I Claudius

Hoard of Roman coins unearthed in Colchester

A collection of Roman coins has been unearthed by archaeologists excavating a former barracks in Colchester.

Two pots, one of them containing 1,247 coins, were discovered on the site of the former Hyderabad and Meeanee barracks, which are being redeveloped.

The coins, known as antoniniani, date back to between 251 and 271 AD.

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Lucius Catilius Pamphilus and Servilia reunited

A married couple from Pompeii have been reunited with the recovery of a missing piece of a 2000-year-old marble puzzle made of several inscribed fragments.

Broken apart and buried during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D., the pieces belonged to a tomb inscription.

They were unearthed in 1813 along the Via dei Sepolcri in Pompeii near a burial tomb known as "Tomb of the Marble Door."

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Roman Child's Footprints Found

Two thousand-year-old footprints left by a Roman child playing by the side of a road have been found in North Yorkshire.

Photographs show a right footprint clearly visible in soft ground followed by two left prints - suggesting that the boy or girl who made them was hopping or skipping.

The perfectly-preserved footprints were uncovered in 2010 during a dig at Healam Bridge, but photographs have only now been released after Sky News heard of their existence.

There is a big WTF moment tho...

Archaeologists were unable to preserve the footprints and the photographs are the only evidence that remains of the child's brief skip through the Yorkshire mud.

Sounds like incompetent archaeologists to me.

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German scholars discover Germany has been annoying Europe for far longer than was known

A 2nd century map of Germania by the scholar Ptolemy has always stumped scholars, who were unable to relate the places depicted to known settlements. Now a team of researchers have cracked the code, revealing that half of Germany's cities are 1,000 years older than previously thought.

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Rare Roman suit of armour found

Archaeologists digging at a site in south Wales have uncovered an entire suit of Roman armour and some weapons.

The rare discovery was made during an excavation at the fortress of Caerleon in south Wales, one of Britain's best known Roman sites.

Dig leader Dr Peter Guest of Cardiff University said the suit was only the third or fourth to be found in the UK, and the first in Wales.

"It's very important for the study of Roman Britain," he said.

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Discovery of ancient cave paintings in Petra stuns art scholars

Spectacular 2,000-year-old Hellenistic-style wall paintings have been revealed at the world heritage site of Petra through the expertise of British conservation specialists. The paintings, in a cave complex, had been obscured by centuries of black soot, smoke and greasy substances, as well as graffiti.

Experts from the Courtauld Institute in London have now removed the black grime, uncovering paintings whose "exceptional" artistic quality and sheer beauty are said to be superior even to some of the better Roman paintings at Herculaneum that were inspired by Hellenistic art.

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Amateur unearths 52,000 Roman coins

An amateur treasure hunter armed with a metal detector has found over 52,000 Roman coins worth $1 million buried in field, one of the largest ever such finds in the UK, said the British Museum.

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'Roman gladiators' link to York skeleton find

The mystery of 1,800-year-old remains unearthed in York may have been solved thanks to bite and hammer marks on their decapitated skulls.

Archaeologists have exhumed 80 skeletons from gardens at Driffield Terrace over the past decade.

The results of forensic work on the skeletons suggests they may be part of the world's only well-preserved Roman gladiator cemetery.

Marks on the remains suggest some individuals died in a violent manner.

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Excavations near Reading show evidence of Boudicca

Evidence found at the Roman site of Silchester could mean it was the site of one of Boudicca's battles.

Professor Michael Fulford said that 13 years of excavations at Calleva had revealed evidence of the first gridded Iron Age town in Britain.

The site also bears the scars of possible early Roman military occupation, and evidence of later, widespread burning and destruction.

This suggests the site could have been destroyed at the hands of Boudicca.

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Part of Nero's Palace collapses

A huge chunk of a 2,000-year-old gallery in the complex that includes the infamous Emperor Nero's fabled Golden Palace collapsed Tuesday, Rome's art officials said.

Officials said they believed nobody was inside when the collapse took place at around 10 a.m., bringing down part of a garden above, but firefighters cordoned off the area as they checked no one was trapped. Nero's Palace had been closed as workers were doing repairs.


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A Brief History of the Roman Epic in the Movies part 5

A Brief History of the Roman Epic in the Movies part 4

A Brief History of the Roman Epic in the Movies part 3

A Brief History of the Roman Epic in the Movies part 2

A Brief History of the Roman Epic in the Movies part 1

DNA Testing on 2,000-Year-Old Bones in Italy Reveal East Asian Ancestry

Researchers excavating an ancient Roman cemetery made a surprising discovery when they extracted ancient mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from one of the skeletons buried at the site: the 2,000-year-old bones revealed a maternal East Asian ancestry.

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Spartacus Blood and Sand, Nipples and Dicks

The soft core trashing of history continues on Spartacus Blood and Sand...

I am embarrassed for John Hannah and Lucy Lawless.

Spartacus Blood and Sand

Oh don't worry, he'll be fine. That's our hero, Spartacus. You should see the other guy.

"Spartacus Blood and Sand" is so over the top, so pornographically violent, so juvenilely written, it manages to make HBO's Rome seem intelligent.

It so wants to be "300" and "Gladiator", it dresses up in their clothes, but can't pull it off.

Caveat emptor.

Buried Coins May Hold Key To Solving Mystery Of Ancient Roman Population

Using a mathematical model to predict population trends based on ancient coin hoards, a UConn biologist and a Stanford University historian have concluded that the population of ancient Rome was smaller than sometimes suggested.

Although the first century BC in Italy has been extensively studied, and much is known about the great figures of the era, including Cicero, Caesar, Virgil, and Horace, some basic facts – such as the approximate population size of the late Roman Republic – remain the subject of intense debate.

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