Archaeologists in Slovakia have uncovered a large Roman military camp likely used by Marcus Aurelius' troops during conflicts with Germanic tribes in the late second century. The "extremely rare" camp came as a surprise to archaeologists, as it holds the hastily buried remains of numerous soldiers in unusual graves, including wells.

Remains of the 18.2-acre (7.4 hectare) camp were found near the town of Šurany in southwestern Slovakia, according to a translated July 17 statement from MH Invest, which excavated the area along with the Institute of Archaeology at the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAS).

"We have a unique opportunity to explore practically an entire Roman marching camp, which is extremely rare in the European context," Matej Ruttkay, director of the SAS Institute of Archaeology, said in the statement. "We are clearly investigating a place that disappeared immediately after the military conflict between the Romans and the Germans."

Between A.D. 166 and 180, the Romans fought a series of battles against a Germanic people called the Marcomanni, who lived north of the Danube River along the border of the Roman Empire in what are now Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Marcus Aurelius, who reigned as Roman emperor from 161 to 180, commanded troops in the Marcomannic Wars with the goal of defending and securing Rome's border against barbarian invasions. But the wars ended upon Marcus Aurelius' death, when his son Commodus negotiated a peace with the Marcomanni, according to third-century Roman historian Cassius Dio.

The newly discovered Roman military camp had clear defensive characteristics, including five entrance gates, fortifications, and a curved ditch-and-rampart system typical of marching or legionary camps, according to the statement. The Šurany camp is only the second Roman military installation ever found in western Slovakia; the first camp, discovered in 2024 by SAS archaeologists, is thought to be where Marcus Aurelius wrote part of his Meditations.

The Šurany camp surprised archaeologists with a large number of skeletons — and parts of skeletons — buried in ditches, wells and hastily dug shallow graves, according to the statement.

"Our preliminary findings indicate that in most cases these are Roman soldiers," Marek Vojteček, an archaeologist at the SAS Institute of Archaeology, said in the statement. "Numerous components of Roman military equipment and weaponry were also found with the skeletal remains, such as spears, arrowheads, parts of helmets, segmented and scale armor, legionary brooches, coins, and the characteristic 'caligae' military sandals, from which iron nails on the soles have been preserved," he said.

X-ray analysis of blocks of clay revealed the intact sandal nails, which are now stored at the SAS Institute of Archaeology's specialized laboratory for further analysis. "It is literally a miracle to see the original footwear of a Roman soldier and even to be able to determine its size," Michal Cheben, an archaeologist at the SAS Institute of Archaeology, said in the statement.

The unusual burials raise important questions about the use and abandonment of this Roman military camp, according to Cheben, including whether the soldiers died from combat injuries or disease and why the bodies weren't looted before being thrown into storage pits and wells. "Laboratory analyses and further genetic and anthropological research may provide answers," Cheben said.

Because the camp was so large and the artifacts so numerous, a comprehensive analysis of the site will take several years and will involve international experts in carbon dating, soil analysis, isotopic analysis and ancient DNA, according to the statement.

"This is a long-term process, so many results will only become known in the coming years," Ruttkay said.

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The face of a young woman crowned with a laurel wreath, buried in elaborate clothing and unusual cork sandals, has appeared nearly 1,700 years after her death.

She is one of 16 people from Aquincum, a Roman-era city in present-day Hungary, whose faces have been reconstructed for "Once We Were Like You," a new exhibition at the Aquincum Museum in Budapest. The display pairs skulls excavated in and around the ancient city with scientifically informed approximations of how their owners may have looked in life.

Six of the reconstructions are hyperrealistic silicone models, complete with artificial eyes, human hair, eyebrows, eyelashes and, in some cases, beards. The exhibition, which runs through Oct. 31, includes men, women and a child who lived during the region's period of Roman rule.

"The face is the most important feature for recognizing a person," Emese Gábor, a forensic facial reconstruction specialist who sculpted the silicone faces, told Live Science in an email. Although a skull cannot reveal every detail of a person's appearance, reconstruction lets museum visitors encounter the faces as those of "a real human being rather than as skeletal remains," she said.

Rebuilding a Roman face

Aquincum stood on the Danube frontier of the Roman Empire in what is now Budapest. The city was home to a diverse population in the first through fourth centuries, and genetic and archaeological analyses of the individuals in the exhibition point to connections with regions including present-day Italy, Scotland and Syria, as well as Sarmatian groups from the Eurasian steppe and Celtic communities that lived in the region before Roman rule.

The remains of those who lived here have also been unearthed, and continue to be discovered today during the excavation of cemeteries," according to a statement from the museum.

Creating a reconstructed face begins with a high-resolution 3D CT scan of the original skull. Specialists then produce an exact 3D-printed replica, allowing experts like Gábor to work without repeatedly handling or disturbing the ancient remains.

"The latest scientific advances — including 3D scanning, CT imaging, archaeogenetic (ancient DNA) analysis and facial approximation research — are incorporated whenever possible," she said.

"If a hyper-realistic reconstruction is required, I create a mould and cast the face in coloured silicone, finishing it with real human hair, eyebrows, eyelashes and, where appropriate, a beard," she said.

Ancient DNA can sometimes provide additional clues about pigmentation, including probable eye, hair and skin color. But the results are still approximations, not portraits. For instance, hairstyle, expression and many details of the person’s appearance are usually more speculative.

The woman with the laurel wreath

Of all the people she reconstructed, Gábor said she found it especially difficult to forget the woman known as the Jablonka Road mummy.

The woman's skeleton was relatively well preserved, but the soft tissue on her face had decayed, leaving only the skull. A laurel wreath still rested on her head, and, according to Gábor, her burial contained fine clothing, a spindle for weaving, bird-shaped cork sandals and a painted male portrait that had been placed near her feet. Archaeologists have suggested that the portrait may have represented her husband or father, although his identity is unknown.

"Based on these details, the archaeological context and the anthropological data, it was the archaeologists who pieced together her story while I reconstructed her face," Gábor said. "That was very moving."

Other individuals selected for the exhibition include those of a young girl who died in childhood and a woman interpreted as a nurse or healer who was buried in a children's cemetery. Some of the other reconstructions include a construction worker, a military officer and a blacksmith.

Two women appear to have met particularly violent or punitive ends. They were buried face down with their legs bound together, Gábor said. The exhibition's interpretation associates one woman with an accusation of witchcraft and the other with poisons, although such details are historical interpretations rather than evidence-based findings from the burials.

"Every reconstruction is a journey," Gábor said. "As I shape each face, I find myself reflecting on that person's life again and again, and by the end, they no longer feel like anonymous remains, but like real people."

Analyses of the skeletons suggest that many of the individuals endured strenuous physical labor, periods of hunger and chronic inflammation. This evidence led museum curators to conclude that many represented the less wealthy inhabitants of Roman society — people whose names and experiences were unlikely to appear in surviving written histories.

For Gábor, the physical reconstructions offer something that a digital image cannot: Visitors can stand face-to-face with a life-size person, walk around the model and study it from different angles. Her hope is that this encounter encourages visitors to think beyond the scientific data and imagine the full lives that once surrounded the excavated bones.

"When you see a face, you don't just see bones in a display," Gábor said. "You see a person — someone who was born, who grew up, who worked, who loved, who laughed, who struggled, who fought with challenges, who raised children. Some were sick. Not everyone died of illness. Some died in accidents. Some through violence. And eventually, all of them died. That sense of shared humanity helps spark empathy."

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Female farm managers are hidden in plain sight in ancient Roman texts, mentioned in laws, literature and grave inscriptions across five centuries. Modern historians have generally assumed they were housekeepers, in charge of domestic tasks and household meals, and segregated from the productive business of the farm.

My new paper, published in the Journal of Roman Archaeology, challenges this assumption.

In fact, there is evidence to suggest that many Roman female farm managers supervised wine production and other processes vital to farming and profits.

A false lead

A farming manual written by the Roman writer Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella in the 1st century CE is a window to the roles of the female manager.

An upper class landowner himself, Columella lists the responsibilities of farm managers, who were probably enslaved. The male manager was termed the vilicus, and the female manager the vilica, terms derived from their roles at the "villa".

But many historians reading this text have been side-tracked by a false lead: Columella begins his section on the vilica with a long quote from the Greek philosopher Xenophon, who wrote in Athens more than four centuries earlier.

The "natural" role of women, according to Xenophon, was to work indoors. Therefore in his discussion, the ideal upper-class married woman is depicted staying inside her town house to supervise the domestic work of the slaves.

The Greek writer is not discussing farm workers. In fact, Columella says four times that these ideas are not his own, but those of Xenophon, writing long ago.

Columella lists a completely different set of responsibilities for the vilica on a Roman farm: most importantly, the making of wine and olive oil, which were highly valuable commodities — the backbone of landowners' profits.

In his description of the vilica's duties, Columella includes the extraction of the juice from grapes during the harvest; adding flavorings and preservatives such as salt, wormwood, fennel or boiled grape-juice; and overseeing successful fermentation into wine.

According to Columella, the vilica also managed the processing of other farm products to make them long-lasting and profitable, such as turning inedible olives into olive oil for sale.

From archaeology we know that production of wine or oil, using huge machines in substantial buildings, could reach 50,000 to 100,000 litres per year, or even more. The vilica was therefore responsible for overseeing large-scale work essential to the operation of the estate.

Calling on the gods

Correct sacrifices to the gods were seen as vital to the success of the farm. Archaeology has uncovered altars for offerings in Roman wine-making buildings.

Wine-making in the Roman world was a precarious process, due to uncontrolled temperatures, bacteria or oxygenation. Wine could easily go moldy or turn into vinegar.

A striking element of Columella's account is that he includes carrying out offerings to avert such a disaster in his instructions for the female farm manager.

Looking for more clues

Other texts contain barely more than a mention of the vilica, revealing only her presence.

But we can still put together some clues.

Legal writings on inheritance, quoting the 1st century BCE jurist Trebatius, include her in the instrumentum fundi — whatever (including enslaved personnel) is required for productive work, gathering and preserving produce of the estate.

Another aristocratic landowner and writer, Cato the Elder, living two centuries before Columella, lists both the female and the male farm manager as essential staff for a vineyard or olive farm.

He devotes only one small section to outlining the female farm manager's tasks, but a close look shows these are not predominantly domestic. Cato includes keeping poultry and processing of seasonal farm products. Although he does include supervision of cleaning, this could refer to maintenance of work spaces such as stables and wine making buildings, an integral part of estate management – and also listed by Columella among the vilica's duties.

Cato also gives the vilica the responsibility for making sacrifices to the gods for the success of the farm. She must regularly offer garlands at the altar "for abundance", he writes.

A Roman mosaic showing estate work in different seasons depicts a scene of sacrifices for abundant crops to the god Jupiter (in his Celtic form as a sky and weather god). A woman is shown holding an offering of garlands, just as Cato instructs. Beside her are a jug for wine offerings and a male figure.

Perhaps this mosaic shows the vilica and vilicus, both essential to the success of annual harvests. While such images of female figures are rare, one fragmentary wall painting from Rome shows a female overseeing wine-making workers, just as Columella describes.

This combined body of evidence suggests we should expand outdated understandings of the roles that Roman women played in farm production, the dominant sector of ancient economies.

No vilica has left us an account of her work in her own words. But by paying careful attention to the evidence, we can hear an echo of her voice.

This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Nearly 2,000 years ago, Mount Vesuvius buried a vast collection of scrolls in ash and scorched them into solid black lumps. Now, without unrolling them, researchers have virtually read two of them —‬ and uncovered what may be a work by a well-known Stoic philosopher.

The breakthrough comes from the Vesuvius Challenge, an international research effort to digitally read the scrolls that were preserved when Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried by ash and pumice in A.D. 79. Papyrologists, who study and preserve the ancient manuscripts, announced June 25 that they had digitally unwrapped the surviving portion of one scroll, known as PHerc. 1667, revealing roughly 5 feet (1.5 meters) of continuous Greek text across 20 columns. Researchers also recovered more than 70 columns of text from a second scroll, PHerc. 172.

"For nearly two millennia, many of these texts have been physically preserved but intellectually inaccessible," Brent Seales, Vesuvius Challenge co-founder and a computer scientist at the University of Kentucky, said in a statement. "Today ‪—‬ after years of interdisciplinary work combining advanced imaging, artificial intelligence, academic research and an innovation contest ‪—‬ we are finally able to read them."

Over the past few years, Seales and his team have used a synchrotron to essentially X-ray inside the scrolls and detect the ink ancient Romans used to write. The letters are then studied by papyrologists, who translate the text.

Part of PHerc. 1667 was physically opened in the 1980s, but overlapping layers obscured the writing so badly that the scroll was given a readability score of zero, Federica Nicolardi, a papyrologist at the University of Naples Federico II, said in the statement.

The handwriting and text of PHerc. 1667 suggest the scroll dates to the second or third century B.C., making it one of the oldest scrolls in the Herculaneum collection. This early date means it could not have been authored by Philodemus of Gadara, the first-century-B.C. Epicurean philosopher whose writings dominated the Herculaneum library.

Experts think the text reads more like a Stoic treatise on ethics and human behavior, and it specifically mentions Aristocreon, the nephew and pupil of the influential Stoic philosopher Chrysippus. Very little of Chrysippus' own writing has survived, so if the attribution holds up, it would be a significant addition to the historical record of early Stoic thought.

In a separate discovery, researchers identified a new book title within scroll PHerc. 139. The end of the scroll references Philodemus' eighth book of "On Gods." While this treatise had previously been known to exist, the new discovery reveals the work extended across at least eight volumes. Experts plan to reexamine other texts in the Herculaneum collection for additional volumes that may belong to the same series.

More than 600 Herculaneum scrolls remain unopened. It's thought that the villa was once owned by the father-in-law of Julius Caesar.

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A new episode of "Almost History," the alternate-history podcast from All About History, explores one of the biggest "what-ifs" of the ancient world: What if Carthage had defeated Rome during the Punic Wars?

The episode is hosted by Emily Staniforth, a staff writer at All About History, a sister publication of Live Science. It features historian and archaeologist Eve MacDonald, a senior lecturer in ancient history at Cardiff University in the U.K. and author of "Carthage: A New History of an Ancient Empire" (W. W. Norton & Co., 2026). Together, they examine how close Carthage came to changing the course of history and what the modern world might look like if one of Rome's greatest rivals had emerged victorious.

"Carthage ha[d] enormous resources, because to even be in the fight for as long as they were is extraordinary," MacDonald said in an interview. However, despite Carthage's capabilities, they were always fighting an uphill battle, she noted.

"I always think the Romans were probably never going to go away," MacDonald said.

Tactics and turning points

The Punic Wars, fought between the Roman Republic and Carthage from 264 to 146 B.C., transformed the ancient Mediterranean. Although Rome ultimately prevailed and went on to build one of history's largest empires, victory was far from guaranteed. During the Second Punic War, the Carthaginian general Hannibal famously marched elephants across the Alps and inflicted devastating defeats on Roman armies, bringing the republic to the brink of collapse before Rome eventually recovered.

In the podcast, MacDonald discusses the political and military turning points that could have tipped the balance in Carthage's favor. The conversation also explores how a Carthaginian victory might have altered trade, culture and the distribution of power across Europe and the Mediterranean, offering listeners a glimpse of an alternate version of world history.

"I think that's one of the things that we would appreciate more now: As much as the Greco-Roman history of the Mediterranean is part of the Western world, so too is all of Carthage, Phoenicia and Numidia" in northern Africa, MacDonald said. "But we haven't got those tales anymore for us to understand."

The episode is part of "Almost History," a series inspired by All About History magazine's long-running "What If" feature. Each installment invites historians to examine pivotal moments from the past and consider how different outcomes might have reshaped history. Recent episodes have tackled questions such as What if D-Day had failed? and What if the Bolshevik Revolution had never succeeded?

You can listen to "What If Carthage Won the Punic Wars?" on Acast and other major podcast platforms.

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Ancient Roman transportation engineers built a vast network of roads that stretched across Europe, North Africa and parts of the Middle East. This complex road system was a key to travel and trade in the Roman Empire, and many of the centuries-old streets had a reputation for being extremely straight, although not all of them were.

For instance, Via Appia (Appian Way), which connected Rome to the port of Brundisium in southern Italy, was more than 300 miles (500 kilometers) long, and sizable parts of it were straight. Another Roman road, Stane Street in southern England, was built to connect London to Chichester. Much of the road, which stretches roughly 57 miles (92 km), is straight. The Middle East also had straight Roman roads, including a coastal avenue from Antioch, Turkey, to what is now Gaza.

A recent mapping project was able to map about 186,400 miles (300,000 km) of roads and more are probably undiscovered. But how did the Romans avoid unnecessary twists and turns to ensure straight streets? The answer may lie in three surveying instruments the Romans used.

Surveying roads

In some instances, the Romans built on top of older roads that existed before they conquered an area. Their "road network incorporated older roads from a broad range of different societies and polities," Marion Kruse, an associate professor of classics at the University of Cincinnati, told Live Science in an email.

But when the Romans built new roads, they used a few different tools to help plan them.

"Three instruments were used consistently by Roman road builders: the dioptra, the groma, and the chorobatus [or chorobates]," Adriana Panaite, a researcher at the Vasile Pârvan Institute of Archaeology in Romania who has studied Roman roads extensively, told Live Science in an email.

While the dioptra is known from ancient texts, no example of it has ever been found in an archaeological dig, according to M.J.T. Lewis, who was a historian at the University of Hull in the U.K. In his book "Surveying Instruments of Greece and Rome" (Cambridge University Press, 2001), Lewis noted that the design of the dioptra varied considerably. The different designs tended to include a stand and a disc-shaped base with a tube-shaped sighting instrument attached. An ancient surveyor could look through the tube and see a distant object without extraneous light interfering, allowing for a better view.

The chorobatus was used to measure horizontal planes. Around 20 feet (6 meters) long, the chorobatus was a beam of wood on legs and looked like a small table, Lewis wrote. It likely had small weights hanging from it to show that the beam was level. No ancient example of the chorobatus has survived, and the exact design and way it was used are unclear. Ancient texts indicate that it acted as a builder's level that could help set up level points and determine elevations.

But the most important tool Roman surveyors used was the groma, Joseph Lewis, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge who has conducted extensive research on Roman roads, told Live Science in an email. The "groma was the principal tool of the mensor ‪—‬ the land surveyor ‪—‬ when planning long, straight alignments," he noted. "These alignments were then often used when constructing roads across gentle terrain."

The groma, also called a gruma or croma, consisted of a vertical pole with a horizontal X-shaped cross on top and four small weights hanging down from strings at the ends of the crossbeams, Lewis said. The groma was most useful for establishing right angles.

Multiple Roman surveyors could use the weights on their poles to ensure any road they were building was going in the right direction.

"A surveyor at one end will direct other surveyors to move their poles until they are in line with one another," Lewis explained. "Once the direction had been established, Roman surveyors observed the landscape and adjusted the course of a road to accommodate/avoid obstacles such as steep sections which would have posed difficulties for wheeled vehicles, locations to ford rivers, or to connect pre-existing settlements."

However, the techniques used to build roads throughout the Roman Empire probably varied somewhat, meaning experts "should be cautious about assuming that there was a single 'Roman' technique for road building," Kruse said. He noted that the Roman Empire covered a vast area and lasted for a long period of time.

"It seems safe to assume that practices varied across time and space," Kruse explained.

Not all roads were straight

One reason for the variation in Roman roads was likely the diversity of the laborers who built them. "In all likelihood, road-building work was done by a mix of soldiers, slaves ‪—‬ especially prisoners ‪—‬ and free locals called upon to help as part of a 'corvee' obligation imposed by their local community on Rome's instructions," Richard Talbert, a professor emeritus of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told Live Science in an email. But paid laborers were probably used for some skilled tasks, such as building bridges, Talbert said.

While Roman roads have a reputation for being precisely laid out and straight, not all of them were.

"It is commonly mentioned that Roman roads were exceptionally straight. This is partially true: The Romans had engineers and a large labor force that in some cases managed to modify the landscape to enable straight roads," Tom Brughmans, a classical archaeologist at Aarhus University in Denmark who is part of a team that helped create an updated map of the Roman road system, told Live Science in an email.

"We believe that the Romans preferred relatively straight roads in places where there was very little friction offered by the topography," such as flatland areas, Brughmans said. But in areas with more difficult terrain, such as mountainous regions, the roads would often not run straight.

Brughmans said he expects "future research will show that, in general, [Roman roads] are less straight than modern roads, given the need for motorized vehicles to avoid sharp turns when driving at speed."

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A clandestine excavation on the outskirts of Rome has brought to light a "splendid villa" that may have belonged to a member of the Antonine imperial family, according to archaeologists with the Special Superintendency of Rome. The remains of the first-century villa, which was previously unknown to archaeologists, include frescoed walls and mosaic floors that showcase the elite social status of the owners.

The villa was discovered at Castel di Guido, a village about 12 miles (19 kilometers) west of the ancient city walls of Rome. In ancient times, the area was known as Lorium, and it was frequented by prestigious Roman families, including the Roman emperors Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius.

In February, the local police were alerted to illegal excavations at Castel di Guido on government-owned land, according to a June 15 translated statement from the Italian Ministry of Culture's Special Superintendency of Rome. The unauthorized excavations had been undertaken with a backhoe, which made deep cuts into the villa and left huge piles of dirt.

Superintendency archaeologists led by Alessia Contino carried out emergency excavations to document and stabilize the architecture at the site.

"Thanks to the local report and prompt intervention, it was possible to identify part of a large, previously unknown Imperial-period villa and uncover a splendid array of decorations, as well as the discovery of a statue in fine white marble," Contino said in the statement.

The excavation revealed the atrium at the entrance of the villa, two rooms decorated with frescoes and mosaics, and several other spaces related to the agricultural activities of the large, rural house. The villa was likely built in the early first century and abandoned in the third century.

The atrium's central impluvium — a marble basin in the center of many ancient Roman houses that collected rainwater from an opening in the roof — was surrounded by a floor decorated with bands of black-and-white botanical and geometric mosaics. The rear wall of the room, about 5 feet (1.5 meters) of which was still preserved, was painted red as part of a fresco that featured multicolor panels with human figures and botanical elements.

Surrounding the large room were four smaller ones, three of which still have preserved mosaic floors. One room includes nine black-and-white geometric panels, another includes black octagons on a white background, and the third has black rectangles.

Within the villa's central basin, archaeologists found a broken statue, about 31 inches (80 centimeters) tall, depicting a bearded man wearing a short tunic and carrying a basket with birds and fruit. The statue may represent Silvanus, the Roman deity of woods and other uncultivated lands, who watched over domesticated flocks of animals. Silvanus was also a companion of Bacchus (known in Greek as Dionysus), the god of wine and ecstasy.

The scale of the villa and the quality of the mosaics and frescoes suggest that the villa's owners were Roman aristocrats and may have even been members of the imperial family, according to the statement. In the Roman Empire, elite families like the Aurelii and the Arrii — the paternal and maternal families of Antoninus Pius, who reigned from A.D. 138 to 161 — lived in Lorium. Ancient sources suggest that Antoninus Pius spent his childhood in Lorium, built his imperial palace there, and died there at age 74.

Lorium was also frequented by Emperor Hadrian, who adopted Antoninus Pius to make him his heir, and by Marcus Aurelius, who was Antoninus Pius' nephew, adopted son and son-in-law. Because of Lorium's strong connection to the Antonine imperial dynasty, numerous villas and ancient estates have previously been discovered in the region.

But the newly uncovered villa "is another important piece of the puzzle," Contino said, "opening up new perspectives for understanding and preserving our history-rich territory."

Further work on the villa and its artifacts will help archaeologists date the building more accurately and work out whether it was abandoned when the imperial household was relocated out of Lorium, according to the statement.

Although work on the villa has not been completed, the public has a chance to visit the newly excavated villa and its mosaics on June 20 through a free archaeological hike and guided tour organized by the Special Superintendency of Rome.

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Archaeologists have discovered thousands of preserved shoes at Vindolanda, an ancient Roman fort along Hadrian's Wall. But this one is quite possibly the world's oldest example of a shower shoe.

The "bath clog" — which consists of a wooden platform sole and a leather upper — was a version of the kind of slip-on shoe people today wear in locker room showers or at a nail salon to avoid issues like foot fungus. But the Romans wore the platform clogs — which they called "sculponeae" in Latin — to protect themselves from the hot, slippery floors of the bath house.

Roman bath houses were communal gathering places, according to English Heritage, a historic trust that conserves artifacts and heritage sites. A bather would undress then move from a cold room to a warm room to a hot room, then back to the first room for a cold plunge. One of the most important inventions in Roman bathing was the hypocaust system, which involved stoking a furnace underneath a raised floor to heat the warm and hot rooms and their baths. This radiant heat system also made the floor incredibly hot to the touch.

Because Roman shower shoes were made from perishable materials, the oldest and best-known examples come from Vindolanda, a Roman fort in Northumberland, England, where organic remains have been preserved in oxygen-free layers of mud. Archaeologists have found over 5,000 Roman shoes at Vindolanda — around 50 of which are bath clogs, according to Elizabeth Greene, an archaeologist at the University of Western Ontario in Canada.

Most of the bath clogs feature a wooden platform 1 to 2 inches (2.5 to 5 centimeters) high and a leather strap across the top. According to Greene, some of the clogs were plain and others were decorated with geometric patterns or representations of toes cut into the surface.

Whether or not the Vindolanda bath clogs are the world's earliest shower shoes is up for some debate.

Archaeologists have found much earlier examples of sandals, including King Tut's, dated to 3,300 B.C. in Egypt, for example. And the Etruscans had metal-framed sandals as early as the sixth century B.C., Elizabeth Semmelhack, the director and curator of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, Canada, told Live Science. "But they were not for bathhouse wear."

Two wood-soled children's shoes were discovered in 2025 at Isarnodurum, a Roman-era archaeological site in France that slightly predates Vindolanda. If these are confirmed to be bath clogs, they would be the oldest ones in the world.

One research angle Greene is pursuing is questioning whether bath clogs were only used in bathing. A few centuries after the Romans left Europe, medieval people invented similar looking footwear that functioned as a type of overshoe (a shoe strapped or worn over another shoe) to protect their feet from mud, water or snow on the ground. Some of the wooden clogs found at Vindolanda may have served an overshoe purpose — or they could have pulled dual-duty two millennia ago as shower shoes and overshoes.

This bath clog from Vindolanda can be seen from now until September 2027 at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto as part of their Unearthing Vindolanda exhibit.

For more stunning archaeological discoveries, check out our Astonishing Artifacts archives.

For years, students at a high school just steps from the Colosseum in Rome have spun tales of mysterious rooms hidden underneath the gymnasium floor. Now, it turns out those rumors have more than a grain of truth to them.

Students on several clandestine explorations happened upon an ancient structure beneath their school. Upon notifying their teacher, who notified the authorities, archaeologists arrived to take a more detailed look. Following an excavation earlier this year, archaeologists have announced that the dark corridors and dimly lit chambers actually belonged to a luxurious second-century villa.

The Liceo Scientifico Cavour (Cavour Scientific High School) is located in a building near the Colosseum that originally housed a Catholic missionary congregation. When the missionaries' headquarters were constructed in the late 19th century, early archaeological exploration of the foundation revealed part of a "domus" — a large ancient Roman house. This neighborhood is incredibly important in Roman history, as figures such as Cicero, Pompey and Octavian (later known as Augustus) lived there, but is not well-understood archaeologically because of all the modern buildings on top of the ancient layers.

Claudia Marino, a history and Latin teacher at the high school, reported the students' discoveries in the subterranean tunnels to the Special Superintendency of Rome, but crews did not begin excavating the site until January 2026. The discovery was presented to the public on May 28 by Marino and Filippo Coarelli, an archaeologist at the University of Perugia in Italy.

The rooms preserved under the high school's gym are part of a mid-second-century house that, based on an inscription found in the late-19th century excavation, was likely owned by a member of the Umbrius family. Little is known about this family, but the Umbrii may have originally come from Samnium, a region of south-central Italy not far from Pompeii, where Mt. Vesuvius famously erupted in A.D. 79. For now, the house is being called the Domus Liceo Cavour (the House of the Cavour High School).

Archaeological excavation revealed figurative and floral frescos on the walls and stucco decorations along the ceiling vaults of the villa. In one room, archaeologists discovered a mosaic with large, irregularly shaped tiles — a style fashionable among elite Romans in this time period. They also found much more recent graffiti made by students, tourists and other subterranean explorers in the 20th century.

Only a portion of the Domus Liceo Cavour has been explored so far, as it extends far beneath the school, but additional excavation may be carried out in the future. The school and the archaeological superintendency plan to work together to eventually open up the site to visitors, potentially with students as guides.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 10:25 a.m. EDT on June 5 to note that Mount Vesuvius, and not the city of Pompeii, erupted in A.D. 79.

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The Romans controlled much of Britain for nearly 400 years, but they left relatively little genetic evidence of their occupation, new ancient-DNA research reveals.

Instead, the Roman occupation, from A.D. 43 until about 410, seems to have changed the culture of their Britannia province, with most people native to Britain converting to Imperial Roman ways.

A preprint of the study was posted to the bioRxiv server April 29 and has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal yet. Some experts agree with the conclusions, but others are cautious.

However, some of the study's findings agree with the results of earlier genetic studies of the Germanic migration into Britain, Duncan Sayer, an archaeologist at the University of Lancashire in England, told Live Science.

"These results absolutely confirm the data we've had previously," said Sayer, who was not involved in the study.

For their investigations, the researchers looked at the genomes of more than 1,000 individuals who had been buried in Britain between 2550 B.C. and A.D. 1150. They found that Roman DNA — identified as having ancestral origins "outside Britain" — accounted for only about 20% of the genetic profile of individuals buried in Britain during its Roman era. By comparison, in the later Anglo-Saxon era, DNA from "Germanic" sources accounted for about 70% of the genetics of people buried there at that time.

These findings indicate that the native British interbred surprisingly little with people from elsewhere in the Roman Empire but often interbred with people of Anglo-Saxon origin, Sayer said.

"In the Roman period, although people are settling in Britain, it's not in quite the same way as Germanic speakers [Anglo-Saxons] are in the fifth and sixth centuries," James Gerrard, an archaeologist at Newcastle University in England who was not involved in the research, told Live Science.

The team who worked on the latest study said they also found very little genetic evidence of the later Viking Age in the North of England, when most of that region followed Danish traditions and was called the Danelaw: only about 4% of the genetic profiles of people buried in England at this time showed they had Iron Age Scandinavian ancestry, they reported.

Meanwhile, ancestries from Central and Southern Europe rose from the eighth century onward that signified more people migrated into England during the medieval period, the team wrote in the preprint.

Cultural transformation

The authors noted that "previous DNA sampling from Roman Britain has been relatively small-scale and regionally or context specific" and suggested that their "dataset bridges this gap."

But Gerrard, who was not involved in the study, cautioned that the new research might not give an accurate picture of Britain's genetic history.

To begin with, while the new study examined the DNA extracted from 1,039 people buried in Britain between the Bronze Age and medieval times — a span of roughly 3,700 years — only about 200 were from the Roman period.

This is a small sample size compared with archaeological investigations in Britain, where the origins of several thousand people buried during the Roman period have been examined over decades, he said.

In addition, the burials in the new research tended to be from cities, rather than from the countryside, where intermarriage rates may have differed. The results of the study might have also been skewed because the Roman presence would have been greater in the North of England, where many troops were stationed at camps, and in the East of England, where Roman urban settlements were more common, he said.

"We have a problem, I think, of whether ancient DNA is representative of the whole population," Gerrard said.

Celtic women

The Romans invaded and annexed most of Britain at the command of Emperor Claudius in A.D. 43, although his great-great-granduncle (by adoption) Julius Caesar led two short-lived invasions in 55 and 54 B.C. The Roman occupation ended in about A.D. 410, when Roman troops guarding the northern frontier were recalled to the continent to defend Roman territories against Germanic invasions.

Although the study found relatively little genetic evidence of the Roman occupation, the researchers noted that the Romans seemed to have had a marked effect on burial practices. Pre-Roman burials in Britain were often grouped by matrilineal relationships, perhaps reflecting the traditionally Celtic importance of women as the heads of their families, and the researchers found evidence that this practice continued for a time in the West of England — a native stronghold. Under this cultural tradition, women were relatively empowered and stayed in their ancestral homes, and the men they married moved into their communities.

But the DNA extracted from the remains in Roman-era cemeteries in Britain showed no such patterns, the researchers said, which might reflect traditional Roman patriarchal practices.

The authors of the new research declined a request from Live Science to comment, noting that they wanted to wait until the paper is published in a peer-reviewed journal before talking with the media.

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A man who died in Pompeii during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79 had a medical kit with him when he perished, a new analysis of his body cast reveals.

The medical kit indicates that he was probably a physician — a "medicus" in Latin.

The man was one of 13 people who died while taking shelter in a Pompeii vineyard later called the "Garden of the Fugitives." But instead of finding refuge, the group was overcome by an explosive burst of deadly gas, likely carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide, and ash from the volcano, which killed thousands of people in Pompeii and the nearby town of Herculaneum.

Pompeii was discovered in the 16th century, but most of the scientific work at the Roman seaside city was done more recently. In 1961, plaster casts were made of the voids left in the ash by the bodies of the volcano's victims in the Garden of the Fugitives ‪—‬ some of the roughly 104 plaster casts of victims made at Pompeii.

New examinations show that the man had been carrying surgical instruments and other "tools of his trade," according to a translated statement from the Italian government archaeological park that runs the site. But it's not known whether the man planned to treat people affected by the eruption or if he was hoping to escape the disaster.

"This man brought his tools with him to be ready to rebuild his life elsewhere, thanks to his profession, but perhaps also to help others," Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of Pompeii Archaeological Park, said in the statement.

Destructive eruption

The eruption of Vesuvius killed about 2,000 people in Pompeii and nearby towns, although archaeologists now think many others escaped. The event has been studied extensively, in part because of the remarkable preservation of many features of Roman life under the layers of ash. Witnesses also made written accounts of the eruption.

According to the statement, a small case made from "organic material" (possibly leather) was found within one of the plaster casts made when the Garden of the Fugitives was excavated in 1961. However, the case's contents had remained a mystery until now.

The new investigation, which used X-ray and CT scans, revealed that the case contained several small, metal instruments thought to be surgical tools as well as a tablet made from slate, which was probably used for preparing medicines. (Ingredients like honey, wine, vinegar and plant extracts were common.) The case was locked with a mechanism based on a toothed wheel.

These findings suggest the man was a medicus trained in medicine and surgery, the statement said. Educated Greek slaves sometimes had this role but by the time of the Vesuvius eruption — when Titus was the Roman emperor — medicine had a higher status (Julius Caesar granted Roman citizenship to all physicians in 46 B.C.).

The practice of medicine was valued by wealthy Romans, but the last resort of surgery entailed serious risks — there were no antibiotics and no modern anesthesia, and patients often died from infections. In addition, the causes of illnesses were not well understood — diseases like malaria were thought to be caused by "bad air" (under the Greek "miasma" theory), and Roman medical treatments often dealt with supposed curses and malign spirits.

Other artifacts found with the victims of Mount Vesuvius include house keys and oil lamps, and some people were killed while carrying precious jewels and coin "treasures" away from the eruption. The victim thought to be a medicus was also carrying a small fabric bag of bronze and silver coins, the statement said.

How much do you know about the Roman town destroyed by Mount Vesuvius? Find out by taking our Pompeii quiz!

An elaborate Roman-era coffin containing the remains of a woman who appears to have been buried with gypsum and exotic resins has been discovered in the city of Colchester in the U.K.

"This is one of the most fascinating Roman burials we have worked on in Colchester in recent years," Adam Wightman, director of archaeology at Colchester Archaeological Trust, said in a statement. The combination of the coffin, grave goods and scientific evidence make it a compelling burial, he said.

The elite Roman woman was in her late 20s or 30s when she died, and she lived at a time when the Roman Empire controlled England. Exactly when she was buried is unclear, but it was likely during the late Roman period, which lasted from roughly the late third century to early fifth century A.D., archaeologists said in the statement.

"The high-status woman was buried in a decorated lead coffin accompanied by a rich group of grave goods," according to Colchester Archaeological Trust. "She was buried with objects including jet hairpins, a group of rare glass flasks, and other grave goods. This indicates a carefully staged and richly furnished burial."

The woman was also buried with exotic resins, including frankincense, dried sap from trees in the Boswellia genus, many of which grow in Africa, the Middle East and India. Frankincense can be burned as incense and was thought to have medicinal properties.

Her coffin also had gypsum, meaning the woman's body may have been covered in liquid gypsum, a plaster-like paste, before her burial. "This suggests usage of valuable imported substances in the treatment of the body after death," according to the statement.

In Roman Britain, elite individuals sometimes had liquid gypsum poured on them after they died. In cases where the gypsum is well preserved, it can leave a haunting image of the deceased. In one case, the outline of a deceased baby was preserved in a liquid gypsum burial found in York.

"Over decades of working with Colchester Archaeological Trust on excavations of the Roman burial grounds around the Roman town, this is certainly the most spectacular I have seen," Robert Masefield, the archaeology director at Tetra Tech Consulting Limited, the company the carried out the excavation, said in the statement. "The young woman was clearly cherished by her family and by her community."

The burial was discovered in 2023 when archaeologists were excavating the site of a defunct hospital that was being redeveloped for housing but only recently announced by Colchester Archaeological Trust. The coffin and its contents will be put on display at Colchester's Roman Circus Visitor Centre starting May 16, 2026.

What do you know about the Empire's conquest of the British Isles? Find out with our Roman Britain quiz!

In 1868, soldiers from an Imperial Prussian Army regiment discovered a hoard of dozens of ancient silver artifacts while constructing a new shooting range near the city of Hildesheim in central Germany. The Hildesheim treasure included elaborate and expensive tableware, including the Athena bowl, that may have belonged to Publius Quinctilius Varus or another Roman military commander who fought against Germanic tribes in the first century.

The Athena bowl, also called the Minerva bowl after the goddess's Roman name, is one of four bowls in the hoard with an ornate central emblem. According to the Altes Museum in Berlin, which has the Hildesheim treasure in its collection, the silver Athena bowl is roughly 10 inches (25.3 centimeters) in diameter and weighs a hefty 4.4 pounds (2 kilograms) ‪—‬ about as much as a 9-inch (23 centimeters) cast-iron skillet.

Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom and youth, is seated on a rock with a shield under her arm and a plumed helmet on her head. Her famous aegis (shield) hangs like a sash to protect her while she gazes behind. In front of Athena is a rock encircled by an olive wreath, with her sacred owl perched atop. While most of the bowl is silver, there are gold accents on her dress, aegis and owl, as well as on the two rock formations, according to archaeologist Gertrud Platz-Horster.

The Athena emblem was likely crafted in the second century B.C., according to the Altes Museum, and a new bowl was created for the emblem in the first century A.D. Many of the Hildesheim treasure vessels had traces of wear and repair, according to Platz-Horster, which suggests that the tableware was collected over time.

Given the first-century date for the hoard and its discovery in central Germany, some experts think the tableware once belonged to an important Roman military commander, who may have hidden it from the enemy. (Or the hoard may represent booty that the Germanic tribes stashed after stealing it.)

Perhaps the most famous Roman general fighting Germanic tribes under Emperor Augustus was Publius Quinctilius Varus, who lost three entire Roman legions at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in A.D. 9. The Roman historian Suetonius reported that Augustus was so upset about the loss that he yelled, "Quintili Vare, legiones redde!" — meaning "Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions!" After the loss, Varus died by suicide rather than facing his ruined political career, and Augustus ended his campaign of expansion into Germany.

Regardless of whether the Athena bowl belonged to Varus, the Hildesheim treasure is renowned for being the largest collection of Roman silver found outside the imperial frontier.

For more stunning archaeological discoveries, check out our Astonishing Artifacts archives.

Urine and fecal residue encrusted on the inside of ancient Roman chamber pots unearthed in Bulgaria has revealed the world's oldest known evidence of humans infected with the Cryptosporidium parasite, which causes acute gastrointestinal distress.

In the first century, the Romans established a province called Moesia Inferior in the Balkan Peninsula, which includes the modern country of Bulgaria. Roman legions were tasked with defending the imperial border from the Goths, primarily from a fortress called Novae (near present-day Svishtov) and a town known as Marcianopolis (modern-day Devnya). While excavating at Novae and Marcianopolis in Bulgaria, archaeologists recovered four chamber pots, whose long-dried contents have revealed new information about health and disease in the Roman Empire.

In a study published April 3 in the journal npj Heritage Science, researchers detailed their analysis of the mineralized deposits of urine and feces that they scraped from the sides and bottoms of the ceramic pots.

Using ELISA (short for "enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay") ‪—‬ a laboratory test that can detect bacteria, parasites and viruses in a sample of bodily fluid ‪—‬ the researchers identified three pathogens in the chamber pot samples: the protozoan Entamoeba histolytica, the parasite Cryptosporidium parvum, and the tapeworm Taenia. All three pathogens infect the human gut and can cause gastrointestinal distress, including diarrhea and stomach pain.

Previous ancient-parasite studies have shown that Roman soldiers on the frontiers of the empire dealt with intestinal worms and the parasite Giardia, as did people living in the city of Rome. However, the new study has identified Cryptosporidium for the first time in an ancient Roman context, and it is the earliest known evidence of human Cryptosporidium infection in the world.

"The evidence of Cryptosporidium comes from two separate chamber pots from Novae," study first author Elena Klenina, a historian at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland, told Live Science in an email. "The parasite's presence across distinct contexts suggests the infection may have been relatively widespread within that community."

C. parvum (often dubbed Crypto, for short) is a parasite that infects dozens of species of domesticated and wild animals, the researchers wrote in the study. When those infected animals contaminate soil or water, the infection can spread to humans. But because Crypto generally causes mild symptoms, the first human cases of the disease were not identified until 1976. Since then, researchers have been investigating the origin of this organism.

Archaeologists in Mexico found Crypto in preserved human feces dated to around A.D. 700, which led some experts to propose that the parasite originated in the Americas. But because the remains of a 5,000-year-old goat (Myotragus balearicus) from the western Mediterranean tested positive for Crypto, Klenina and colleagues suspect that it may have first started infecting humans in Europe rather than in the Americas.

It's unclear how the Romans living at Novae picked up the parasite, but the researchers think the infected individuals might have been drinking contaminated water supplied by an aqueduct in the rural countryside. When infected with any of the three pathogens the researchers identified, the ancient Romans may have dealt with severe diarrhea and thus had to use chamber pots in the middle of the night rather than the more sanitary public latrines and bathhouses that were open during the day.

Analyzing ancient bodily fluids is important for understanding health and disease in the Roman Empire, the researchers noted in the study, and chamber pots present a wealth of information on these topics.

"This type of research poses no significant health risk to archaeologists," Klenina said. "The biological material we analyze is extremely old and typically no longer viable or infectious."

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A chance discovery of a broken bronze cup in Spain has revealed a 1,900-year-old depiction of Hadrian's Wall and forts in England, a new study reports. The multicolored vessel was likely crafted as a memento of a soldier's time defending the frontiers of the Roman Empire, the study authors said.

The cup was discovered in Berlanga de Duero, a municipality in central Spain, nearly 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) from the storied Roman defensive wall that protected the northern frontier of the empire in the second century. The hemispheric "Berlanga Cup" is about 4.5 inches (11.4 centimeters) wide and around 3.2 inches (8.1 cm) tall. It features colorful enameled designs and a Latin inscription that mentions four forts.

"The cup is a small representation of a functional vessel called a Roman trulla — a bronze or clay cup with a handle used to drink water," Jesús García Sánchez, an archaeologist at the Archaeological Institute of Mérida in Spain and co-author of the new study, told Live Science in an email. "It is not only crafted with metals, but also expensive enamels, and later on customized. It is definitely not an industrial product."

In the study, published April 23 in the journal Britannia, García Sánchez and colleagues wrote that, while similar cups have been discovered in the past, the Berlanga Cup is the only one that refers to forts on the eastern side of Hadrian's Wall. The four forts mentioned in the inscription are Cilurnum (now called Chesters), Onno (now called Halton Chesters), Vindobala (now called Rudchester), and Condercom (now called Benwell). Each fort is depicted on the cup as a series of four squares and two half-moons that represent either turrets or the fort's gateway. Below the schematic forts are two bands of designs inset with red, green, turquoise and navy-blue enamel.

An analysis of the cup revealed it was bronze — largely copper and tin — with a substantial addition of lead that likely came from mines in northernEngland. These findings strongly suggest the cup was made by a local artisan near Hadrian's Wall between A.D. 124 and 199, the researchers said. But how the cup ended up in Spain is a bit of a mystery.

The modern municipality of Berlanga de Duero was likely the ancient settlement of Valeranica in Roman times. Archaeological excavation in the area revealed fragments of Roman pottery and masonry walls, which were potentially part of a rural villa used between the first and fourth centuries. The Berlanga Cup may have been acquired by someone who lived in Valeranica and was a soldier in a Roman auxiliary unit of Hispanic origin known in historical records as the Cohors I Celtiberorum.

"This contingent was made up of troops from Celtiberia, precisely the area where the piece in question was found," the researchers wrote in the study, and "was stationed near Hadrian's Wall during the reign of Emperor Trajan" (who ruled from A.D. 98 to 117). After soldiers served in the Roman military, many returned to their original homes and brought back mementos of their time in service.

The Berlanga Cup "could have been a souvenir acquired by a veteran before his return home, purchased with the aim of remembering his time and service at one of the monumental forts of the Empire," the researchers wrote. Alternatively, the cup may have been bestowed on a soldier as recognition of distinguished service or a particularly brave act.

Either way, the fact that the memento was shaped like a simple trulla — an object soldiers used every day for eating and drinking — and not like a weapon suggests it was meant to remind veterans of the camaraderie they experienced while living along Hadrian's Wall, the researchers wrote.

What do you know about the Empire's conquest of the British Isles? Find out with our Roman Britain quiz!

Before construction workers began building a new cricket pavilion in Lewisvale Park, just east of Edinburgh, Scotland, in 2010, archaeologists were called in to survey the area. In their brief dig, the excavators discovered a unique Roman-era altar that had once been used to worship the sun god in a mysterious, male-only ritual.

The Altar to Sol was found in two pieces. Made of buff sandstone, it originally stood around 4 feet (1.23 meters) tall. Four female busts representing the seasons grace the top of the monument. In the middle, a face representing the sun god Sol rises from the monument, inscribed within an incised circle. The eyes and mouth of the humanlike face and the six rays of Sol's crown have been pierced so that the altar could be illuminated from behind. Traces of red paint were found on the front of the altar, and the two sides feature carved laurel wreaths.

Based on the inscription, the altar appears to have been dedicated by a soldier named Gaius Cassius Flavianus, who may have been in command of the Roman military base in Inveresk, Scotland. In A.D. 142, the fort at Inveresk was established along the Antonine Wall, where Roman soldiers were sent to protect the northernmost frontier of the Roman Empire.

According to National Museums Scotland, which recently acquired the Altar to Sol along with a second altar that honors the god Mithras, these monuments would have been focal points for worshippers participating in secret religious ceremonies. The mythical Mithras was born from a rock and was often depicted slaying a bull. Sol played an important role in the Mithras cult and was sometimes equated with Mithras.

Temples to Mithras, called Mithraea, were always situated underground, and only men were allowed to join the mysterious cult, which purported to celebrate the triumph of light over darkness and goodness over evil.

"In the dark of the temple, you would see the rays and the eyes of the sun god glaring at you," Fraser Hunter, curator of Iron Age and Roman archaeology at National Museums Scotland, explained in a video. The altars to Sol and Mithras are unique in Scotland and point to the beliefs of soldiers stationed along the Antonine Wall. Mithras and Sol gave soldiers "a sense that there was a purpose to the world and that there was a life after death," Hunter said.

The rare carved altars will be on display at National Museums Scotland starting Nov. 14.

For more stunning archaeological discoveries, check out our Astonishing Artifacts archives.

For the first time ever, an image of a Roman woman battling a beast in an arena has been identified.

While ancient texts say that some women battled beasts in the arenas of the Roman Empire, this is the first visual evidence that this occurred, according to a new study published March 22 in The International Journal of the History of Sport. The women who battled beasts were known as venatrices or huntresses.

In the Roman Empire, beast hunters put on shows in arenas, where they would battle wild animals, such as boars and bears. Unlike gladiators, they fought beasts rather than people. The newly analyzed drawing, on a third-century mosaic, shows a topless huntress fighting a leopard with a whip.

The mosaic was found in Reims, France, in 1860. Most of it was destroyed during bombing in World War I, but there is a surviving drawing illustrated by Jean Charles Loriquet, the archaeologist who discovered the mosaic. Loriquet published the drawing in his 1862 book, but it has received minimal scholarly attention, Alfonso Mañas, a sports researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote in the new study.

The mosaic shows a mix of beasts, beast hunters and gladiators, each of which is surrounded by diamond- or square-shaped decorations that archaeologists call "medallions." Dating to the third century A.D., it was found in a house that likely belonged to a wealthy individual who sponsored beast-fighting shows held in arenas, Mañas told Live Science in an email.

The mosaic was probably on the floor of the feasting hall "so that the guests of the host could admire the mosaic during the banquet," Mañas said.

Originally, researchers weren't sure if the individual was female, so they identified the figure as an "agitator, an inexistent arena role, or a paegniarius, a kind of clown with a whip," Mañas wrote in the study. But there are several clues that the person is female and a huntress, Mañas said. An agitator is a person who supposedly used whips to encourage the beasts to fight, however there is no solid evidence that this position existed. A paegniarius fought with a whip and a stick and wore an armguard. The fact that the woman doesn't have a stick or armguard indicates that she is not a paegniarius.

Mañas said that there is no doubt that this depicts a woman, noting that the drawing shows that the person has sizable breasts.

As for her role, Mañas thinks she was a beast hunter, rather than a prisoner condemned to death. A prisoner condemned to death would be given no weapon and would often be tied up. This woman holds a whip and doesn't seem to be restrained.

Is the drawing accurate?

Most of the mosaic was destroyed in World War I, so it's impossible to verify if Loriquet's drawing is accurate, Thomas Scanlon, a professor emeritus of classics at the University of California, Riverside who was not involved with the study, told Live Science in an email.

Scanlon praised the journal article but wasn't convinced about the identification. "The article is well documented, but my concern is that the actual mosaic is not extant, but was destroyed in WWI, so the images are from an old [drawing] which may not be reliable in detail," Scanlon said.

In his article, Mañas tried to address this problem by comparing the drawing of the mosaic with a small piece of the mosaic that survived the bombing and is currently in the Musée Saint-Rémi. The surviving fragment appears to closely match the drawing, Mañas wrote.

Alison Futrell, a professor of history at the University of Arizona, found the article convincing. "I agree with the author," she told Live Science in an email, adding that "I think that women were regular participants in arena events and that they're underrepresented in surviving textual and visual evidence."

Topless beast hunter

We don't know the huntress's name or much else about her. She may have volunteered to be a beast hunter, or she may have been convicted of a crime that did not warrant execution, and instead was sentenced to be trained and perform as a beast hunter, Mañas wrote in the article.

Although this is the only surviving image of a Roman huntress, there are at least two known surviving sculptures of female gladiators. Those images also depict the women topless and without helmets to help show that they are women.

Like the female gladiators, it seems female beast hunters would "always fight topless, with bare breasts, because [otherwise] spectators from the stands would have had problems to notice that they were actually women, and [to] arouse an erotic effect on those spectators, to excite them sexually, was one of the aims sought by their performance," Mañas wrote in the article. The women would have had to be of low social status since it would have been unacceptable for a woman of higher status to appear topless in the arena, Mañas said.

The bottom half of the female beast hunter is not shown in the drawing; it may have been destroyed already when Loriquet found the mosaic in 1860. Therefore, it is unclear if she competed completely nude or wearing something like a loincloth, Mañas noted.

The mosaic dates to the third century, while historical records indicate that female gladiators were banned throughout the Roman Empire in A.D. 200. This suggests that this ban did not affect female beast hunters, Mañas said.

While female gladiators tended to be controversial in the Roman world because many people felt that fighting another person should be restricted to men, the idea of women hunting beasts was less controversial, Mañas said. The Roman goddess Diana engaged in hunting, he added, which made the idea of women hunting beasts more acceptable to Romans.

Roman emperor quiz: Test your knowledge on the rulers of the ancient empire

Two massive Iron Age hoards of burned metal weapons, vessels, and chariots or carts, found in the north of England, may have been part of a royal funeral, possibly for a queen, archaeologists say.

A metal detectorist found the hoards in 2021 near the village of Melsonby in Yorkshire and alerted archaeologists. Excavators discovered two separate deposits with a total of more than 950 artifacts, including iron "tires" for wooden wheels, a cauldron, an ornate wine-mixing bowl and ceremonial spearheads.

Together, the two deposits represent one of the largest Iron Age hoards ever found in Britain. Now, a new study, published March 17 in the journal Antiquity, suggests the hoards may have been used in the funeral of an Iron Age leader, before being deliberately burned, damaged and buried.

"It is clear that Melsonby was not a burial [because] we have no evidence of a body," study co-author Tom Moore, an archaeologist at Durham University in the U.K., told Live Science in an email. "So our question is — why deposit this material?"

Moore and his colleagues think the size of the Melsonby hoards and the large number of expensive artifacts indicate they were part of an elite funeral held by the Brigantes, a powerful tribe of Iron Age Britons of mainly Celtic origin.

The Brigantes ruled the nearby Stanwick royal site, a few hundred feet away from the location where the hoards were found. At that time, Stanwick was a fortified village that the Romans called an "oppidum"; they were typically built by Celts on hilltops or other defensive areas.

Burnt artifacts

Moore said burning or destroying objects had been a key practice in many prehistoric funerals.

"Much of the material … was burnt to high temperatures — enough to melt copper alloy and silver," he said. "At this time, cremation was becoming a popular funerary rite for elites in parts of Britain." No signs of a burial had been found nearby, but the remains could have been buried elsewhere.

The exact reason for the hoards' burials, however, may never be known. "There are several possibilities for that event," Moore said, "but a funeral of an important leader seems one of the most likely."

The researchers used radiocarbon dating to determine that the artifacts originated in the first century B.C., while their style and decorations, including coral from the Mediterranean Sea, indicate that the elites at Stanwick had connections with the European mainland.

The Brigantes were allies of the Romans after their conquest of much of Britain after A.D. 43. Roman sources after A.D. 69 said the Brigantes were then ruled by a queen named Cartimandua, a "client ruler" and ally.

But the researchers think the hoards date to several generations before that and may have been used in a funeral for one of Cartimandua's royal ancestors. (Royal power among the Brigantes seems to have passed from mother to daughter, so it is likely that some of Cartimandua's ancestors were also ruling queens.)

Four-wheeled carts

A key discovery was that the Melsonby hoards contained several strange, U-shaped iron brackets, which have been found in continental Europe but not in Britain. The brackets have now been identified as parts of four-wheeled carts, which the Iron Age Britons used alongside their two-wheeled chariots, according to the study authors. This indicates the Britons had connections with other Celtic groups on the European continent.

"The fact that we have elements which can only be ascribed to such vehicles … is a first for Britain," Moore said. "Why we have never found them before is a mystery."

Melanie Giles, an archaeologist at the University of Manchester who wasn't involved in the Melsonby study but is excavating a chariot funeral from about the same time in Wales, said the chariot in Wales and the artifacts in the Melsonby hoards have several things in common. For one, "They're sharing the same style of Celtic art," Giles said.

In both cases, the Celtic motifs seemed to have been exaggerated, which may have been a sign of Celtic opposition to Roman expansion on the European continent, Giles proposed. "Some people think this is a kind of resistance to the Romans," she said. "It's people celebrating their Celtic art and being a bit more 'in your face' about it."

Celtic quiz: Test your knowledge about these fierce tribes once described by Julius Caesar

Small iron nails laid across three skeletons' chests preserve an unusual detail about ancient Roman burial practices: 1,800 years ago, someone tried to protect the living from the dead.

The discovery of nails in burials "is a practice well documented in the Roman period and in later phases," Diletta Menghinello, an archaeologist with the Italian Ministry of Culture's Special Superintendency of Rome and the leader of the excavation project, told Live Science in a translated email.

Menghinello and colleagues were working in the vast Ostiense necropolis in the heart of Rome when they discovered three burials with nails that had been placed deliberately over the chest, according to a March 4 translated statement from the Special Superintendency of Rome.

The Ostiense necropolis was initially excavated in 1919, but new archaeological work ahead of housing construction exposed another part of the cemetery on Via Ostiense, near the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls. The newly uncovered site is helping clarify how burial customs changed across centuries as the Ostiense necropolis expanded, Menghinello said.

"In antiquity, the sides of the road were occupied by a vast Roman necropolis" with several different tomb types, Menghinello said, dating to between the second century B.C. and the fourth century A.D. But the precise boundary of the necropolis is still not fully known, she said. The skeletons buried with nails were found in simple graves, likely dating to the third and fourth century A.D.

But the purpose of the nail is something of a mystery.

"Its function has been interpreted in different ways," Menghinello said, noting that the nail may have been used for symbolically "fixing" the dead from returning to haunt the living. If the body wasn't fixed, it was thought that the dead could become a "revenant," or a revived corpse common in folklore.

But the practice may have been meant to protect the deceased person as well. When used in an apotropaic practice — one meant to ward off harm — the nail became a type of talisman to protect the dead individual from the perils of the afterlife or to protect the tomb from being disturbed, Menghinello said.

The nail ritual "would therefore have served to preserve the body from potential violators of its final resting place, protect the deceased from malevolent forces and, at the same time, safeguard the surviving relatives from the possible return of the dead among the living," Menghinello said.

Roman emperor quiz: Test your knowledge on the rulers of the ancient empire

The tradition of depicting emperors on horseback as a symbol of leadership was common in ancient Rome. But only one equestrian statue of a pagan Roman emperor has survived into the present: the larger-than-life-size bronze depiction of Marcus Aurelius, who reigned from A.D. 161 to 180.

Housed in the Capitoline Museums in Rome, the statue towers 13.9 feet (4.24 meters) above the ground. Part of the Antonine dynasty, Marcus Aurelius presided over the Roman Empire at the end of the Pax Romana, a 200-year period of relative peace. However, there was still unrest, with ramped-up Christian persecution. And the Roman army under Marcus Aurelius fought numerous wars on the outskirts of the empire. It's thought that when Rome's forces returned home during his reign, they brought the "Antonine plague" with them, leading to an outbreak from 165 to 180 that killed over 5 million people.

According to the Capitoline Museums, the equestrian statue was likely erected in 176 to commemorate Marcus Aurelius' victory over Germanic and Sarmatian tribes in the Marcomannic Wars, but it is possible it was erected in 180, shortly after his death.

Marcus Aurelius is depicted in a very specific pose called "adlocutio" — raising his right arm to show he is in the middle of giving an address to his troops. But unlike many other "adlocutio" sculptures that depict leaders wearing armor and carrying weapons, this equestrian statue shows Marcus in another light: Absent this military garb, he is portrayed as a bringer of peace rather than a victorious general. He also rides the horse without the help of stirrups, an invention that had not yet been introduced to the West by Central Asian horseback-riding peoples.

Although at least two dozen giant bronze equestrian statues — also called "equi magni" — are known to have decorated the public squares of ancient Rome, none of the other equestrian statues of pagan emperors survived, likely because they were melted down in the late Roman Empire or early Middle Ages for coins or other sculptures.

But the statue of Marcus Aurelius survived this purge, possibly because he was mistaken for Constantine the Great, the Roman emperor who legalized Christianity during his reign from 306 to 337. While both of these emperors are typically depicted with curly hair, Marcus Aurelius was also notable for wearing a full beard, which signified his intelligence and his role as a philosopher king. Marcus' "Meditations" — a collection of his personal thoughts on self-improvement and other Stoic philosophy ideals — are still read today.

The location of the Marcus Aurelius equestrian statue was first recorded in the 10th century, when historical records mentioned it in the Lateran Palace, which was originally a Roman structure but was later used as the main residence of the popes for 1,000 years. In the 16th century, the statue was moved to the Capitoline Hill in Rome, and Michelangelo was commissioned to refurbish the statue and to redesign the Piazza del Campidoglio.

Today, the equestrian statue is kept in the Capitoline Museums, while a replica made in 1981 stands in the middle of Michelangelo's piazza.

For more stunning archaeological discoveries, check out our Astonishing Artifacts archives.

Archaeologists in Scotland have discovered the remains of a Roman "fortlet" that was built beside a massive wall that ran across Scotland.

Known as the Antonine Wall, the defensive border separated what is now southern Scotland, which had been conquered by the Romans, from the unconquered northern Scotland. The 38-mile-long (62 kilometers) wall was made largely of turf, or earthen materials, and its construction started in A.D. 142 on the orders of Roman emperor Antoninus Pius (reign A.D. 138 to 161) following the Roman conquest of southern Scotland.

The wall had a series of forts, fortlets, camps, bathhouses and a military road that enabled Roman troops and their supplies to be quickly moved. The wall was abandoned by 165 after the Roman military retreated back to Hadrian's Wall in northern England.

The newly discovered fortlet dates to the mid-second century to the mid-third century A.D., radiocarbon dating revealed. It was built on the southern side of the Antonine Wall in the town of Bearsden, about 5 miles (8 km) northwest of Glasgow, and spans the gardens of three private residences on an "area of high ground right next to the Antonine Wall," archaeologists from Guard archaeology said in a statement. "It had commanding views over the landscape, particularly to the north, which was beyond Roman control."

The fortlet also had a good view of a nearby Roman fort and could potentially have signalled the garrison if they spotted an enemy force. Most fortlets along the Antonine Wall could house between 20 and 50 soldiers at a time, the team noted.

Archaeologists initially discovered the fortlet in 2017 in the backyard of a private residence that was having an archaeological survey done ahead of construction work. The team later conducted a larger excavation and recently published the findings in the journal Archaeology Reports Online.

The fortlet was built on a stone base, the archaeologists wrote in the journal article. There was also a ditch located just outside the fortlet that may have helped defend it.

Guard Archaeology created a digital reconstruction of the fortlet, which shows two buildings that could house a small garrison of Roman troops along with two watchtowers and a series of ditches and walls to protect them.

The fortlet would likely have been "an integral part of the Roman Wall defences which included forts and fortlets along its length" the archaeological team wrote in the journal article.

Roman Britain quiz: What do you know about the Empire's conquest of the British Isles?

An intriguing coin deposited into a bus driver's till in England in the 1950s turned out to have ancient origins: It was minted 2,000 years ago in what is now southern Spain. Now, more than 70 years later, the grandson of the former transport cashier has donated the mysteriously acquired coin to a museum.

The cashier, James Edwards, worked for Leeds City Transport and was tasked with gathering and counting fares from bus and tram drivers. Whenever he discovered fake or foreign coins, he would bring them home for his grandson, Peter.

"Neither of us were coin collectors, but we were fascinated by their origin and imagery — to me, they were treasure," Peter Edwards said in a March 9 statement.

But one particular coin intrigued Peter, whose research into the designs on the coin revealed that it was minted more than 2,000 years ago in a Phoenician settlement called Gadir (now known as the city of Cádiz) in Spain's Andalusia region.

Gadir was founded by the Phoenicians, who also settled Carthage in what is now Tunisia, as their earliest colony in Western Europe in the 12th century B.C. Gadir came under Carthaginian control after the First Punic War in the early third century B.C. and then under Roman rule less than a century later.

The front side of the bronze coin bears the visage of the god Melqart — a Phoenician god who was the chief deity of Gadir, Carthage and Tyre — wearing the lion-skin headdress of Hercules. On the back of the coin are two bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus), likely a reference to the importance of the fishing industry in Gadir.

How the coin ended up in Leeds is unclear, but "it was not long after the war, so I imagine soldiers returned with coins from countries they had been sent to," Edwards said.

Edwards has donated the coin to the Leeds Museums and Galleries so experts can study it as part of the museum's collection of ancient currency. Kat Baxter, the curator of archaeology and numismatics for the museums, confirmed in the statement that the coin is around 2,000 years old and was minted in Gadir.

"Museums like ours are not just about preserving objects, they're also about telling stories like this one and inspiring visitors to think about the history that's all around us, sometimes in the most unlikely of places," Leeds City Councillor Salma Arif said in the statement.

"My grandfather would be proud to know, as I am, that the coin is coming back to Leeds," Edwards said. "However, how it got there will always be a mystery."

Archaeology Fragments Quiz: Can you work out what these mysterious artifacts are?

The mysterious Roman-era burial rite of pouring liquid gypsum over the dead wasn't limited to elite adults as previously thought; it was also performed on children, including babies as young as 1 month old, researchers have found.

The finding contradicts Roman-era legal sources who wrote that infants under 12 months old were not supposed to be mourned at all, according to two blog posts published by the Seeing the Dead project, a collaboration between the University of York and the York Museums Trust. Their team is investigating the discovery of children among the rare "gypsum burials" found in York, in northern England.

Liquid-gypsum burials have long confounded researchers. The enigmatic practice involved placing the deceased in a stone or lead sarcophagus and then pouring liquid gypsum over them. The plaster-of-paris-like substance hardened over their bodies, preserving traces of high-status clothing. But new research found that even the youngest members of ancient society were mourned.

"Infants were the most vulnerable members of Roman society," Maureen Carroll, a Roman archaeologist at the University of York, wrote in a Feb. 18 blog post, particularly given the high infant mortality rate of around 30%. But even though historical records say babies younger than 1 year old were not to be mourned because infant deaths were commonplace, Carroll has found that these restrictions applied only to public mourning.

"They had no bearing on sentiments such as grief or the sense of loss felt and expressed by the surviving family in private," she wrote.

Among the more than 70 gypsum burials Carroll has studied, at least seven belonged to children, including three infants under 4 months old. The practice of liquid-gypsum burial seems to have been reserved for the Roman elite in York, and it was usually employed on adults. Infants were more often buried in large jars called amphorae; ceramic tile boxes; or small, wooden coffins.

One remarkable infant burial was found in 1892 during the construction of the York Railway. The newborn, just 1 or 2 months old, was covered with a cloak of purple-dyed wool decorated with gold thread and tassels, before being placed in a lead sarcophagus and covered in liquid gypsum.

Although nothing remains of the infant's bones today, impressions of the brilliant purple-and-gold cloak can still be seen. This is the only gypsum burial with dyed fabric ever found, Sarah Hitchens, an archaeological textile expert at the University of York, wrote in a Feb. 23 blog post.

"It is likely that the purple textile was made from an animal fibre such as wool," Hitchens wrote, and the cloak was likely draped over the infant's body as a burial shroud.

Chemists on the project team are now analyzing the hardened gypsum covering to glean more information about Romano-British burial practices.

"We are testing the gypsum casing for evidence of aromatic substances, such as frankincense or mastic," dried tree sap and resin, respectively, Carroll told Live Science in an email. They also plan to test the purple dye to determine whether it came from murex, a type of snail from which the ancient Romans extracted a natural reddish-purple dye. The gold threads will be analyzed as well, Carroll said.

Other liquid-gypsum burials found in York include a child of about 4 months old discovered wrapped between the legs of two adults. It's unclear if these three people constituted a family, "but it is evident that they were closely associated in life and in death," Carroll wrote.

In another case, a girl who was between 7 and 9 years old when she died was buried with an array of gold, silver, copper, jet, glass and coral jewelry. Two pairs of boots and a pair of sandals were discovered near her feet, and the bones of what was likely a pet chicken were found in her coffin as well.

"The 3D scan of her body visible under a shroud or sheet reveals how frail and thin she was, perhaps pointing to a protracted illness before her death," Carroll wrote.

These lavish burials of infants and children discovered in York show that Roman legal texts, which were written primarily by older men, did not reflect the reality of life and death in Roman Britain.

"It all certainly suggests that children this young were valued and cared for, unlike the age-old notion that Romans did not care when their infants died because infant mortality was high," Carroll said. "Utter nonsense!"

Roman Britain quiz: What do you know about the Empire's conquest of the British Isles?

A long-standing mystery about when an ancient European "princess" buried in a log coffin died has finally been solved, a new study reports.

The woman's wooden coffin was initially found in the village of Bagicz in northwestern Poland in 1899, after it fell from an eroding cliff. Archaeologists nicknamed her the "Princess of Bagicz" because of her unique burial style and well-preserved artifacts. Over the decades, researchers determined that she had died in Roman times, but analyses gave conflicting dates spanning nearly 300 years.

Log coffins are rarely discovered in archaeological excavations, since they disintegrate over the years. The one found in Bagicz is the only preserved wooden sarcophagus of its kind from the Roman Iron Age, researchers wrote in a study published Feb. 9 in the journal Archaeometry. The Bagicz burial is exceptional, the researchers wrote, because the coffin and lid were carved from a single tree trunk. The coffin likely survived into modern times thanks to its location in a wet, humid environment.

Inside the coffin, which came from a larger cemetery associated with the Wielbark culture related to the Goths, was the skeleton of an adult woman who was buried on a cowhide along with a bronze pin, a necklace of glass and amber beads, and a pair of bronze bracelets.

An archaeological examination of the style of the grave goods in the 1980s suggested that the Princess of Bagicz died between A.D. 110 and 160. But in 2018, a carbon-dating analysis of the woman's tooth produced a date of between 113 B.C. and A.D. 65, which would make her significantly older than the artifacts buried with her.

To resolve this discrepancy, a team of researchers led by Marta Chmiel-Chrzanowska, an archaeologist at the University of Szczecin in Poland, dated the log coffin itself using dendrochronological analysis, which involves counting the tree's rings. They collected a small core of wood from the coffin and compared the growth rings to established chronological sequences from northwest Poland.

"The estimated felling date of the oak used for the coffin was calculated as 120 AD," the researchers wrote in the study. "It is likely that the coffin was crafted immediately after felling."

Given that the woman's grave goods and coffin are from the same time period, the radiocarbon date from her tooth is likely incorrect, the researchers concluded, and it was potentially thrown off because of the woman's diet or the water sources she drank from during life.

Radiocarbon dates can be thrown off by up to 1,200 years if the organic sample comes from a marine organism rather than a terrestrial one, scientists have learned, because the carbon stored in the oceans is older than the carbon found on land. This is known as the marine reservoir effect and results in marine organisms appearing to be older than they actually are when they are carbon dated. Similarly, eating a significant amount of seafood can throw off a human's carbon date by dozens or hundreds of years. This might have happened in the case of the Princess of Bagicz.

"The burial provides rare insight into wooden coffin preservation in the Wielbark culture, offering valuable data on funerary practices and environmental conditions that allowed for the exceptional survival of organic materials," the researchers wrote.

Although the mystery of the Princess of Bagicz's date of death has been solved, there is still more to learn about her and her culture.

"The woman did not exhibit any paleopathologies that could indicate the cause of death," Chmiel-Chrzanowska told Live Science in an email, but she did have osteoarthritis, which may have been from work-related overuse, given her young age of 25 to 35 when she died. Her osteoarthritis also suggests that the woman was a typical representative of the Wielbark culture rather than a princess, Chmiel-Chrzanowska wrote in a previous study.

"Next week, I am going to Warsaw for DNA testing" to learn more about the woman, Chmiel-Chrzanowska said. DNA analysis was previously attempted on the skeleton, but it was not successful. "We will attempt to drill into the skull in such a way as to obtain material from the temporal [skull] bone, without the need to damage it," she added.

Roman emperor quiz: Test your knowledge on the rulers of the ancient empire

While walking their dogs along a cliff-flanked Scottish beach after an intense storm, a couple stumbled upon a series of unusual markings on the damp ground — patterns that looked like ancient human and animal footprints.

Their discovery sparked an archaeological race against the clock to document and study the prints before they disappeared into the surf.

"It's very rare that you get involved in a genuine archaeological emergency where, if we didn't do it very, very quickly, the whole site would be gone," Kate Britton, an archaeologist at the University of Aberdeen, said in a video about the find.

On the beach at Lunan Bay in eastern Scotland, locals Ivor Campbell and Jenny Snedden — along with their dogs Ziggy and Juno — spotted a fresh layer of clay in the storm-damaged dunes with what appeared to be prints. They notified Aberdeenshire council archaeologist Bruce Mann, who brought in Britton and her team to excavate the newly uncovered site before it was lost forever.

The team of archaeologists worked in wind gusts up to 55 mph (88.5 km/h), racing to document the prints as the site was eroded with each high tide. They used drones, cameras and, later in the lab, 3D modeling software to record images of the archaeological site. They also used plaster to create molds of some of the better-preserved prints, which were made by barefoot humans and several animals, including red deer (Cervus elaphus) and roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), according to the statement.

"I'd never seen a site like this in Scotland," Britton said. "It was just immediately clear that this was something special."

Underneath the prints, the archaeologists found a layer of charred plant remains. They carbon-dated the plants to 2,000 years ago, during the late Iron Age.

"The late Iron Age dates are in keeping with what we know about the rich archaeology of nearby Lunan Valley," Gordon Noble, an archaeologist at the University of Aberdeen, said in the statement. "It's very exciting to think these prints were made by people around the time of the Roman invasions of Scotland and in the centuries leading up to the emergence of the Picts."

The Lunan Bay site "tells us how this now sandy beach was once a muddy estuary and that humans were using this environment, perhaps for hunting deer or to collect wild plant foods," William Mills, an archaeologist at the University of Aberdeen, said in the statement.

Britton and her team excavated the site for two days, recording as much as they could. When they returned a week later, the prints were completely gone.

"Footprints that represent actions of people over minutes, thousands of years ago, were destroyed within days," Britton said.

Although the Lunan Bay site is unique in Scotland, Britton said, "what it does mean for us now is there could be potentially other sites like this out there."

Roman Britain quiz: What do you know about the Empire's conquest of the British Isles?

A group of people living in the far southern reaches of Greece's Peloponnesian Peninsula have been genetically isolated for over a millennium and can trace their roots back to the Bronze Age, an analysis of their DNA reveals.

A new genetic study shows that this group, known as the Deep Maniot Greeks, are paternally descended from ancient Greeks and Byzantine-era Romans. Long-term genetic isolation and strict patriarchal clans likely contributed to the unique genetics of the Deep Maniot Greeks over the past 1,400 years, according to the study authors.

The Mani Peninsula is the middle of three peninsulas that extend south from mainland Greece. In ancient times, the area was part of the Laconia region, which was dominated by the city-state Sparta in the seventh century B.C. Much of the Greek Peloponnese region experienced demographic upheaval as Slavic peoples invaded in the sixth century A.D. However, the Mani Peninsula was spared, and the Deep Maniots who lived in the far southern part of the peninsula became geographically and culturally isolated from the rest of Greece.

In a study published Wednesday (Feb. 4) in the journal Communications Biology, researchers analyzed the DNA of more than 100 living Deep Maniots and discovered that they represent a "genetic island" due to long-standing isolation.

"Our results show that historical isolation left a clear genetic signature," study lead author Leonidas-Romanos Davranoglou, a zoologist at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, said in a statement. "Deep Maniots preserve a snapshot of the genetic landscape of southern Greece before the demographic upheavals of the early Middle Ages."

During Europe's Migration Period (circa A.D. 300 to 700), which is sometimes called the "Barbarian Invasions," various groups of people — including Germanic tribes, the Visigoths, the Huns and early Slavs — moved throughout the continent. This resulted in numerous waves of migration, only some of which were historically documented. Ancient DNA research has begun to tease out these Migration Period population waves.

But these Migration Period movements did not seem to affect the Deep Maniots, according to historical, linguistic and archaeological evidence. So Davranoglou and colleagues turned to DNA analysis of modern Maniots to investigate why.

The researchers looked at genetic markers on the Y chromosomes (which are passed down from father to son) of 102 people with Deep Maniot ancestry on their paternal side, as well as mitochondrial DNA (passed down from mother to child) sequence data from 50 people with maternal Deep Maniot ancestry.

The DNA analysis revealed that Deep Maniots have an extremely high frequency of a rare paternal lineage that originated in the Caucasus region around 28,000 years ago, the researchers wrote in the study. And when compared with the DNA of present-day mainland Greeks, the DNA of Deep Maniots lacked evidence of common lineages that came from Germanic and Slavic peoples during the Migration Period.

Taken together, these results suggest that genetic drift (a reduction in genetic variation due to a small population size) played an important role in shaping the paternal lineage of Deep Maniots, the researchers wrote, forming a kind of "genetic island." This island of paternal ancestry is rooted in the ancient Balkans and West Asia and is strongly linked to Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman-period Greek-speaking populations, they noted.

Analysis of the maternal Deep Maniot lineages through mitochondrial DNA revealed a more complex genetic picture, however. The researchers identified 30 distinct maternal lineages in their population sample of 50 Deep Maniots. Most of those lineages have connections to Bronze Age and Iron Age people from Western Eurasia, but several appear to be Deep Maniot-specific, showing no close matches to other present-day European populations.

"These patterns are consistent with a strongly patriarchal society, in which male lineages remained locally rooted, while a small number of women from outside communities were integrated," study co-author Alexandros Heraclides, an epidemiologist at European University Cyprus, said in the statement.

Both the paternal and maternal DNA markers also show evidence of a founder effect, which happens when a new population is established by a very small subset of a larger population. The new population includes only the genes of its small number of founders and, over time, becomes distinct from the larger population.

The genes of present-day Deep Maniots reveal that there was a founder effect among their paternal ancestors around A.D. 380 to 670. As a result, over 50% of Maniot men today descend from a single male ancestor from the seventh century. There was also a founder effect among their maternal ancestors around 540 to 866, the team found, suggesting the number of both maternal and paternal lineages shrank around the same time.

The DNA study suggests that the Deep Maniot population "represents a snapshot of the genetic landscape of the Greek-speaking world prior to the demographic turmoil of the Migration Period," the researchers wrote.

"Many oral traditions of shared descent, some dating back hundreds of years, are now verified through genetics," study co-author and independent researcher Athanasios Kofinakos said in the statement.

A 2,200-year-old bone unearthed in Spain may be from one of Hannibal's war elephants that was deployed during the Second Punic War, a new study reports.

The baseball-size bone, found near the southern Spanish city of Córdoba, may be the only direct evidence of the Carthaginian general's war elephants, according to the study, which was published in the February issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. Famously, 37 of these bellicose pachyderms trekked with Hannibal and his army for the length of Iberia, over the Pyrenees to southern Gaul, across the Alps and into Italy to attack Rome.

Until now, the strongest archaeological evidence of their march was what may be churned earth and other traces left by the giant beasts passing through an alpine pass on what is now the French and Italian border.

The bone "could prove to be a landmark," Rafael Martínez Sánchez, an archaeologist at the University of Córdoba and the study's first author, told Live Science. Until now, "there has been no direct archaeological testimony for the use of these animals," he said in an email.

The mysterious bone was unearthed in 2019 and initially perplexed scientists because it matched no native animal. It was recognized years later as an elephant's right carpal bone — the "ankle" of its right foreleg, which is equivalent to the wrist in humans. The researchers think this particular elephant was brought there as a beast of war by the Carthaginians.

Celtic stronghold

The bone was found during archaeological excavations at the site of a fortified Iberian village, in a layer of earth radiocarbon-dated to around 2,250 years ago — before the Romans took control of the region in about 150 B.C. The Romans called such fortified villages oppida; they were commonly used by the ancient Celts and were often built on hilltops, but this was in the defensible bend of a river.

Carthage, an ancient city state on the coast of what's now Tunisia, originated as a Phoenician colony and its fleet of warships was especially feared. But its armies were also powerful, and Carthage used war elephants in the first two Punic Wars against the Roman Republic, which were largely for control of strategic regions of the western Mediterranean.

It seems a Carthaginian army stationed nearby during the Second Punic War (218 to 201 B.C.) had been involved in a battle at the ancient fortified village near Córdoba — and that the elephant was killed in the fighting, the researchers wrote in the study.

Other signs of a military conflict at the site included 12 spherical stones the researchers think were ammunition for Carthaginian catapults.

It seemed most of the elephant's skeleton had rotted away, but the carpal bone had been protected by a collapsed wall, the researchers wrote. They do not rule out the possibility, however, that the bone had survived because it was taken as a souvenir, as it is small enough to carry.

Martínez Sánchez said it's not currently possible to determine if the animal was an Asian elephant (Elephas maximus indicus) — the species the Greek king Pyrrhus of Epirus (known for his eponymous "Pyrrhic Victory") had used against the Romans about 10 years before the First Punic War — or a now-extinct species of African elephant that the Carthaginians preferred for their war beasts.

Hannibal's march

The Carthaginian general and nobleman Hannibal Barca started his famous attack on Rome in about 218 B.C., leading his armies into Italy the long way through Western Europe. Most of his war elephants died while crossing the Alps, but Hannibal's armies were victorious against the Romans in Italy for many years.

Hannibal was recalled to Carthage in 203 B.C. to defend against Roman attacks there. But the Carthaginians ultimately lost their second war on Rome as they had the First Punic War more than 20 years earlier. (About 50 years later, Rome engineered a Third Punic War, which the weakened Carthaginians also lost and which led to their demise.)

The researchers stressed that the elephant that died near Córdoba could not have been one of the "legendary specimens" that crossed the Alps with Hannibal. However, the bone is a relic of the ancient Punic Wars for control of the Mediterranean and represents the "passage of the gigantic 'tanks of antiquity' through the [Iberian] peninsula," the researchers wrote.

In 1796, while scampering through fields behind his house in Ribchester, England, a young boy stumbled upon a hoard of over 30 metal artifacts in a hollow. The most unique and impressive item in the hoard was a bronze helmet with a face mask dating to the early Roman Empire.

The Ribchester Helmet entered the collection of the British Museum in 1813, where it has been on display ever since. The helmet consists of two main parts: a helmet bowl decorated with a martial scene, and a mask shaped like the face of a young man. Together, the parts of the mask weigh 2.9 pounds (1.3 kilograms). It is one of only three helmets with face masks ever found in Roman Britain.

The helmet bowl has been highly decorated with a scene of apparent combat between six cavalry and 11 infantry soldiers. Although the cavalry troops are outnumbered, they seem to have the upper hand, as two infantrymen lie dead. Two palmettes symbolizing victory are also depicted on the helmet bowl, in addition to a shield and spears signifying armor captured from the enemy. Holes in the nape of the neck suggest streamers were once attached to the helmet.

On the face mask, the young man has an expressionless and beardless visage. His hair curls turn into four serpents' heads — likely a visual reference to the myth of Medusa and the Gorgons, which has been found on other Roman military equipment. Atop the youth's hair rests a diadem in the form of the "corona muralis." This crown, shaped like a city wall, was one of the highest forms of Roman military decoration. But the mask has very small eye and nostril holes, making it impractical to wear in actual combat.

In a 2019 study published in the journal Arms & Armour, archaeologists Jamie Kaminski and David Sim explained the purpose of the Ribchester Helmet as special equipment worn during "hippika gymnasia" (cavalry tournaments), a type of military exercise that doubled as entertainment for troops and visiting dignitaries.

"The events included mock battles between the élite riders of the unit, in which both men and horses were bedecked in flamboyant suites of equipment often in the guise of Greeks, Trojans and Amazons," Kaminski and Sim wrote.

The helmet was likely being stored in a box or chest, along with the rest of the military equipment, for future use or for scrap purposes near the Roman fort of Bremetennacum Veteranorum, which was once located in the present-day village of Ribchester. The fort was abandoned in the late second century, and the hoard was likely forgotten until a curious young boy dug it up 17 centuries later.

For more stunning archaeological discoveries, check out our Astonishing Artifacts archives.

A medieval seal with a blood-red gemstone that was discovered in the U.K. is hiding an ancient secret, researchers have found.

A metal detectorist discovered the medieval seal in Gosfield, in the eastern county of Essex, in the fall of 2024. But a recent analysis of the seal by experts with the U.K.'s Portable Antiquities Scheme has revealed that the 800-year-old object prominently featured a 2,000-year-old Roman gemstone at its center.

"It's not common to have an object composed from two different time periods," Lori Rogerson, the finds liaison officer for Essex, told the BBC. "I thought it was a really special find."

The silver seal is just 1 inch (27.5 millimeters) long, and the entire keepsake weighs 0.23 ounces (6.44 grams), according to the entry for the artifact in the Portable Antiquities Scheme database. A loop attached to one end of the oval seal suggests it was suspended, perhaps on a necklace, rather than being a signet ring.

Around the bezel, there's a mirror-image inscription that reads "SECRETUM.RICARDI," meaning "Richard's secret" or the "secret [seal] of Richard," along with a cross pattée, a plus-shaped Christian symbol commonly used in medieval times by the Knights Templar.

The center of the Gosfield seal features a piece of carnelian, a brownish-red semiprecious stone, engraved with the image of a two-horse chariot. A charioteer stands on the back of the cart, holding the reins and a whip, suggesting he is competing in an ancient circus race. The carved gemstone dates to the late first century B.C. or early first century A.D., making it at least 1,200 years older than the metal seal matrix.

The mirror-image engraving and intaglio chariot design would appear the right way when Richard pressed it into wax as his seal.

Rogerson said Richard might have specifically chosen the Roman gemstone to show his knowledge of the classical world and his ability to procure something from a faraway place and time.

"It definitely would have been an indicator of the owner's social status," Rogerson told the BBC, "and indicated they were quite important — or saw themselves as quite important."

The Gosfield seal has been submitted for consideration as treasure under the U.K.'s Treasure Act of 1996, since it is made of silver and more than 300 years old. The Braintree Museum in Essex hopes to acquire the object following a treasure inquest.

Gold and gems quiz: What do you know about sparkly treasures made by nature?

Dark-brown flakes discovered inside a 1,900-year-old Roman glass vial are the first direct evidence for the use of human feces for medicinal purposes, a new chemical analysis reveals. The feces were mixed with thyme to mask the smell, and the concoction may have been used to treat inflammation or infection.

"While working in the storage rooms of the Bergama Museum, I noticed that some glass vessels contained residues," Cenker Atila, an archaeologist at Sivas Cumhuriyet University in Turkey, told Live Science in an email. "Residues were found in a total of seven different vessels, but only one yielded conclusive results."

In a study published Jan. 19 in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, Atila and colleagues detailed their analysis of the contents of one particular unguentarium, a small glass bottle used to hold perfume, oil or medicine. The glass vial had been sealed with clay in antiquity and was found in a tomb in the ancient city of Pergamon in western Turkey.

"When we opened the unguentarium, there was no bad smell," Atila said. During its stay in storage, however, "the residue inside it was overlooked. I noticed it and immediately initiated the analysis process."

The researchers used gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) to identify the organic compounds in the dark-brown residue they had scraped from inside the glass unguentarium. Two of the identified compounds — coprostanol and 24-ethylcoprostanol — are typically found in the digestive tracts of animals that metabolize cholesterol.

"The consistent identification of stanols — validated fecal biomarkers — strongly suggests that the Roman unguentarium originally contained fecal material," the researchers wrote in the study. Although they could not conclusively determine the origin of the feces, the researchers noted that the ratio of coprostanol to 24-ethylcoprostanol suggests it was human.

Another major discovery in the residue was carvacrol, an aromatic organic compound present in essential oils made from certain herbs.

"In this sample, we identified human feces mixed with thyme," Atila said. "Because we are well-acquainted with ancient textual sources, we immediately recognized this as a medicinal preparation used by the famous Roman physician Galen."

During the second and third centuries, Pergamon was known as a major center for Roman medicine, thanks to the physician and anatomist Galen of Pergamon, whose ideas would come to dominate Western medical science for centuries.

There were several popular feces-based remedies in Roman medicine that were meant to treat conditions ranging from inflammation and infection to reproductive disorders, the researchers wrote. In one example, Galen mentioned the therapeutic value of the feces of a child who had eaten legumes, bread and wine. But because ancient physicians knew their patients would reject foul-smelling medicines, they often advocated for masking them with aromatic herbs, wine or vinegar.

"This study provides the first direct chemical evidence for the medicinal use of fecal matter in Greco-Roman antiquity," the researchers wrote, as well as direct evidence that the stench of the excrement was masked with strong-smelling herbs. "These findings closely align with formulations described by Galen and other classical authors, suggesting that such remedies were materially enacted, not merely textually theorized."

Roman emperor quiz: Test your knowledge on the rulers of the ancient empire

Two elite tombs from the time of the Roman Republic more than 2,400 years ago have been unearthed near Via Pietralata in the northeast of modern Rome.

The buried chamber tombs were together in a funerary complex and near what seems to have been a shrine to the Greek demigod Hercules, who was a popular symbol of protection to the Romans. The excavations include a stretch of ancient roadway and two large monumental basins or tanks that were likely used in sacred ceremonies.

With these finds, Rome's suburbs "reveal themselves to be repositories of deep memories, still to be explored," Daniela Porro, the head government archaeologist for Rome, said in a translated statement.

Evidence of ancient occupation around Via Pietralata was found in the 1990s, and excavations of the area of the shrine began in 2022 under the direction of government archaeologist Fabrizio Santi. The area was outside the ancient Roman walls but it is now a suburb of the modern city.

The archaeological team has since discovered bronze coins that indicate the shrine was used between the fifth or fourth centuries B.C. — when Rome was supposedly a republic, although archaeologists don't agree on the dates — and the first century A.D., when Rome had become an empire.

Some media stories have claimed the finds included six bronze figurines of Hercules, but reports from the Italian Ministry of Culture do not mention any such findings. In fact, the shrine once had a central statue, but it is now missing, the statement said.

Ancient occupants

The tombs could be evidence that the area was occupied by a wealthy family group known as a Roman gens, Santi said in another translated statement. One of the newfound tombs contains a stone sarcophagus and three cremation urns, and the other contains an adult male skeleton.

The two stone basins or tanks were built more than 100 years later than the tombs. The largest was over 90 feet (28 meters) long, about 33 feet (10 m) wide, and about 7 feet (2.1 meters) deep, while the other was a little smaller but almost twice as deep.

"They could be structures connected to ritual or, less likely, productive activities or related to water collection," Santi said. "A thorough scientific study will allow us to contextualize these findings and understand their role within the ancient landscape."

The ancient road was a key element at the site, he said. It had led to a small cult building called a sacellum (Latin for "shrine") that was devoted to a god — probably the deified hero Hercules, whose worship was popular in that area.

Hercules was the Roman version of the Greek hero Herakles (or Heracles), who was said to be the son of the god Zeus (Jupiter to the Romans) and the mortal Alcmene. He was legendary for his incredible strength, and his worship as a symbol of protection and virtue was widespread in Rome for many centuries.

Roman emperor quiz: Test your knowledge on the rulers of the ancient empire

Archaeologists in Germany have discovered four Roman marching camps, dating to 1,700 years ago, along with a multitude of artifacts, including coins and old shoe parts.

During the third century A.D., the Roman Empire conducted several military campaigns into what is now Germany. Their goal was to expand Roman territory north along the Elbe River, which flows into the North Sea. But Germanic tribes resisted Roman occupation and contributed to an imperial crisis in the third century. Archaeologists have discovered evidence of Roman occupation in the form of military camps.

"Roman camps were highly standardized facilities," archaeologists from the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt, wrote in a statement. "The typical rectangular camp enclosure had rounded corners. From the gates, the main camp roads, laid out at right angles, led into the interior. At the intersection of these roads stood the headquarters building, the principia," the archaeologists wrote.

They noted that a "characteristic feature of marching camps is the so-called titulum — a segment of ditch with a rampart [defensive wall] located in front of the gate passages."

Two of the camps are located near the town of Aken; another camp is located near the town of Deersheim; and a fourth is located in the municipality of Trabitz, the statement said. The camps were discovered by amateur and professional archaeologists who used a combination of aerial and satellite imagery, as well as ground surveys and excavations to find and investigate the sites.

Metal detectors were used to help survey the camps, which led to the detection of more than 1,500 metal artifacts, many of them nails; some of them may have fallen off of sandals that Roman legionaries wore. Such nails, known as hobnails, likely provided traction for marching Roman legionary soldiers and auxiliaries.

The excavators also found coins that date to the second half of the second century and the early third century, discoveries that helped date the marching camps, the statement said. A number of radiocarbon dates confirmed this.

"Among the coin finds from Trabitz, a Caracalla denarius is the most recent discovery. It is therefore conceivable that the camp was established in connection with a campaign under [Roman emperor] Caracalla in 213 AD," the statement said. Historical records indicate that Caracalla's campaign in Germany was focused against a group referred to as the "Albanians" who may have lived along the Elbe River, the statement said.

Research into the marching camps is ongoing and may shed light on Caracalla's military campaign in Germany, the statement said.

Roman emperor quiz: Test your knowledge on the rulers of the ancient empire

"All I want is an income of 20,000 sesterces from secure investments", proclaims a character in a poem by Juvenal (first to second century A.D.), the Roman poet.

Today, 20,000 sesterces would be equivalent to about [Australian] $300,000 in interest from investments. Anyone would be very happy with this much passive annual income.

Like today, people in ancient times understood that investing money could help them consolidate and grow their wealth.

As the Roman novelist Petronius (first century A.D.) once wrote,

Whoever has money sails with a fair breeze, and governs his fortune as he wishes.

So, how exactly did ancient people invest their money?

A lofty house with hidden silver

In ancient Greek and Roman times, there was no stock market where you could buy and trade shares in a company.

If you wanted to invest your cash, one of the more popular options was to obtain gold or silver.

People did this to protect against currency fluctuations and inflation. They usually kept the metals either in bullion form or in the form of ware like jewelry. Storing these items could be risky and prone to theft.

The Roman poet Virgil (70 to 19 B.C.) describes the estate of a wealthy person that included "a lofty house, where talents of silver lie deeply hidden" alongside "weights of gold in bullion and in ware".

A talent was the largest unit of currency measurement in ancient Greece and Rome, equivalent to about 25 kg [55 pounds] of weighed silver.

Usually the metals were stored in a special vault or security cupboard.

The Roman writer Cicero (106 to 43 B.C.) recalls how a wealthy lady named Clodia would take gold (perhaps bars or ingots or plates) out of a security cupboard when she wished to lend money to someone. The gold could then be exchanged for coinage.

Market booms — and busts

The price of these metals could, however, occasionally be subject to unpredictable fluctuations and crashes in price, though less often than currency.

The Greek historian Polybius (c. 200 to 118 B.C.) says that when a new gold vein was discovered in Aquileia, Italy, only two feet deep, it caused a gold rush. The new material flooded the market too quickly and "the price of gold throughout Italy at once fell by one-third" after only two months. To stabilize the gold price, mining in the area was quickly monopolized and regulated.

When people wanted to trade precious metals, they would sell them by weight. If the gold or silver or bronze had been worked into jewelry or other objects, this could be melted down and turned into bullion.

People must have delighted in owning these precious metals.

The Athenian writer Xenophon (c. 430 to 350 B.C.) gives a clue about the mindset of ancient silver investors:

Silver is not like furniture, of which a man never buys more once he has got enough for his house. No one ever yet possessed so much silver as to want no more; if a man finds himself with a huge amount of it, he takes as much pleasure in burying the surplus as in using it.

A number of Roman wills reveal people leaving their heirs silver and gold in the form of bars, plates or ingots.

Commodities that could not be 'ruined by Jupiter'

Aside from metals, agricultural commodities were also very popular, especially grain, olive oil, and wine.

To profit from agricultural commodities, people bought farmland and traded the commodities on the market.

The Roman statesman Cato thought putting money into the production of essential goods was the safest investment. He said these things "could not be ruined by Jupiter" – in other words, they were resistant to unpredictable movements in the economy.

Whereas precious metals were a store of wealth, they generated no income unless they were sold. But a diversified portfolio of agricultural commodities guaranteed a permanent income.

People also invested and traded in precious goods, like artworks.

When the Romans sacked the city of Corinth in 146 B.C., they stole the city's collection of famous artwork, and later sold the masterpieces for huge sums of money at auction in order to bring profit for the Roman state.

At this auction, the King of Pergamon, Attalus II (220 to 138 B.C.), bought one of the paintings, by the master artist Aristeides of Thebes (fourth century B.C.), for the incredible sum of 100 talents (about 2,500 kg [5,500 pounds] of silver).

Eccentric emperors

Political instability or uncertainty sometimes raised the price of these metals.

The Greek historian Appian (secondnd century A.D.) records how during the Roman civil war in 32. to 30 B.C.:

the price of all commodities had risen, and the Romans ascribed the cause of this to the quarreling of the leaders whom they cursed.

Eccentric emperors might also impose new taxes or charges on commodities, or try to manipulate the market.

The Roman historian Suetonius (c. A.D. 69 to 122 ) tells us the emperor Caligula (A.D. 12 to 41) "levied new and unheard of taxes […] and there was no class of commodities or men on which he did not impose some form of tariff."

Another emperor, Vespasian (A.D. 17 to 79), went so far as to "buy up certain commodities merely in order to distribute them at profit", says Suetonius.

Clearly, investing in commodities 2,000 years ago could help build personal wealth — but also involved some risk, just like today.

This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The ancient Romans are well known for their advanced water supply systems and hygienic facilities, including public baths and toilets. But the first baths built in Pompeii may not have been particularly pleasant, due to dirty, contaminated water that was replaced only once per day, according to a new study.

"It is very likely that the bathing experience in this small bathing facility was maybe not hygienic and hence not very inviting," study lead author Gül Sürmelihindi, a geoarchaeologist at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz in Germany, told Live Science in an email.

Sürmelihindi and colleagues analyzed the chemical compound calcium carbonate preserved in incrustations in the Republican Baths at Pompeii to investigate the composition of the water supply. Their study was published Monday (Jan. 12) in the journal PNAS.

Public baths were a key part of Roman culture, the researchers wrote in the study, and as the Roman Empire expanded, bathing culture also evolved. At the height of the Roman Empire, the Romans "built long-distance aqueducts in order to have their daily bathing and cleansing experience," Sürmelihindi said.

But in the earliest baths built at Pompeii, which were in use between about 130 and 30 B.C. during the Roman Republic, the situation was different. Before the city constructed an aqueduct, bathing facilities were filled with water from wells and cisterns via a single water-lifting machine that was operated by enslaved people.

"The water could not be replenished more than once a day," Sürmelihindi said. "In this setting, I would expect water to be less clean, especially before the bathing water was refreshed again."

To investigate the composition of the bath water during this time, the researchers studied samples of calcium carbonate, a mineral form of calcium. Calcium carbonate is produced when calcium ions in hard water react with carbonate ions, leading to limescale — a hard, chalky deposit that builds up in kettles, boilers and pipes.

The researchers found that the carbonate in the Republican Baths showed a strong decrease in carbon isotopes (variations of the element with different numbers of neutrons) between the well that supplied the water and the heated pools where people bathed. The lowest carbon isotope values were found in areas where the water drained, meaning the main cause was likely "the introduction of organic carbon from microbial activity and human waste (e.g., sweat, sebum, urine, bathing oil)," the researchers wrote.

"These baths were an experience we do not have nowadays," study co-author Cees Passchier, a geoarchaeologist at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, told Live Science in an email. "People would not use soap, but olive oil to rub in and scrape the dirt off, and some of that oil would land in the water."

The water in the heated pools of the Republican Baths shows "high contamination by human waste," suggesting that it was not replenished regularly and that it offered "poor hygienic conditions for the Pompeiian bathers," the researchers wrote.

The researchers also investigated heavy-metal contamination in the baths by analyzing traces of elements left there. In the Republican Baths, the team identified elevated levels of lead, a toxic element that was likely introduced through the lead-pipe system in the bathing complex. Over time, though, the gradual incrustation of the pipes with calcium carbonate would have reduced the water's lead level.

It's unclear whether the murky water would have kept people away.

"Everyone mixed in the baths, regardless of social class, and the price was low," Passchier said. But if the water was really gross and smelly, he said, the baths would not have had customers. "People probably did not spend much time in the warm pools, which were small, but mostly spent time sitting around in the warm air of the hot bath having a conversation," he said.

Pompeii quiz: How much do you know about the Roman town destroyed by Mount Vesuvius?

Archaeologists have recovered a rare 2,000-year-old war trumpet in England that may have been used in Queen Boudica's wars against the Romans. The battle trumpet, also known as a carnyx, was part of a hoard of metal artifacts discovered ahead of residential construction in West Norfolk last year.

The hoard was announced Wednesday (Jan. 7) by Pre-Construct Archaeology, the company that led the original excavation, and Historic England, the organization that is coordinating the research and conservation efforts.

Artifacts in the hoard include the nearly complete animal-headed battle trumpet; a boar-headed military standard, or a decorated pole that identified a group of soldiers; five shield bosses, or ornaments that decorated the center of shields; and other metal items. According to Pre-Construct Archaeology, "finds of this kind are exceptionally rare in Britain and across Europe."

Battle trumpets were used primarily by Celtic tribes in Iron Age Europe and were often taken by Roman soldiers as war trophies, according to representatives for Historic England. "This newly excavated example is one of only three known from Britain and is one of the most complete found in Europe," they said in a statement.

The carnyx was a bronze wind instrument similar to a trumpet, but it had an elongated, vertical shape that ended in an open-mouthed animal, such as a boar. It was a common part of Celtic soldiers' military gear, along with chain mail, shields and spears.

Experts at the National Museum of Scotland have created a replica of a carnyx that, when played by musician John Kenny, gives an impression of what the battle trumpet sounded like.

Given the estimated first-century-A.D. date of the metal hoard and its discovery in West Norfolk, the items may have been used by Celts who were attempting to resist the incursion of the Roman Empire.

In A.D. 60, Boudica (also spelled Boudicca), queen of the powerful Iceni tribe that was based in what is now Norfolk, led a revolt against the Romans. But Boudica and the Iceni were defeated, paving the way for the Roman rule of Britain.

The hoard was removed from the ground in a single block so that its contents could be investigated with X-ray imaging and CT scans before being carefully excavated in the lab. Research and conservation work are ongoing, and the discovery of the hoard will be featured in an upcoming episode of BBC Two's "Digging for Britain."

Roman Britain quiz: What do you know about the Empire's conquest of the British Isles?

Roman soldiers defending Hadrian's Wall in Britain were well acquainted with diarrhea and stomachaches, according to a new study that found evidence of at least three different intestinal parasites in the soil near centuries-old toilets.

The finding shows that Roman guts suffered greatly, in spite of the wall having what was then a state-of-the-art sewer system.

The auxiliary fort of Vindolanda in northern England was occupied by the Romans from the first through the fourth centuries. The fort stood just south of Hadrian's Wall, which was first built in A.D. 122 to protect the northernmost extent of the Roman Empire. Vindolanda is known for its oxygen-free layers of mud, which have helped preserve perishable material like writing tablets, leather shoes and even bedbugs for millennia.

In a study published Friday (Dec. 19) in the journal Parasitology, a team of researchers investigated a new line of evidence at Vindolanda — soil preserved in the drain pipes of the fort's third-century latrines.

Researchers collected 58 samples from along the length of the latrine drain, some of which contained animal bones, Roman beads and pottery. They then micro-sieved the soil samples to look for the eggs of parasitic worms.

Within the latrine samples, the researchers discovered eggs from roundworms (Ascaris sp.) and whipworms (Trichuris sp.). Both roundworms and whipworms are parasites that live in human intestines, often causing stomachaches, fever and diarrhea. These fecal-oral parasites are typically passed along when a person ingests unsanitary food or dirt contaminated with the parasites' eggs.

Additionally, in one sample, the researchers detected Giardia duodenalis, a parasite that also infects the small intestines and causes giardiasis or giardia infections.

The presence of all three parasites suggests fecal contamination of water or food sources at Vindolanda, the researchers wrote in the study. But while whipworms and roundworms have been identified before in Roman Britain, this is the first evidence for G. duodenalis.

"Archaeological sites in Britain dating to before the arrival of the Romans have not been systematically tested for Giardia," study co-author Piers Mitchell, a paleoparasitologist at the University of Cambridge, told Live Science in an email, so "it remains unknown whether this parasite was in the U.K. prior to the Roman period."

But Giardia is an important clue to the health of the people living along the Roman frontier.

"Of the three parasites we found, Giardia is the most likely to cause serious health problems," Mitchell said. While short-term infection results in diarrhea and dehydration, long-term side-effects of giardia infection can include irritable bowel, eye damage, arthritis, allergies and muscle pain.

Although Roman soldiers were not legally allowed to marry, myriad forms of archaeological evidence, including preserved children's shoes, point to men, women and children all living at Vindolanda. And the new parasite evidence may point to a major health concern for soldiers' kids.

"Diarrhea can lead to dehydration in all age groups, but it is young children who are most likely to die from it," Mitchell said. "Chronic infection in children with Giardia, roundworm or whipworm can all lead to stunted growth and reduced intelligence."

Gastrointestinal issues from parasites were likely quite common in most parts of the Roman Empire, the researchers noted in the study, but the new analysis does not reveal exactly how many people suffered from these infections.

"As the sewer drain contains the mixed feces of all those who used the latrine, we cannot tell what proportion of those at Vindolanda were infected by parasites," Mitchell said. Given data from past studies, though, it’s thought likely that "between 10 and 40% of people in Roman times were infected by intestinal worms."

Editor's note: This article was updated on Monday (Dec. 22) at 9:55 a.m. EST to correct the misidentification of roundworms and whipworms as microscopic.

Roman Britain quiz: What do you know about the Empire's conquest of the British Isles?

Pompeii may have been unseasonably cold when the eruption of Mount Vesuvius destroyed the Roman city in A.D. 79, new research proposes.

A new analysis of 14 of the iconic plaster casts made of the victims at Pompeii has revealed that at least four were wearing woolen clothing when they were buried, even though late August — when the eruption is thought to have happened — is typically hot in this region. It's also possible that people were wearing woolen clothes for protection against the eruption, the researchers noted.

The research, which has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal, was presented in late November at an archaeological conference near Pompeii in Italy.

It plays into an old idea that Vesuvius might have erupted in a later and colder month than August. But modern scholarship has determined from contemporaneous documents that the volcano blew on Aug. 24, 79, and some experts suggest the traces of woolen clothes from Pompeii are not signs of cold.

"They were wearing wool because that's what people wore at that time," said Pedar Foss, a historian and archaeologist at DePauw University in Indiana who was not involved with the research. Sheep's wool was tough, warm even when wet, and relatively cheap; linen from flax was available but delicate; and only the elites wore silk and cotton in ancient times. "About 90% of all clothing anywhere was wool," Foss told Live Science.

The research was led by Llorenç Alapont, an archaeologist at the University of Valencia. According to a translated statement from the university, the researchers studied the weaves of fabric imprinted on the plaster casts of the Vesuvius victims at Pompeii. "From our study … we can know how people dressed on this specific day in history," Alapont said in the statement.

Disputed date

A total of 104 casts have been made at Pompeii since the 19th century by using plaster to fill the voids where victims had been buried by ash and debris from the erupting volcano. (Miami University history professor Steven Tuck thinks that around 2,000 people were killed at Pompeii but that many more escaped.) Casts are no longer made, because it's now thought they could destroy any remains.

The imprints of the weaves of garments from the victims at Pompeii show most were wearing a two-piece outfit of a woolen tunic and cloak, Alapont said. But "we do not know if this particular clothing was to protect themselves from the gases or the ambient heat caused by the volcanic eruption," he said. In other words, he wondered whether the people killed at Pompeii were wearing woolen clothes for protection, perhaps from gases, heat or falling ash, during the roughly 18-hour-long eruption.

Foss explained that the Roman author Pliny the Younger was a teenager when he witnessed the eruption and described it about 30 years later in letters to the Roman historian Tacitus. Pliny firmly dated the eruption to "Nonum Kalendas Septembres" — the ninth day before the Kalends (first) of September, which is Aug. 24 of A.D. 79 in the modern Gregorian calendar.

But Pliny the Younger's written account was badly copied during the Middle Ages, and the month of the eruption was disputed until recent scholarship confirmed that Pliny — who was by that time an accomplished Roman magistrate — had recorded the August date, Foss said.

Proponents of a later month cite the evidence of autumnal fruits at Pompeii, an inscription scrawled in charcoal on a wall there, and what may be a slightly later coin found in the ruins. However, none of it is conclusive.

Tulane University historian and archaeologist Allison Emmerson explained the dispute to Live Science in an email. "The manuscript tradition is quite secure — the only date provided by the text is August 24," she said. "Whether that reflects the date of the actual event, however, is still subject to controversy."

Warmth or protection

The latest study does not make a pronouncement about the date of the Vesuvius eruption. It says only that the clothing worn by the Pompeii victims might be a sign that the day of the eruption was unseasonably cold for August — but, then again, it might not have been, or the wool might have been for protection.

The researchers also determined that people who died both inside and outside the houses at Pompeii were wearing the same types of clothes, according to the statement.

Foss said the research by Alapont and his team was important because it established what people at Pompeii were wearing when they were killed, but it did not add to any issue about the weather. "I just don't think it makes an argument either way," he concluded.

Pompeii quiz: How much do you know about the Roman town destroyed by Mount Vesuvius?

Roman concrete is pretty amazing stuff. It's among the main reasons we know so much about Roman architecture today. So many structures built by the Romans still survive, in some form, thanks to their ingenious concrete and construction techniques.

However, there's a lot we still don't understand about exactly how the Romans made such strong concrete or built all those impressive buildings, houses, public baths, bridges and roads.

Scholars have long yearned for more physical evidence from Roman worksites to provide clues.

Now, a new study — led by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and published in the journal Nature Communications — sheds new light on Roman concrete and construction techniques.

That's thanks to details sifted from partially constructed rooms in Pompeii — a worksite abandoned by workers as Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE.

New clues about concrete making

The discovery of this particular building site hit the news early last year.

The builders were quite literally repairing a house in the middle of the city, when Mount Vesuvius blew up in the first century CE.

This unique find included tiles sorted for recycling and wine containers known as amphorae that had been re-used for transporting building materials.

Most importantly, though, it also included evidence of dry material being prepared ahead of mixing to produce concrete.

It is this dry material that is the focus of the new study. Having access to the actual materials ahead of mixing represents a unique opportunity to understand the process of concrete making and how these materials reacted when water was added.

This has re-written our understanding of Roman concrete manufacture.

Self-healing concrete

The researchers behind this new paper studied the chemical composition of materials found at the site and defined some key elements: incredibly tiny pieces of quicklime that change our understanding of how the concrete was made.

Quicklime is calcium oxide, which is created by heating high-purity limestone (calcium carbonate).

The process of mixing concrete, the authors of this study explain, took place in the atrium of this house. The workers mixed dry lime (ground up lime) with pozzolana (a volcanic ash).

When water was added, the chemical reaction produced heat. In other words, it was an exothermic reaction. This is known as "hot-mixing" and results in a very different type of concrete than what you get from a hardware store.

Adding water to the quicklime forms something called slaked lime, along with generating heat. Within the slaked lime, the researchers identified tiny undissolved "lime clasts" that retained the reactive properties of quicklime. If this concrete forms cracks, the lime clasts react with water to heal the crack.

In other words, this form of Roman concrete can quite literally heal itself.

Techniques old and new

However, it is hard to tell how widespread this method was in ancient Rome.

Much of our understanding of Roman concrete is based on the writings of the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius.

He had advised to use pozzolana mixed with lime, but it had been assumed that this text did not refer to hot-mixing.

Yet, if we look at another Roman author, Pliny the Elder, we find a clear account of the reaction of quicklime with water that is the basis for the exothermic reaction involved in hot-mixing concrete.

So the ancients had knowledge of hot-mixing but we know less about how widespread the technique was.

Maybe more important is the detail in the texts of experimentation with different blends of sand, pozzolana and lime, leading to the mix used by the builders in Pompeii.

The MIT research team had previously found lime clasts (those tiny little bits of quicklime) in Roman remains at Privernum, about 43 kilometres north of Pompeii.

It's also worth noting the healing of cracks has been observed in the concrete of the tomb of noblewoman Caecilia Metella outside Rome on the Via Appia (a famous Roman road).

Now this new Pompeii study has established hot-mixing happened and how it helped improve Roman concrete, scholars can look for instances in which concrete cracks have been healed this way.

Questions remain

All in all, this new study is exciting — but we must resist the assumption all Roman construction was made to a high standard.

The ancient Romans could make exceptional concrete mortars but as Pliny the Elder notes, poor mortar was the cause of the collapse of buildings in Rome. So just because they could make good mortar, doesn't mean they always did.

Questions, of course, remain.

Can we generalise from this new study's single example from 79 CE Pompeii to interpret all forms of Roman concrete?

Does it show progression from Vitruvius, who wrote some time earlier?

Was the use of quicklime to make a stronger concrete in this 79 CE Pompeii house a reaction to the presence of earthquakes in the region and an expectation cracking would occur in the future?

To answer any of these questions, further research is needed to see how prevalent lime clasts are in Roman concrete more generally, and to identify where Roman concrete has healed itself.

This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Around 1,800 years ago in Roman Britain, people preparing bodies for burial created a plaster-like paste and smeared it over the corpses, leaving behind fingerprints that are still visible today, researchers reported in a recent blog post.

These newfound prints reveal a hands-on approach to funerary practices in the third and fourth centuries A.D., the archaeologists said.

This team of researchers, involved in the "Seeing the Dead" project at the University of York, have been investigating the mysterious practice of using liquid gypsum to fill stone and lead coffins of people who lived in Yorkshire during the Roman Empire.

Gypsum is a calcium-based mineral that was a key ingredient in ancient plaster and cement. When heated and mixed with water, gypsum becomes a pourable liquid sometimes called plaster of paris. This thick liquid, when poured over a dead body, hardens into a plaster and leaves behind a casing or impression of the deceased, much like the casts at Pompeii.

At least 70 liquid gypsum burials have been discovered in the Yorkshire area to date. When investigating one of them — a stone sarcophagus found in the 1870s that had not been properly studied before — the team found a surprising clue to the method of applying the liquid gypsum: Someone had spread it by hand.

"When we lifted the casing and began cleaning and 3D scanning, we discovered the hand print with fingers and were astounded," Maureen Carroll, a Roman archaeologist at the University of York and principal investigator of the Seeing the Dead project, told Live Science in an email. "They had not been seen ever before, nor had anyone ever removed the casing from the sarcophagus."

In a Dec. 10 blog post, Carroll explained that the team had previously assumed the liquid gypsum was heated to at least 300 degrees Fahrenheit (150 degrees Celsius) and poured over the body. But the presence of fingerprints means that the gypsum mixture was probably a soft paste that someone smoothed over the body in the coffin. The gypsum had been spread very close to the edges of the coffin, so the fingerprints were not visible until the team removed the casing from the coffin.

The fingerprints and hand marks reveal the close, personal contact the Romans had with their dead, according to Carroll. "They are a striking trace of human activity that is not otherwise known to survive on a body in a Roman funerary context," she wrote in the blog post.

The marks might preserve additional clues about the person or people who buried the dead — revealing, for example, whether a professional undertaker or a family member last touched the deceased.

"We are hoping to extract potential DNA remains from the handprint for examination at the Francis Crick Institute in London," Carroll said. It's a long shot, but "the best case scenario is that we may be able to infer genetic sex, which would be a huge result!"

Editor's note: This article was updated at 12:55 p.m. ET on Dec. 12 to correct the number of liquid gypsum burials discovered to date to 70.

Roman Britain quiz: What do you know about the Empire's conquest of the British Isles?

A Roman mosaic recently discovered in Britain depicts a long-lost version of the Trojan War story that differs from the most famous telling of the saga.

The artifact, known as the Ketton Mosaic, shows a key conflict during the Trojan War. But it is not based on Homer's "Iliad," the most enduring version of the tale, researchers reported in a new study. Instead, it was inspired by a more obscure tragedy by the Athenian playwright Aeschylus. Called "Phrygians," it was written in the early fifth century B.C. and survives today only in fragments and analyses discussed in other ancient works.

"This is an exciting piece of research, untangling the ways in which the stories of the Greek heroes Achilles and Hector were transmitted not just through texts but through a repertoire of images created by artists working in all sorts of materials, from pottery and silverware to paintings and mosaics," Hella Eckhardt, an archaeologist at the University of Reading who was not involved in the study, said in a statement.

Measuring 33 feet by 17 feet (10 by 5.3 meters), the mosaic likely covered part of the floor of a triclinium, or dining room, in a large villa. The mosaic was in use by the fourth century A.D., but preliminary work suggests the villa may have been occupied even earlier.

In Homer's telling of the Trojan War, the Greeks spend 10 years fighting against the city of Troy, in what is now modern-day Turkey. According to the myth, Paris, a son of Troy's King Priam, abducted the beautiful queen Helen of Sparta, and the Greeks were fighting to get her back.

The mosaic shows three scenes from the conflict between the Greek hero Achilles and the Trojan prince Hector. In the first panel, the two duel after Hector kills Patroclus, a close companion and possible lover of Achilles. In the second, Achilles drags Hector's dead body behind his chariot. And in the third, Achilles ransoms Hector's body to his father, Priam, for his weight in gold.

Initially, researchers thought the mosaic depicted scenes as described in Homer's epic, the "Iliad." But upon closer examination, study first author Jane Masseglia, a historian at the University of Leicester, found that some of the details in the mosaic were inconsistent with Homer's version. In the new study, published Dec. 3 in the journal Britannia, Masseglia and her colleagues argue that the differences instead point to "Phrygians" as the inspiration for the imagery.

For example, in the "Iliad," Achilles explicitly says he will not accept Hector’s weight in gold as ransom for Hector's body. And in the mosaic, Achilles drags Hector's body around Patroclus' tomb, while in most Trojan War retellings after the fourth century B.C., he drags it around the walls of Troy. Fragments of "Phrygians" and of ancient scholars' analyses of the text, however, describe both events as they're depicted in the Ketton Mosaic. "Phrygians" is the only known retelling of the Trojan War to describe events this way.

The art style offered further clues about the mosaic's inspiration. "In the Ketton Mosaic, not only have we got scenes telling the Aeschylus version of the story, but the top panel is actually based on a design used on a Greek pot that dates from the time of Aeschylus, 800 years before the mosaic was laid," Masseglia said in the statement.

Other parts of the mosaic also had designs from more ancient times, she noted.

"I found other parts of the mosaic were based on designs that we can see in much older silverware, coins and pottery, from Greece, Turkey, and Gaul," Masseglia said.

The findings suggest close cultural relationships between Romans in Britain and the rest of the classical world, the authors wrote in the study.

"Romano-British craftspeople weren't isolated from the rest of the ancient world, but were part of this wider network of trades passing their pattern catalogues down the generations," Masseglia added. "At Ketton, we've got Roman British craftsmanship but a Mediterranean heritage of design."

Editor's note: This story was updated at 3:33 p.m. ET on Jan. 7, 2026 to note that in most, but not all, retellings of the "Iliad," Achilles drags Hector's body around the walls of Troy. It was also updated to clarify the ransoming of Hector's body. Achilles states that he will not accept Hector's weight in gold as ransom, but ultimately does accept some in the canonical version of the "Iliad."

Roman Britain quiz: What do you know about the Empire's conquest of the British Isles?

Two millennia ago, the Roman Empire reached the limits of its power in Britain. The island marked the northernmost border of the Roman Empire and the point at which the ancient superpower's expansion came to a halt.

The Romans launched several invasions and kept 10% of the entire army in the province but failed to conquer the whole island. Instead, a militarized frontier divided the island in two — marked by the 73-mile-long (118 kilometers) Hadrian's Wall, which was the border for nearly 300 years.

One key source of information we've gleaned about this borderland is a historic fort called Vindolanda, which was built by the Romans in what is now Northumberland in England and once housed units of soldiers from across the empire. The site holds layers of history from the Roman era as it was demolished and rebuilt nine times by its occupants.

While Vindolanda has been studied for decades, new discoveries are changing the picture of what life was like on the edge of the empire. The Roman frontier was far from a forbidding, "Game of Thrones"-like outpost in the middle of nowhere, defended only by men. Instead, clues point to a diverse community that was a demographic snapshot of the entire empire. And the site is shining a light on some of the most understudied groups in Roman society.

The northern frontier

The Romans successfully invaded Britain in A.D. 43 and within a few decades had pushed as far north as Scotland. But after battles with Indigenous groups like the Caledonians, Rome pulled back to northern England. To secure the empire's position, in A.D. 122 Emperor Hadrian constructed a vast wall that spanned from what is now Newcastle in the east to Carlisle near the western coast. Hadrian's Wall, as it is now known, was dotted with forts, spikes, ditches and earthworks, and was guarded by auxiliaries — troops who were not Roman citizens but came from across the empire. (This changed in A.D. 212, when most free people in the empire were granted citizenship.)

These auxiliaries "basically go from being a conquered group living in a conquered province to being part of the very war machine that then conquers more places," Elizabeth Greene, Canada research chair in Roman archaeology at Western University in Ontario, told Live Science.

But the wall was never intended to demarcate the end of Roman influence.

"Hadrian [essentially] says, 'OK, we're going to stop here, the North is not conquered, but we control it from this line,'" Andrew Gardner, a professor of Roman archaeology at University College London, told Live Science.

While the idea of a vast wall spanning the breadth of northern Britain sounds forbidding and desolate, it was anything but, experts told Live Science.

It wasn't "the 'Game of Thrones' model of the frontier, with a great cranking elevator leading you to floor 5 million and then you just pee off the edge of the world," Marta Alberti-Dunn, deputy director of excavations at the Vindolanda Trust, told Live Science. "No, it's a very busy in-and-out space."

Military communities

Early archaeologists in the 19th century believed auxiliaries manned the frontier alone, "living like monks in fortified enclosures," Gardner told Live Science. But research has since revealed they had families with them, even before Hadrian's Wall cemented the frontier.

"Soldiers were legally not allowed to marry," which led early researchers to discount the notion of military families springing up near the frontier, Greene said. "Now does that stop anyone from having a relationship with a woman and having children? It does not. And we have a whole body of evidence that tells us that."

Excavations at Vindolanda and other sites revealed that the military forts were nestled alongside "extramural" settlements, meaning civilian settlements outside the walls. But recent research shows that the military community was even more closely intertwined, with families of officers, and even low-ranking soldiers, likely living and working inside the forts, Greene said. "We absolutely have this open community."

A treasure trove of evidence from Vindolanda has yielded unprecedented glimpses into these communities.

Key to modern archaeologists' understanding of life on the frontier are artifacts known as the Vindolanda tablets, Alberti-Dunn said. Around 1,700 of these postcard-size wooden tablets, scribbled on with ink, have been found at Vindolanda. They date to around A.D. 100, before Hadrian's Wall was built and when the fort sat on an important road.

One of the most famous tablets "is from Claudia Severa to Sulpicia Lepidina and is inviting Sulpicia to Claudia's birthday party," Alberti-Dunn said. "It's the earliest example of female handwriting [in Latin]."

A wealth of leather shoes abandoned at Vindolanda also reveal windows into people's lives, including their social status and even where they lived in the settlement.

"The shoes are really great because they tell us exactly who's there," Greene said, including women and children from the earliest occupation of the fort. Around 5,000 shoe parts have been unearthed at Vindolanda and a nearby fort called Magna, Greene noted, including mysteriously large shoes found earlier this year. (It's unclear if some people there had massive feet, or if the shoes were large because people were wearing multiple pairs of socks to stay warm.)

People and society

New discoveries at Vindolanda are also revealing that military settlements along the frontier were complex societies.

"So you've got these 'de facto wives' who are living probably outside in the extramural settlement. They have no status because they're not [Roman] citizens," Greene added. "But you've got elite women as well" who likely played a public role in frontier life, Greene said.

Researchers are also finding more evidence of enslaved people in the forts and settlements. "We know there were enslaved people in the military. Lots of them. But we know so little about them," Greene said.

For instance, in the past few years, archaeologists used new techniques to finally decipher a Vindolanda tablet that was previously illegible. It turned out to be a deed of sale for an enslaved person, according to a study published earlier this year. Other evidence includes the Regina Tombstone in the frontier fort Arbeia near Newcastle, which depicted an enslaved woman and featured an inscription that described her life.

"She was the slave of an individual named Barates. He was probably a soldier or merchant," Greene explained. "She's Catuvellauni, which is a British tribe. He's from across the empire in Syria, she was his slave and he married her."

Merchants also gathered around the forts, and the Vindolanda tablets chronicle discussions about money and supplies, and even show evidence that local Celtic entrepreneurs profited from the military outpost.

"These are people who serve each other's needs," Alberti-Dunn said. "The people who might reside outside the fort need the people who live inside the fort in order to make money out of them."

Diverse frontier

Auxiliaries on the frontier were recruited from across the empire — from the Netherlands, Belgium, and even Spain and Syria — and they brought diverse cultures to the northern frontier.

That meant people stationed there amalgamated beliefs. "At Vindolanda, we have a stone to De Gallia, the personification of Gaul; we have a stone to a goddess named Ahvardua, which is not known anywhere else but there," Greene said. In the empire religious syncretism — combining different religions or beliefs — was accepted, and there were syncretized deities in Vindolanda, Greene added.

These communities held Roman festivals but worshipped Roman deities such as Jupiter Optimus Maximus and Victory, alongside local Celtic deities such as Sattada.

The troops stationed at the forts may have even brought their own unique hierarchies. "The Batavians [a German tribe from what is now the Netherlands] put out that they could cross a river in full armor and not drown," Alberti-Dunn said.

These fearless, bloodthirsty assassins were notoriously hard to rule, and the Batavians addressed their commanding officer as "my king," Alberti-Dunn said. That suggests the commanding officer was Batavian nobility akin to a client king whom the Romans appointed because it was too difficult to control the Batavians otherwise, Alberti-Dunn added.

Danger and boredom

With such a large military presence, it's easy to think the frontier was dangerous. But evidence paints a mixed picture.

There are hints of tumultuous periods, such as the Romans' abandonment of the farther north Antonine Wall in Scotland just 20 years after they built it in A.D. 142, Rebecca Jones, keeper of history and archaeology at National Museums Scotland, told Live Science.

Another moment of danger came during Septimius Severus' invasion of Scotland in A.D. 208. "It's one of the bloodiest times for Britain, it's horrible for the Roman army. [There were] uncounted casualties on the Roman side, uncounted casualties on the non-Roman side," Alberti-Dunn said. "It's just a hot mess."

But for most of the Roman period, frontier life was more mundane. One tablet discusses preparing for storms, while another reveals a soldier, unprompted, sent a fellow soldier socks and underwear. Others concern gardening.

People in the settlements, meanwhile, staved off boredom by playing games and visiting bath houses.

Frontier life came with other downsides. New research detailing the excavation of a latrine revealed that many soldiers had worms, Jones noted, while research published last year revealed the widespread presence of bedbugs. "It doesn't make the whole thing particularly glamorous," Jones added.

Ongoing research into what Roman soldiers in Britain ate suggests it was a meat-heavy diet — particularly beef. "I think meat was absolutely core to the Roman military diet," Richard Madgwick, a professor of archaeological science at Cardiff University who is leading the project, told Live Science.

Archaeologists have also found evidence of imported foods, such as wine and fish oil along Hadrian's Wall, as well as North African cooking styles on the Antonine Wall, Jones noted.

The local people

Britain was populated by more than 20 different Celtic groups, such as the Iceni in the east — made famous by Boudica — and the Brigantes and Caledonians farther north. But the Romans rarely mention Britons — one Vindolanda tablet dismissively calls them Britunculi — "wretched little Brits."

Researchers are digging deeper into life in these Celtic communities. "There's a mixture of deprivation, oppression and poverty," Gardner said. "At the same time, in some situations, there's a degree of opportunity."

Yet-to-be-published research indicates Iron Age communities north of the wall saw a population drop between A.D. 200 and 400, during the later Roman Empire period of Britain, Jones said.

"That reduction of population could be for enslavement; it could be through violence and death," Jones added. "It could also be through conscription and enlistment."

The Romans set up camps north of Hadrian's Wall and maintained a military presence to some extent in the north, Gardner noted, which may have contributed to this population decline.

Growing evidence suggests that Celtic people north and south of the frontier profited from the Roman presence. For example, evidence has revealed that Roman forces were being supplied with animals bred in Highland Scotland, Madgwick noted. "Is it trading, or is it raiding? The more I look into it, the more I think there's evidence that these were being bred and raised with Romans in mind. … This was a fantastic economic opportunity."

The auxiliary units guarding the frontier even recruited British men. "This is the paradox of people's lives being shaped by … the imposition of military control, people being killed, people being enslaved," Gardner said. "But local people find ways to live still and sometimes to find opportunities. So even joining the military itself becomes an opportunity," he added.

The Romans withdrew from Britain around A.D. 410, but Vindolanda remained occupied by Christian communities — possibly the descendants of former Roman soldiers stationed there — until the ninth century.

Archaeologists in France have discovered three ancient storage jars brimming with tens of thousands of Roman coins. The vessels were buried in pits 1,700 years ago in the house floor of an ancient settlement, possibly as a type of safe or piggy bank.

These three jugs, known as amphorae, were uncovered during excavations run by the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP) in the village of Senon in northeastern France, and may contain a total of more than 40,000 Roman coins.

The first hoard held an estimated 83 pounds (38 kilograms) of coins, which "corresponds to approximately 23,000 to 24,000 coins," Vincent Geneviève, a numismatist with INRAP who is analyzing the hoards, told Live Science in an email.

The second jug and its coins weighed about 110 pounds (50 kg), "and, based on the 400 coins recovered from the neck, which was broken at the time of discovery, it could contain 18,000 to 19,000 coins," Geneviève said. The third jug was retrieved in ancient times and only three coins were left in the pit where the vessel once sat.

Around 30 coin hoards are already known in this area, so the real significance of this find lies not in the sheer number of coins but in the detailed information about where the hoards were found.

"Contrary to what one might think at first look, it is not certain that these are 'treasures' that were hidden during a period of insecurity," according to a Nov. 26 translated statement from INRAP. Experts believe based on the dates on the coins that the amphoras were buried between A.D. 280 and 310.

Among the hoard are coins that feature busts of the emperors Victorinus, Tetricus I, and his son Tetricus II, the emperors of the so-called Gallic Empire, which ruled Gaul and the surrounding provinces independently of the rest of the Roman Empire from 260 to 274, until it was reintegrated by emperor Aurelian in 274.

Hastily hidden treasures or long-term savings?

The coin-stuffed amphoras had been carefully sunk into well-constructed pits within the living room of a residence. The jugs' openings were level with the ground and therefore easily accessible as a kind of ancient piggy-bank.

"In two cases, the presence of a few coins found stuck to the rim of the jar clearly indicate that they were deposited after the vase was buried, when the pit had not yet been filled with sediment," according to the statement.

The accessible jars suggest the owners were using them as a long-term savings vehicle rather than a hastily hidden hoard. Within this residential district were stone buildings with underfloor heating, basements and workshops with stoves. There was also a Roman fortification nearby.

At the beginning of the fourth century, a large fire destroyed the settlement. Although the settlement was re-established before a second fire led to its permanent abandonment, the coin deposits were lost for nearly two millennia.

Roman emperor quiz: Test your knowledge on the rulers of the ancient empire

In 30 B.C., Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII died by suicide after they were defeated by Octavian's forces in a civil war.

But what if Antony and Cleopatra had defeated Octavian, the man who became Rome's first emperor? Would they have become rulers of Rome? How would history have been different?

We asked several experts, who explained various possibilities for what might have happened if Antony and Cleopatra had prevailed.

Civil war

First, it helps to understand what led to the war. In the aftermath of Julius Caesar's assassination in 44 B.C., three major factions fought for power: Octavian, Caesar's great-nephew, adopted son and heir; Mark Antony, one of Caesar's generals; and Brutus and Cassius, both senators. However, the senators were soon defeated and died by suicide.

Before Caesar died, he had a relationship with Cleopatra VII, the ruler of Egypt. Cleopatra had a son named Caesarion whom she claimed was fathered by Caesar. But he never acknowledged the boy as his son. After Caesar died, Cleopatra and Antony became a couple and had three children, although they likely didn't officially marry.

During this time, there had been an uneasy power-sharing agreement between Octavian, who was based in Rome, and Antony, who was based in Alexandria. But then, civil war for control of Rome and its territories erupted in 32 B.C.

The turning point in the civil war was the Battle of Actium, which occurred on Sept. 2, 31 B.C. During this battle, the fleet of Antony and Cleopatra was destroyed, and Octavian gained control of the Mediterranean Sea. While further battles occurred on land, Antony and Cleopatra's forces could not recover from the loss of their fleet.

Cleopatra and Antony died in 30 B.C., and Egypt was incorporated into the Roman Empire as a province in 30 B.C. Soon after, in 27 B.C., the Roman senate gave Octavian the title "Augustus," and he became the first emperor of the Roman Empire.

But what might have happened if the lovers had triumphed over Octavian?

Cleopatra restricted?

There are a wide range of possibilities in this "what if" scenario, scholars said.

One possibility is that Cleopatra's power would have been restricted to Egypt and parts of the Middle East. Some scholars said Cleopatra would have had a hard time playing a large role in the Eternal City. "I don't see a role for Cleopatra in Rome," Jeffrey Tatum, a professor of classics at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, told Live Science in an email, noting that Octavian's supporters had used propaganda to villainize Cleopatra.

Lee Fratantuono, a professor of ancient classics at Maynooth University in Ireland, agreed, noting Cleopatra, who was an Egyptian ruler of Macedonian descent, would not have been accepted by the people of Rome. "Her presence at his side roused patriotic sentiment in Italy, and it is highly unlikely that Antony could have achieved long-term success in the central and western Mediterranean with her prominently in the picture," he told Live Science in an email.

Antony had sons and stepsons from his previous marriages, and he might have tried to insert them into power in Rome instead of himself. Antony "had what Octavian did not — an abundance of children and stepchildren, especially male ones, that he could utilise," Jane Draycott, a senior lecturer of classics at the University of Glasgow, told Live Science in an email.

Antony and Cleopatra, along with their children, may have been more focused on Egypt and the Near East, where the Romans faced a formidable opponent in the Parthian Empire in what is now largely Iran. Antony may have wanted to spend his time fighting them rather than trying to govern Rome itself, Draycott said.

Cleopatra as queen?

Another possibility is that despite opposition to Cleopatra, she could have still come to power in Rome, ruling alongside Antony, who would have become an emperor, Prudence Jones, a classics professor at Montclair State University in New Jersey, said in an email.

If they had achieved this, "we might expect to see greater balance between the eastern and western parts of Rome's empire," Jones said, as Egypt was an important part of the eastern part of the empire.

"If power were more balanced between the eastern and western parts of the empire, rather than having power centralized at Rome, European history could look quite different," Jones told Live Science. "Western Europe might have remained rural for a longer period of time with a lesser degree of Romanization, particularly in Gaul and Britain if more resources had been directed eastward. Greek culture might have had more of an influence on all of Europe, with perhaps fewer Romance languages and more modern languages related to Greek."

Egypt might "have retained a degree of independence and functioned as a client kingdom," Jones said. Perhaps Antony would have avoided centralizing the Roman Empire's government to the degree Octavian did.

We "can't assume that Antony would have had Octavian's desire for and skill in developing bureaucracy," Jones said. "With less central control, the Roman Empire might have been more of a Greco-Romano-Egyptian confederation."

Giving it back to the senate?

Another possibility is that rather than try to control Rome himself or through his sons and stepsons, Antony might have handed the city and some of its territories back to the senate and kept Rome as a republic, Tatum said.

It's possible that "he would have handed the republic back to the senate and the assemblies," Tatum wrote in his book "A Noble Ruin: Mark Antony, Civil War, and the Collapse of the Roman Republic" (Oxford University Press, 2023). "Relishing his wealth and prestige from a distance, perhaps even from Alexandria, he could have exercised influence without dominating affairs and changing the fundamental nature of the republic."

It's also possible that whatever decisions Antony and Cleopatra made could have triggered another civil war with other aristocrats battling for control of Rome and its territories, Tatum said in an email.

Roman emperor quiz: Test your knowledge on the rulers of the ancient empire

This sun hat was made from different colors of felted wool in Egypt during the early Christian or Coptic period. It is one of only three such hats that has survived the ages and the best preserved of them. The sun hat was donated to the Chadwick Museum in Bolton, England — later called the Bolton Museum — by Sir Flinders Petrie, the English Egyptologist who found it in 1911.

Petrie discovered the hat at the site of Lahun (also called Illahun), a town and pyramid complex in Egypt's Fayum region, along with numerous other garments that showcased stunning Coptic textile work.

According to the Bolton Museum, where the artifact is housed, the conical hat was stitched together from four quarters, with a knob in the center. Most of the hat, which measures roughly 15.5 inches (39.5 centimeters) in diameter, was made from brown felt, with a wide brim of red felt. Green woolen cloth was used to bind the edges, which were finished in a blue woolen fabric, and the hat was lined in white felt. The hat seams were slip-stitched with decorative chain stitches on the outer edges.

According to a statement by the local government of Bolton Council, experts think the hat may have been made for a member of the Roman military's occupying force, since it looks similar to earlier, third-century Roman hats. However, it may have been adapted from a Roman design to better shield its wearer from the harsh Egyptian sun and sandstorms.

Egypt's Coptic period began around A.D. 395, when the Roman Empire broke up. Emperor Constantine had already been promoting Christianity throughout the empire, and in the mid-fourth century, the Egyptian-inspired Coptic language emerged among the Christians of Roman Egypt. Coptic textiles discovered in early Christian burials in the Fayum area are marked by their colorful yarn, intricate woven patterns, and a mix of iconography, including the Egyptian ankh (a cross with a loop at the top that symbolized life), Roman gods and Christian saints.

In August 2025, the Bolton Museum put the sun hat on display for the first time following conservation. Jacqui Hyman, the expert textile conservator who worked on this "very rare felt hat," said in a statement that moths had damaged the felted wool, but she stabilized the hat with hand-dyed fabric and re-created the hat's original shape.

"This hat was made to be worn," Hyman said, "but if only it could talk and tell us who made it and who wore it."

For more stunning archaeological discoveries, check out our Astonishing Artifacts archives.

Archaeologists need to have excellent attention to detail. They'll examine the curve of a potsherd, measure the precise angle of a carved block of stone, or perceive a barely visible hole in a bone to identify important details about our collective human history.

Think you've got what it takes to be an archaeologist? Let's see how well you can identify some of the world's most famous artifacts from just a sliver of the image. No whip or fedora needed — but keep an eye out for snakes!

Remember to log in to put your name on the leaderboard; hints are available if you click the yellow button!

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Archaeologists in France have discovered a Roman-period cremation tomb richly furnished with silver coins, gold jewelry, and a ring inscribed with what is likely the last name of the deceased.

The grave was found unexpectedly during excavations at a medieval settlement in Lamonzie-Saint-Martin, a small town in southwestern France. As the archaeologists excavated underneath the medieval silos, they noticed an unusual burial, according to a Nov. 24 translated statement from the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP).

Excavation of the burial revealed it to be a "bustum," a type of Roman-era funeral practice in which the deceased was cremated directly over the grave and then immediately buried. The rectangular bustum measured 7.2 by 3.4 feet (2.2 by 1.05 meters) and was filled with grave goods for the deceased.

In one corner of the burial, archaeologists found a ceramic beaker and a clear glass vial. In another cluster of offerings, archaeologists recovered 10 silver and bronze coins, alongside small gold sheets that may have decorated a purse or case that held the coins. A series of lozenge-shaped crystals was also discovered, likely the remains of a bejeweled leather accessory that has since decomposed, as well as a long, corroded iron object that may have been part of a horse bit, which would have attached to a bridle.

The burial style, pottery and coins suggest that the bustum dates to sometime between the first and third centuries.

Also recovered from the burial were nearly two dozen gold objects, two of which may hold clues to the occupant of the grave.

Archaeologists unearthed a probable "bulla" — a special amulet that was given to male children in ancient Rome nine days after they were born and that they wore until they came of age as Roman citizens at around 16 years old. And the remains of a gold ring, deformed by the heat of the cremation, appear to match up with a small piece of inscribed rock crystal called an intaglio. The Greek inscription on the intaglio reads ΑΛΛΑΛΛΗ (Allallé), which may be the surname of the deceased.

The rich and well-preserved cremation tomb has raised a number of questions that archaeologists will try to answer through further analysis. They will study the surviving human bones to try to determine the deceased's sex and age at death. They will also excavate in the area to look for other graves or dwellings that could help them understand why this tomb full of artifacts, including one that suggests Greek heritage, was placed in this part of France.

Roman emperor quiz: Test your knowledge on the rulers of the ancient empire

Archaeologists have recovered a single human skull from the walls of a 2,000-year-old fort in Spain. Their study of the skull reveals that a local soldier was brutally killed by Roman forces, who then decapitated him and placed his head on the walls of a fort as a warning to others.

In the first century B.C., Rome repeatedly waged war against the Cantabri, fierce Celtic warriors who lived in what is now northern Spain, to gain control over the Iberian Peninsula. The Cantabrian Wars (29 to 19 B.C.) were fought in part by the first Roman emperor Octavian (later known as Augustus) himself. During these wars, the Romans prevailed over the Cantabri in the siege of La Loma ("The Hill"), a fortified Celtic town in the modern province of Palencia, in 25 B.C.

During recent excavations at La Loma, archaeologists discovered a single human skull inside the collapsed fort walls. In a study published Nov. 11 in the Journal of Roman Archaeology, the researchers determined that the skull belonged to a defender of the Celtic fort who met an untimely end before becoming a symbol of the Romans' victory.

Just outside the fort's walls, archaeologists recovered hundreds of projectiles, revealing that, in its final hours, La Loma was riddled by storms of Roman arrows. Scattered on the ground were fragments of armor and weapons that appeared to have been damaged in hand-to-hand combat between the Cantabri and the Romans, the researchers wrote. After their success, the Roman troops pulled down the walls, destroying the fort.

The human skull was broken and scattered in the corner of the fort, but it clearly belonged with the layer of debris associated with the collapse of the defensive walls, the researchers noted in the study.

DNA analysis of the skull showed that it came from a man who was likely local to the area, and the researchers estimated that he died at around 45 years old. They did not find any evidence of a grave or the rest of the skeleton.

Given the flaking of the skull bones, their light color, the fragmentary state of the skull and the lack of other bones, the researchers suspect the skull was put out in the elements, rather than buried.

"The skull was broken during the demolition of the walls," Santiago Domínguez-Solera, director of Heroica Archaeology and Cultural Heritage and lead author of the study, told Live Science in an email. "This means that the head was exposed for a few months."

The researchers suspect that this man died while defending the fort and that the Romans deliberately placed his decapitated head on top of the wall during their occupation of the site.

"Afterwards, the head fell next to the wall and was buried in the rubble that was created when the Romans destroyed the fortifications and abandoned their position there," the researchers wrote.

Roman legions often exposed whole corpses and parts of their defeated enemies, especially heads and hands, according to the study. "These punitive acts may have been part of strategies of intimidation," the researchers wrote, with this decapitated head serving as a "war trophy."

But the exact circumstances of the display are unclear.

"We don't know how the head was exposed," Domínguez-Solera said. "There aren't diagnostic marks over the bone surface" that would suggest if it was, for example, impaled on a pike.

More work is planned at La Loma to better understand the vicious siege.

"This year, we found other skull fragments — human ones — in other areas of the [fort's] entrance," Domínguez-Solera said. "We are going to study them for more evidence of punishments."

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The Roman Empire is famous for its arenas like the Colosseum where gladiators fought each other in gory skirmishes. But were any of these gladiators ever women?

Several lines of evidence, including historical records and artistic depictions, suggest that female gladiators did exist in the Roman Empire, but they were much rarer than their male counterparts.

However, this evidence is limited to roughly a dozen texts and inscriptions, and an even smaller number of artifacts that depict them. For instance the Roman senate passed laws in A.D. 11 and A.D. 19 banning upper class women and freeborn women under age 20 from fighting as gladiators. And another text mentions that around A.D. 200, emperor Septimius Severus banned female gladiators because after one show, jokes about the fierceness of the women were "directed at other very prominent women" (translation by Mary Lefkowitz and Maureen Fant).

Who were the female gladiators?

In Rome, women tended to be excluded from politics and could not serve in the military. However, they did have some freedoms, and some ran their own businesses or worked as doctors. They could also own property and make contracts.

But less is known about female gladiators, so it can be difficult to know who they were and how they competed.

That said, the vast majority of male gladiators were enslaved people, and this was probably also true for female gladiators. There were different ways a person could become a slave: they could be enslaved after a war, as punishment for a crime or for unpaid debts, or for other reasons.

"I believe women-gladiators were primarily slaves who committed crimes," Anna Miączewska, a lecturer at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Poland who has extensively researched and written about female gladiators, told Live Science in an email. She noted that another source of female gladiators could have been free women with high debts who were forced to sell their freedom to a gladiator school.

However, there were exceptions. A few male gladiators included people from the upper echelons of society — perhaps most famously the Roman emperor Commodus (ruled from A.D. 176 to 192), who dressed as the god Mercury and made the senate watch his triumphant battles, likely to send a message about his power. Likewise, ancient texts suggest a few women from the upper classes also competed as gladiators.

The ancient Roman writer Tacitus (lived circa A.D. 56 to 120) wrote that in A.D. 63, during the reign of Nero, a large gladiator show was put on by the emperor, during which "many distinguished ladies and senators disgraced themselves in the arena." (Translation by Mary Lefkowitz and Maureen Fant.)

How did female gladiators compete?

Male gladiators tended to wear a helmet and potentially other forms of armor. They competed as specialized fighters, such as a retiarius, who battled with a net and trident. Gladiators did this after some level of training, potentially at a gladiator school. While some male gladiator fights resulted in the loser being killed at the end, not all did, and having gladiators die could be costly to those charged with putting on a show.

There is a lot of uncertainty as to how female gladiators competed and how they were selected and trained. A relief from Halicarnassus in what is now Turkey depicts two female gladiators holding shields and swords with the stage names "Amazon vs Achillia" (names likely based on mythology).

Stephen Brunet, a professor emeritus of classics at the University of New Hampshire, noted in a chapter of the book "A Companion to Sport and Spectacle in Greek and Roman Antiquity" (Wiley, 2013) that the two women are shown wearing armor associated with a "provocator" — a gladiator type that was meant to look somewhat like a Roman soldier. And, just like many male gladiators, the women are shown fighting bare-breasted. The women also don't appear to wear helmets, although it could be that the artist didn't include them, Brunet wrote. An inscription says that the women were "released while still standing" with neither of them being killed.

Another is a statuette of a female gladiator. It shows a female gladiator holding a short, curved dagger called a sica, a type of weapon used by a type of gladiator called a "thraex." However, just like the relief, the female gladiator wears no helmet and wears only a loincloth and a wrapping on her knee.

How were female gladiators selected?

Alfonso Mañas, a researcher at the University of California Berkeley who identified the statuette as a female gladiator in 2011, told Live Science in an email that he suspects that appearances played a sizable role in the selection of female gladiators. Mañas noted that one of the earliest sources to mention female gladiators was Nicolaus of Damascus (lived circa 64 B.C. to A.D. 4), who wrote that the women who were selected to fight were not the strongest or most skilled but rather "the most beautiful." This text indicates that the person sponsoring the gladiator contest had a considerable amount of influence over which women fought.

Mañas said that the textual references often refer to female gladiators performing in shows put on by Roman emperors. The use of female gladiators was likely a "very expensive and exclusive show, strongly associated with the emperor, so that it would be offered on very few occasions," he said.

Female gladiators were likely told to not wear helmets so that their faces could be seen by the audience, Mañas said. He also suspects that they would have been prohibited from fighting to the death, noting that none of the written sources mention a female gladiator dying. Furthermore, no tombstone of a female gladiator has ever been found, despite the more than 1,000 tombstones of male gladiators that have been documented.

In "Rome no one expected a woman to be skilled with weapons, brave in combat, or have to face death by fighting," Mañas said. The rules and perhaps weapons would likely have been modified somewhat to reduce the risk of death, Mañas noted.

Virginia Campbell, a lecturer at The Open University in the U.K. who has studied gladiators extensively, thinks that physical fitness likely played a role in the selection of female gladiators. Because "there is an expense associated with training and keeping gladiators, the selection of women — and men — would at least in part depend on their physical fitness, and ability to fight," Campbell told Live Science in an email. "Gladiators, after all, were meant to entertain, not meant to die, so it would be in the best interest of the [owner] to make smart choices in picking their [fighters]."

Even if beauty was emphasized, some audience members were impressed with the way they fought. The poet Statius (lived A.D. 45 to 96) wrote of the female gladiators fighting in one show that "you would think a band of Amazons was battling by the river Tanais…" (translation by Mary Lefkowitz and Maureen Fant).

Excavations at a Roman fort in England north of Hadrian's Wall have revealed a unique engraved gemstone depicting a grape-harvesting scene from Roman mythology — imagery that's rarely found in northern Europe.

The red stone was likely originally set in a signet ring and used by a Roman man as his personal correspondence stamp, Bob Jackson of the Redesdale Archaeology Group, who has overseen multiple digs at the site, said in a statement. The design is "thought to be unique in Britain and northern Europe," excavation director Richard Carlton, an archaeologist at Newcastle University, said in the statement.

Researchers recently wrapped up the fifth season of excavation at Bremenium, a Roman fort in Northumberland, about 24 miles (39 kilometers) north of Hadrian's Wall. Originally constructed in the late first century A.D., Bremenium was important for military operations in Scotland and for warning the Romans about attacks from the north. After Hadrian's Wall was completed in A.D. 128, Bremenium became a key communications outpost.

Since 2021, archaeological excavation has focused on the structures outside the main fort, which were built and rebuilt several times between the late first and third centuries. Researchers also discovered a rare lime kiln in a previous excavation at Bremenium. It was likely used to produce quicklime — the basis for mortar, plaster and concrete — to construct the fort's ramparts, or defensive walls.

"The results in 2025 add to those made in previous years by confirming the presence of the inner enclosure wall," Carlton said. "Numerous pottery and other items indicate the original buildings were infilled, probably in the third century, with later buildings and yard surfaces."

Among the artifacts uncovered this year were examples of Roman pottery from across the Roman Empire, including an amphora, or clay jug, that was made in northern Spain to transport olive oil to Bremenium, according to the statement. The archaeologists also found a lead sling bullet from a Roman soldier's kit, a votive oil lamp, a lead seal for official documents, several brooches and two engraved gems called intaglios.

The larger intaglio depicts two winged Cupid figures picking grapes from a tree. There is a goat-like creature next to them, stretching itself up on its hind legs. The unusual intaglio is rare for northern Europe, according to Carlton, but it's similar to ones found in northern Italy and Croatia.

"It seems likely that the gem reflects the likely origin of the wearer, who may have come from the Mediterranean," Carlton told the BBC.

"This year's finds are exceptional in both quantity and quality," Jackson said. "The range of pottery and metalwork, especially the amphora and the intact brooches, offer new insights into trade, craftsmanship, and daily life at Bremenium."

The researchers plan to return to Bremenium next year for further excavations at the fort.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 12:15 p.m. ET on Nov. 7 to correct the word "northeastern" to "northern" in a quote.

Roman Britain quiz: What do you know about the Empire's conquest of the British Isles?

An international research team has created a new map of the Roman Empire — and it expands the ancient road network by more than 60,000 miles (100,000 kilometers).

The saying goes, of course, that "all roads lead to Rome." But while it's true that many of the Empire's major cities were linked via main roads to the capital, the secondary roads in the network had not been studied in depth, said Tom Brughmans, an archaeologist at Aarhus University in Denmark and co-author of a study describing the roads that was published Thursday (Nov. 6) in the journal Scientific Data.

"The 200-year research history on Roman roads has focused strongly on these Roman 'highways' if you will, at the expense of our knowledge about the unnamed roads, the 'country lanes,'" Brughmans told Live Science in an email.

Brughmans and colleagues created a new digital atlas of Roman roads in Europe, the Near East and North Africa called Itiner-e to better understand the interconnections within the Roman Empire around its maximum extent in A.D. 150. The Itiner-e platform is open access and, according to the study, includes high-resolution spatial data on Roman roads derived from historical and archaeological information, topographic maps and remote sensing data.

The resulting map includes nearly 186,000 miles (300,000 km) of roads, twice what other maps have. And this immense road network speaks to the power of the Roman Empire.

"This massive, integrated network was a historical game-changer," Brughmans said. "It meant for the first time, a plague, an economic boom, or a new religion could go 'continental' and reshape the world."

One example Brughmans gives is the Antonine Plague, which erupted in A.D. 165 and devastated the Roman Empire, resulting in the deaths of possibly one-quarter of the population.

"By mapping the ancient roads that carried the Antonine Plague, we get a 2,000-year-old case study on the centuries-long societal impact of pandemics," Brughmans said.

Itiner-e is a useful digital tool that will increase experts' understanding of the Roman world, according to Jeffrey Becker, a Mediterranean archaeologist at Binghamton University in New York who was not involved in the study. The authors conducted a thorough review of the data to compile their road dataset, Becker told Live Science in an email.

But there are some gaps in the Itiner-e map, Becker said, which may be the result of the availability of data as well as the difficulty even experts have in recognizing various types of Roman roads in the archaeological record.

Brughmans said that the new dataset "includes nearly 200,000 km of secondary roads, but we expect this number can be increased significantly." So Brughmans and colleagues see their new map as a "call to action," showing other experts where historical gaps remain or where archaeological excavation is needed.

"We know there are many roads we still haven't found yet."

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