A preventative archaeology survey at the site of a solar panel system in Carcarello, a few miles from the ancient Etruscan city of Tarquinia in central Italy, has unearthed a necropolis from the Roman imperial era. The excavation has uncovered 57 burials dating between the 2nd and 4th centuries A.D., several of them richly furnished.

The excavation conducted in March and April of 2023 brought to light a wide variety of tomb types including gabled roof tile tombs (known as “alla cappuccina” after the pointed hood of a Capuchin monk’s cowl), amphora burials, masonry coffins and simply earthen graves. Despite being found less than two feet under the surface, the burials had never been looted or damaged. The necropolis was protected by large limestone boulders that dotted the field, making it impossible to cultivate.

The graves contained the skeletal remains of 67 individuals as some of the 57 tombs were communal, built for at least two people who were either married couples or otherwise related. Some of them were buried clenched in an embrace.

Silver rings with amber and engraved initials, precious stones, terracotta pottery, coins, shiny glasses, amulets and even items of clothing were found alongside the golden necklaces and earrings.

“We found several skeletons still wearing their expensive stockings and shoes,” Emanuele Giannini, lead excavation archaeologist at the site told CNN. “All these riches, and the fact that the bones show no sign of stress or physical labor, (leads us to believe) these weren’t local farmers, but upper-crust members of Roman families coming from cities.” […]

“We did have a faint idea that some treasure could lie there, as historical sources mentioned the location of a postal station for travelers near the site,” explained Giannini. “Many Romans would stop (here) for the night to eat and rest, but the magnitude of the discovery is unmatched.”

The diversity of funerary objects laid near the remains, and the luxurious designs and linings inside the tombs, have led archaeologists to believe that the occupants wanted to recreate heavenly spaces similar to their earthly homes. The interior of many tombs originally featured elaborate cloth linings, or were surrounded and covered by tiles or terracotta pieces like little houses.

The artifacts recovered from the graves are undergoing conservation, and a selection of them went on display last month at the Castle of Santa Severa in Santa Marinella, 25 miles south of Carcarello. The skeletal remains are now being studied and will be analyzed to determine their geographic origins and any family relationships.

A lead slingbullet inscribed with the name of Julius Caesar and the Ibero-Roman city Ipsca has been discovered in Montilla, Andalusia, southern Spain. It the first time an incontrovertible inscription of Julius Caesar’s name has been found on this type of projectile in the Iberian Peninsula. It is also the first slingbullet inscribed with the place-name Ipsca; indeed, the first toponym of any city in Roman Hispania ever found inscribed on a slingbullet.

The practice of putting inscriptions on lead slingshot projectiles (glandes inscriptae) goes back to 5th century B.C. Greece and continued through the early Roman imperial era. The clay molds used to manufacture the shots would be incised so the projectile, once hardened, would feature an inscription in relief on the body. The types of inscriptions commonly included the name of the maker, the military commander, the legion or the place they were to be deployed. Sometimes they included messages to the enemy like “eat this” and “our persistence will destroy you.”

Glandes inscriptae have been found in significant numbers in the Republican Roman provinces of the Iberian Peninsula. A large concentration date to the 1st century B.C., so much so that scholars believed them to be a particular feature of the Sertorian War (82-72 B.C.) and Caesar’s conflict with Pompey (48-45 B.C.), a pointed, as it were, form of self-promotion. Quintus Sertorius added actual slogans like “veritas” and “fides” on the other side of his sling bullets. (Recent studies of glandes inscriptae in private collections have found a few even earlier examples, bearing the names of Roman military leaders who fought Celtiberian tribes in the 2nd century B.C.)

Even if it hadn’t had a tell-tale inscription, the slingbullet found in Montilla was unlikely to have been Sertorian because no known battles in that conflict took place in the area. Its shape and weight are directly comparable to a group of lead projectiles found at the Roman city of Ulia Fidentia, where Caesar and Pompey’s troops clashed, less than eight miles north of the slingbullet’s find site in Montilla. None of the slingbullets found at Ulia were inscribed, which makes the Montilla example all the more notable.

The almond-shaped lead projectile was discovered in 2019 during agricultural work in the town of Montilla near Cordoba. It is one of 18 lead slingbullets discovered in the immediate surroundings of the find site in the course of agricultural work or by happenstance.

The glans inscripta measures 1.8 inches long, .8 inches wide and .7 inches high. It weighs 2.5 ounces. It was manufactured by pouring lead into a clay mold. The pointed ends were cut with shears to separate them from the next bullet in the mold. The projectile is in excellent condition, with just a couple of damage spots typical of soft lead projectiles after they’ve been thrown at an enemy.

It has two longitudinal inscriptions on opposite sides: IPSCA and CAES. Ipsca is the place name of a city. Caes is the abbreviation for Gaius Julius Caesar. While the name of Caesar has been found on slingbullets in Italy, the archaeological context of these discoveries date them to after Julius Caesar’s assassination. They are therefore attributed to Gaius Caesar Octavianus, aka Octavian, Caesar’s nephew, adoptive son and heir who took Caesar’s name after his death. One unpublished slingbullet may bear the abbreviation of Caesar (the photos are unclear and it is not in public view), but the inscription on the other side “Accipe” means “take it” so even if it is Caesar’s name, the bullet itself was likely destined for his side and therefore manufactured by the Pompeian forces.

Ipsca was an Iberian oppidum (fortified town) and later a Roman municipality about 12 miles from Montilla. It was in this countryside that Julius Caesar and the surviving sons of Pompey, Gnaeus and Sextus Pompeius, engaged in the final battle of their civil war in 45 B.C. The exact location of the Battle of Munda has long been subject of debate, with the environs of Montilla being one of the top candidates. The discovery of the lead slingbullet supports this candidacy, and confirms that the city of Ipsca allied itself with Caesar’s faction.

Certainly Ipsca produced ammunition for Caesar, sealing an unbreakable alliance on lead. It was a real sponsorship, that is, a strong sharing of the cause. Hipsca espoused Caesar’s cause. And he wanted to publicly underline it, marking the operation with his name, so that there would be no doubts. The municipality probably also sent its own men to reinforce the Caesarian army in view of the clash at Munda, near present-day Montilla, the territory in which the projectile was found.

Ten 1,400-year-old coins in a jug have been unearthed in the ancient city of Hadrianopolis, modern-day Eskipazar in the Black Sea region of Turkey. The coins date to the reign of the Byzantine emperor Constans II (r. 641-668) and is probably not a hoard in the sense of having been deliberately hidden or buried, but more like a piggy bank or household petty cash box.

The coins were found in a building whose overall function is still unknown. As a number of pottery vessels of different configurations and cooking utensils were found inside the structure, archaeologists believe it may have been a kitchen. The building was in use for centuries — at least 300 years, perhaps 400 — and was repeatedly repaired, expanded and renovated during its occupation. The coins were from the last phase of the building’s use.

Renamed in honor of the Roman emperor Hadrian in the 2nd century A.D., Hadrianopolis was originally founded by the Hittites around 1300 B.C. The remains of the Roman city have been excavated off and on since 2003, uncovering 14 public structures including two baths, a theater and two churches. The 2018 excavation uncovered the remains of one of the oldest churches in Anatolia, dating to the 5th century and decorated with exquisite mosaic floors. The city was an important center of ecclesiastical administration and several notable religious figures were born or lived there, making Hadrianopolis a popular site of pilgrimage.

The same 2018 excavation found evidence that Hadrianopolis was suddenly abandoned in the 7th century A.D. It seems to have been entirely depopulated almost overnight for unknown reasons. Perhaps the little pot of money was left behind in this cataclysmic event.

A tomb from the Western Han Dynasty (206 B.C. – 24 A.D.) in an excellent state of preservation has been unearthed in the Wulong district of Chongqing, southwestern China. The tomb was still sealed and the wooden coffin and more than 600 artifacts, including lacquerware, pottery wood, bamboo and bronze objects, survived in exceptional condition. Dubbed Guankou Western Han Dynasty Tomb No. 1, it contains the largest quantity of lacquerware and bamboo ware ever discovered in a single find in the upper Yangtze River.

The site was excavated this March in an archaeological salvage project due to hydropower station construction. Archaeologists discovered a number of tombs from the Han Dynasty (206 B.C. – 220 A.D.) and the Six Dynasties period (222 A.D. – 589 A.D.), but the Western Han tomb is the most significant of them all, not just thanks to the profusion of funerary furnishings it contained, but also because the precise date it was sealed was recorded.

Huang Wei, who led the excavation project, said in the report: “What is exciting about this discovery is not just the large number of unearthed artefacts but also a list of burial items that indicate a precise record of burial, which has been verified as 193 BC, providing clarity on the tomb’s date. A piece of unearthed jade ware shows the prominent position of the tomb owner.”

The date makes the tomb the earliest known Western Han burial site discovered in China.

Located in the Wujiang River basin, the tomb was filled with water which performed the dual function of preventing the decomposition of organic material and acting as a deterrent to would-be looters. Among the organic artifacts found in the tomb were ganzhi, wood slips representing the 60-year cycle of the Chinese zodiac. The sexagenary cycle was used to record days of the week going back to the earliest written records in Chinese archaeology: oracle bones from around 1200 B.C. Instead of the more simple 12-year cycle of the Chinese zodiac today in which one of a dozen animals represent a year, the sexagenary cycle combines two terms –10 Heavenly Stems and 12 Earthly Branches — to create a compound cycle of 60 that began as names for the days of the week and deceased family but by the middle of the 3rd century B.C. had evolved to represent years.

These wooden slips were how ancient Chinese civilisations communicated through writing before the invention of paper. The ganzhi, or wooden slips, are the first time that the specific artefact has been discovered in China.

Huang told China News Network: “This set of dry branch wooden slips is well preserved, with circular perforations on the sides. We believe ropes probably connected them, but since this was the first time these objects have been discovered, we still need to verify their uses and burial purposes.”

A monumental tomb from the Roman era has been unearthed at the Apollon Smintheus Sanctuary in the village of Gülpınar, Çanakkale, western Turkey. The bones had been disturbed and were found mixed together, but so far the skeletal remains of more than 10 individuals, adults and children, were discovered in the tomb. These were likely to be members of wealthy families, able to commission a large tomb at a very important sacred site.

Smintheus has been interpreted to mean “Lord of Mice,” an epithet for Apollo first recorded by Homer in Book I of The Iliad, although the root of the word is not Greek and Homer never explains its meaning. Before the Trojan War even starts, Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, sacks the city of Chryse, kidnapping Chryseis, daughter of Chryses, priest of Apollo at the city’s sanctuary. When Agamemnon spurns Chryses’ offer of a rich ransom for the return of his daughter and throws in some insults to the god he represents while he’s at it, the priest prays to Apollo, addressing him as “O, Sminthian,” and asks him to send a plague to punish the Greeks for their offenses. Apollo is glad to help.

The Smintheion temple was built in the ancient town of Hamaxitus around 150 B.C. in Ionic style. Pieces of the entablature have survived, decorated with scenes from the Iliad. Fragments of a monumental statue more than 16 feet high have been found at the site, and according to coins and ancient sources, the statue depicted Apollo trampling a mouse. The deity was believed to protect farmers from the scourge of crop-devouring mice.

It was the second most important temple in the Troas region of Anatolia, and the sanctuary precinct was expanded during the Roman period to include two large public baths where pilgrims cleansed and purified themselves before worship, seven water cisterns to supply the baths and the sacred road connecting the temple to the city of Alexandria Troas 20 miles to the north.

Excavations have been carried out regularly at the temple site since 1980. This year’s dig season (June 15th-October 1st) uncovered the remains of two tombs and the foundations of several buildings.

Hüseyin Yaman, a member of the excavation team said: “We aim not only to acquire information about the burial traditions of individuals and communities that once existed here but also to contribute to the delineation of the distribution area of sacred structures, or in other words, to determine the boundaries of the sacred area. In line with this goal, in the excavations conducted at three different points, we revealed remnants of two tombs alongside foundational remains of some structures. Based on the artifacts found in the only room that seemed to have survived with intact foundations in the monumental tomb, we estimate its origin to be approximately 2,000 years ago, around the first century A.D.”