
Rome's Subway Expansion Reveals Artifacts From The Ancient Past - ascertain
https://www.npr.org/2018/07/22/630532760/romes-subway-expansion-reveals-artifacts-from-the-ancient-past
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ff_
The really funny thing about doing any construction work in basically any
Italian city is that you already know from the start that there is going to be
several years of delay due to finding ancient stuff...

But it's impossible to dig all of that out (reasons: too big, too disruptive,
no funds, happens everywhere, etc). So what usually happens is: take pictures,
save some artifact, cover with concrete and go on with the works.

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bvc35
What a damn shame.

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drb91
What's the alternative--people stop developing Istanbul, Rome, etc entirely? I
can't say I'm entirely unsympathetic to a population that wants development
over marginally better understanding of places that already experience high
levels of excavation and historical tourism.

~~~
freehunter
I agree. Just because it's old doesn't mean it's valuable. Archaeologists come
in and determine if the area has any historical value or advances our
understanding of the ancient past. If it does, construction stops while the
finds are uncovered. If not, then continue on.

Finding yet another clay pot in Rome, one of the largest centers of population
with one of the longest and most complete historical records of anywhere in
the ancient world, is probably not going to be of much historical value.

In an age where you can buy 10 Roman coins on Amazon for $25 and have them
delivered to your house in two days with Prime shipping, the value of common
ancient Roman artifacts is made abundantly clear.

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pmontra
It's valuable (think about revenues from tourism) but we still have to live
our lives. The ancients built on top of anything was there before. That's why
we have so many archeological layers in Rome.

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sbov
It's not valuable if all they find is standard roman clay pot # 123,312 to
124,312.

There was an article about this when they were building the tunnel in
Istanbul. They did find some significant stuff, but the vast majority of it
was stuff they already had tons of. They literally filled warehouses with the
stuff, and dumped most of it back in because it was not rare or significant.

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weberc2
IIRC there's literally a hill in Rome that is just ancient olive oil amphorae
(clay jars) shards.

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eecc
Monte dei Cocci aka Testaccio -
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Testaccio](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Testaccio)
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testaccio](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testaccio)

Clubbing and nightlife area now, nice place...

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sAbakumoff
In Amsterdam they recently started the new subway line and they put items from
underwater in one of the stations. I can't express enough how cool it looks
like[https://www.google.nl/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/International...](https://www.google.nl/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/International/stone-
axes-cellphones-project-examines-amsterdams-history-
junk/story%3Fid%3D56339929?source=images)

~~~
ngold
That's fun. Neolithic all the way to cell phones. It's a neat reminder how far
we've come and how short our lives are.

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doitLP
I saw a joke headline last time I was in Rome that went something like "C Line
construction halted to excavate ancient remains of C Line construction"

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dsfyu404ed
Interesting. I really like that they're displaying the things they found in
the stations rather than just carting them away to the basement of some
museum.

~~~
toyg
Museums in Rome would throw them out, their basements are _already_ full.

I know it's controversial, but I personally think that there should be the
possibility for the State to sell (or "permanently loan" for money)
significant amounts of minor artifacts to other nation-states. Countries like
the US, Britain or Australia would build academic cathedrals around the
crappiest 1% of the stuff we have to stockpile in Italy.

~~~
carlob
In many cases that is possible when the dig was financed by another
institution. The 4000 yo Egyptian "dioramas" they have on display at the met
have been split between NYC and Cairo, because it was an American-led
archaeological survey that found them.

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psukhedelos
Reminds me of what I consider one of the most beautiful scenes in film from
Federico Fellini's Roma [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wjtst-
Vr87A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wjtst-Vr87A)

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azujus
It’s weird how our great^5 grandchildren will only find treasures in our
dumps, but the cities will still be full of ancient stuff.

~~~
carlob
It's also that the Romans thought they were going to be around forever so they
built everything to last.

If you look at the Colosseum, it looks the way it is because it was willfully
destroyed and used for construction material over centuries: when Rome became
the seat of the Papacy, the Colosseum was remembered as a place where the
early martyrs were slaughtered by wild beasts, not as a nice building to be
preserved for tourists.

On the other hand many Roman bridges throughout Europe still stand and some
are still in use (yes even by cars). But the really amazing case is the
Pantheon, that was turned into a church early on and preserved and restored
for almost 2000 years. It's true that not all we see is original, but the
structural engineering is.

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wtvanhest
The Pantheon is one of the most impressive buildings I have ever seen. The
light coming through the top is just incredible.

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ProfessorLayton
Random tangent: As much as I love living in sunny California, it saddens me
that due to earthquakes, nothing we build here will still be around in 2,000
years.

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wjnqx
That's only because the construction isn't as sturdy. Italy routinely
experiences earthquakes similar in magnitude to California.

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cm2187
Stupid question: how come so much stuff is buried? Tombs of course. But why do
we keep finding other stuff under several meters of earth? It's not like if
there are sand storms in Rome like there are in Egypt. And many of these areas
have been inhabited continuously since ancient Rome.

~~~
garmaine
> how come so much stuff is buried? Tombs of course.

No, that's not the reason. Rather it is the case that through most of human
history new buildings were built on top of the rubble of earlier buildings
destroyed in a fire, sacking, earthquake, or in very early times the simple
accumulation of trash. In many parts of the Middle East finding a lost city is
as easy as looking for a hill that has no geological business being there and
digging. People living in the same place over thousands of years is what makes
the hill.

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justinclift
The straight text version:
[https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=630532760](https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=630532760)

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User23
Southern California faces a similar challenge. There are many interesting
fossils and any sizable work site is going to find something. Usually it just
gets surreptitiously trashed, but occasionally it’s something so awesome the
builders actually follow the law.

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emmelaich
Chrome Canary gives a https warning:

    
    
       NET::ERR_CERT_SYMANTEC_LEGACY
       Subject: www.npr.org
       Issuer: Symantec Class 3 ECC 256 bit EV CA - G2
       Expires on: 17 Nov 2019
       Current date: 27 Jul 2018

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toyg
Sad that this great trove will end up with a name linked to one of the most
shameful pages of Italian history [1], just because postwar politicians in
Rome didn't have the guts to do the right thing and rip colonial-era names
from the map.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Amba_Aradam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Amba_Aradam)

~~~
squarefoot
That is just one of the atrocities my country committed in the past [1]. I
would rather keep these names, in the hope young people who cannot ask their
grandparents anymore dig the terms and get some information before they're
sucked into embracing neo fascist ideologies spread by Facebook groups as it
is happening right now.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_war_crimes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_war_crimes)

