Meggie Macdonald

At this time of the year, when archaeological projects in Greek and Roman history are not in the news, when the dig season in Egypt has yet to start, and when everyone has holidays on their minds, I felt it would be valuable to include a list of some of the current archaeological and academic projects that are still ongoing in the field despite a lack of press coverage.

Archaeology Magazine’s website has an excellent list compiled from the summer 2009 season of underwater sites that made the news when they first appeared but have since fallen out of the public eye, as the intensive archaeological excavations and analyses continue.  In particular, a Phoenician ship discovered off the coast of Cartagena has yielded vital information suggesting that Phoenician traders were interacting with peoples on the Atlantic coast west of the Straits of Gibraltar in the sixth century BCE.  There is also evidence of the diet – primarily nuts – that these ancient sailors could have expected during these long merchant voyages.  A Roman stone carrier was also discovered and, four years on, the site is still thrilling archaeologists.  Nautical archaeologist Deborah Carlson notes that this ship was carrying a marble column that, once assembled, would have been 30 feet high and included a Doric capitol.

There was also a Roman sewn ship discovered in Croatia in May of 2009 at the site of ongoing excavations of the Roman town of Kissa that has sunk into Caska Bay since the Romans inhabited it.  The remains of this ship will enlighten researchers about the process of manufacturing such a light, portable vehicle in this area of the Roman world.

The English Heritage website has also compiled a short list of ongoing projects in the UK that, from the moment of their identification, have had the Roman archaeological world all atwitter.  The most obvious of these are the Chester amphitheatre first discovered in 2004, the Roman villa at Groundwell Ridge, and the Cawthorn Roman camps.

Surprisingly missing from this list is the 2005 discovery of a Roman circus in Colchester, the first of its kind to be found in Britain, thus dispelling all theories about British art depicting the horse races based on stories and travels disseminated to the natives by non-Britons.  This discovery followed quickly on the heels of that of the amphitheatre at the same site in 2004.  The circus has been commemorated with a mosaic created in the Roman tradition by modern artists, and its unveiling was captured in this youtube video.

Also missing from the English Heritage site is the work currently ongoing at the site of the London amphitheatre, discovered in 1988 underneath the late medieval Guildhall of Britain’s capital.  An impressive if surprisingly short tour of the archaeological remains is available, after descending through the Guildhall Art Gallery into the dark underground beneath the Guildhall plaza itself.  Engineers have included a slate ring on the outer floor of this plaza that identifies the limits of the original Roman arena.

The Sagalassos Archaeological Project in recent years has yielded some of the most amazing artifacts ever discovered.  The site, first identified in the nineteenth century by French archaeologists, has since been found to include a large bath complex.  Beginning in July 2007, archaeologists discovered the remains of colossi of Hadrian, the Empress Faustina, and the Emperor Marcus Aurelius.  The colossus of Hadrian made its international debut at the British Museum’s ‘Hadrian:  Empire and Conflict’ exhibition.  The hope is that excavations in coming years will reveal colossal statues for each of the three remaining alcoves in the frigidarium of the baths, perhaps representing the Emperor Antoninus Pius, Hadrian’s wife Sabina, and Marcus Aurelius’ wife Faustina the Younger.  This find potentially represents the first example of imperial statuary limited to a single family, the Antonids, the last three of the traditional Five Good Emperors.

The Pylos Regional Archaeological Project concluded in 2005 after fifteen years of work in Greece at a Bronze Age site dubbed the ‘Palace of Nestor’, after the famously wise king of Homeric epic.  At this point, research and analysis are continuing in the lab and office to compile a publication of this successful dig.

In 2008, news came through the wire from the Egyptian Higher Council of Antiquities that archaeologists had eliminated all but three possible locations of the tomb of the Pharaoh Cleopatra and her doomed lover, the Roman general Marc Antony.  Excavations have, as of October 2009, resumed in Egypt at a site 50 kilometres from Alexandria in the hopes of unearthing the final resting place of this infamous pair.

What is being called the Staffordshire Hoard - a massive find of 1500 gold and silver pieces, larger than the famous Sutton Hoo hoard by a remarkable 6kg – has formally become part of the Department of Prehistory and Europe’s displays at the British Museum.  These pieces, featuring some of the most exquisite goldworking known from the Anglo-Saxon world, was discovered in September 2009 by amateur archaeologist Terry Herbert using a metal detector on a farm in Southern Staffordshire.  Dated to approximately the seventh century, it is the largest gold hoard ever discovered and has been equated with the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Book of Kells for its priceless value to the study of this period of history.

The mighty Perseus Digital Library continues to grow, with further texts by Seneca, Quintillian, Flaccus, Cicero, Aulus Gellius, Ammianus and Petronius.  In addition, they are looking to expand their Greek word database, improve their general searchability, and have recently announced the first release of their Arabic Collection.

And finally, for all those literary projects that I have not yet mentioned, the Athena Review has a substantial and comprehensive list of ongoing work worldwide.

Onward!

NOTE:  The titular quote is from Poem 54, line 63, by Michelangelo Buonarroti as translated by Anthony Mortimer.

I have recently moved back to Canada from the UK and, although there was a vague reference to the reconstructed face of Museum subway station in Toronto in the news before I left, I had entirely forgotten about it until I returned to the city and saw it for myself.

The new station, a significant improvement on the old yellowed tile walls much in need of renovation, has pillars in the shape of figures including West Coast totem poles, Central American gods, Egyptian sarcophagi, and Doric columns.  In addition, the TTC text identifying the station now showcases Egyptian hieroglyphs from behind a clear cut-out.

In a single move, the Royal Ontario Museum has highlighted the best of its collections – images that are immediately evocative of coming face-to-face with magical statues as a child visiting the museum for the first time.  As part of the TTC’s revitalization project, architectural firm Diamond and Schmitt have designed and achieved a very appealing result for Museum station. 

Following further investigation, however, I found that there are few who think highly of the new design and instead they lament what one article called the TTC’s quintessential ‘washroom stations’.  One piece in Transit Toronto by Alex Bozikovic highlights the issues surrounding the lukewarm reception the renovation has received:  the TTC’s graphic identity.  Like Transport for London in the UK, who similarly hold the copyright on the font used for the graphic text on the Underground (Johnston, or Johnston Sans), the TTC’s famous font - Toronto Subway Regular – is the exclusive property of the TTC.  As one element that contributes to the Toronto subway’s graphic identity, this font as well as the tiled designs in most of the stations created in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s are treated as a child treats a worn-out favourite teddy bear:  they will fight for it to stay exactly the same, missing limbs and loose button eyes and all, and will fight vehemently.

I think the character of public transit should be cultivated so that the public takes an active and personal interest in its welfare.  But taking it to the point where anything new is treated as a visual irritation, forcing die-hard enthusiasts to avert their eyes, is ridiculous.  Character is not static, not immutable, but polymorphic and eternally so.  It doesn’t matter if that character belongs to a person, an inanimate object, or an ideal.

I think that the newly renovated Museum station draws the eye to the ROM above the same way that, for example, Holborn station does for the mighty British Museum nearby.  You know a cultural centre is nearby, and a spur-of-the-moment decision could get you there.  And remembering to think about your surroundings is something that more people should do generally.  I applaud Diamond and Schmitt for their creative efforts, and look forward to seeing their designs for two further stations – St. Patrick (Art Gallery of Ontario) and Osgoode (Toronto Performing Arts Centre) – come to fruition.

Ehud Netzer, an archaeologist associated with the Hebrew University in Israel, has announced that discoveries led by his team in 2007 have unearthed what he believes is the tomb of King Herod the Great at Herodium, one of several palaces built by Herod during his 40-year reign.  After excavating this site and others throughout ancient Judaea, Netzer’s team narrowed the scope of possible sites for the tomb and the results are astounding.

Part way up the hillside – artificially increased by Herod himself to a further height of 65 feet and overlooking a vast expanse of desert, with Jerusalem to the east - Netzer’s team have found architraves, friezes, and cornices all decorated with various Judaea and Nabataean funerary motifs (Herod’s mother was from Petra, capital of the Nabataeans).  However, the most stellar discovery thus far has been the remains of a smashed sarcophagus, and specifically its red limestone fragments decorated with rosettes.  It appears that the mausoleum stood on the eastern slope of the great palatial fortress – the largest in the Roman world, author Barbara Kreiger points out - on a base 30 by 30 feet and originally standing approximately 80 feet high. 

Without letting assumptions cloud observations, the whole site seems to indicate nothing less than the mausoleum of the king himself.  Jodi Magness, an archaeologist in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Maryland, and Ken Holum, curator of the Smithsonian exhibition ‘King Herod’s Dream’ both feel that Ehud Netzer has found what has eluded archaeologists for two hundred years.

From Herodium’s first identification in 1838 by Edward Robinson who, like Heinrich Schliemann with Homer at Troy, used the extant works of Flavius Josephus to seek out the site, to confirmation of that identification by german archaeologist Conrad Schick, Herodium has been under the scrutiny of diligent archaeologists for two centuries.  In the 1860s, French explorer Felicien de Saulcy, began an outright search for Herod’s tomb.  From 1963 to 1967, Father Virgilio Corbo of the Franciscan Faculty of Biblical Sciences and Archaeology in Rome scoured the summit.  Lambert Dolphin, an American geophysicist, worked through the 1983 dig season analysing the base of the highest of the fortress’s four towers.  Netzer’s own work, begun on the site in the 1970s and continuing since then, allowed him to further narrow down possible locations for the tomb.  His 2007 discoveries are, he believes, as conclusive as can be expected.

However, Duane Roller, professor emeritus at Ohio State University, suggests instead that Herod’s tomb is at the base of the summit tower and not part-way up the slope at the site of Netzer’s dig.  One of Roller’s main arguments against this site as the location of Herod’s tomb is that no inscriptions have been found to positively identify the mausoleum.  Refuting this comment is the evidence that inscriptions were not the norm in Judaean burials during the first century CE when Herod died.

More to the point, the body of King Herod is no longer entombed at Herodium.  Coins recovered from the site, along with the obvious destruction pattern of the sarcophagus itself, suggest that the mausoleum was desecrated some time during the first Jewish Rebellion against the Romans in 66-74 CE.  Herod was a particularly ruthless king who killed much of his own family before he died, fearing they were plotting against him.  He had come to power with the support of the Roman princeps Augustus, whom he had befriended while in exile in Rome, and his reign was marked with ambitious building projects throughout Judaea.  Among his most famous were the fortresses at Herodium and Masada and the great temple at Jerusalem, built to replace the First Temple that was destroyed by the Persians in the sixth century BCE.

Archaeologists who are not already affiliated with the site and those scholars who find ancient Judaea endlessly alluring will, if they have not already, begin flocking to the site and those who do not will watch avidly for news of further discoveries at Herodium.  It is clear that Ehud Netzer’s career as an archaeologist has reached new heights of success, and we can only hope that his team will continue surprising the world with news of King Herod.