Association for Roman Archaeology

Rare Roman altars acquired for the nation will go on display in the autumn | National Museums Scotland News Two spectacular stone altars from a Roman fort near Edinburgh have been acquired for the National Collection ahead of a major exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland. The rare carvings are among...

This will be interesting to see
media.nms.ac.uk/news/rare-ro...
#history
#archaeology
#scotland
#romans
#edinburgh

A big fat view of the north wing of Fishbourne roman palace including walkways, mosaics, and happy visitors. And crucially no insanity whatsoever.

We're happy to announce that we are the last place on earth that hasn't gone *absolutely insane* and are open for visitors.

(This is a time-limited offer)

The ‘Severan Tondo’ depicting Septimius Severus, Julia Domna, and their sons Caracalla, and the scratched out face of his co-heir, Geta. Painted on wood, the Imperial portrait dates to around 200 AD, and is now part of the collections at the Altes Museum in Berlin. #Woodensday

Oh my god! No Friend to This House is one of Time’s ‘Books You Should Read in March’! How fantastic. And they’re right, US readers, you SHOULD 😁

time.com/7381423/best...

#OnThisDay - 4 March - AD 51: thought to be the date Nero received the title 'Princeps Iuventutis' - 'Leader of the Next Generation'. Tacitus (Annals 12.41) calls this a 'sycophancy of the Senate'. #History 🏺

Image: RIC Claudius 76; British Museum (BNK,R.9). Link - numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric....

Imperatore Caesare divi Hadriani filio / divi Traiani nepote divi Nervae pronepo/te T(ito) Aelio Hadriano Antonino Augusto Pio / co(n)s(ule) IIII tribuniciae potestatis XXI / L(ucius) Matuccius Fuscinus legatus Augusti pr(o) / pr(aetore) consul designatus patronus col(oniae) d(ecreto) d(ecurionum) p(ecunia) To the Emperor Caesar, son of the deified Hadrian, grandson of the deified Trajan, great-grandson of the deified Nerva, Titus Aelius Hadrianus Antoninus Augustus Pius, consul for the fourth time, holding tribunician power for the twenty-first time. Lucius Matuccius Fuscinus, imperial legate with praetorian authority, consul-designate, patron of the colony, by decree of the town council, with public funds (set this up).

#EpigraphyTuesday - Building/dedicatory inscription in the Forum of Thamugadi (Timgad, Algeria) dedicated to Antoninus Pius and set up by consul designatus Lucius Matuccius Fuscinus. Dated AD 158/9.

CIL 08, 17858
edcs.hist.uzh.ch/en/document?...

The picture shows two dolls with movable shoulders, elbows, hips and knee joints. The legs of both dolls are partially broken off. One doll's arm is almost completely missing. The limbs and torso are very long, the breasts small. The faces are largely destroyed. The hair is combed back behind the ears, reaching down to the shoulders at the nape. The ivory, which is actually white, has turned brown over time.

Beloved #toys: a pair of #Roman ivory #dolls with articulated arms and legs found in a tomb of a little #girl from a wealthy family in Emona, Ljubljana/Slovenia.

The majority of the dolls in Roman times were made of less valuable materials such as clay, wood or linen. 🧵1/2

🏺 #archaeology

YouTube video by Dan Snow's History Hit Caesar's Disastrous Invasion Of Britain

youtu.be/F9Oc_kAmi-E?...

Free content alert! My new pod with the ace Dan Snow and History Hit about Caesar and Britain! If you have a mo, enjoy!

@jimb42.bsky.social @davidebb.bsky.social @alexharvv.bsky.social @maltonmuseum.bsky.social @romanarchaeouk.bsky.social @penandswordbooks.bsky.social

#mosaicmonday
Bath

Bonus post no. 1 for this #MosaicMonday: FREE online symposium on mosaics, this Saturday 7 March, 13.50-17.30 UK time:
Aquileia!
Hammam-Lif!!
Scarborough!!!
ALL WELCOME
1/2

FLOOR MOSAIC WITH TRITON AND NEREID, C. 150 CE. THE BRITISH MUSEUM Between 1857 and 1860 a novice archæologist, Nathan Davis, undertook excavations in the ruins of ancient Carthage on behalf of the British Foreign Office, receiving £1000 per annum for his discoveries, which the local Bey permitted to be exported. This was part of an imperialist competition with the equally marauding French for collecting antiquities in a strange race which would make a smashing movie. Here we see a floor mosaic from a Roman domus, perhaps itself a border for a larger mosaic, showing a triton reaching back toward a Nereid riding on his serpentine back. She seems to be having second thoughts. A shawl billows over her head, the "velificatio" that indicates her divine nature. Above their heads is a yellow border between two black lines, and then a wide frame with a guilloche between two dentillated strips. The same frame can be seen below, with a complex braid instead of the guilloche.

This #MosaicMonday we're at the #BritishMuseum to see a #mosaic from #Roman #Carthage, c. 150 CE, where the usual flirtation between a #triton and a #Nereid doesn't seem to be going well, but the complex #frame takes equal attention: #guilloches, #braids, #dentils. Fancy. #AncientBluesky 🏺

#MosaicMonday
Construction on a Supermarket screeches to a halt after workers uncovered an #ancient #Roman Villa With Mosaic-Tile Floors. Archaeologists excavated the site on Warrington Road in Olney, Buckinghamshire. #Archaeology #RomanBritain #History
📸 Oxford Archaeology.

Part of a hand-coloured engraving of a Roman mosaic showing a boar in profile running to the right, flanked by trees.

For this #MosaicMonday, the adorably perky boar from the Withington Orpheus mosaic. The original can now be seen in
@coriniummuseum.bsky.social. 🐗😍

#MosaicMonday - Mosaic in the House of the Planetarium in Italica (Spain) with busts of the planetary deities who gave their names to the days of the week.

In the centre is Venus. Anticlockwise from bottom centre are Jupiter, Saturn, Helios or Sol, Luna or Selene, Mars, and Mercury.

My photo shows the so-called ‘Trier Gold Treasure’ in a museum display case. It is a Roman coin hoard made up of some 2,650 gold aurei. The small round gold coins are spread randomly in a dense pile across a light-coloured display case surface. To the upper right of the coin mound is the broken bowl-shaped bottom of the original copper alloy vessel that held the hoard. The metal is coloured green with corrosion. Several gold coins are scattered inside the bowl. In the lower left corner of the display case is another large, irregular fragment of the original container. Museum information label: In 1993, a bronze vessel with 2650 Roman gold coins (aurei) is discovered in Trier. It is the largest Roman gold coin treasure ever found. The Aureus was in the 1st and 2nd Century the standard coin of the Roman gold minting with an average weight of 7.27 g, with a very high fineness of approx. 980/1000. The coins depict 29 different emperors, empresses or relatives of the imperial house. The oldest coins were minted between 63 and 64 AD, the youngest between 193 and 196 AD. The coins were inside the vessel, which was accidentally discovered by an excavator, rolled up in leather bags. The bags were decorated with leather straps and closed enamel seal capsules. The treasure revealed numerous secrets in its scientific processing: it probably did not represent private assets, but a state treasury that was carefully managed and over a longer period of time and enlarged. During a civil war, the gold coins were finally buried in a cellar in 196 AD and then fell into oblivion. Presumably the former administrator of the treasury took his knowledge of the hiding place with him to the grave.

The Trier Gold Hoard!

The largest #Roman gold coin hoard ever found!

More than 2,650 Roman aurei, weighing 18.5 kg, were discovered inside a bronze vessel wrapped in leather bags, during construction work in 1993. The coins date from 63 AD to 196 AD.

Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier 📷 by me

The Roman triumphal arch at Orange in France

A well-preserved Roman leather shoe with elaborate cutout patterns. The design features a high ankle and open section

An adorable #Roman shoe, made for a #baby too young to walk. The shoe imitates the footwear of Roman soldiers (caligae). The cut-out design would have shown off the kid’s socks!

From Bordeaux, dating 1st/2nd AD.

📷 Bordeaux, Musée d’Aquitaine

🏺 #archaeology

#MosaicMonday with this Mosaic of the Seasons in Palazzo Massimo.

It dates to the 4th-5th Centuries AD and was purchased from the antiquities market, with a provenance that it was discovered on the Via Appia Nuova.

#AncientBlueSky🏺

3c mosaic depicting a peacock from the House of Dionysus in Paphos #mosaicmonday

#MosaicMonday
2019 in Newport #Archaeologists discovered a #Roman settlement, made up of three stone buildings, thought to date back to somewhere between the 2nd and 4thC AD.
It's thought that a well-made road and complex water culvert system were also on the site.
#Archaeology

Image shows a floor mosaic at #FishbourneRomanPalace near to #Chichester UK, where the occupants of what is a huge villa had decided to have a new floor covering (another floor mosaic) at some point, which automatically was added on top! A large surrounding margin in red-terracotta coloured tessellae, with partial upper mosaic showing an image of Medusa in a centrepiece, and mostly black and white pattern of tiles across the remainder of the floor. In the centre, the flooring shows a second layer of mosaic tiles approximately 1 inch (2.5 cm) below the other, partially-exposed with a black and white graphical design. Below this layer appears to be the earth layer.

#MosaicMonday has come around again. Always impressed with the Romans way of doing things… this photo is showing a floor within @romanpalace.bsky.social where the first mosaic was covered over with another floor mosaic… just when you think you’ve found one, you come across its predecessor too!

#MosaicMonday

#Roman mosaic from a villa in East Coker (southwest England). The object dates to the 4th century CE. On the mosaic, we see two hunters carrying a hunted deer and a hunting dog.
#History #artwork
#Archaeology #RomanBritain

Book cover with painting of a mosaic showing Orpheus in the centre surrounded by animals.

Bonus post no. 2 for this #MosaicMonday: a new book on mosaics is always exciting, and this one by Steve Cosh - which is about to be published - should be illustrated with lots of lovely pictures. Looking forward to getting my copy soon! 1/2

Mosaic of the months depicting March, Coin and sculptures of Mars god of war

Mosaic of the months depicting March, Coin and sculptures of Mars god of war

Mosaic of the months depicting March, Coin and sculptures of Mars god of war

Mosaic of the months depicting March, Coin and sculptures of Mars god of war

Happy #March — or mensis Martius!
The #Kalends of March marked the original #Roman New Year. The sacred fire was renewed 🔥 and the farming, sailing & military seasons began.
Named for #Mars, god of war & legendary father of Romulus & Remus, making him a divine ancestor of the Roman people.

Depiction of a woman and child on a medallion; statuette and statue of JUNO

Depiction of a woman and child on a medallion; statuette and statue of JUNO

Depiction of a woman and child on a medallion; statuette and statue of JUNO

Happy Matronalia! Ancient festival celebrated on 1st Mar in honour of Juno Lucina, #Roman goddess of childbirth & motherhood. Women took part in rituals at Juno's temple, they were allowed to wear their hair loose & received gifts from their daughters & husbands.
Household slaves had the day off.

Three connected cups from Roman Aldborough in Yorkshire (Isurium Brigantum). Dating to the second century AD, the cups were possibly used as part of a religious ceremony. 📸 My own. #RomanBritain #Aldborough

Roman mosaic depicting a grey dolphin with red beak, tail and whiskers, swimming up and out of shot

A sassy dolphin with flamboyant red feather costume vibe for #MosaicMonday

Detail from a 2nd century #Roman floor found in Fordington High Street #Dorchester 1927

Conserved by Cliveden Conservation, the cheeky chappie can today be admired in the excellent @dorsetmuseum.bsky.social

📷 Sept 2023

The Roman priesthood of the Salii, devoted to Mars, celebrated the beginning and end of the war season, in March and October. In the opening of the war season the sacred shields of the city of Rome were carried in procession and beat with sticks. End of 2nd/beginning of 3rd c AD #MosaicMonday

Mosaic of lion and cupids. The lion is at the centre of the mosaic and around him are erotes and maenads. The scene is outside and there are various vessels in the landscape hinting at a revelry most likely connected with Dionysus/Bacchus. Photo credit to Giuseppe Ciaramella. The mosaic is held the MAN Napoli, inventory number 10019.

Mosaic of lion and cupids. The lion is at the centre of the mosaic and around him are erotes and maenads. The scene is outside and there are various vessels in the landscape hinting at a revelry most likely connected with Dionysus/Bacchus. Photo credit to Giuseppe Ciaramella. The mosaic is held the MAN Napoli, inventory number 10019.

Mosaic of lion and cupids. The lion is at the centre of the mosaic and around him are erotes and maenads. The scene is outside and there are various vessels in the landscape hinting at a revelry most likely connected with Dionysus/Bacchus. Photo credit to Giuseppe Ciaramella. The mosaic is held the MAN Napoli, inventory number 10019.

Mosaic of lion and cupids. The lion is at the centre of the mosaic and around him are erotes and maenads. The scene is outside and there are various vessels in the landscape hinting at a revelry most likely connected with Dionysus/Bacchus. Photo credit to Giuseppe Ciaramella. The mosaic is held the MAN Napoli, inventory number 10019.

✨A lion with Erotes and maenads✨

This scene has the feeling of a chaotic gathering, which might be because Dionysus (Bacchus) the god of wine is involved. The lion takes centre stage, but the various Erotes and maenads surround the lion making for quite a party.

#MosaicMonday #AncientRome

🏛 Spectacular mosaics have been uncovered in a large villa located in the Roman town of Carsulae, Umbria.

💥 📰 Read more in the latest A Whole Lot of History ⤵️

open.substack.com/pub/historyh...