This weekly feature is a place to discuss new developments in fields of history and archaeology. This can be newly discovered documents and archaeological sites, recent publications, documents that have just become publicly available through digitization or the opening of archives, and new theories and interpretations.
Researchers have found a heck of a lot more stuff in the Antikythera shipwreck, which, as Nature reports, is a lot bigger than suspected:
An ornate bed leg, an intact jug and giant bronze spear are among the finds discovered by archaeologists in the famed Antikythera wreckage in the Aegean Sea. The 2,000-year-old site is best known for housing an intricate navigation contraption, the Antikythera mechanism.
The treasure hints at a much larger booty, says Brendan Foley, a maritime archaeologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and co-director of the research team. “It kind of boggles the mind, what could be down there,” he says.
The spear, which is 2.1 metres long, 6 centimetres in diameter, and weighs 10.3 kilograms, is too big and heavy to have been a weapon; researchers believe it was probably part of a statue. (The legs, arms and other pieces of six to eight bronze statues were excavated from the site in 1901, along with more than 30 marble statues, which are now housed at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.)
The team, with researchers from Woods Hole and the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities in Athens, had just five days of good weather during their 23-day excavation season, which finished on 7 October. But that was enough to learn that the wreck covers about 300 metres of the sea floor and that the ship was probably a hulking 50 metres long, quite a bit longer than the 37 metres reported for ships of that era.
Hello All,
[Discovery of Roman coins in Devon] (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/22/roman-coins-devon-map-empire-ipplepen). Of possible interest to some!
The discovery of a few muddy coins in a Devon paddock by a pair of amateur metal detector enthusiasts has led to the redrawing of the boundary of the Roman empire in south-west Britain.
Previously it had been thought that Ancient Rome’s influence did not stretch beyond Exeter but the find has resulted in a major archaeological dig that has unearthed more coins, a stretch of Roman road and the remnants of vessels from France and the Mediterranean once full of wine, olive oil and garum – fish sauce.