Skeleton remains of four people that could date back to the Roman era were unearthed during work on a new water pipeline.
Anglian Water is connecting Boston to Covenham Reservoir in a £40million project to supply the area’s growing population.
Specialists were assessing sites ahead of laying the 63km pipeline when they came across bones of an adult and child, loosley buried in farmland in Stickford.
A spokeman said the bones were ‘more or less in the top soil’.
The first discovery was of an adult and very young child crouched or ‘spooned’. Another two adults were then found nearby and appeared to have been buried lying on their backs. Read more.
Engineers carrying out sewer repairs in Bath have uncovered part of the Roman city walls.
The discovery in Burton Street was made when a large stone block was uncovered nearly 3ft (90cm) below the pavement, a Wessex Water spokesman said.
Further investigations revealed the block was part of the stone wall which dates back to the 4th Century.
“This is a very significant discovery,” said Natalie Doran, an environmental scientist with Wessex Water.
“Bath is an archaeologically rich city, however, discoveries of this significance on our schemes is very unusual. Read more.
Roman-era toiletry sets consisting of tweezers, scrapers and other artifacts have long been interpreted as beauty aids. But it’s possible the tools had a more gruesome use: to treat a type of Chlamydia that infects the eye.
The tools are found across Great Britain and date back to around A.D. 43 to A.D. 410, a time when much of the island was under Roman control. They do bear resemblance to modern-day cosmetic kits, but they’re also similar to tools used in folk treatments of trachoma, the leading cause of preventable blindness around the world today, said Wendy Morrison, a graduate archaeology student at the University of Oxford.
“Trachoma is a disease which has plagued humans for millennia,” Morrison told LiveScience. “We have ethnographic examples from modern Africa and historical examples from ancient India that show utensils, such as tweezers and rasps, were used to pluck in-turned eyelashes and to scour away the afflicted eyelids.” Read more.
A restored Roman cockerel figurine is the best result from a Cirencester dig in decades, archaeologists have said.
The enamelled object, which dates back as far as AD100, was unearthed during a dig in 2011 at a Roman burial site in the town.
It has now returned from conservation work and finders Cotswold Archaeology said it “looks absolutely fantastic”.
The 12.5cm bronze figure was discovered inside a child’s grave and is thought to have been a message to the gods.
It is believed that the Romans gave religious significance to the cockerel which was known to be connected with Mercury. Read more.
ARCHAEOLOGISTS have praised builders for helping them save historic Roman finds in Flint.
Anwyl Construction halted work on the Croes Atti housing development after uncovering evidence of a Roman era industrial site – including a well-preserved section of Roman road dating back about 2,000 years.
The area was cordoned off for three weeks while experts from Ewloe-based Earthworks Archaeology, backed by Anwyl Construction, Welsh historic buildings organisation Cadw and the Clwyd Powys Archaeological Trust, carried out a survey.
As well as the Roman road archaeologists also found buildings where lead mined on nearby Halkyn Mountain was smelted before being shipped, probably by barge, down the River Dee to Chester. Read more.
Shimmering as if still lit by the Mediterranean sun, two spectacular Roman marble panels have been reunited at the British Museum for the first time in almost 2,000 years.
Both come from a seaside mansion in Herculaneum, the town overwhelmed by a torrent of boiling mud from Vesuvius, when the wind changed direction 12 hours after Pompeii had already choked to death. They will be seen in the most eagerly awaited archaeological exhibition in decades, on life and death in the Roman towns when it opens at the museum later this month.
The remains of the owner of the palatial villa may still lie on the ancient shoreline, now half a mile inland. In AD79 the sea was the beautiful view that his sumptuously decorated room looked out on, with its fourth wall open to the sea. Read more.
A mosaic featuring an Eros figure fishing on horse has been found in the southern province of Adana’s Yumurtalık district. The half fish-half horse Eros, which is called Hippocampus in Greek mythology, is claimed to be the one and only such mosaic in the world.
Made up of marble, glass and stone, the mosaic is estimated to date back to the late Roman or early Byzantine era.
The Adana Museum Directorate has initiated archaeological excavations in the region where the mosaic was discovered. Read more.
Hoards of valuable materials, particularly coins, are a common and rapidly growing class of discovery across the Roman Empire. While these are usually seen as having been deposited for safe keeping, other explanations for this activity are also possible.
A new study has begun by the British Museum and University of Leicester, supported by an Arts and Humanities Research Council grant of £645K for a 3-year project on “Crisis or continuity? The deposition of metalwork in the Roman world: what do coin hoards tell us about Roman Britain in the 3rd century AD?”
There has been little explicit discussion or research on why Roman coin hoards were buried, why hoards were not recovered in antiquity, or what they tell us when studied as a group. Read more.
