Month: May 2025

Appia altar reunited with its cover

Ancient, Roma, Caput Mundi

An ancient funerary altar discovered in Rome’s Appia Antica archaeological park has been reunited with its cover 1,800 years after they were unceremoniously separated. Archaeologists discovered the cover just eight inches in front of where the altar had been found two years earlier. The lid was upside-down but otherwise in excellent condition.

The altar was discovered in July 2023 at a site on the first mile of the Appian Way near the tomb of Geta. This is the area where the life-sized Hercules statue was found during construction in January of that year. The site was abandoned in the 4th century, probably because a rise in the level of the water table rendered it impassable. The waterlogged soil and the benign neglect of millennia have preserved the archaeological materials.

An inscription on the front of the altar named its owner as Caius Ofilius Ianuarius. The Ofilii gens has been documented since the Republican era, and was likely of Samnite or Oscan origin. Members of the family are recorded as having fought in the Samnite wars of the 1st century B.C. and having practiced law in Rome. The cognomen Ianuarius refers to the god Janus and the first month of the year. It was typically adopted as by freedmen or their sons. His funerary monument on the Appia was in a very prestigious location, however, so he was likely someone achieved a certain status, despite his humble origins.

The altar has a niche inside that contained a cinerary urn and perhaps some jewelry or other valuables the deceased was wearing when he was cremated or when the ashes were placed in the urn. Archaeologists believe the cover was removed in antiquity by looters looking for valuables to steal inside the funerary monument. The lid was dumped on the ground, but it didn’t break. Both parts of the altar managed to survive practically unscathed.

The altar’s fine condition required no conservation, so it was cleaned and put on display at the museum of Santa Maria Nova less than two months after its discovery. The cover had an even shorter wait. Archaeologists just dusted it off and moved it right to the museum where it was put back on top of the altar.

Here’s a happy pair of videos capturing the moment the cover was discovered and the moment it was placed back on top of the altar. 

Ancient flood preserves hundreds of Roman bridge pilings in Utrecht

Ancient

Evidence of a major flood that swept through Roman Utrecht around 100 A.D. has been discovered in an excavation of the Merwede Canal Zone. The flood was wreaked havoc with the Roman infrastructure of the city, sweeping away a bridge and leaving a gully 33 feet deep and 150 feet across in its wake.

Utrecht was founded around 50 A.D. as the Roman castellum Traiectum, a small fort on the Lower Germanic Limes, the northern defensive boundary of the Roman Empire. The fort was on the Rhine then (its course has since changed), likely at a crossing. A civilian settlement grew around the fort to supply it and house the soldier’s families. The fort and town were abandoned under pressure from Germanic raids in around 275 A.D.

The Merwede Canal Zone is being excavated as part of an exploration of a Roman gravel road that was discovered last December. It was a branch of the larger road that followed the Limes and was used to transport troops, supplies and messages between Roman forts through Traiectum.

Because the fort was located on a river delta, water management was a constant issue. The excavation of the Merwede Canal Zone has uncovered culverts of different types that drained stormwater under the road to the countryside, and a remarkable 115 feet-long “swamp bridge,” that crossed a depression along the road, making transit possible even when the low point was flooded.

Archaeologists unearthed hundreds of wooden piles, several bridge piers, bridge abutments, culverts and roadside gutters. They were preserved in exceptional condition by the waterlogged soil and thick clay deposits from flooding. After the 100 A.D. flood, the Romans undertook a major restoration of the bridge by order of the Emperor Hadrian who had inspected the area on his travels a few years before. Dendrochronological analysis of the piles date the reconstruction to 125 A.D. Roman soldiers built a road diversion 460 feet around the deep gully hole, protected by a heavy oak revetment. The oak trees came from the northern Ardennes Forest 180 miles to the south.

The huge gully took centuries to fill, and before that, it seems people dropped valuable objects into the deep pool, perhaps as offerings. Archaeologists uncovered a unique silver loop necklace and a belt fitting decorated with inlaid glass in the fill. Over the centuries, the huge gully filled in with peat and clay, which preserved its contents but made an unstable subsoil and caused numerous subsidence events through the 20th century.

The gully and its contents will be preserved in situ, as will some of the 125 road diversion. Some of the piles have been removed for further study. Some are being donated to artists.

Oldest baked bread flying off the shelves

Ancient, Modern(ish)

The oldest baked bread in Anatolia has been reproduced for sale in Eskişehir, northwestern Turkey. The historic loaf dates to the Early Bronze Age (ca. 3300 B.C.) and was unearthed at the Küllüoba Mound. Spurred by the loaf’s recent unveiling for public display at the Eskisehir Archaeological Museum, the municipality commissioned a replica and it was an instant success, selling out the full production of 300 loaves a day.

The period around 3300-3000 B.C. saw farming settlements emerge in large numbers on the plains of Anatolia. The settlement at Küllüoba Mound is the oldest in the area and has been excavated continuously since 1996.

The round, flat loaf five inches in diameter was discovered in September 2024. A piece was torn off, and the rest of the loaf was burned and buried in the close to the threshold of a house. Archaeologists believe this was a ritual to bring abundance and prosperity to the dwelling. The charring preserved the bread, making it possible for a sample to be analyzed to identify its ingredients.

[The head of the Küllüoba excavation team, Professor Murat] Türkteki explained that the bread had fermented and was baked — making it the earliest known example of such a processed food. “The back of the bread shows white residues known as phytoliths — microscopic plant remains, often from leaves — which were possibly left during the fermentation process. We’re continuing our research on those traces as well.”

Microscopic analysis revealed that the bread contained large particles of a wheat variety called “gernik wheat,” which still exists today but is rarely cultivated. Türkteki said that nearly 90 percent of the bread was made from this type of wheat, ground coarsely using basalt stones typical of the era.

Gernik wheat is also known as wild emmer wheat. Wild emmer no longer exists in Turkey today, and the leaf that played a role in fermentation is unknown. Lentils were also identified. The bread was baked quickly at more than 300°F.

As ancient emmer was not available, Eskişehir’s Public Bread Company, a municipal bakery that provides low cost bread, decided to use Kavılca wheat, which is a native heritage grain close to emmer, as a substitute. They also used lentil flour, cooked lentils kamut and cooked bulgur.

The loaves are packaged in a paper bag with information about the Küllüoba Mound on the back. So for 50 Turkish Lira ($1.28), buyers get a fiber-rich, filling, low-gluten, preservative-free bun their distant ancestors would have recognized served in a museum information panel. No wonder they’ve been selling out every day.

The success of the Bronze Age bread revival may have repercussions for the area’s agricultural practices as well.

Once rich in water sources, the province of Eskisehir is today suffering from drought.

“We’re facing a climate crisis, but we’re still growing corn and sunflowers, which require a lot of water,” said Unluce, the local mayor. “Our ancestors are teaching us a lesson. Like them, we should be moving towards less thirsty crops,” she added.

The mayor wants to revive the cultivation of Kavilca wheat in the region, which is resistant to drought and disease. “We need strong policies on this subject. Cultivating ancient wheat will be a symbolic step in this direction,” she said.

“These lands have preserved this bread for 5,000 years and given us this gift. We have a duty to protect this heritage and pass it on.”

Queen Margherita’s elevator restored

Modern(ish)

An electric elevator installed for Queen Margherita of Italy in 1905 has been restored, not to its original function, but to its original wood paneled beauty. The elevator connected the first floor where the queen and her ladies lived to the ground floor of the Palazzina di Caccia di Stupinigi, a royal hunting lodge on the outskirts of Turin. It had a wooden cabin with a sliding door with eight frosted glass windows. A Bakelite button panel is lost, leaving behind only minute traces.

Of the old elevator in Stupinigi, only the wooden cabin was preserved, as if suspended in time, since the electrical and “hydraulic pump” instrumentation as described in the documents was no longer preserved. The space that houses the wooden cabin had been separated from the basement, where the systems must have been located, and from the upper floor by partitions built during the second half of the twentieth century. The cabin was preserved not entirely intact in its internal parts but still maintained the two doors that allowed access to the compartment and the historic glass in place. The elevator was internally illuminated and had a button panel that is no longer preserved.

The restoration involved the repair of the poplar structure and the walnut veneer that had detachments and deformations due to humidity. The dome, decorated with a baluster motif, had numerous gaps that were filled in. Scientific analyses allowed us to study the protective varnishes and determine the most suitable solution to restore the artifact to a stable and durable condition.

Elevators have a long history in Italy. Of course the ancient Romans had the pulley elevators in the underground of the Colosseum that raised wild animals to the arena floor and similar devices were used to carry heavy materials in the construction of medieval cathedrals. But Italy claims an important first in elevator history. The first elevator in the modern sense of a mechanical cabin permanently installed in a building to transport people between different floors was the elevator that brought people up to the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica so they didn’t have to trudge up 320 stairs. It was installed in the 16th century.

The Officine Meccaniche Stigler created its first hydraulic lift to transport people up and down floors in 1870. The Grand Hotel Costanzi in Rome. The first Stigler Electric Lift was produced in 1895. It had a rope system to control the ascent and descent, but that was soon replaced by push buttons. The new electric push button-operated elevators became all the rage and the Savoy royal family had them installed in several of their palaces.

Princess Maria Clotilde di Savoia had a beautiful Stigler elevator installed in her residence, the Moncalieri Castle, in the first years of the 1900s. The Moncalieri elevator also went up and down a single floor, connecting the princess’ apartment on the first floor with her daughter Maria Letizia’s apartment on the ground floor. It too was recently restored as part of a much larger restoration project in the wake of a 2008 fire that devastated the castle. Thankfully, almost all of its original elements survived. It is made of wood, glass and brass, and is intact with its glass access door and two sliding doors with glass panels opening to an inner cabin. The original electric motor is still in place, as is the brass lever system that operated the elevator. Today the elevator is in active use, making the first floor accessible to visitors with mobility issues.

World Trade Center Revolutionary War gunboat reassembled in public

Modern(ish)

It’s been 15 years since the remains of an 18th century ship were discovered 22 feet below of the surface of the World Trade Center site, and at long last it has arrived at its new home: the New York State Museum in Albany. It will be the centerpiece of the museum’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Built near Philadelphia in 1775, the ship is a gunboat that patrolled the shallow waterways of the northeast. The discovery of shipworms in the timber indicate it traveled to the warm, wormy waters of the Caribbean, and British regiment buttons found inside the boat may mean it was captured by the British and sailed south before making the journey back up north to New York. It was deliberately abandoned along the Hudson River shoreline.

It was originally about 50 feet long with a raised deck. A section 30 feet long was preserved in the muddy soil of the shore. As soon as it was discovered in the excavation of Ground Zero before construction of One World Trade Center, the timbers were exposed to oxygen and began to deteriorate. Archaeologists worked feverishly in shifts over two weeks to disassemble the ship and recover more than 600 pieces wood so they could be stabilized for eventual reconstruction.

The first year after the excavation, the timbers were studied and conserved at Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory. They then moved to Texas A&M University’s Center for Maritime Archeology, the country’s foremost experts in nautical archaeology, where the remains were conserved in a multi-stage process 14 years long. It was soaked in fresh water for five years to desalinate the wood. The timbers were then freeze-dried to ensure there was no water left in them. The team laser-scanned each timber to create a 3D model of the ship, and removed every piece of iron, every nail, to keep the wood from being damaged by rust.

The stabilized pieces of the ship have now been transferred to Albany where they are being reassembled on public view in the South Lobby alongside a selection of the artifacts found in the excavation. The reconstruction is being led by Dr. Peter Fix, Principal Conservator of the World Trade Center Ship and expert in Archaeological Watercraft Conservation at Texas A&M University, who estimates reassembly will be complete by the middle or end of June. Visitors are encouraged to ask the team questions and there will be a series of lectures and talks given by the conservators while they put the ship back together.