COOL ARCHEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES FROM 2024

[Ocatarinetabellatchitchix]

1) At the beginning of the year, a farmer discovered two Roman graves while plowing a field in northern Bulgaria. Archaeologists from the Veliko Tarnovo Regional Museum of History dated the graves to the 3rd century A.D. Both of the brick graves had been lined with plaster and covered with large slabs of limestone.
 

The remains of a man and a woman between the ages of 45 and 60 at the time of death were found in the larger tomb, which measures about 10 feet long. They were buried with jewelry made of glass beads and gold, six coins dated to between 200 and 225 AD, a lamp, a leather shoe, and vessels made of ceramic and glass. Three of the glass vessels were lacrimaria, or small flasks for collecting the tears of the mourners. The smaller grave contained the remains of a child aged between 2 and 3 years old at the time of death. A bronze medallion depicting the Roman emperor Caracalla, who ruled from 198 to 217, was recovered from this grave. Archaeologists believe the deceased may have been members of the same family, but DNA analysis of samples of the bones has not yet been conducted.

 

2) A rare haul of 27 silver Roman coins dated between 94 and 74 BC has been discovered on the remote island of Pantelleria (Sicily) in September 2024. The discovery was made during a cleaning and restoration project by a team of archaeologists from the University of Tuebingen in Germany. It was found in the Acropolis, part of the Archaeological Park of Selinunte, Cave di Cusa and Pantelleria, which is one of the largest such sites in the Mediterranean and includes the remains of an ancient Greek colony founded in the 7th century BC.

The discovery was on the same site where 107 Roman silver coins had been unearthed in 2010 and not far from where the three famous imperial statue heads of Caesar, Agrippina and Titus had been found a few years earlier. The coins would have been minted in Rome and date back to the Republican age, the same period as the first find. Some coins appeared in the loose soil after recent heavy rains while the others were found under a rock during the excavations and have already been cleaned and inventoried.

 

3) Metal detectorists discovered a cache of ancient coins in a field in eastern Poland in last July. Three of the coins are Roman denarii minted between 138 and 161. These coins bear a portrait of the emperor Antoninus Pius.

Another silver dinarius is struck with the face of his wife, Faustina the Elder, dated to 141 AD. The bust of the emperor Marcus Aurelius has been identified on another denarius dated to 174. A piece of one coin, which also bears the face of Antoninus Pius and has been dated to between 146 and 152, had been cut away, perhaps during a trade transaction. A rare Roman denarius, twice the usual size, bears the face of the empress Herennia Cupressenia Etruscilla, minted between 249 and 251. A quarter of this coin had also been cut off. Some of the coins in the cache have been identified as counterfeits of Roman coins made by Germanic Visigoths. Several tools, metal artifacts, and pieces of pottery were also recovered. 

 

4) (Not talking about coins here, but IMHO a pretty cool discovery). Researchers have used X-ray and CT scans to study a 30-pound block of corroded Roman chain mail that was unearthed in a settlement outside a legionary fortress in modern-day Bonn, Germany.

The team discovered that the hoard consists of two nearly complete sets of armor and parts of two others, suggesting that it was a stockpile intended to be used by local civilian craftspeople to repair Roman mail coats. “This is the first clear evidence that mail armor was being repaired outside a Roman military installation,” said archaeologist Martijn A. Wijnhoven of the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences. The discovery shows the extent to which Roman soldiers stationed on the periphery of the empire relied on local labor to help maintain their equipment. Read the original scholarly article about this research here.

 

5) Nearly 3,000 poorly preserved coins were discovered by a metal detectorist in the Westerwald mountain range (Germany), in an area outside the borders of the Roman Empire and any known settlements of ancient Germanic tribes.

The coins were unearthed in October 2024 by archaeologists who also recovered more than 200 unidentified thin silver fragments decorated with geometric designs from the site. The cache had been placed in a ceramic pot and hidden between two rocks. It appears that most of the 100 coins identified to date depict either a Roman or Gallic emperor on one side. The Gallic Empire broke away from Rome between 260 and 274 AD and included what are now France, Belgium, Spain, and parts of Germany and Italy. The oldest coins show Roman emperor Gordianus III, who ruled from 238 to 244. The newest bear an image of the Gallic emperor Victorinus, who ruled from 269 to 271. Some of the coins were minted in Rome, but most of them were minted in Cologne, which was part of the Gallic Empire. The hoard was probably buried in the early 270s. Looking forward to see if rare specimens will be identified in the coming months…

[panzerman]

Nice thread/ thanks for detailed photos/ history/ much appreciated.

 

John

[Postvmvs]

Thanks for taking the time to share. I am of course partial to #5 and the Gallic coin hoard found outside the Roman border. Lower left coin is still encrusted, but there is no hiding that it is Marius!

11 hours ago, Ocatarinetabellatchitchix said:

 

 

[CPK]

Very cool finds! Thanks for sharing.

Incidentally, on #3, that first denarius is of Lucius Verus, not Antoninus Pius.