Latest news with #LateAntiquity
Miami Herald
25-06-2025
- Science
- Miami Herald
Remarkable mosaic found in ancient home built into a hill in France. Take a look
On a hill just outside the French Alps, a group of ancient homes have been unearthed. Archaeologists began working on the site looking over the town of Alès in February, and have now revealed the discoveries made there, according to a June 24 news release from the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research. The site dates to between the second and sixth centuries, and at least four homes have been uncovered, partially built into the rock of the hill, archaeologists said. They are well-preserved, archaeologists said, which is not only indicative of the expertise of the builders in their construction, but also in their water management. The walls of the homes are lined with an internal layer of clay that would have prevented water from seeping through limestone banks in the hill and into the homes, particularly during bad weather, archaeologists said. On the clay, there are remnants of wall paintings, though they are now rare and hard to read. One home, with a total area of more than 8,000 square feet, was built into two phases, archaeologists said. Some of the stone used to create the home was part of the earth, while other parts of the building are made from beaten sediment, according to the release. Concrete pavers with small pieces possibly used to create mosaics were also found. On the east side of the building a makeshift rainwater drainage system was built by cutting the ends off amphorae, or vases, and fitting them into one another, archaeologists said. This was likely used to bring water off the roof away from the home. The most remarkable find, however, was discovered in the state room of a domus, or a Roman house built in an urban area and typically occupied by a wealthy family, according to the release. A roughly 12 foot by 15 foot mosaic was laid into the floor in a geometric pattern using black, white and red colors, photos show. The red was a deep shade, archaeologists said, meaning it may have been made from a precious pigment, and analysis will be needed to determine if the color was derived from cinnabar, a mineral like mercury sulfide. There were also a few yellow tiles, which archaeologists called peculiar. Around the main pattern were entire sections of white tiles without any pattern, and they may have been used as smaller alcoves or to denote special arrangements of furniture or a bench, archaeologists said. One side also has a pattern of white crosses on a black background, which likely indicated an opening that could have led to another room that wasn't preserved, according to the release. Studying the organization of the building will confirm its use as a domus, archaeologists said. During the excavations, archaeologists also uncovered 10 graves dating to the Late Antiquity period, or the mid-fifth century to the end of the sixth century, according to the release. Two graves in the same style were found separate from the other 10, archaeologists said. The land, now terraced, had been previously transformed in the 16th and 18th centuries, and the terraces were created and reworked during the 19th century, according to the release. Alès is a town in southern France, just southwest of the Alps. Google Translate was used to translate the news release from the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research.
Jordan Times
15-02-2025
- General
- Jordan Times
From Byzantine to Mamluk: Reinterpreting archaeological record of Gharandal in South Jordan
Columns of the Byzantine church in Gharandal, southern Jordan (Photo courtesy of ACOR) AMMAN – Ceramics from Gharandal constitute an important component of a much larger research project on the social and economic history of Late Antique and early Islamic Jordan and Palestine. "Until recently the dearth of dependable ceramic chrono-typologies crossing the crucial transitional period between Late Antiquity and the early Islamic period has hindered an authoritative analysis of the occupational history of individual sites, and impeded any valid assessment of regional settlement histories," said the professor Alan Walmsley from the Macquarie University in Australia. "Issues of production and trade, cultural regionality and social change were also overlooked, as the data were not able to meet the difficult questions generated by these studies," Walmsley added. In the last two decades, however, great advances have been made in understanding of socio-economic conditions in other parts of Jordan, in no small part due to the establishment of a reliable and stratigraphically linked pottery sequence from excavations at sites such as Amman Citadel, Jerash, Pella and Aqaba. The 1990's were turning point in reassessment of social and cultural conditions in Jordan during the early Islamic period. The absence of any immediate and significant break in the cultural record at the time of the emergence of Islam (633-640 AD) or, as has been recognised more recently, with the overthrow of the Umayyad Dynasty in 750AD, has obliged archaeologists to tackle issues of social continuity and change from a much broader perspective than simple historical 'causes and effect', said Walmsley. "Conventional wisdom, largely based on regional survey work, argues for considerable abandonment of settlements in the lead up to the Islamic expansion and, in effect, the virtual end of settled life on any significant scale south of the Dead Sea -Wadi Rasa divide in the early Islamic period," said the professor. Walmsley added that the region has been dismissed as forgotten, depopulated and marginal; politically and culturally bypassed under the early Caliphate (a view perhaps more descriptive of nineteenth century European perceptions than the situation in the sixth-seventh centuries). Yet, the persistence of the region and its sites in the Muslim and Crusader sources would suggest otherwise, and the Gharandal Archaeological Project seeks to elucidate, from the archaeological record, the nature and extent of urban and rural settlement in Al Jibal during the Late Antique-early Islamic transition. The Gharandal excavations have revealed, through the ceramics and their contexts, the continuity of occupation from Byzantine into Mamluk times while showing the complexities of settlement development that occurred over this period. The pottery from the church fills, with the preponderance of light blooms and decorative combing could easily be mistaken for sixth-century "Byzantine", and could well account for the low representation of early Islamic sites in the regional surveys of south Jordan, the scholar retorted. "Similarly, the characterisation of the first handmade wares and their dating to the late-tenth and eleventh century has not been widely acknowledged," said the professor. "The misallocation of these wares to an amorphous 'Ayyubid-Mamluk' category, or even to the Ottoman period, has probably denied the proper recognition of settlement in this period for south Jordan. Hence very quickly the imagined Byzantine-Mamluk settlement 'gap' for the south is being filled," Walmsley noted.
