climate which characterised ancient Pompeii,” Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, said in a statement. 

Mummified remains

Secundio’s remains rest in a rectangular masonry tomb that was once painted with images of green plants on a blue background; traces of this paint still grace the outside walls of the tomb.

The partially mummified body was tucked into a sealed alcove in the tomb with an arched ceiling. Close-cropped hair and an ear are still visible on the skull.

Archaeologists also recovered scraps of fabric and two glass bottles called “unguentaria” from Secundio’s tomb. Unguentaria are often found in Roman and Greek cemeteries and may have held oils or perfumes for graveside rituals. 

The tomb also contained two funerary urns, including a beautiful blue-glass urn belonging to a woman whose name is recorded as Novia Amabilis (“kind wife”). Cremation was the most common method of burial for Pompeiians during the Roman period, according to archaeologists.

It’s not clear why Secundio’s remains weren’t cremated. It’s also not clear if his body was mummified naturally or if it was treated to prevent decomposition. 

“We still need to understand whether the partial mummification of the deceased is due to intentional treatment or not,” University of Valencia archaeologist Llorenç Alapont said in the statement. 

Multilingual city

The tomb is in the Porta Sarno Necropolis, which sits just outside the town walls by the Porta di Nola gate. A number of notables were buried in the necropolis, including city administrator Marcus Obellius Firmus, who lived during the reign of Emperor Nero (between A.D. 54 and 68), according to ArchaeoSpain, a field school that coordinates internships at Pompeii and other sites.

What is known of Marcus Venerius Secundio’s life comes from a previously discovered record-keeping tablet belonging to the banker Cecilius Giocondus, as well as the inscription carved in marble on Secundio’s tomb.

He was a slave at the temple of Venus before his release, after which he joined the priesthood of the imperial cult, dedicated to glorifying the memory of the Roman emperor Augustus, who ruled from 27 B.C. to A.D. 14.

As one of these “Augustales,” Secundio “gave Greek and Latin ‘ludi’ for the duration of four days,” according to the tomb inscription. “Ludi graeci” were theater performances in Greek, Zuchtriegel said.

“It is the first clear evidence of performances at Pompeii in the Greek language, which had previously been hypothesised on the basis of indirect indicators,” he said. These performances indicate that Pompeii in the first century was a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic place where Eastern Mediterranean cultures melded.

Pompeii’s 2,000-Year-Old Fast Food Outlet Is Now Open To Visitors

The Italian archaeologists have unearthed a 2,000 years old fast-food stall from the ashes in Pompeii, Italy. The researchers have dug out an ancient restaurant from the vast archaeological site in the city of Southern Italy, that could now give new clues about the snacking habits of the ancient Romans.

According to the reports, the Italian archaeologists who have been carrying out excavations at the ancient lost city of Pompeii on Saturday said that they had discovered a frescoed ‘thermopolium’ or fast-food counter in an exceptional state of preservation.

The ornate snack bar counter, decorated with polychrome patterns and frozen by volcanic ash, was partially taken off from the ground last year but archaeologists had continued their work on the site to reveal it in its full glory.

Pompeii was buried in a sea of boiling lava when the volcano on nearby Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, killing between 2,000 and 15,000 people.

The massive site that spreads over 44 hectares (110 acres) is what remains of one of the richest cities in the Roman empire.

The Thermopolium of Regio V, which is believed to have been present at a busy intersection of Silver Wedding Street and Alley of Balconies, was the Roman-era equivalent of a fast-food snack stall.

The Thermopolium was very popular in the Roman world. Pompeii alone had around 80 such stalls.

A fresco bearing an image of a Nereid nymph riding a seahorse and gladiators in combat has also been unearthed at the spot.

The team has discovered duck bone fragments as well as the remains of pigs, goats, fish and snails in earthenware pots. Some of the ingredients had been cooked together like a Roman era paella.

The excavators have found crushed fava beans, used to modify the taste of wine at a bottom of one jar.

Reportedly, the food stall appears to have been closed in a hurry and abandoned by its owners, believed to be after the first rumblings of the eruption were felt, said Massimo Osanna, director general at the Archaeological Park of Pompeii.

Alongside human remains, amphorae, a water tower and a fountain were found. The remains of a man believed to have been aged around 50 has also been discovered near a child’s bed.

“It is possible that someone, perhaps the oldest man, stayed behind and perished during the first phase of the eruption,” Osanna said.

The remains of another person were also found and could be an opportunist thief or someone fleeing the eruption who was “surprised by the burning vapours just as he had his hand on the lid of the pot that he had just opened”, he added.

The archaeologists, in the latest stage of their work, have excavated a number of still life scenes, including depictions of animals believed to have been on the menu, notably mallard ducks and a rooster, for serving up with wine or hot beverages.

Pompeii is Italy’s second most visited site after the Colisseum in Rome and last year attracted around four million tourists.

Ancient Roman Road Discovered at the Bottom of Venice Lagoon

In the Venice lagoon, an ancient and now submerged road was unearthed in a location that would have been accessible by land 2,000 years ago during the Roman era.

Fantina Madricardo at the Marine Science Institute in Venice and her colleagues made the discovery after mapping the floor of an area of the lagoon called the Treporti channel.

“We believe it was part of the network of Roman roads in the northeast of the Venice area,” says Madricardo.

In the 1980s, the archaeologist Ernesto Canal proposed that there are ancient human-made structures submerged in the Venice lagoon.

This suggestion prompted decades of debate, but couldn’t be confirmed until now as the previously available technology was insufficiently advanced to explore such a challenging environment.

“The area is very difficult to investigate by divers because there are strong currents and the water in the Venice lagoon is very turbid,” says Madricardo.

The team used a multibeam echosounder mounted on a boat to form a picture of what lies underwater. This device sends out acoustic waves that bounce off the lagoon floor, allowing the team to reconstruct images of whatever structures are down there.

The researchers found 12 structures up to 2.7 metres tall and 52.7 metres long that extended along 1140 metres in a southwest to the north-eastern direction in the configuration of a road.

The presence and layout of these structures suggest that there may have been a settlement in the area.

It was then submerged about 2000 years ago – partly due to human activity that diverted the flow of rivers and starved the area of the sediment that was needed to keep it above water.

“Presumably, the road is giving access to this rich environment.

The margins of the land and the water are full of resources that people might have been exploiting,” says James Gerrard at Newcastle University in the UK. “It’s not normal to find, if you like, ‘drowned’ landscapes or be able to study them in this kind of detail.”

Rare Boundary Stone Uncovered in Rome

During excavations for a new sewage system, archaeologists unearthed a unique stone outlining the city borders of ancient Rome. It dates from the time of Emperor Claudius in 49 A.D. and was discovered by archaeologists.

Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi was on hand for the unveiling Friday of the pomerial stone, a huge slab of travertine that was used as a sacred, military and political perimeter marking the edge of the city proper with Rome’s outer territory.

It was found June 17 during excavations for a rerouted sewer under the recently restored mausoleum of Emperor Augustus, right off the central Via del Corso in Rome’s historic centre.

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In ancient Rome, the area of the pomerium was a consecrated piece of land along the city walls, where it was forbidden to farm, live or build and through which it was forbidden to enter with weapons.

At a press conference in the Ara Pacis museum near the mausoleum, Claudio Parisi Presicce, director of the Archaeological Museums of Rome, said the stone had both civic and symbolic meaning.

“The founding act of the city of Rome starts from the realization of this ’pomerium,‴ he said of the consecrated area. The stone features an inscription that allowed archaeologists to date it to Claudius and the expansion of the pomerium in 49 A.D., which established Rome’s new city limits.

Raggi noted that only 10 other stones of this kind had been discovered in Rome, the last one 100 years ago.

“Rome never ceases to amaze and always shows off its new treasures,” she said.

The stone will be on display at the Ara Pacis museum, the Richard Meier-designed home of a 1st-century altar until the Augustus museum opens.

New Dates Obtained for Italy’s Bronze Age “Infinity Pool”

According to a Live Science report, Sturt Manning of Cornell University and his colleagues have dated the Vasca Votiva, a pit lined with wood unearthed in Italy’s Po Valley.

A mysterious wooden structure built in Italy more than 3,000 years ago may have been a Bronze Age “infinity pool” that reflected the sky during religious rituals to give onlookers the impression they were looking into another realm, according to new research.

One of the authors of the new study has even likened the pool to England’s famous Stonehenge monument, which also symbolically may have led people into another world. 

The pool-like structure was likely built sometime between 1436 B.C. and 1428 B.C. — a time of great cultural change in the region, which reinforces the idea that was established for new ritual purposes, said Sturt Manning, an archaeologist at Cornell University in New York and one of the authors of a new paper describing the research.

“As you would have come up to this thing, as soon as you’d been able to start to see the surface, you would have seen effectively the edge of the land around the sky,” Manning told Live Science. “And as you got close to it, then you would have just been looking at the [reflected] sky — so you’d have, in a sense, entered another world.” Today’s infinity pools are similar in their reflective beauty.

Italian archaeologists discovered the structure in 2004 near the town of Noceto, just west of Parma in Italy’s northern Po Valley region. They called it “Vasca Votiva” — Italian for “votive” or “sacred” tank. The archaeologists noted that the pit was roughly 40 feet (12 meters) long, 23 feet (7 m) wide and more than 10 feet (3 m) deep. It had been excavated on a small hilltop and then lined with wooden poles, planks and beams; most of them were oak, but some were elm or walnut.

Layers of sediment showed that the structure had once contained water, although no channels to distribute water led away from it, and it seemed much too elaborate to have been just a reservoir for irrigation, Manning said. Previous research of ceremonial pots and wooden figurines found inside had revealed that the structure was built in the Bronze Age, probably between 1600 B.C. and 1300 B.C. But its exact age couldn’t be verified, and its purpose had been a mystery. The new study resolves some of that uncertainty.

Ancient timbers

Manning is a specialist in dendrochronology — the science of dating ancient wood — and he and his team joined the project with the hope that determining the age of the timbers used to line the Vasca Votiva could accurately reveal when it was built.

It’s a difficult task; wood quickly rots when it is exposed to oxygen, and the record of dates for the growth of trees in ancient times often depends on rare finds of logs in the layers of sediment beneath ancient rivers and bogs, Manning said.

The team studied the growth rings from the timbers and measured each ring’s levels of radioactive carbon-14, which is a naturally occurring fraction of the carbon that the trees absorbed while they were alive. The trees stopped absorbing carbon when they were cut down, and so the levels of carbon-14 that remain can be used to date when that happened.

Then, the team calculated when the timbers were harvested using “wiggle matching,” in which they compared the patterns of carbon-14 absorption — the “wiggles” — with the distinctive patterns from trees that grew elsewhere in northern Europe at different times.

That enabled them to determine that the true date for the Vasca Votiva structure was in the middle of the 15th century B.C., which corresponded to a time of tremendous cultural change in northern Italy.

The dominant society in the region at that time, the Bronze Age Terramare culture, was transitioning from a simpler period of individual small farms to a period of greater social complexity, with the development of larger settlements that became cultural centres and increased use of ploughing and irrigation for farmland, the researchers wrote.

Reflecting waters

The new dates reinforce the idea that the mysterious structure at Noceto was built for new ritual and religious purposes established in the area, Manning said. There was no sign that the tank had ever been used as a simple reservoir for irrigation, and it was much too elaborately built; also, the ceremonial pots and figurines found inside it showed it was used for ritual offerings, he said.

As well, a great deal of labour would have been needed to complete the elaborate Vasca Votiva, and the excavations have shown that it was the second such structure at the same hilltop site. The first was even larger, and started about 10 years before the later structure; but discarded tools and wood shavings suggest that it collapsed as it was being built and so the latest tank was built over it, he said.

A few similar ceremonial water features have been found elsewhere in the ancient world, such as the earlier “lustral basins” found at Minoan sites on Crete that date back to at least the 15th century B.C., although those were smaller and typically made of clay and stone.

But nothing like this infinity pool has been found in northern Europe. “To our knowledge, it’s unique in the area,” Manning said.

He likened the Vasca Votiva to the Neolithic Stonehenge monument in southern England. Although Stonehenge is on a much larger scale, “you have these avenues leading to a particular ceremonial place;  you’re sort of leaving one world that you’re part of and creating an impression that you’ve moved and joined another one,” he said.

“It was like an infinity pool, in a sense, because it was up at the top of a hill; if you were standing near it, looking into it, you would see through the water and see some of the pots and other objects that have been deposited carefully in it,” Manning added. “But you would also be very much looking at the sky and the clouds above you; it’s hard not to think that this might have to do with rainfall and things like that.”

The introduction of whatever supernatural water rituals took place at the Vasca Votiva in ancient times seems to have been an attempt to gain favour with the deities responsible for water and rainfall – elements that would have been vital to early farming communities, he said.

“If it was just for irrigation or something, then fine, but it doesn’t seem to work for that,” Manning said. “It’s more about some group activity that they think is going to be beneficial, or that the gods are going to be pleased that they have done this.” 

Pompeii dig uncovers 2000-year-old remains of rich man and slave killed by Vesuvius volcanic eruption

Archaeologists uncovered the skeleton remains of two males who perished about 2,000 years ago in Pompeii, Italy, after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. The bones are thought to be those of a wealthy man and his male slave who attempted to flee the volcano’s explosion.

During an excavation of the ruins from what was once an elegant villa with a panoramic view of the Mediterranean Sea on the outskirts of the ancient Roman city, parts of the skulls and bones of the two men were found.

The remains of the two victims, lying next to each other on their backs, were found in a layer of grey ash at least 2 meters (6.5 feet) deep. In 2017, a stable with the remains of three harnessed horses was also found in the same area. 

In a statement issued by Pompeii officials, they said that the men apparently escaped the initial fall of ash from Mount Vesuvius but then succumbed to a powerful volcanic blast that took place the next morning. The later blast “apparently invaded the area from many points, surrounding and burying the victims in ash,” the officials said. 

Judging by cranial bones and teeth, one of the men was young, likely aged 18 to 25, with a spinal column with compressed discs. That finding led archaeologists to hypothesize that he was a young man who did manual labour, like that of a slave.

The other man had a robust bone structure, especially in his chest area, and died with his hands on his chest and his legs bent and spread apart.

He was estimated to have been 30- to 40-years-old, Pompeii officials said. Fragments of white paint were found near the man’s face, probably remnants of a collapsed upper wall, the officials said.

Based on the impression of fabric folds left in the ash layer, it appeared the younger man was wearing a short, pleated tunic, possibly of wool. The older victim, in addition to wearing a tunic, appeared to have had a mantle over his left shoulder, said reports.

According to a report by The Associated Press, both skeletons were found in a side room along an underground corridor, or passageway, known in ancient Roman times as a cryptoporticus, which led to to the upper level of the villa.

Pompeii archaeological park director general, Massimo Osanna said that the find was “truly exceptional”, while Italian culture minister Dario Franceschini said it underlined the importance of Pompeii as a place for study and research.

Osanna further stated, “The victims were probably looking for shelter in the cryptoporticus, in this underground space, where they thought they were better protected. Instead, on the morning of Oct. 25, 79 A.D., a blazing cloud (of volcanic material) arrived in Pompeii and…killed anyone it encountered on its way.”

The famous Mount Vesuvius is located near Naples in Italy and is well known throughout the world for its massive destructive eruption. It is also known as Vesuvio among the locals and stands 4,203 feet (1,281 meters) tall and has a semi-circular ridge called Mount Soma that rises 3,714 feet.

It has erupted over 50 times and remains an active volcano till date.

Italy recovers nearly 800 illegally gathered archaeological finds

Italy said Monday it had recovered from a Belgian collector hundreds of illegally gathered archaeological finds dating as far back as the sixth century BC, worth 11 million euros.

The nearly 800 pieces “of exceptional rarity and inestimable value”, including stelae, amphorae and other works, came from clandestine excavations in Apulia in Italy’s southeastern tip, according to the Carabinieri police in charge of cultural heritage.

The investigation began in 2017 after a state archaeology lab in Apulia noticed in European art catalogues that decorative elements from a Daunian funerary stele belonging to a “wealthy Belgian collector” resembled those found within a fragment in a southern Italian museum.

That flat stone slab from Daunia—a historical region of Apulia—in the collection of the Belgian collector was missing a piece in its centre.

An official within the restoration lab noticed that the piece in the museum’s collection completed the design of a shield and a warrior on horseback that was missing on the stele.

“During the course of the search, a veritable ‘archaeological treasure’ was recovered, consisting of hundreds of Apulian figurative ceramic finds and other Daunian stelae, all illegally exported from Italy, which were then seized in Belgium,” read a statement from police.

Italy was able to repatriate the works after all the legal appeals of the collector were dismissed, police said.

Besides stelae, the collection includes vases painted with red figures, amphorae, black glazed ceramics, and numerous terracotta figurines. The pieces date back to between the sixth and third centuries BC.

In Italy, a giant water tank has been linked to prehistoric rituals.

The Noceto Vasca Votiva is a unique wood structure that was unearthed on a small hill in northern Italy in 2005. Built primarily of oak and slightly larger than a backyard swimming pool, the exact purpose of the in-ground structure has remained a mystery, as has the date of its construction. Italian researchers estimated its origins go back to the late Middle Bronze Age, sometime between 1600 and 1300 BCE.

While that gap might not seem huge, in archaeological terms it’s like comparing the culture that invented the steam engine with the one that produced the iPad.

A Cornell University team led by Sturt Manning, Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences in Classics and director of the Tree-Ring Laboratory, used dendrochronology and a form of radiocarbon dating called ‘wiggle matching to pinpoint, with 95% probability, the years in which the structure’s two main components were created: a lower tank in 1444 BCE, and an upper tank in 1432 BCE Each date has a margin of error of four years.

The finding confirms that the Noceto Vasca Votiva was built at a pivotal moment of societal change, and bolsters the Italian researchers’ theory that the structure was used for a supernatural water ritual.

The team’s paper, “Dating the Noceto Vasca Votiva, a Unique Wooden Structure of the 15th Century BCE, and the Timing of a Major Societal Change in the Bronze Age of Northern Italy,” published June 9 in PLOS ONE.

Manning has led the Tree-Ring Laboratory since 2006, and his team has advanced a range of tools and techniques that have successfully challenged common assumptions about historical artefacts and timelines. Among the lab’s specialities is tree-ring sequenced radiocarbon “wiggle-matching,” in which ancient wooden objects are dated by matching the patterns of radiocarbon isotopes from their annual growth increments (i.e., tree rings) with patterns from datasets found elsewhere around the world. This enables ultra-precise dating even when a continuous tree-ring sequence for a particular species and geographic area is not yet available.

“Working at an archaeological site, you’re often trying to do dendrochronology with relatively few samples, sometimes in less than ideal condition, because they’ve been falling apart for the last 3,500 years before you get to see them. It’s not like a healthy tree that is growing out in the wild right now,” Manning said. “We often measure the samples a number of times to extract as much signal as we can.”

The Noceto Vasca Votiva is about 12 meters long, 7 meters across and roughly four meters deep—although the depth was a little ambiguous at first.

When the site was fully excavated, the researchers found that the structure had a second tank beneath it, which had been built first but collapsed before it was finished. It was initially unclear how much time elapsed between the creation of the two tanks, which shared some of the same materials.

Judging by the size of the structure and the extensive labour that would have been required to excavate the earth and drag timber to the uphill location, the Italian researchers recognized that the Noceto Vasca Votiva was a major undertaking for its era and theorized its purpose. But they were unable to determine the precise date of its origins, and so turned to the Cornell Tree-Ring Laboratory.

Manning’s team made multiple attempts with different samples. While the wood from the Noceto site was well-preserved—a rarity, given its age—there was an unexpected challenge when the samples did not seem to fit the international radiocarbon calibration curve that is used for matching tree-ring sequences. This suggested the curve needed revising for certain time periods, and in 2020 a new version was published. The Noceto data finally fit.

By combining radiocarbon dating calibrated via dendrochronology from southern Germany, Ireland and North America, along with computer-intensive statistics, the Cornell team was able to establish a tree-ring record that spanned several hundred years. They pegged the construction of the lower and upper tanks at 1444 and 1432 BCE, respectively; and they determined the finished structure was in use for several decades before it was abandoned, for reasons that may never be known.

The new timeline is particularly significant because it synchs up with a period of enormous change in Italian prehistory.

“You’ve had one way of life in operation for hundreds of years, and then you seem to have a switch to fewer, larger settlements, more international trade, more specialization, such as textile manufacture, and a change in burial practices,” Manning said. “There is something of a pattern all around the world. Nearly every time there’s a major change in social organization, there tends often to be an episode of building what might be described as unnecessary monuments. So when you get the first states forming in Egypt, you get the pyramids. Stonehenge marks a major change in southern England. Noceto is not the scale of Stonehenge, but it has some similarities—an act of major place-making.”

Because the structure was located atop a hill and not in the centre of a village, it wasn’t used as a reservoir or well. The smooth layers of sediment that filled in the structure, and the absence of channels, implying it wasn’t used for irrigation. In addition, the researchers discovered a large set of objects deliberately deposited inside the tank, including numerous ceramic vessels, figurines and a range of stone, wood and organic items. All of that evidence indicates the structure was used in some kind of supernatural water ritual.

“It’s tempting to think it was about creating a reflective surface that you can see into, and where you put some offerings, but you’re also looking at the sky above and the linking of land, sky and water (rain),” Manning said.

Given the fact that nearby settlements in this southern edge of the Po Plain were built with dikes and terraces, and the region was agriculturally productive with much water management, water was clearly important for all aspects of the builders’ lives. At least for a time.

“The collapse of the whole social and economic system in the area around 1200 BCE seems to occur because it becomes much drier,” Manning said.