Friday Archaeology Blogging

Well, a couple of things this week. It seems the past month or so has produced a couple of finds that could be filed under the "famous lost sites" category. I'll deal with the most recent one first:

Ancient Welsh city found
14/8/2006

Caer Caradoc at Mynydd y Gaer, Glamorgan, is one of the most important locations in all of ancient British history. It is the fabled fortress city of King Caradoc 1, son of Arch, who fought the Romans from 42-51AD.

Caradoc had some success against the Romans, fighting a guerrilla campaign for a number of years before he was betrayed by the queen of a neighbouring tribe, and arrested. Unusually, his life was spared by the emperor Claudius, and by all accounts he lived out his life with his family in Italy. He is sadly overlooked as a historical figure, with most of the credit for opposing the Romans in Britain going to Boudicca, whose revolt happened more than a decade later.


Caradoc

I would point out here that so far, the site has only been identified from aerial photographs, so hopefully they're intending to get in there and dig. Apparently, they're basing the identification of the site as Caradoc's city on toponomy and ancient records, so excavation is going to be necessary to confirm it.

Moving along then, to another "famous" discovery:

Augustus' birthplace believed found
Posted 7/20/2006 5:51 PM ET

ROME (AP) — A team of archaeologists announced Wednesday they have uncovered part of what they believe is the birthplace of Rome's first emperor Augustus.


Augustus

This one's a bit more dubious. What they've found, in fact, is part of fairly elegant house on the Palatine Hill, in Rome. There is, so far, no evidence whatsoever that Augustus was actually born there; in fact, there is some debate over whether he was born in Rome at all (the other possibility is Velitrae). However, a house on the Palatine that survived the Great Fire of July 19, A.D. 64 and the subsequent rebuilding is in itself an interesting find, whether the future emperor was born there or not.

Lastly, in a bit of follow-up news, in an earlier "Friday Archaeology Blogging", I described the site of a purported pyramid in Bosnia as "unquestionably something, and a pretty damned impressive something at that." Not so, apparently:

Bosnia "Pyramid" Is Not Human-Made, U.K. Expert Says
Sean Markey
for National Geographic News

June 13, 2006
A war of words continues to rage over the alleged discovery of an ancient pyramid in Bosnia.

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Speaking at a press conference in Sarajevo, Anthony Harding [President of the European Association of Archaeologists] told reporters the pyramid-shaped hill was a natural phenomenon.

"My opinion and the opinion of my colleagues is what we saw was entirely geological in nature," the AFP news agency quoted him as saying.

So, basically, it's a hill, and I'm an idiot... :)

Short Friday Archaeology Blogging

We gots pyramids!!!!!!

Indiana Jones of the Balkans and the mystery of a hidden pyramid
By Nick Hawton in Visoko, Bosnia

DRIVE 20 miles northwest of Sarajevo through the mountains of central Bosnia and you enter the broad Visoko valley, dissected by the meandering Bosna River. Beyond the river sits the town of Visoko, watched over by its minarets. And beyond Visoko rises an extraordinary triangular hill, 700ft (213m) high and looking for all the world like an ancient pyramid.



"Pyramid" can be one of those "wince" words for archaeologists, because mentioning it does tend to bring out the strangeness. The fact that we have pyramids in both the old and new worlds has prompted a large number of people who ought to know better to suggest that they were built by the same cultures. This misses the point. A pyramid is an extremely logical and stable shape for a large construction, being wider at the bottom than it is at the top, and the mere fact that multiple cultures built them is not proof that those cultures were talking to each other.

Anyway, to return to our Bosnian pyramid. There's been no real evidence brought forward for what sort of date it might have (although ludicrous numbers like 12,000 years ago are being hurled around), which is not a good sign for the overall professionalism of the excavation. Nor, indeed, has there been any concrete proof that it's actually a pyramid rather than, say, a bunch of tunnels cut into a pre-existing hill. However, it is unquestionably something, and a pretty damned impressive something at that.