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Every year or two I hear of some absolutely astounding archaeological discovery, more often than not taking place in that little sliver of land where Providence decided to place so much of Western history, and that is called Italy. If there is a country that is almost literally paved with gold, Italy is it; one suspects that to dig at almost any spot, if done with care and commitment, would reveal wonders.
IN 1999, the city of Pisa - home of the famous Tower and of Italy's most prestigious university, our equivalent of Oxford, Harvard, Tubingen or Leyden - was digging up a field near the Tower to build a new airport. Suddenly people started realizing that there were more than bits of dirt that they were digging... and when the dimension of what was being found was realized, the airport was quite forgotten.
Ships. The finding of one Roman-age ship is an archaeogical wonder; here there were some thirty, dating from the second century before Christ to the fifth AD, preserved by peculiar fortune by anaerobic silt, that did not allow their wood to perish. They had been swept and piled on top of each other, in a kind of naval Elephants' Graveyard, by successive floods from the river Arno, which to this day is very fond of flooding.
This was almost too much fortune. To excavate, record and preserve this colossal archaeological wealth was almost beyond the resources of the Italian community. Wood is a tremendously difficult material to preserve. But the digs are still ongoing, and at least nine ships dating across seven centuries have been studied.
A sad old tragedy is one of the side results of the ongoing investigation. Under the bulk of one of the ships, which had overturned, the archaeologists found the skeletons of a tall, strong seaman in his forties, and of a little dog like a dachshund. From the position of the bones and other details, archaeologists believe that man and dog were crushed by the ship as the man was trying to save the dog from one of the river-floods I mentioned.
IN 1999, the city of Pisa - home of the famous Tower and of Italy's most prestigious university, our equivalent of Oxford, Harvard, Tubingen or Leyden - was digging up a field near the Tower to build a new airport. Suddenly people started realizing that there were more than bits of dirt that they were digging... and when the dimension of what was being found was realized, the airport was quite forgotten.
Ships. The finding of one Roman-age ship is an archaeogical wonder; here there were some thirty, dating from the second century before Christ to the fifth AD, preserved by peculiar fortune by anaerobic silt, that did not allow their wood to perish. They had been swept and piled on top of each other, in a kind of naval Elephants' Graveyard, by successive floods from the river Arno, which to this day is very fond of flooding.
This was almost too much fortune. To excavate, record and preserve this colossal archaeological wealth was almost beyond the resources of the Italian community. Wood is a tremendously difficult material to preserve. But the digs are still ongoing, and at least nine ships dating across seven centuries have been studied.
A sad old tragedy is one of the side results of the ongoing investigation. Under the bulk of one of the ships, which had overturned, the archaeologists found the skeletons of a tall, strong seaman in his forties, and of a little dog like a dachshund. From the position of the bones and other details, archaeologists believe that man and dog were crushed by the ship as the man was trying to save the dog from one of the river-floods I mentioned.
