The Ipogeo dei Cristallini, an ancient Greek necropolis carved into the tufa stone underneath Naples, is opening to the general public for the first time this year, giving visitors the opportunity to see a treasure trove of Greek funerary art and architecture.

The earliest coastal settlement of what would become Naples was established by Greek colonists from Rhodes in the 9th century B.C. and grew in wealth in population as an ally of fellow Greek city Syracuse. It was conquered by Rome in the 4th century B.C., but maintained its strong Greek culture even as the Roman elite flocked to build elegant villas on the beautiful Neapolitan seaside.

For hundreds of years the Greeks of Neapolis buried their high-status dead in hypogea dug entirely out of the tufa of the city’s hills. Later the Romans made use of them as well, carving niches out of the walls of the old Greek tombs to hold cinerary remains and digging new hypogea. They were reused again as Christian catacombs.

They fell into disuse after repeatedly mudslides buried the rooms and were eventually forgotten. A select few have since been rediscovered and preserved, the Ipogeo dei Cristallini among them. It was found in 1889 when the landowner, Baron Giovanni di Donato, was looking for water under his palace on Via Cristallini. Four chambers were excavated and a flight of steps built down into the hypogeum which was now 40 feet below ground level thanks to all those mudslides.

The Cristallini Hypogeum was built in the late 4th, early 3rd century B.C. Every chamber was carved out of the living tufa, sculpted to look like real homes with architectural features like steps, columns, benches and ceiling beams. The dead were laid to rest in sarcophagi carved to look like beds, complete with plump pillows. The only element that was not carved out of the tufa is a relief of a gorgon that was carved separately and mounted high on the wall of one of the chambers, looking down at the sarcophagus beds.

The gorgon’s original polychrome paint is beautifully preserved, as are other painted elements like trompe l’oeil details on the beds, a red faux marble floor, red steps, blue and yellow stripes on the pillows, red, blue and white friezes, draped garlands, lit candelabras, a large golden patera with reclining figures of Dionysus and Ariadne. The mudslides that ended the tombs’ use had the happy side-effect of preserving the paint. Almost no Greek painting has survived, so the vivid colors and details are priceless glimpses of Greek mural art.

On the walls, meanwhile, are scrawled names in ancient Greek: lists of those buried inside.

The other three tombs are equally interesting, if not as spectacular. One was also frescoed, although the paintings have been damaged — it’s hoped that future restoration will bring them back to light.

In another lie six headstones, dedicated to the dead. Each lists the name of the deceased, and signs off with the inscription “khaire” — an ancient Greek greeting, akin to the “ciao” that modern Neapolitans use. […]

Elsewhere are sculptures of people, and traces of portraits — potentially dead ancestors, according to Paolo Giulierini, director of the National Archaeology Museum of Naples, which houses hundreds of finds from the tombs, including sculptures, vases, and carved symbols of resurrection, such as pomegranates and eggs.

The hypogeum is still under observation by archaeologists to assess its stability and environmental threats. The tomb will not be opened until the monitoring is complete and experts determine how many visitors should be allowed and how often. Restoration work will be ongoing even when the tomb opens.

A Bronze short sword has been discovered in the bed of the River Váh near the town of Hlohovec in the southwestern Slovak Republic. The blade is 26 cm (10 inches) long and weighs 150 grams (5.3 oz) and had a handle made of organic material (probably wood) which has not survived. The rivets that once joined the handle to the sword are still in place, however. It dates to the 16th century B.C.

It was discovered by a local resident last summer when it was exposed by a sharp drop in the water level. At first he just thought it was a cool object and took it home. He soon realized it was an archaeological find and had it examined by an archaeologist at the local museum who confirmed its ancient age and reported it to the Trnava Office of the Monuments Board of the Slovak Republic.

These types of short-bladed swords or long-bladed daggers are typical of the Tumulus culture of the Middle Bronze Age in the Danube basin. They have been found in tombs, hoards and in rivers and other bodies of water, where they were deliberate depositions made for ritual purposes.

At the end of the Early Bronze Age the first metal swords began to appear in Central Europe, as a separate invention that most likely evolved from long bronze daggers. The sword from the Váh could serve as a very interesting developmental link between these two types of weapons, [Matúš] Sládok [of the the Trnava Office] argued.

The Monuments Board of the Slovak Republic is fairly new, established in 2002. In the twenty years since, four Bronze Age blades like this one have been found in the Váh and reported to the Trnava Office.

Construction of a new boathouse on the Rhine in Kaiseraugst, outside Basel, Switzerland, has revealed the remains of a previously unknown Roman amphitheater that is the youngest that has ever been found in the Empire. Aaargau Canton archaeologists started excavating the site last month expecting to encounter material remains from a quarry that was abandoned in Roman times. They were surprised to find an oval ring of walls instead.

The walls encircle a hollow of the abandoned quarry and are about 165 feet long and 130 feet wide. A large entrance gate flanked on each side by smaller entrances was unearthed on the south side. A sandstone block from the threshold of another gate was found on the west side. Some of the walls have surviving plaster on the interior. Of the wooden bleachers only the impression of wooden posts they were built on remain.

The structure was adjacent to the Castrum Rauracense, the military fort built near the city of Augusta Raurica in around 300 A.D. when the Roman army had to redraw its defensive lines after the loss of Upper Raetian Limes in the Germanic invasions at the end of the 3rd century. The location next to the fort, the use of the abandoned quarry and the building materials use all point to the amphitheater having been constructed in the 4th century, which makes it the youngest known.

The good folks of the Basel Rowing Club will benefit greatly from this find. The plans for the boathouse have been redesigned to include the amphitheater’s remains. They will be left in situ, protected by a barriers while the new building is erected above them creating the coolest boathouse of all time.

The remains of tea leaves discovered in a royal tomb in Zoucheng, eastern China’s Shandong province, have been dated to 453-410 B.C., the early Warring States Period, making them the oldest known brewed tea in the world. The previous title-holders, discovered in 2005 in the tomb Emperor Jing of Han, are 300 years younger.

The leaves were found in an overturned porcelain cup during the 2018 excavation of tomb No. 1 at Xigang in the Ancient Capital City Site of the Zhu Kingdom in Zoucheng City. Archaeologists suspected at the time of the find that the charred remains of plant matter in the cup were tea. That was confirmed when scientific analyses — among them calcium phytoliths analysis, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and gas chromatograph mass spectrometry — compared the ancient matter to modern tea and steeped tea residue.

Their results show that the sample contains abundant calcium phytoliths identifiable as tea and that its FTIR spectra are similar with that of the modern tea residue.

They also detected caffeine, methoxybenzene compounds, organic acids, and several other compounds in both the ancient sample and the modern tea residue.

The Shennong Ben Cao Jing, the earliest surviving Chinese medical treatise written between 200 B.C. and 220 A.D., records a legend that tea was discovered as an antidote to poison by Emperor Shen Nung in 2737 B.C., and references in agricultural almanacs from the Warring States Period refer to tea being used in religious sacrifices.

“Since ancient times, the Chinese people have always had the habit of drinking tea, but there is no physical evidence to prove when tea actually appeared, until the discovery of tea in the Han Yangling Mausoleum, which proved that Chinese tea has a history of at least 2,150 years, which has earned recognition from Guinness World Records as the oldest tea in 2016,” the scientists said.

“The identification of the tea remains in Zoucheng — the early stage of Warring States, approximately 2,400 years ago — has advanced the origin of tea by nearly 300 years.”

“Furthermore, the tea was found in a small bowl, providing additional evidence of the usage of tea.”

“Our results indicate that tea drinking culture may start as early as in Warring State period.”

The study has been published in the journal Scientific Reports and can be read in its entirety here.