Crash course on Alexander the Great.
Other ancient history crash courses: The Fall of the Roman Republic, Persians vs. Greeks.
via Rogueclassicism.
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#history #archaeology #ancient #alexander #roman #macedonia #persian #persia #greeksMore you might like
The largest archaeological find of its kind in Greece has set off speculation and thrilled Greeks, reminding them they are rich in history.
Early last month, on a hill outside a tiny, windy village of almond and tobacco farmers in northeastern Greece, veteran archaeologist Katerina Peristeri announced that she and her team had discovered what is believed to be the biggest tomb in Greece.
The “massive, magnificent tomb,” Peristeri told reporters, is likely connected to the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia, which, in the fourth century B.C. produced Alexander the Great.
Shortly after Peristeri’s announcement, Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras held his own press conference at the site — known as Amphipolis — declaring it an “exceptionally important discovery” from the “earth of our Macedonia.”
And since then there have been daily reports in the Greek media, even though Peristeri and her team have refused interviews. They release each tidbit of news — each discovery of a caryatid, sphinx and other impressive artifacts — in press releases through the Greek Ministry of Culture.
![How a Ship Full of Fish Helped Recreate an Ancient Fish Sauce
“ What is the difference between Roman garum than [sic] modern Thai fish sauce?
What little I know comes from an experiment performed by Sally Grainger, author of Cooking Apicus, recounted...](https://images.weserv.nl/?url=https%3A%2F%2F64.media.tumblr.com%2Ftumblr_m0h6w6e3x21qzn6kno1_640.jpg&q=12&output=webp&max-age=110)
How a Ship Full of Fish Helped Recreate an Ancient Fish Sauce
What is the difference between Roman garum than [sic] modern Thai fish sauce?
What little I know comes from an experiment performed by Sally Grainger, author of Cooking Apicus, recounted in the book Cured, Fermented and Smoked Foods. Grainger is a British chef and an experimental archeologist. She looked at studies on fish sauce amphorae (ceramic vessels) from archeological sites in Spain and North Africa. One of her more fascinating sources comes from a 2,000-year-old shipwreck discovered off the coast of Grado, Italy. The ship was full of fish—maybe even live ones. Italian researchers found that the vessel contained what amounts to a giant fish tank—a hydraulic system capable of transporting 440 pounds of live parrotfish (Scarus ssp.) from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. The wreck also contains 600 amphorae, some with well-preserved fish sauce inside.
Using these studies and a recipe from Geoponica, a 10th century collection of agricultural lore, as a guide, Grainger added salted sardines (Pilchardus sardines) and sprats (Sprattus sprattus) to barrels, put the barrels in a greenhouse, and covered the tops with cardboard. Then she waited two months. What’s surprising, Grainger found, was that the recreated ancient fish sauce appeared to be a lot less salty than its modern Southeast Asian counterparts, with just as much protein. Salt slows down the enzymatic process, so industrial-scale fish sauces today—what you might otherwise think of cheaply made “fast” food—actually take longer to make than the ancient brews. In other words, this old, “slow food” fermented faster.
Ancient Roman latrine, Casa della Fortuna Annonaria, Ostia Antica, Italy.
Photo: F. Tronchin
Watch the video only if you have only a passing acquaintance with science, archaeology, and/or history.
The comments I left on that ridiculous post:
To answer in one word the question posed by the title of this post: No.
To answer it in two words: Hell no.
Problem #1 in this video is his tacit endorsement of (albeit casual) archaeological looting. This is clearly what the author means by “speculative archaeology."The glass slides he shows are modern. There are ancient equivalents, but much, much more fragmentary and made with gold and glass. None come from Dalmatia (Croatia). The other glass slides are modern reproductions of a wall painting of "Flora” from Stabiae, in southern Italy.
That hunk of metal at 1:08 and 1:14 is also clearly modern.
And as Rex Jvba points out in his comment, the coin is not authentic either.
I’m just one of many *actual* archaeologists who are really sad to see archaeology bastardized and exploited so casually as a means to fund a personal pet project.
See also RogueClassicist for a good breaking-down of this filmmaker’s “evidence” for ancient cinema.
Classics professor unearths archaeological clues about ancient Roman vineyards
They may not look like much to the untrained eye, but these ancient Roman grape seeds, believed to back to the 1st century A.D., could provide “a real breakthrough” in the understanding of the history of Chianti vineyards in the area, de Grummond says.
Call it a toast to the past. A Florida State University classics professor whose decades of archaeological work on a remote hilltop in Italy have dramatically increased understanding of the ancient Etruscan culture is celebrating yet another find. This time around it’s not the usual shards of pottery and vessels, remnants of building foundations or other ancient artifacts unearthed in past years, but rather a treasure that’s far more earthy: grape seeds.
Actually, Nancy Thomson de Grummond has discovered some 150 waterlogged grape seeds that have some experts in vineyard-grape DNA sequencing very excited. The tiny grape seeds, unearthed during a dig this past summer in Cetamura del Chianti, were discovered in a well and are probably from about the 1st century A.D., roughly about the time the Romans inhabited what is now Italy’s Chianti region. The seeds could provide “a real breakthrough” in the understanding of the history of Chianti vineyards in the area, de Grummond said. “We don’t know a lot about what grapes were grown at that time in the Chianti region,” she said. “Studying the grape seeds is important to understanding the evolution of the landscape in Chianti. There’s been lots of research in other vineyards but nothing in Chianti.”
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-12-classics-professor-unearths-archaeological-clues.html#jCp
A two-way 60-meter ancient Roman road, which was unearthed in the north of Izmir’s ancient site Agora, has been opened to visits
The Palestra of the Baths of Neptune, Ostia Antica.
I’m in the process of uploading photos from my recent study trip to Italy. Works in process, all.
Chiusi, Tarquinia, and Cerveteri
All my art and archaeology sets on Flickr. (corrections, comments, tags welcome!)
120 Roman Shoes Found in U.K.; “Substantial” Fort Find
About 60 pairs of sandals and shoes that once belonged to Roman soldiers have been unearthed at a supermarket construction site in Camelon, Scotland, archaeologists say.
The 2,000-year-old leather footwear was discovered along with Roman jewelry, coins, pottery, and animal bones at the site, which is located at the northern frontier of the Roman Empire.
The cache of Roman shoes and sandals—one of the largest ever found in Scotland—was uncovered recently in a ditch at the gateway to a second century A.D. fort built along the Antonine Wall. The wall is a massive defensive barrier that the Romans built across central Scotland during their brief occupation of the region.
The find likely represents the accumulated throwaways of Roman centurions and soldiers garrisoned at the fort…
Golden medallions featuring inscriptions and images found in a gravesite dating to the Roman era in Debelt, a village in the region of Bourgas on Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast, have been identified by archaeologists as being from the second century CE.
According to archaeologists, the graves are those of veterans of the eighth legion of Augustus. They are in the western part of the ancient Roman colony of Deultum, according to a report on July 17 2012 by public broadcaster Bulgarian National Television.
Today the gravesite is next to a street in the latter-day village of Debelt. Deultum, in its time, was known as “Little Rome in Thrace”, the report said.
The find was made by accident while people were pouring concrete for construction. The vibration of the concrete mixer caused the surface to crack and a tomb was found.
Krasimira Kostova, director of the Archaeological Museum in Debelt, said that the find was of extremely high value. The valuable gifts were evidence that the people who lived there were of high status.
The finds included golden jewellery and a needle, beads and scrapers used by the ancient Romans for bathing and massage and in medicine as a means of inserting medication in the ears and throat, the report said. All of these were signs of urban life in what was then an important place in the Roman empire.
An inter-ministerial committee will decide what will become of the site. According to the report, Debelt archaeological reserve is the only one in Bulgaria to have “European archaeological heritage” status.
“It has been flattened,” spokesman Einar Bjorgo told AFP news agency.
Horrific.