Category Archives: ITALY

Lavish ancient Roman winery found at ruins of Villa of the Quintilii near Rome

Lavish ancient Roman winery found at ruins of Villa of the Quintilii near Rome

Lavish ancient Roman winery found at ruins of Villa of the Quintilii near Rome
View of the excavated winery from the northern dining hall of the Villa of the Quintilii outside Rome. Photograph: Stefano Castellani

Of all the Roman ruins that populate what is now a pleasant landscape of pine trees and meadows, under the distant gaze of the Alban Hills, the Villa of the Quintilii is perhaps the most impressive – almost a city in miniature, covering up to 24 hectares.

Lying on the ancient Appian Way as it runs south-east from Rome, the villa had its own theatre, an arena for chariot races and a baths complex with walls and floors lined in sumptuous marble.

But the story of the villa, whose origins lie in the second century AD, has just become even more remarkable, with the discovery of an elaborate winery unparalleled in the Roman world for lavishness.

The facility included a series of luxurious dining rooms with a view on to fountains gushing with young wine. There were also marble-lined treading areas where enslaved workers would stamp down the newly harvested fruit, while the emperor perhaps looked on as he feasted with his retinue.

The winery, just beyond the city limits of Rome during antiquity, was set in what was once a landscape of orchards and agricultural lands, dotted with monumental tombs – and the villas of the super-rich.

“[The Villa of the Quintilii] was an amazing mini city completed by a luxury winery for the emperor himself to indulge his Bacchic tendencies,” said archaeologist Dr Emlyn Dodd, assistant director at the British School at Rome and an expert on ancient wine production. He has published the archaeologists’ findings in an article for the scholarly journal Antiquity.

The discovery of the ancient Roman winery came by chance, when archaeologists from the Italian ministry of culture were trying to find one of the starting posts for the villa’s arena. The chariot-racing track was built by the emperor Commodus, who reigned from AD177-192. The later winery, it turned out, had been built over one of these starting gates.

Multicoloured decorative marble flooring from one of the dining rooms set around the winery.

It was the notoriously violent Commodus who had the original owners of the villa, the wealthy Quintilii brothers, killed in AD182-3. After that the imperial rulers took personal ownership of the complex, expanding and modifying it over the centuries.

The fact that the name Gordian is stamped into a vast wine-collection vat means that the emperor likely either built the winery or renovated it. That would almost certainly be Gordian III, giving a date of AD238-244, since the first and second emperors of that name reigned only for a matter of days.

At the villa, which is open to the public, Dodd pointed out the recently excavated rectangular wine-treading areas.

“Usually these treading areas would be covered in a waterproof concrete,” he said. “But these were covered in red marble. Which isn’t ideal, as marble gets incredibly slippery when wet. But it shows that whoever built this was prioritising the extravagant nature of the winery over practical considerations.”

After being trodden, the crushed grapes were then taken to the two mechanical presses, 2 metres in diameter, that stood nearby. The resulting grape must was then sent into three fountains, which gushed out of semicircular niches set into a courtyard wall. There were in fact five fountains, with two outer spouts producing water.

The grape must, having cascaded out of the fountains, then flowed along open channels into vast ceramic dolia, or storage jars, set into the ground – a standard winemaking technique in ancient Rome, since they created a stable microenvironment in which fermentation would take place.

Covered dining rooms with wide, open entrances were set around three sides of this open courtyard area. Dodd’s hypothesis is that here the emperor would have feasted and enjoyed the full theatrical spectacle of wine production.

Only one of these dining rooms is excavated – Dodd would like to find funding to uncover them all – and its walls and floors were covered in multicoloured inlaid marble veneers in elaborate geometrical patterns.

The whole facility seems to have been designed with both the practical matter of wine production and the sheer theatre of it in mind.

Letters by a previous emperor, Marcus Aurelius, attest to his having banqueted while watching the work of winemaking going on – perhaps at a luxury winemaking facility at the Villa Magna 30 miles away to the south-east, which is the only parallel to the newly discovered winery in the archaeological record.

Dodd’s hypothesis is that the emperor and his retinue might have visited the Villa of the Quintilii annually to inaugurate that year’s vintage with a ritual and a spectacular – and surely drunken – banquet.

Marble inlay floors were found in a Sunken Roman villa in Baia, the Las Vegas of the ancient world

Marble inlay floors were found in a Sunken Roman villa in Baia, the Las Vegas of the ancient world

Marble inlay floors were found in a Sunken Roman villa in Baia, the Las Vegas of the ancient world

Expansion of research activities in the Terme del Lacus area in the sunken Baia park, known as the ‘Las Vegas’ of the ancient world, has revealed new elements of ancient Roman luxury villas.

In the Gulf of Naples, a few kilometers from Pompeii, Baia was a vacation city for the capital’s rich and powerful during the Roman era, drawn to its natural volcanic vents and medicinal hot springs.

Some of the most important names in Roman history such as Caesar, Cicero, Mark Antony, Brutus, and Nero had villas in Baia.

The luxurious town was abandoned in the 8th century after being raided by a Muslim army, and in the 16th century, the underlying volcanic magma chamber emptied, a process known as bradyseism.

The land dropped about 20 feet below sea level, drowning more than half of Baia beneath shallow bay waters.

A section more than 260 feet long with visible remains, including a stone colonnade with collapsed columns made of fine imported Portasanta marble from Chios in Greece, was discovered during an exploration of the Baths of Lacus, a private thermal bath built inside a domus.

A large section of opus sectile (marble inlay) flooring was also discovered.

A large piece of marble opus sectile flooring has also been identified, still rendered in Portasanta in chromatic alternation with white or gray marble slabs. This currently appears as the most indicative dating element, being the typology and implementation referable to the Late Antiquity age.

The Lacus Baths site, which opened in 2020, allows scuba divers and snorkelers to explore the bath’s exceptional mosaic floors made of white, pink, red, green, grey, and black tiles.

It was a spa complex, most likely of a private residence, overlooking Baia’s ancient port, the Lacus Baianus.

In addition to the perimeters of various rooms and the thermal baths, three apses walls, which once supported large windows overlooking the Lacus Baianus, can be seen.

Roman girl adorned with 1800-year-old jewelry found in a lead coffin on Mount Scopus

Roman girl adorned with 1800-year-old jewelry found in a lead coffin on Mount Scopus

Roman girl adorned with 1800-year-old jewelry found in a lead coffin on Mount Scopus

“After the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and the exodus of the Jewish population, late Roman Jerusalem—renamed Aelia Capitolina—had a mixed population. During this period, some young girls were buried and adorned with fine gold jewelry.

The jewelrys was discovered in a lead coffin on Mount Scopus during excavations led by late archaeologist Yael Adler of the Israel Department of Antiquities.

The find included gold earrings, a hairpin, a gold pendant, gold beads, carnelian beads, and a glass bead, according to the IAA.

The jewels were discovered in 1971, in an excavation carried out by Yael Adler (deceased) of the Israel Department of Antiquities but the finds were not published.

The jewels were recently located as part of the Israel Antiquities Authority’s “Publication of Past Excavations Project,” which aims to publish previously incomplete excavation reports.

Impressive gold jewelry discovered in previous excavations in Jerusalem burial caves will be on display for the first time to the public at the 48th Archaeological Congress, organized by the Israel Antiquities Authority, the Israel Exploration Society, and the Israel Archaeological Association.

The congress will take place at the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein National Campus for the Archaeology of Israel, now inaugurated in Jerusalem.

“The location of the original reports that gathered dust over the years in the Israel Antiquities Authority archives, and physically tracing the whereabouts of the items themselves, has shed light on long-forgotten treasures,” says Dr. Ayelet Dayan, Head of the Archaeological Research Department, who heads this project. “The beautiful jewelry that we researched is an example of such treasures.”

Researchers from the Israel Antiquities Authority, Dr. Ayelet Dayan, Dr. Ayelet Gruber, and Dr. Yuval Baruch, believe that the priceless objects bearing the symbols of Luna, the Roman moon goddess, accompanied the girls during their lifetimes and were buried with them after they passed away to continue to protect them in the afterlife.

Their investigation revealed that Prof. Vassilios Tzaferis had found two pairs of identical gold earrings in a previous excavation on the Mount of Olives for the Department of Antiquities in 1975.

The finds, according to researchers, are from a time after Jerusalem had almost entirely been destroyed following the siege of 70 CE.

The pagan Roman deities Jupiter and others received special honors in Hadrian’s new city. At that time, Jews were forbidden from entering Jerusalem under penalty of death because the city was occupied by Roman legionaries.

“It seems that the girl was buried with an expensive set of gold jewelry that included earrings, a chain with a lunula pendant (named after the goddess Luna), and a hairpin,” say the researchers.

“These items of jewelry are known in the Roman world, and are characteristic of young girl burials, possibly providing evidence of the people who were buried at these sites,” the researchers said.

“Late Roman Jerusalem—renamed Aelia Capitolina—had a mixed population that reached the city after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and the evacuation of the Jewish population.

People from different parts of the Roman Empire settled in the city, bringing with them a different set of values, beliefs, and rituals. The pagan cult of the city’s new population was rich and varied, including gods and goddesses, among them the cult of the moon goddess Luna.”

According to researchers, gold jewelry was used as an amulet against the evil eye by young pagan girls nearly 1,800 years ago. The jewelry was buried with the girls to continue protecting them in the afterlife.

“The interring of the jewelry together with the young girl is touching,” said IAA Director Eli Escusido. “One can imagine that their parents or relatives parted from the girl, either adorned with the jewelry or possibly lying by her side and thinking of the protection that the jewelry provided in the world to come.

This is a very human situation, and all can identify with the need to protect one’s offspring, whatever the culture or the period.”

Mysterious mosaics depicting Medusa uncovered at 2nd-century Roman villa

Mysterious mosaics depicting Medusa uncovered at 2nd-century Roman villa

Mysterious mosaics depicting Medusa uncovered at 2nd-century Roman villa
Restorers Maria Teresa and Roberto Civetta work on a mosaic at the Villa of the Antonines archaeological project, directed by Deborah Chatr Aryamontri and Timothy Renner of the Center for Heritage and Archaeological Studies at Montclair State University.

While excavating a villa used by ancient Roman emperors in Italy, archaeologists uncovered something unexpected: two mosaics that depict the Greek mythological figure Medusa, whose hair was made of snakes and whose gaze was said could turn people into stone. 

The team found the mosaics in a circular room in the Villa of the Antonines, so called because it was used by members of the Antonine dynasty who ruled the Roman Empire from A.D. 138 to 193.

The mosaics likely date to the second century A.D. the researchers said at a presentation at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America, which was held in New Orleans in January. 

In both mosaics, Medusa is looking off into the distance, perhaps leaving observers to wonder, “What are these ladies thinking?” Timothy Renner, a professor of classics and general humanities at Montclair State University in New Jersey and co-director of the team that is excavating the site, said during the presentation. 

The team found the Medusa mosaics within two niches cut into a circular room at the villa — one in the northwest part of the room and another in the southeast part. The room had two other niches, but no mosaic remains were found in them. 

It’s still a mystery what this room was used for and why it contained Medusa mosaics. However, it “definitely must have been quite impressive to enter the room,” Deborah Chatr Aryamontri an associate professor of classics and general humanities at Montclair State University and co-director of the team, said during an interview with Live Science, noting that the room is around 69 feet (21 meters) in diameter. 

“Finding those mosaics [was] a pleasant surprise,” Chatr Aryamontri said, noting that many of the villa’s most impressive decorations were removed during the 18th and 19th centuries. 

In the second century, Medusa heads were popular decorative features in the Roman world, the researchers said. It’s not certain if the villa’s owners ordered them specifically or whether they were created on the whim of the artist who worked on the room. 

The Antonine dynasty ruled the Roman Empire between the reigns of Emperors Antoninus Pius (reign A.D. 138-161) and Commodus (reign A.D. 177-192) The villa is immense and even has what appears to have been an amphitheater used by Emperor Commodus for gladiator practice and the killing of wild beasts. (Commodus sometimes participated in gladiator fights.) 

The circular room appears to be in an area where people resided in the villa. One possibility is that it was a reception room. Chatr Aryamontri and Renner told Live Science that this is uncertain and they are not even sure if the circular room had a roof. 

Site disturbance

One challenge for modern archaeologists is that there is a large amount of damage and disturbance at the site. In the past, the area where the villa is located in Italy was looted and used for dumping. Also, during World War II, the site was in a strategic location that saw considerable movement of troops. “We actually find some World War II artifacts” during excavation of the villa, Chatr Aryamontri said. 

A photograph of the area taken in the early 20th century shows Roman concrete walls that are above ground, but they have since suffered damage or are now destroyed, Renner said. 

A small portion of the circular room with mosaics was first found in 2014, and excavation and analysis have continued since then. The team hopes to help create an archaeological park at the villa’s location someday. 

Pottery Unearthed at Pompeian Villa

Pottery Unearthed at Pompeian Villa

The ancient city of Pompeii has long been celebrated as one of the richest archaeological sites of all time, and now its surrounding suburbs are finally getting their due attention.

Pottery Unearthed at Pompeian Villa
Newly discovered pottery at the villa Civita Giuliana, an archaeological site in the suburbs of Pompeii.

Researchers have announced new additions to the growing list of unique finds that have recently been made at a nearby villa, Civita Giuliana.

These items of pottery include fired ceramic bowls found upside down along the walls of a room that was likely part of the servants’s quarters within a vast residential complex. It is assumed that this crockery was in situ at the time of the final phase of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 C.E.

Two years ago, the site made headlines for the stunning discovery of a ceremonial chariot decorated with silver reliefs, a stable containing the remains of a horse still dressed in a caparison as well as evidence of what may have been a small slave family in an adjoining room.

In 2020, two bodies that are believed to be a man and a slave attempting to escape the eruption were also found.

The dig began in 2017, but attempts to unearth the secrets of Civita Giuliana have long been impeded by looters who targeted the site as its more remote position left it relatively unprotected.

To counter these illegal excavations, a memorandum of understanding was signed by the prosecutor’s office for the local city and commune of Torre Annunziata and the Archaeological Park of Pompeii in 2019 and renewed in 2021.

This unique partnership is the first of its kind in ensuring collaboration and mutual support between archaeological researchers and law enforcement.

“In a territory so rich in history and yet so abused, which still hides important traces of the past, as the discoveries of recent years have shown, it is essential that the protection of cultural heritage and legality go hand in hand,” said Massimo Osanna, former director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii.

The agreement has supported researchers in a new scientific investigation of the site, which includes stratigraphic studies to reveal details about daily Roman life that aren’t well documented in written sources from the period.

This work has required the closure of a modern road running through the site, which had already been made structurally vulnerable by the elaborate network of underground tunnels made and used by looters.

The Civita Giuliana villa will become part of the wider Pompeii system and will eventually welcome tourists.

“These finds demonstrate the commitment and ability of the state to stem the scourge of clandestine excavations and the trade in archaeological goods,” said Italy’s minister of culture Gennaro Sangiuliano.

“Pompeii is the pride of Italy and it is our intention to further defend and promote a heritage that is unique worldwide.”

Signs of Surgery Examined on Medieval Woman’s Skull

Signs of Surgery Examined on Medieval Woman’s Skull

Signs of Surgery Examined on Medieval Woman’s Skull
The woman’s skull shows clear traces of a large cross-shaped incision in the top, with a partially-healed oval of bone at the center; and a patch on her forehead where the bone has been scraped thin. Researchers think both are evidence of trepanations, possibly in an attempt to cure extreme pain she was suffering from two large abscesses on her upper jaw.

The skull of an early medieval woman found in Italy shows signs of two trepanations –  surgeries for making holes in the head.

There were several reasons for trepanation, but in this case, the procedures seem to have been attempting to remedy an illness, researchers reported in a new study. However, they couldn’t determine exactly what that illness was.

“We suppose that this individual died from pathologies that may have been related to her condition,” Ileana Micarelli, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Cambridge, told Live Science. “But we are not certain about the reason.” Micarelli is the lead author of the new study, published Jan. 23 in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, part of which she wrote as a doctoral student at the Sapienza University of Rome. 

The skull’s most remarkable features, according to the study authors, are traces of a huge cross-shaped incision that show that most of the skin of the woman’s scalp was peeled back, with a partially healed oval of bone at its center that seems to be the result of a trepanation performed up to three months before she died.

Lombard castle

The skull is one of 19 that have survived since excavations in the 19th century of an early medieval cemetery at Castel Trosino in central Italy. The castle was a Lombard stronghold from the sixth until the eighth centuries A.D.

The woman’s skull was found in the 19th century during excavations at a cemetery at Castel Trosino in central Italy, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) northeast of Rome.

From around the sixth to eighth century A.D., Castel Trosino was a stronghold of the Lombard people — Germanic invaders who established a kingdom in Italy after the fall of the Roman Empire — and the researchers think this woman was a wealthy Lombard.

Although hundreds of burials were found during the excavations, just 19 skulls have survived. The rest of the woman’s skeleton is lost, which complicates any modern analysis, Micarelli said.

As well as the cross-shaped incision, the skull shows clear signs of a second surgery, when the bone behind the woman’s forehead was scraped thin after the skin there was peeled back. This appears to have been an attempt at a second trepanation, Micarelli said. There is also evidence that the woman died before the second procedure could be completed: The patch of scraped bone doesn’t go all the way through the skull, and there is no sign that it ever healed, Micarelli said. 

But the new scientific analysis doesn’t show any reason why this woman would have voluntarily undergone both of these extreme surgeries, which must have been painful, although painkillers from plants were known of at the time, she said.

Micarelli speculated that the woman may have suffered extreme pain from two large abscesses on her upper jaw, which could have spread the infection to her brain. “We can imagine that these were quite painful as well,” she said.

Ancient Remedy

The researchers made silicone molds of the scars on the bones of the skull, and then used the molds to make casts with epoxy resin that they could study.
Computed tomography (CT) scans show that a hole at the top of the woman’s skull was scraped through the entire bone, but had partially healed; while the scraped patch of bone on the woman’s forehead had not completely penetrated her skull before she died.

Bioarchaeologist Kent Johnson, an associate professor of anthropology at the State University of New York, Cortland who wasn’t involved in the study, said there is evidence that trepanations have been carried out for thousands of years. “The practice of trepanation is seen on almost every continent, wherever people have lived,” he told Live Science. “It’s a long-standing and pretty widespread practice.”

In most cases, trepanation was performed in an attempt to cure an ailment and mainly to alleviate trauma to the skull, such as swelling of the brain caused by a blow to the head, Johnson said. However, some scholars have suggested that the surgery sometimes had a ritual purpose.

Indeed, Micarelli and her colleagues considered that the trepanations on the Castel Trosino skull may have been performed for cultural reasons — something is seen among the Avar people in the Carpathian Basin (parts of modern-day Hungary and Romania) in the early medieval period — or as a judicial punishment. However, the study authors ruled out both of those ideas in the case of the Lombard woman’s skull.

In fact, it’s possible that the incisions were not from trepanation at all, said John Verano, an anthropologist and professor at Tulane University and author of “Holes in the Head: The Art and Archaeology of Trepanation in Ancient Peru” (Dumbarton Oaks, 2016) who wasn’t involved in the Castel Trosino research.

He suggested that what Micarelli and her colleagues interpreted as a trepanation on the top of the skull may instead have been an attempt to scrape away infected bone.

“I [have] never seen a trepanation like this, if indeed it is a trepanation,” he told Live Science in an email. “This is a complex case with multiple possible scenarios to explain the bone reaction.”

New Excavation at Pompeii Underway

New Excavation at Pompeii Underway

The goal is to improve conservation, remodeling the excavation front and acquiring new archaeological data

In Pompeii, excavations are once again in an area covering approximately 3,200 m2, almost an entire block of the ancient city buried in 79 AD by Vesuvius. 

The project is part of a broader approach which, developed during the years of the Great Pompeii Project, aims to rectify and solve the hydrogeological and conservation problems of the excavation fronts, i.e. the boundary between the excavated and the unexplored part of the ancient city.

 The latter amounts to about 15 hectares of blocks and houses still buried under lapilli and ash, almost a third of the ancient town.

The layout of the new excavation, located in Insula 10 of Regio IX, along Via di Nola, is therefore the same already implemented in the excavation of Regio V during the years 2018-2020 which, under the direction of the then director, Massimo Osanna , saw the emergence of the house of Orion, the house with a garden and the Themopolium.

In addition to improving the conditions of conservation and protection of the millenary structures through arranging the excavation fronts, which have always been elements of vulnerability due to the pressure of the ground on the ancient walls and the outflow of rainwater, the new excavations make use of the various professionals of archeology, including archaeologists, archaeobotanists, numismatic volcanologists, ancient topographers, as well as architects, engineers and geologists,

“Excavating in Pompeii is a huge responsibility – declares the Director of the site, Gabriel Zuchtriegel -. Excavation is a non-repeatable operation, what is excavated is forever. 

Therefore, we need to document and analyze each find and all the stratigraphic relationships well and immediately think about how to secure and restore what we find.”

Excavation is still at the beginning, but the masonry ridges of the upper floors of the ancient buildings are already beginning to emerge, including a house, transformed in its last stages into a fullonica (laundry) and already excavated around 1912, and a house with an oven and upper cell. 

In even higher levels, archaeologists have documented a series of holes made in the ground in perhaps more recent years and presumably functional to the agricultural use of the land or perhaps linked to the lapilli quarrying activities that the area underwent in the modern era. Eighteenth-nineteenth-century views (see attached painting by Jacob Philipp Hackert) show how the plateau above the excavations was used for various agricultural crops, between wooded areas and rural buildings, and farmers’ greenhouses were still present until 2015.

A landscape, the historical one of the decades of the rediscovery of Pompeii, which the Park wants to enhance and tell also through another project that aims at the redevelopment of the green areas of the site and its surroundings. 

In recent weeks, the procedure for selecting a partner for the cultivation of the Park’s existing trees is underway in the context of a public-private partnership, which provides for the expansion of the cultivated areas, and in the future also the introduction of olive groves , orchards and vegetable gardens.

“The size of a catastrophe is also measured according to the possibility of forgetting it, of making it fall into oblivion – comments the director – And that landscape of crops, woods and pastures that was born over the centuries after the eruption on the site of the ancient city , is like a small comfort compared to the terrible tragedy of 79 AD which destroyed the entire city of Pompeii in two days. 

The memory of the tragedy faded, life returned. So much so that after the excavations began in 1748, it took 15 years to understand that they were digging in Pompeii and not in Stabia.” 

New Thoughts on an Unusual Burial in Sardinia

New Thoughts on an Unusual Burial in Sardinia

New Thoughts on an Unusual Burial in Sardinia
Archaeologists have dated the unusual face-down burial of the young woman at the Monte Luna necropolis in Sardinia to late in the third century B.C. or early in the second century B.C.

The strange facedown burial of a young woman, who likely had a nail driven into her skull around the time she died in Sardinia more than 2,000 years ago, could be the result of ancient beliefs about epilepsy, according to new research.

The facedown burial may indicate that the individual suffered from a disease, while an unusual nail-shaped hole in the woman’s skull may be the result of a remedy that sought to prevent epilepsy from spreading to others — a medical belief at the time, according to a study coming out in the April issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

Epilepsy is now known to be a brain condition that can’t be transmitted to other people, but at the time the woman died, “The idea was that the disease that killed the person in the grave could be a problem for the entire community,” said study co-author Dario D’Orlando, an archaeologist and historian at the University of Cagliari in Sardinia.

The tomb is one of more than 120 Punic tombs at the Monte Luna necropolis in southern Sardinia, which was established after the sixth century B.C. and was used until the second century B.C.

The unusual burial was found in a tomb in the Necropolis of Monte Luna, a hill located about 20 miles (30 kilometers) north of Cagliari in the southern part of Sardinia. The burial ground was first used by Punic people after the sixth century B.C. and continued in use until the second century B.C.

Punic necropolis

The latest study found evidence of blunt-force trauma to the woman’s head, possibly from falling, and a square hole that appears to have been made by an ancient nail.

The Monte Luna necropolis was excavated in the 1970s, and the latest study is based on photographs of the tomb and a new examination of the woman’s skeleton.

Pottery in the tomb suggests she was buried in the last decade of the third century B.C. or the first decades of the second century B.C. — a time when Sardinia, a center of Punic or Phoenician culture for hundreds of years, had come under Roman rule since the end of the First Punic War against Carthage, which took place from 264 B.C. to 241 B.C. 

And a new analysis of the young woman’s skeleton — based on her pelvis, teeth and other bones — confirmed an earlier estimate that she was between 18 and 22 years old when she died.

It also showed she had suffered trauma to her skull shortly before or around the time she died. The archaeologists found evidence of two types of trauma: blunt-force trauma, which could have occurred during an accidental fall — possibly during an epileptic seizure — and a sharp-force injury in the form of a square hole in her skull consistent with an impact by an ancient Roman nail; such nails have been found at several archaeological sites in Sardinia.

D’Orlando said the sharp-force injury by a nail may have been inflicted after the woman’s death to prevent the perceived “contagion” of her epilepsy.

The authors suggest the woman’s skull may have been pierced by an ancient nail with a square cross-section, like this one, to prevent the spread of the perceived “contagion” of epilepsy.

Medical beliefs in ancient Sardinia

Such treatment may have been based on a Greek belief that certain diseases were caused by “miasma” — bad air — that would have been known throughout the Mediterranean at that time, D’Orlando said.

The same remedy is described in the first century A.D. by the Roman general and natural historian Gaius Plinius Secundus — known as Pliny the Elder — who recommended nailing body parts after a death from epileptic seizures to prevent the spread of the condition, the authors reported.

D’Orlando suggested that this practice of nailing the skull, and perhaps the woman’s unusual facedown burial, could be explained by the introduction of new Roman ideas, which were heavily influenced by ancient Greek ideas, into rural Sardinia.

The tomb was excavated in the 1970s and the latest study is based on photographs and a new analysis of the bones it contained, in particular the young woman’s skull.

But Peter van Dommelen, an archaeologist at Brown University who wasn’t involved in the study, said the culture in Sardinia stayed resolutely Punic in spite of Roman rule.

“Culturally speaking, and particularly in rural places like here, the island remains Punic,” he said. “There’s no reason to look at the Roman world for affinities — what people were doing was entirely guided by Punic traditions.”

Van Dommelen has not heard of similar burials in Sardinia, but “it’s interesting,” he said. “It fits with a broader pattern that you can see across the world and across cultures.”