Electoral graffiti are one of the most common types found on the streets and walls of Pompeii. There are more than 1500 documented examples of political campaign electioneering and slogans painted on the walls of Pompeii. Politicians running for office would hire professional graffiti writers to publicize their names, virtues, campaign promises and endorsements by well-known individuals and professional associations (bakers, goldsmiths, mystery cult members, etc.). They even did negative campaigning via graffiti, claiming an opponent was supported by the drunkards and thieves association, for example.

The political graffiti of Pompeii are so extensive that historians have been able to trace which candidates ran for which office in which elections, who endorsed them, who opposed them, what their platforms were; the real meat-and-potatoes of local electoral politics in a 1st century Roman city.

Now a new discovery has added a fresh dimension to our understanding of how campaigns for political office operated. A series of electoral inscriptions have been discovered inside House X in Pompeii’s Regio IX neighborhood, the same villa where the fresco with the fruit focaccia was found earlier this year. The inscriptions were in the room where the lararium, the home’s altar, was located. This was a fully interior space, not the exterior of the house where passersby would see which candidate the homeowner supported. The presence of the inscriptions indicates campaign promotions took place inside private homes.

The inscriptions are faded and fragmentary, but the remains are legible and promote the campaign of Aulus Rustius Verus, candidate for aedile, the magistrate responsible for public games, markets and the maintenance of sacred and private buildings. Epigraphers translate the longest and clearest two inscriptions as: “I exhort you sincerely to vote for Aulus Rustius Verus, aedile candidate, man worthy of the office.” Verus’ name has appeared before in electoral inscriptions. He owned a grand villa on the Via dell’Abbonzanza and in 73 A.D., a scant six years before the city’s obliteration, he attained the position of duovir, the next step up for aedile and the highest office possible in the city, alongside Gaius Julius Polybius. The graffiti must therefore pre-date 73 A.D.

House X’s owner was clearly a supporter and may have been a relative, friend or freedman of Aulus Rustius Verus’. The house had a professional oven so it was a bakery shop as well as a private home, and bakers were more typically freedmen. Bread was a big political issue in Rome. Roman citizens were given free wheat starting in the 2nd century B.C. and the grain dole was thoroughly entrenched under the emperors. The phrase “panem et circensis” (bread and circuses) was coined by the poet Juvenal around 100 A.D. to decry the decline of civic duty, replaced by the public’s craving for cheap/free bread and entertaining distractions. Verus’ initials appear on a millstone in the atrium that was undergoing renovations when Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. It’s likely that Aulus Rustius was helping to fund the bakery’s renovation, a tidy way to associate his generosity with bread production. This would make the baker his client and therefore bound to support his political endeavors even to the point of putting up billboards in his house.

The lararium also preserved another surprise for archaeologists: the remains of the last offering made on its altar. Analysis determined the sacrifice was dates and figs burned on the altar with olive pits and pine cones as the fuel. (Note: I have burned dried olive pits in a fireplace and they smell just as fantastic as you think they would.) The burned offerings were topped with a whole egg and then the altar covered with a tile.

A Scythian scepter carved from animal bone has been discovered in a 5th century B.C. warrior burial in Provadia-Solnitsata, northeastern Bulgaria. Bone scepters have been found before, but they are usually cross-shaped and the design of this one is unique.

The scepter is 15 inches long with a smooth handle made of two sections of bone glued together. It has an ornithomorphic (bird-shaped) head with a hooked beak. From one side it looks like the beak of an eagle, an animal with great ritual significance to the Scythians, but from the other side there’s an anthropomorphic design that makes the beak look like a hat. The lower shaft has a hole suggesting that it was suspended from something. The Scythians were masters of the bone-carving arts, and this scepter is a superlative example of their skill.

The scepter was found in the grave of a warrior that had been opened in antiquity, but not looted. In addition to the bone scepter, archaeologists also found the skeletal remains of a horse, a small dog and a turtle. Although his skull and upper body are missing today, the posture of his body — legs open, one bent — is typical of Scythian burials. A heavily corroded iron knife was also found in the grave. The weapon and horse suggest the deceased may have been a cavalryman, and the scepter is a symbol of command, so he was likely a warlord.

Solnitsata was an ancient town near modern-day Provadia that is the oldest prehistoric town in Europe. The walled fortified settlement existed from 5,600 to 4,350 B.C. It prospered greatly off of salt production. The residents boiled water from a local spring to evaporate the liquid and collect the salt and then traded it throughout the Balkans. Salt was so expensive and valuable because it was essential to food preservation. That’s why the small settlement (population 350) had massive defensive walls built around 4,700 B.C..

The Scythians were latecomers to the area, migrating from the Eurasian steppe to arrive in what is now Bulgaria in the 7th century. When the Scythians first settled the area, they buried their dead in pre-existing burial mounds. The grave of the warrior with the scepter was not in a burial mound, but rather in a settlement mound.

The scepter is being kept in controlled laboratory conditions while it is studied and conserved. When it is ready for exhibition, it will go on display at the historical museum in Provadia.

Elaborately woven baskets that look like they could have been made yesterday but were actually made 9,500 years ago have been discovered in a cave in southern Spain. These are the oldest surviving baskets in Europe. (The earliest basket known to survive was found in a Dead Sea cave and is about 10,500 years old.) Discovered in the same cave is the earliest dated sandal ever found in Europe.

The baskets were found in the Cueva de los Murciélagos (Cave of the Bats) which is 195 feet deep. Its depth makes it extremely arid, and with humidity levels at almost zero, organic artifacts survive in exceptional condition. They were made by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers out of grasses, still used by local craftsmen today to make baskets, shoes and hats. The Mesolithic basket-makers employed closed twining, a weave with no space between the weft elements that creates a tight, high-quality basket. They also made geometric patterns using dyed fibers.

The baskets were left as grave goods. When the cave was first discovered by galena (lead ore) miners in the 19th century, they found dozens of bodies, partially mummified in the arid environment, interred with the baskets, stone tools and boar’s teeth. Unfortunately the finds were not treated with respect back then. The miners used the mummified remains and some of the woven items to fuel their boilers. Later excavations unearthed additional mummified bodies buried alongside baskets, sandals and tools.

A recent study analyzed 76 of the artifacts recovered from the Cave of the Bats that are now in the collection of the Museo Arqueológico Nacional of Madrid. Researchers found that 65 of the objects were made with fibers of the flat-leaved esparto grass. Radiocarbon dating divided the artifacts into two distinct periods: the Mesolithic (7950-7360 B.C.) and the Neolithic (4370-3740 B.C.).

After the Mesolithic phase, the cave was unused for 2,000 years. Then Early Neolithic farmers picked up where the hunter-gatherers had left off, weaving esparto grass with more sophisticated and diverse techniques to make a wide variety of objects, including cords, baskets, sandals, mats and bags. Wear analysis of a wooden mallet found in the cave indicates it was used to crush esparato grass which would have made it softer and more flexible and therefore more comfortable for use in things like the soles of sandals, for example.

Some of the sandals show evidence of wear while others were in pristine, unused condition. Archaeologists believe some of the deceased were buried with the sandals they had used in life, while others had shoes made specifically for burial.

The study has been published in the journal Science Advances and can be read here.

Archaeologists have unearthed the tomb of Yuwen Jue, Emperor Xiaomin of Northern Zhou, founder of the Northern Zhou Dynasty (557-581 A.D.) in Xianyang, northwest China. This is only the second tomb of a Northern Zhou emperor to be excavated.

The tomb was found in Hongdu Plain area of Xianyang City, a site where several tombs of elites from the Northern (439-581 A.D.), Sui, and Tang (581-907 A.D.) dynasties have been unearthed. The tomb of Yuwen Jian, Yuwen Jue’s younger brother and the eighth son of Yuwen Tai, Emperor Wen of Western Wei, was found a half-mile to the east. The only other Northern Zhou imperial tomb excavated, the tomb of another of Xiaomin’s younger brothers, Yuwen Yong, Emperor Wu, is five miles to the east.

The tomb was originally enclosed by a rectangle of ditches 482 feet long and 344 feet wide. The emperor’s tomb is a single-chamber earthen cave tomb with four patios in the north-central position of the rectangle bounded by the ditches. The floor of the tomb is 30 feet from the surface, which makes it medium-sized for tombs from the Northern Zhou era.

The tomb was pillaged in antiquity and its contents disturbed, but the thieves left plenty behind. The team unearthed 146 artifacts, most of them in the southeast section of the tomb and most of them terracotta figures of people (warriors, mounted cavalry, women), animals and legendary creatures. On the east side of the entrance, archaeologists found the stone inscribed with the emperor’s epitaph, the characters painted red with cinnabar. It translates to “Renshen in October of the second year of the tomb of Gongyu Wenjue, Duke of Lueyang, Zhou Dynasty.”

He held the title of Duke at the time of his death in 557 A.D., even though he was the ruler of the new dynasty he had just founded months earlier. It was his brother Emperor Wu who declared him emperor posthumously after his own ascension to the throne in 572 A.D.

According to archaeologists, the archaeological discovery of the tomb of Yuwen Jue in Northern Zhou is of great significance. First of all, the discovery can further clarify that the tombs of the Northern Zhou emperors have the same ground structure as the high-level tombs of the Northern Zhou. Secondly, Yuwen Jue was buried as the “Duke of Lueyang”, providing physical evidence for the political struggle during the founding period of the Northern Zhou Dynasty and supplementing the historical materials of the Northern Dynasty. Finally, the determination of the location of the Jingling Tomb provides important indication information for the distribution of the remaining three imperial tombs in the Northern Zhou Dynasty.