Typical of Roman funerary practices of the time, only cremation burials have been found there. They consisted of pyres built over rectangular pits. The deceased's body was placed on the pyre with pottery and grave goods arranged around them. The hot fire burned the logs of the pyre, whitened and cracked the bones, melted glass bottles and bronze artifacts, and everything collapsed into the pit.
Set on the North African coast, Tunisia is home to some of the finest Roman ruins in the Mediterranean. After the fall of Carthage, Rome transformed the region into the prosperous province of Africa, enriched by its fertile plains and bustling cities. This land, shaped by dramatic events that influenced ancient history, has left behind an extraordinary archaeological legacy with ruins scattered across the rolling countryside, largely untouched by mass tourism.
"The fact that it was in Latin that really just gave us pause, right?" said Daniella Santoro, a Tulane University anthropologist. "I mean, you see something like that and you say, 'Okay, this is not an ordinary thing.'" Intrigued and slightly alarmed, Santoro reached out to her classical archaeologist colleague Susann Lusnia, who quickly realized that the slab was the 1,900-year-old grave marker of a Roman sailor named Sextus Congenius Verus.
The inscription reads: D(is) M(anibus)/S(e)x(to) Congenio Vero/mi(liti) cl(assis) p(raetoriae) Mi(senensis) natio(ne) Bes(so)/vixit an(nis) XLII mi(litavit) an(nis)/XXII, Tutela ((triere)) Asc(l)epio/fece(runt) Atilius Carus/et Vettius Longi/nus heredes/b(ene) m(erenti) (To the spirits of the dead for Sextus Congenius Verus, soldier of the praetorian fleet Misenensis, from the tribe (natio) of the Bessi, (who) lived 42 years (and) served 22 in the military, on the trireme Asclepius. Atilius Carus and Vettius Longinus, his heirs, made (this) for him well deserving.)
Bronze objects were usually melted down for later reuse, so it is rare for one of this size to survive. It is the largest bronze artifact from Roman Salzburg found since 1943. The object was unearthed last year during excavations of the Neue Residenz in the historic site, the site of the new Salzburg branch of the Vienna Belvedere Museum.
The remains of a wooden bridge built over 2,000 years ago have been discovered in Aegerten, Switzerland. More than 300 oak piles from the bridge spans over the Zihl river were unearthed, preserved in the waterlogged soil of the silted-over riverbed. Archaeologists had found remains of Roman military structures on both banks of the Zihl 40 years ago, so when construction was planned in the same area, a team from the Archaeological Service of the Canton of Bern excavated the site.
Built around 50 AD, with an internal diameter of 15 m [50 feet], it had to be more than 6 m [20 feet] high to be visible to all those passing through or arriving in the Roman colony of Vienne, particularly from the Rhone River. This shows the importance of the person whose burial place it was, who, even in death, must still have been present in the world of the living.
