Roman ruins cast new light on a trip to doctor

An ancient doctor's surgery unearthed by Italian archaeologists has cast new light on what a trip to the doctor would have been like in Roman times. Far from crude, the medical implements discovered show that doctors, their surgeries and the ailments they treated have changed surprisingly little in 1,800 years.

A fresco from Pompeii depicts a physician on a house call
A physician on a house call kneels to tend the hero Aeneas in this fresco from Pompeii

Sore joints were common, patients were often told to change their diets, and the good doctor of the seaside town of Rimini even performed house calls.

Archaeologists have spent the past 17 years at the Domus del Chirurgo - House of the Surgeon - painstakingly excavating the site and compiling the world's most detailed portrait of medical treatment in Roman times. Their discoveries go on public display for the first time on Tuesday.

"This is the largest find of surgical instruments anywhere," said Dr Ralph Jackson, the curator of the Romano-British collection at the British Museum and an expert in ancient medicine.

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Inner sanctum of first Roman emperor to go on show

ROME, Dec 10 (Reuters Life!) - Four frescoed rooms in the eastern wing of the house of Augustus, where he lived before becoming Rome's first emperor, will open to the public for the first time next year after three decades of restorations.

Italian archaeologists said on Monday the rooms dated from around 30 B.C. and had been buried -- which may explain why some of the paintings are so well preserved -- after Augustus moved to another residence on a higher level of the Palatine Hill.

The tiny rooms, first discovered in the late 1970s, are mostly painted in vivid red, blue and ochre. They include a cubicle on an upper floor known as the "studiolo", or small studio, where Augustus was thought to withdraw for privacy.

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Glue used by the Romans has stuck around for 2,000 years

German archaeologists claim to have found traces of a glue they say was made by the Romans more than 2,000 years ago and used to mount silver laurel leaves on legionnaires' battle helmets.

Researchers at the Rhineland historical museum in Bonn said they had found remnants of the glue on a legionnaire's iron helmet unearthed near the town of Xanten. It had lain on what was once the bed of the Rhine for at least 1,500 years.

Frank Willer, the museum's chief restorer, said researchers came across the glue by surprise while removing a tiny sample of metal from the helmet with a fine saw. The heat from the tool caused silver laurel leaves decorating the helmet to peel off leaving thread-like traces of the glue behind.

"It is a sensational find and a complete stroke of luck that we were still able to find traces of the substance on the helmet after 2,000 years," Mr Willer said.

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Ancient wood, ropes discovered in Romania

BUCHAREST, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) -- The Romanian archaeologists have discovered well-preserved wood and ropes of 3,000 years old at Beclean of Romania's northern Bistrita-Nasaud County, officials said on Wednesday.

The objects, found in the bed of a highly salted river near Baile Figa, have been well preserved due to the salted mud, said Valeriu Kavruk, curator of the Museum of the Eastern Carpathians based in Sfantu Gheorghe, central Romania.

The laboratory tests with Carbon 14 showed the objects dated from 1000 B.C., Kavruk said, adding that the Figa site represents "the most important archaeological discovery in the latest decades in South-Eastern Europe."

According to the curator, the importance of such a discovery resides not only in the fact that it is for the first time that wood and ropes made of ivy that old, very well preserved too, were found but also it is highly important such objects gave an idea about how salt was dug 3,000 years ago.

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Stonehenge road tunnel scrapped

Plans to build a road tunnel under Stonehenge have been scrapped.

The decision to axe the 1.3 mile tunnel along with a bypass to the west of the monument and a flyover to the east follows a detailed review of the plans by the Department for Transport.

It comes after ministers decided that the estimated £500 million bill for the scheme was too high.

Plans to improve the A303, one of the major arterial roads to the West Country, have been in a succession of transport ministers’ in-trays for more than 20 years.

Initially it was believed that the schemes would cost less than £200 million.

But the price tag soared as engineers discovered that the road building project would take place on soft and weak chalk and on land with a high water table on that section of Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire.

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Ancient mtDNA from Iron Age Denmark

Rare mtDNA haplogroups and genetic differences in rich and poor Danish Iron-Age villages.

Melchior L, Gilbert MT, Kivisild T, Lynnerup N, Dissing J.

The Roman Iron-Age (0-400 AD) in Southern Scandinavia was a formative period, where the society changed from archaic chiefdoms to a true state formation, and the population composition has likely changed in this period due to immigrants from Middle Scandinavia. We have analyzed mtDNA from 22 individuals from two different types of settlements, Bøgebjerggård and Skovgaarde, in Southern Denmark. Bøgebjerggård (ca. 0 AD) represents the lowest level of free, but poor farmers, whereas Skovgaarde 8 km to the east (ca. 200-270 AD) represents the highest level of the society. Reproducible results were obtained for 18 subjects harboring 17 different haplotypes all compatible (in their character states) with the phylogenetic tree drawn from present day populations of Europe.

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Neanderthal kids grew teeth faster than human kids

The Neanderthal has been grabbing a lot of headlines recently, now comes news a recent analysis reveals the teeth of Neanderthal children grew faster than the teeth of human children today, suggesting a long childhood and slow development are uniquely human traits.

Tooth development in all primates, specifically the age of molar eruption, is related to other developmental landmarks, such as weaning and first reproduction. Anthropologists have long debated the timing of such events in Neanderthals, with evidence both supporting and refuting the idea that our distant cousins grew up differently than we do.

To get a better handle on Neanderthal tooth development, anthropologists at the Max Planck Institute in Germany examined the growth lines on the teeth of a 100,000 year-old juvenile found in the Scladina caves of Belgium.

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Neanderthal bearing teeth

Tooth growth suggests rapid maturation in a Neanderthal child

An international European research collaboration led by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology reports evidence for a rapid developmental pattern in a 100,000 year old Belgian Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis). The report, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (online edition early December), details how the team used growth lines both inside and on the surfaces of the child’s teeth to reconstruct tooth formation time and its’ age at death. Scientists found differences in the duration of tooth growth in the Neanderthal when compared to modern humans, with the former showing shorter times in most cases. This faster growth resulted in a more advanced pattern of dental development than in fossil and living members of our own species (Homo sapiens). The Scladina juvenile, which appears to be developmentally similar to a 10-12 year old human, was estimated to be in fact about 8 years old at death. This pattern of development appears to be intermediate between early members of our genus (e.g., Homo erectus) and living people, suggesting that the characteristically slow development and long childhood is a recent condition unique to our own species.

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Roman throne discovered in Italian ruins

ROME --
Remnants of the first known surviving Roman throne have been discovered in the lava and ash that buried the city of Herculaneum in the first century, archaeologists said Tuesday.

Decorated with ivory bas-reliefs depicting ancient deities, two legs and part of the back of the wooden throne were dug out between October and November. They were found 82 feet below ground near Herculaneum's Villa dei Papiri, a first century country home that is believed to have been the residence of Julius Caesar's father-in-law.

Herculaneum, Pompeii and Stabiae were destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that killed thousands in the year 79. The layers of volcanic ash preserved the sites for centuries, providing precious information on domestic life in the ancient world.

Archaeologists said the throne was an exceptional find; furniture of its type had previously only been seen in artistic depiction.

"It's the first original throne from Roman times that has survived until today," Pietro Giovanni Guzzo, Pompeii's archaeological superintendent, told a news conference in Rome.

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4,000-year-old relic found near village

A HOLIDAYMAKER has discovered what could be a 4,000-year-old relic from the Bronze Age period in Sandsend.
Butcher Michael Dearden (56), from Micklefield in Leeds, was walking in the village with his wife Cathie (54) when he found the odd pot left on the top of a dry stone wall and took it home.

He said: “It’s all countryside out there and as we came round one bit, there was a dry stone wall and the urn was just placed on top of it. Someone must have put it there.

“The only thing I can think is that someone else had come across it and put it up there.

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JORVIK VIKING CENTRE CELEBRATES 15 MILLIONTH VISITOR WITH SPECIAL TOUR

Jorvik Viking Centre in York is celebrating its 15 millionth visitor with a special event on December 6 for a select group including the actual 15 millionth visitor.

The group, made up of competition winners and the Chief Executive of the City of York Council, Bill McCarthy, as well as the lucky visitor no. 15 million, will take a journey on foot through Jorvik’s reconstructed Viking age streets. The village is normally only accessible to the public via cable car.

Leading the tour will be one of the men that made the whole place happen, Richard Hall. Hall, now Deputy Director of York Archaological Trust, began excavating the very site upon which the Jorvik Centre is built, back in 1972, with the help of a 600-strong team.

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Priceless medieval manuscripts go inline via new web service

New technology allows scholars and the general public alike to explore priceless manuscripts thanks to an innovative project with The University of Sheffield and Tribal.

Kiosque will be on show for the first time as a core part of a new exhibition at the Royal Armouries in Leeds from 8th December, a fascinating exhibition that uses digital technology to reveal the secrets of exquisite medieval manuscripts in vivid, colourful detail.

Normally the £3m+ rare and valuable manuscripts are only available on special request to researchers and not usually accessible to the general public, as the original manuscripts have to be preserved in special storage conditions requiring humidity, light and temperature control.

From 2008 Tribal expects to make the software available to organisations across the arts, heritage, museums and libraries sectors.

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He digs less to learn more about Vikings

The joke is that, in John Steinberg's home, they know an awful lot about Vikings.

On one side you have his wife, Andrea Kremer, whose job requires her to be an expert on the Minnesota Vikings (and the other 31 National Football League teams) as a reporter for NBC Sports' football coverage.

And then there's Steinberg, a senior researcher at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, who is one of the world's foremost specialists on the real Vikings, the tough-guy (and girl) Scandinavian peoples who really knew how to blitz.

Steinberg, 41, has been exploring archeological sites in Iceland since 1999, and for the last two years has led the Skagafjord Archaeological Settlement Survey, which seeks to study the evolution of settlements in a northern fjord for clues as to how Iceland evolved from the era of Viking chiefdoms into a more organized central government.

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Mystery over ceramic head finds

Archaeologists are trying to solve the riddle of three mysterious ceramic heads that have been uncovered in Edinburgh and Dumfriesshire.

A bodiless male head was found after St Margaret's Loch in Holyrood Park, Edinburgh, was partially drained.

A smaller female head was later discovered on grassland in the nearby Spring gardens.

A third disembodied head said to resemble The Scream painting by Edvard Munch was then found near Dumfries.

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Rare ancient wooden throne found in Herculaneum

ROME (Reuters) - An ancient Roman wood and ivory throne has been unearthed at a dig in Herculaneum, Italian archaeologists said on Tuesday, hailing it as the most significant piece of wooden furniture ever discovered there.

The throne was found during an excavation in the Villa of the Papyri, the private house formerly belonging to Julius Caesar's father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, built on the slope of Mount Vesuvius.

The name of the villa derives from the impressive library containing thousands of scrolls of papyrus discovered buried under meters (yards) of volcanic ash after the Vesuvius erupted on 24 August 79.

Restoration of the throne is still ongoing with restorers painstakingly trying to piece back together parts of the ceremonial chair.

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Proof of Liverpool's Viking past

The region around Liverpool was once a major Viking settlement, according to a genetic study of men living in the area.

The research tapped into this Viking ancestry by focusing on people whose surnames were recorded in the area before its population underwent a huge expansion during the industrial revolution. Among men with these "original" surnames, 50% have Norse ancestry.

The find backs up historical evidence from place names and archaeological finds of Viking treasure which suggests significant numbers of Norwegian Vikings settled in the north-west in the 10th century. "[The genetics] is very exciting because it ties in with the other evidence from the area," said Professor Stephen Harding at the University of Nottingham, who carried out the work with a team at the University of Leicester led by Professor Mark Jobling.

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The Oxford Experience Summer School

The Oxford Experience Summer School offers courses in archaeology, architectural history, history and history of language.

Online booking available from:

http://international.conted.ox.ac.uk/oxfordexperience.php

EMAS Archaeological Study Tour to Cornwall

20 to 25 March 2008

Details of the EMAS Easter archaeological study tour to Cornwall are now on the Web.

You can find more information here...

Archaeological dig on blaze site reveals 'Cowgate palaces'

ARCHAEOLOGISTS digging at the site of the fire that devastated part of Edinburgh's Old Town have uncovered remains of buildings going back to the 16th century.

It is thought the homes may have belonged to some of the city's wealthiest inhabitants. Fragments of pottery, coins and pipes have been recovered from the site, where a major archeological dig is going on before a hotel is built in the next few years.

About half the area is being examined during the three-week project, the biggest archaeological analysis there since the blaze, which destroyed a number of buildings.

The area where fire struck in December 2002 was one of Edinburgh's most fashionable quarters in the 16th and 17th centuries - the so-called "palaces of the Cowgate". But by the mid-1800s it had degenerated into a notorious slum.

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Early Human Ancestors May Have Had "Harem" Societies

Some early human ancestors may have lived in "harem" societies much like those of modern gorillas and orangutans, a new fossil study suggests.

Such an arrangement is known to arise in some modern primate species when males mature later in life than females and become much larger than their mates.

In these cases a single dominant male mates with and protects a large harem of females.

The new find is based on analysis of fossils from the human relative Paranthropus robustus.

The primate species, which lived in Africa about 2 million to 1.2 million years ago, is closely related to early humans but is a dead-end branch of the family tree.

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