News

Nov 01, 2024

This Roman Village was Buried Underground for Centuries. Not Anymore.

These ornate mosaic floors and marble fountains have just been hiding in the dirt, waiting to be revealed. The Roman Empire was not shy about displaying its wealth and success. A group of

These ornate mosaic floors and marble fountains have just been hiding in the dirt, waiting to be revealed.

The Roman Empire was not shy about displaying its wealth and success. A group of archaeologists were recently reminded of this fact when they uncovered a roughly 37-acre Roman-style village on the southeastern tip of Sicily—a locale marked by mosaic floors, colonnaded courtyards, and marble fountains aplenty.

According to a translated statement from the University of Göttingen, during an excavation in the Sicilian province Catania near Vizzini, the team uncovered an individual villa with a mosaic floor that dates back to somewhere between the 2nd and 4th centuries A.D. It turns out that this was just one piece of an entire Roman village.

Found only “slightly below the current surface,” the roughly 100-foot-by-42-foot building is marked by the intricate design. “There is a representative room measuring almost 100 square meters [1,076 square feet],” Johannes Bergemann, professor from the Archaeological Institute at the University of Göttingen, said in a statement, “the floor of which was covered with mosaics. Unfortunately, parts of the mosaic were destroyed by plowing the site.”

Fortunately, there was plenty more evidence of the resplendent community.

The team had been researching the area since 2022, and anomalies in the Earth’s geomagnetic field led them to conduct more in-depth geophysical surveys that showed them where the now-excavated building was located. The measurements also indicate that there are other, somewhat similar buildings existed in the area. “People lived there at high level between the second and around sixth centuries A.D.,” Bergemann said. “There were columns that were made of round bricks, covered with stucco and well painted, similar to those in Pompeii.”

Bermemann said the team found remains of fountains with marble basins, as well as luxury Roman ceramics known as terra sigillata.

The team believes the entire Roman village that once spread across about 37 acres. They wrote that earlier Greek cities were replaced in Roman times by a new settlement system that featured large rural villages with villas. The sites often featured Roman agricultural production facilities that were concentrated on developing large crops. The long-distance trade routes of the Roman Empire allowed for this type of system, and these trade routes also meant that small stacking areas were created in high numbers along the southern coast of Sicily.

“This new settlement system, which was connected to the interior by highways, only existed for a few centuries,” Bergemann said. “The house we discovered near Vizzini is an important testimony to this era.”

Tim Newcomb is a journalist based in the Pacific Northwest. He covers stadiums, sneakers, gear, infrastructure, and more for a variety of publications, including Popular Mechanics. His favorite interviews have included sit-downs with Roger Federer in Switzerland, Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles, and Tinker Hatfield in Portland.

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