Discovery of Roman water wells in England proves trial and error | Hacker News Reader

Discovery of Roman water wells in England proves trial and error

theguardian.com

18 pointszeristor9 comments

It would have been so amusing to hear a bunch of Roman construction workers swear really fluently in Latin when they discovered the first one had collapsed. That’s the kind of stuff Cicero never wrote down.

Museum of London Arcaeology, excavating in Cambridgeshire.

i keep thinking of the Duke’s of Hazard when they go over the state border, to escape the police.

I guess archaeologists don’t have so many turf wars.

I know almost nothing about archaeology, and what little I do know mostly comes from Time Team (a British show).

But, what I understand is that archaeology requires multidisciplinary approach, bringing together experts from various specialties to work on a single project. Which often means collaborating with people outside ones region or organization.

Especially complex archaeology like the Uk (pre-historic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Roman, Anglo Saxon, Medieval, etc.)

But again, what I don't know about this topic would fill volumes.....

Technically the British Iron and Bronze Ages are prehistoric since British recorded history begins with the Roman conquest in 43 AC.

I guess you might be technically correct with that date being the official cut-off for pre-history, but the Romans who recorded successfully invading in 43 AD also recorded unsuccessful invasion attempts in 55 and 54 BC, so it's not entirely true to say that's the start of British recorded history.

I also think it's funny that Schama's History of Britain Volume 1 is titled "3000 BC - AD 1603" and yet only has 6 pages of information for before 55 BC, and certainly nothing specific date-wise that would justify choosing 3000 BC over any other random year.

I knew I would be called on that, lol. You're correct.

I think I initially was going to write paleo/mesolithic but couldn't remember how to spell mesolithic.

> I guess archaeologists don’t have so many turf wars.

There isn't a lot of funding to go around in archaeology. They fight so hard over the grants that there's no energy to left for turf wars.

The Roman engineers had to adjust to local conditions all the time.

See: Pompeii. Pompeii roads aren't like normal Roman roads. Because digging down was so difficult in Pompeii, they chose to add material to grade the roads for drainage rather than dig them out.

Why did we need an archeological discovery to tell us that people iterated on a design and used trial and error to learn and develop new techniques?

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