Roman mosaic floor found under Italian vineyard
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
Two thousand years ago, the mediterranean was a much different place. Today much of Tunisia seems barren, but one peek at the El Jem Amphitheatre and you know things have changed. Tunisia was once a verdant agricultural land with a booming economy that supported the building of sumptuous homes, outdoor theatres, public baths, temples, enormous aqueducts, etc. http://www.tourismtunisia.com/historic-sites-in-tunisia/
Fun thing I saw there: this is where St. Cyril was buried and above his tomb there are about a dozen plaques thanking him for bringing literacy to places like Ukraine, Macedonia, etc. Despite them being centuries old I could read them almost perfectly since I can read Russian and Ukrainian. That was incredible.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Clemente_al_Laterano
I wish Turkey would allow archeological digs.
I say that in a complete vacuum with respect to Turkey. I'm guessing disallowing archaeological digs is has less to do with conservation & preservation and more to do with not getting in the way of real estate developers. I live in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania, not Alaşehir), where it's not that archaeological digs aren't allowed, but the trouble is that such digs are not mandated in the historical sections of the city, and as a result, so much history gets carted away in dump trucks.
In Turkey, building stops if any archaeological finding is found in the process, until they come in and resolve the situation of the ruin. This may even lead to cancellation of the building project.
Perhaps I'm biased (certainly) but Turkey often seems to be in the news for spectacular finds from archaeological digs across the country (focused mostly in the west though). I worked on a site in the SE for seven years, and there was a ton of activity every year many foreign but also Turkish digs working in every province.
Despite the spin from post-enlightement historians recasting everything between ~600-1600 into the 'dark ages', 'rome' as in 'the roman empire' didn't end in the east until 1453 (or possibly 1917, depending on how Romanov you go), and didn't end in the west until 1806 (or possibly 1914, depending on how Hapsburg you go).
Not 'ancient rome', but still self-styled as 'rome' with a direct lineage in some form or fashion.
Polemic aside, certainly cappadocian caves would fall under the 'eastern roman empire' category, albeit post-pagan as you point out.
As Voltaire quipped: "The Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy nor Roman, nor an Empire"
Just assuming the title of the Roman emperor is not really a direct lineage.
It's not any more or any less the end of the Western Roman Empire than the political troubles that occurred in the earlier and later centuries. The Gothic, Frankish or Vandalic kingdoms very much thought of themselves as belonging to a Roman world.
But in those 324 years a lot happened that make the case of a direct lineage questionable. The Gothic wars destroyed a lot of remaining infrastructure and Roman culture, the Roman senate was no more after 600 CE, the long term population loss, and the Christian Pope was the defacto ruler of the city (if you could still call that what was left a city).
The coronation of Charlemagne was also considered illegitimate by the Eastern Roman emperor at first, until they couldn't ignore Charlemagne's military power anymore.
To this day, many Greeks, Russians, etc. (mainly Eastern Orthodox Christians) still refer to Istanbul as Constantinople, as though it is under some form of illegitimate occupation. The West also still seems to view the fall of Constantinople as the fault of the Turkish people. Is it hard to blame the average Turkish citizen for being less then enthusiastic about exploring the history of what everyone around them views as somebody else's historical legacy?
This all ignores the fact that the Eastern Empire declined steadily for centuries and lost territory to many other peoples besides the Turks, including both Greeks and Europeans. While we may view the conquest of Constantinople as the tragic end of the Roman empire, the fact is that the empire lived on in the institutions of the Ottoman empire and in its people. The Ottoman empire absorbed populations that were once Roman and, although their descendants today may adhere to a different religion, their culturual inheritance is still, in large part, Roman.
This alienation of Turkish citizens from their heritage is now causing serious problems. Erdoğan's regime holds commercial interests to be supreme and has not hesitated to throw important sites under the bulldozer over minor delays. Roman ruins are widely viewed, not as the people's heritage, but as a foreign nuisance that is best swept away to make room for the new. This must change.
Somewhat OT, I wonder if there’s a way to teach history that wouldn’t make people’s dislike it just because of perceptions like this. The Roman and Ottoman empires don’t exist anymore, what do people get my being angry at states that are gone?
Can't wait to see a further analysis of the site. Hope they can use some techniques to measure the full scale and find even more interesting artifacts nearby
"Old maps showed that a villa was in the area, but of course they didn't use scale until much later, so the exact location had been lost. This was the result of a long search to finally pinpoint it."
Relatively speaking, they were most numerous within Rome, but they also owned lands they had lower class people and slaves farm for them that they sometimes visited.
Wealth accumulated over generations. In that time, if your great-great-great grandfather had a piece of artwork, there was a good chance it was yours now.
We have negative stereotypes of the past, and there were periods of history when that was true, but there were advanced periods too. The Bronze Age empires were pretty impressive until roughly 1300 BC. We had a dark age for a while. The Roman Empire was very impressive. Then we had a dark age for a while.
And you also want to think of the social structure. Rich people employed poor people in households. Even if I owned nothing personally, I'd be exposed to art in my master's household.
Art is just a thing we expect to see now and is easily reproduced. We are surrounded by it. This is why I chose "commoditized".
Many but not all of us do. Every time I think about all the beauty that was created in the Classical Antiquity or the Renaissance (or any other less Eurocentric moment of widespread creative spark), and how it contrasts with nearly everyone today who is seemingly hellbent on making "critical" pieces for the sake of being critical.
I understand that we need to raise awareness of certain issues, that art is also politics, that a lot "has already been done", that art expresses intent and not only depicts reality (or idealized imagery). I understand all of that, but it seems we've somehow lost track of how art can also be made just... for the sake of beauty
There's a reason hordes of tourists flock to Florence all year long, you know? Let's build more of that unquestionable beauty that transcends generations.
A few years ago I was in Fez, stayed in a 600 year old riad with original tile. And yes it was breathtaking and inspiring every day. A few days before, I was in Volubilis (وليلي)a long abandoned Roman town. Every home had these mosaic tiled floors.
Additionally, labor becomes cheaper relative to materials the farther back you go in history so older stuff has proportionately more labor put into it. Having a bunch of fancy ornate wood work in your house was the 100yo equivalent of having a bunch of granite countertops.
If someone wants really nice wood trim, mantlepieces, panelling, and such in a modern house, it seems they usually loot it from an old house. The materials and work are too expensive now to make it from scratch. Ditto doors, of all things. Modern interior and exterior doors are awful compared to solid wood doors that were common not even that long ago, but, though you can still buy them, new solid doors are impractically expensive, so buying salvaged old doors usually makes more sense.
Not really true, I rented more upscale apartment once and, unlike my previous apartment, I couldn’t hear neighbors due to much better sound isolation. Appliances and cabinets were much nicer too.
The sheer competency of these guys was unbelievable.
If you're a Roman working on that roof, you know you're doing something totally unprecedented in human history. So you pull out all the stops with an utterly heroic feat of engineering and construction. That's very impressive, but when it comes to the floor -- well, plenty of buildings have floors, nothing groundbreaking about that. So, y'know, just call the flooring contractors and have them install something nice.
The fact that something relatively ordinary is still performing so well, a couple thousand years later, is what blows my mind. Today, I'm sure that a gathering of the world's greatest engineers would be capable of designing a dome that would last for millennia. But I doubt there's any flooring contractor on earth who would give even a hundred-year guarantee on their work.
But the woman and man in the lower right of the picture are weirding me out. It seems there are two men almost identical walking one in front of the other, next to two women who also look almost identical walking one in front of the other - but the woman's clothing has changed colors. I'm assuming it is some panorama software weirdness as I see other strange artifacts, but changing the colors to give the impression of different people following each other is... interesting.
If you look just slightly to the right of center, it looks like a partial image of the same woman appears again, weirdly cut off and out of scale (just her left shoulder and arm).
Otherwise you should sue in small claims court.
There's 17 seasons of it, most of which is on Amazon Prime (I think youtube has episodes as well). It's been my goto show lately for interesting entertainment during the pandemic.
Unfortunately, it turned out that the GWR railway line had obliterated the original villa. :(
Last year they started digging again and the first parts of the mosaic floor had been uncovered.
As you work in the open air, it's certainly less risky than a closed space (like, say, a haidresser).
> A note on the commune website said diggers finally made the discovery "after decades of failed attempts".
Also "scholars first found evidence of a Roman villa there more than a century ago", so they knew it must be there somewhere (I guess from old texts), but didn't know where exactly to look for it.
Bbc disappointing me here - it’s not a commune but a comune, i.e. the local council / municipality.