Rome's Subway Expansion Reveals Artifacts From The Ancient Past - Slashdot

Rome's Subway Expansion Reveals Artifacts From The Ancient Past - Slashdot
Close
binspam
dupe
notthebest
offtopic
slownewsday
stale
stupid
fresh
funny
insightful
interesting
maybe
offtopic
flamebait
troll
redundant
overrated
insightful
interesting
informative
funny
underrated
descriptive
typo
dupe
error
101740392
story
All roads may lead to Rome, but once you get there, good luck taking the subway. The sprawling metropolis is expanding its mass transit system --
a sluggish process made even slower as workers keep running into buried ancient ruins
. From a report:
"I found some gold rings. I found glasswork laminated in gold depicting a Roman god, some amphoras," says Gilberto Pagani, a bulldozer operator at the Amba Aradam metro stop, currently under construction not far from the Colosseum. Pagani is part of an archaeological team at the site, a certified archaeological construction worker trained to excavate, preserve and build in cities like Rome, with thousands of years of civilization buried beneath the surface. The presence of ancient artifacts underground is a daunting challenge for urban developers. For archaeologists, it's the opportunity of a lifetime. "I think it's the luckiest thing that's ever happened to me, professionally speaking," says Simona Morretta, the state archaeologist in charge of the Amba Aradam site. "Because you never get the chance in a regular excavation to dig so deep. That's how we've found architectural complexes as important as this."
You may like to read:
Some Colleges Cautiously Embrace Wikipedia
CDC Changes Webpage To Say Vaccines May Cause Autism, Revising Prior Language
US Formally Withdraws From WHO
Ultra-Processed Foods Should Be Treated More Like Cigarettes Than Food, Study Says
CDC Data Confirms US is 2 Months Away From Losing Measles Elimination Status
Scientists Warn US Will Lose a Generation of Talent
People Like Getting Thank You Notes, Research Finds
This discussion has been archived.

No new comments can be posted.
Rome's Subway Expansion Reveals Artifacts From The Ancient Past
More
Rome's Subway Expansion Reveals Artifacts From The Ancient Past
Comments Filter:
All
Insightful
Informative
Interesting
Funny
The Fine Print:
The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Re:Work arounds
Score:
, Interesting)
by
omnichad
( 1198475 )
writes:
on Sunday July 22, 2018 @12:31PM (
#56990304
Homepage
I don't think everyone's treating this as a problem to be solved. Maybe not even most people. I'm sure a lot of people take it as a matter of national pride that they have so much advanced civilization buried beneath their feet and love that it is being preserved.
Parent
Share
Re:Work arounds
Score:
, Interesting)
by
quantaman
( 517394 )
writes:
on Sunday July 22, 2018 @01:32PM (
#56990572
I don't think everyone's treating this as a problem to be solved. Maybe not even most people. I'm sure a lot of people take it as a matter of national pride that they have so much advanced civilization buried beneath their feet and love that it is being preserved.
It's an opportunity more than a problem.
Most time when you build a tunnel for a subway all you get out of it is a big hole.
Rome is getting a bunch of ancient artifacts out of the deal, and all it costs them is a longer schedule and the associated costs.
Parent
Share
Re:Work arounds
Score:
, Interesting)
by
Brandano
( 1192819 )
writes:
on Sunday July 22, 2018 @07:52PM (
#56992006
I live in Rome.
It may be an opportunity.... but we have literally hundreds of thousands of similar opportunities all over the place. and while I agree that these are precious artefacts that ought to be studied and made available to the public to be seen, the truth is that there's no funding for that, and so they mostly get buried back to preserve them. This while the infrastructure works are delayed for decades, to nobody's advantage. I mean, it's Rome. There's bound to be Roman artefacts, since Romans have lived here for the past few thousands of years.
Parent
Share
Re:
Score:
by
Anonymous Coward
writes:
No one is forced to live in a particular city. If one wants to live in the (gorgeous) open-air museum that Rome is, but cannot afford to live in the central part of the city, he must take into account that daily commuting will take a little longer than usual, because the subway network cannot be - and will never be - as dense as in other cities. Surely in San Francisco, Berlin or Tokyo you can commute faster, but you also cannot see the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain or Piazza di Spagna. Different people ha
Re:
Score:
by
quantaman
( 517394 )
writes:
I live in Rome.
It may be an opportunity.... but we have literally hundreds of thousands of similar opportunities all over the place. and while I agree that these are precious artefacts that ought to be studied and made available to the public to be seen, the truth is that there's no funding for that, and so they mostly get buried back to preserve them. This while the infrastructure works are delayed for decades, to nobody's advantage. I mean, it's Rome. There's bound to be Roman artefacts, since Romans have lived here for the past few thousands of years.
Yeah, ideally the archaeologists would get some additional funding so they could help compensate for the increased construction costs though that doesn't really work politically.
Which reminds me, I was originally gonna write "priceless artifacts" in my original post but then I thought better of it, turns out
with good reason
[www.ebay.ca].
Re:
Score:
by
dargaud
( 518470 )
writes:
Yeah, I used to live in Rome too. I worked in a crumbling laboratory. When we finally did get money to build a new one, we did and it was great, then at the end of construction the road was built... and hit a Roman villa and cisterns. It delayed the opening of the new lab by 5 years, while the old one crumbled completely. When we finally moved into the new one, everything had been stolen inside: toilets, doors, windows, ceiling tiles, even entire floors... Back to square one.
Re:
Score:
by
fuzzywig
( 208937 )
writes:
"Most time when you build a tunnel for a subway all you get out of it is a big hole."
Not so much, most times when you dig a tunnel you get archaeology (as well as a hole). Eg,
London
[thameslink...amme.co.uk],
Amsterdam
[belowthesu....amsterdam],
Mexico City
[latinamericanstudies.org].
LA
[phys.org] etc..
It's almost harder to find a metro/subway/underground tunnel that
didn't
find interesting archaeology, provided that archaeologists were allowed in.
Just hope that your new subway project
doesn't run into an old plague pit.
[bbc.co.uk]
Re:
Score:
by
greenbird
( 859670 )
writes:
I was recently in Rome and the primary thing I got was the locals lamenting the crumbling infrastructure including the decaying and inadequate public transportation. One running joke was be careful taking the bus since they tend to spontaneously combust. Although I'm sure there was a certain pride in living in the Eternal City and desire for preserving that history, trying to survive day to day tends to take priority over that.
Re:
Score:
by
Anonymous Coward
writes:
It depends on the locals you ask to. Surely those who live in the suburbs and need daily commuting might be pissed off, but I can hardly imagine the wealthy people who live close to the Trevi Fountain complaining about public transportation, let alone preferring to level down the fountain itself to get a new subway station.
Rome wasn't built in a day
Score:
, Funny)
by
jfdavis668
( 1414919 )
writes:
on Sunday July 22, 2018 @12:30PM (
#56990302
And now we have the proof.
Share
Hardly surprising
Score:
, Insightful)
by
OneHundredAndTen
( 1523865 )
writes:
on Sunday July 22, 2018 @12:46PM (
#56990360
I'd bet that in Rome you cannot dig anywhere without stumbling on some archaeological finding.
Share
Re:Hardly surprising
Score:
, Interesting)
by
Ungrounded Lightning
( 62228 )
writes:
on Sunday July 22, 2018 @01:36PM (
#56990594
Journal
I'd bet that in Rome you cannot dig anywhere without stumbling on some archaeological finding.
What was garbage, obsolete rubble, or misplaced trinkets millenia ago is now valuable information about lost or corrupted history.
Parent
Share
Re:
Score:
by
Anonymous Coward
writes:
Not with the same frequency as in Rome. You can name one, two, maybe three archeological sites for every major city in the european continent. In Rome, you can basically name one per every street.
Re:
Score:
by
mikael
( 484 )
writes:
It's like that in a lot of cities. I once went on one of Edinburgh's Ghost Tours". Mostly it was walking around what are technically the foundation levels of old buildings. But the architects had actually built up an entire level street over several valleys. So they had excavated the old topsoil and dug out hundreds of thousands of stone blocks to make arches, then built a road on top of what were now basement levels. This also helped to preserve old monuments like the original village road and well, which
Re:
Score:
by
Anonymous Coward
writes:
It's like that in a lot of cities.... Edinburgh... Paris...
Not really, not at the same massive frequency as in Rome. There can be more archeological findings in a single Roman square than in all of Paris and Edinburgh put together. That's really not the same thing.
Yeah, Cato the callow. Carthage Must be Destroyed
Score:
by
Ungrounded Lightning
( 62228 )
writes:
In about 2000 years archaeological robots will be digging through the ruins of a federal prison and they'll uncover Donald TRUMP's bones!
Yeah, yeah, Cato the Callow. And Carthage Must be Destroyed, too. Oh, wait: It WAS. By Rome, even.
No matter what your professors told you, it wasn't Cato the Elder's incessant injection of flamage of Carthage into discussions of unrelated subjects in his (the original) forum that did them in. It was their behavior the next time Rome and Carthage were having a military
Re:
Score:
by
Ungrounded Lightning
( 62228 )
writes:
The battle of Carthage was a massacre.
Sure was.
What part of "... the Roman general going postal[k] on them." don't you get? I'd think it was clear even with the typo.
1. Lay siege to Carthage - intending to do the usual thing of annexing them and ending up with them as a new province, religious freedom and all.
2. The Carthaginians' priests declare that the people have angered their god and a sacrifice is needed to make the Romans go away.
3. The people are convinced and a sacrifice is made. Their god happen
This is actually
Score:
, Insightful)
by
93 Escort Wagon
( 326346 )
writes:
on Sunday July 22, 2018 @02:07PM (
#56990742
Very, very cool.
Share
This is a usual problem in Italy.
Score:
by
Qbertino
( 265505 )
writes:
Especially historically significant places like Florence and
... well, just about everywhere. You can't uproot a weed without discovering some ancient piece of aqueduct or something. The Italians are pretty unnerved about this. The piazza de la signioria in Florence was dug up for a few years back in the early 90ies. Everyone was relieved when they finally closed it up again.
Re:
Score:
by
Anonymous Coward
writes:
The Italians are pretty unnerved about this.
I'm Italian, and I know no one being "unnerved" by our archeological treasures. It's actually something to be proud of, rather than a "problem". It's also profitable in the long term, thanks to tourism revenues. Maybe only construction companies are pissed off, because they thankfully cannot ruin the landscape and speculate as they would like to.
It's a matter of balance
Score:
by
aglider
( 2435074 )
writes:
on Sunday July 22, 2018 @04:42PM (
#56991266
Homepage
You could destroy anything you find in the name of the future.
You could save anything you find in the name of the past.
Or you could find some balance in between in the name of the present.
Share
This happens all the time in Europe
Score:
by
Pollux
( 102520 )
writes:
When I was in college, I did a semester abroad trip to Greece and Italy. One of the Greek guides explained that contractors dig up ruins all the time in Athens; it's impossible to dig a metro line without it happening. (
Here's one example
[alamy.com] of a metro line running right through ruins of Ancient Athens.)
The guide told us that Greek law requires that contractors notify the Ministry of Culture immediately when ruins are found. They then come out, inspect the site, and after a couple years, either give the con
What's it called? Monorail!
Score:
, Funny)
by
Anonymous Coward
writes:
Clearly, Rome should never have built a subway in the first place. If they had built an above-ground monorail, this problem would not be happening. Plus, Rome would finally be put on the map just like Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook. Just think of the tourism dollars.
Re:
Score:
by
ChrisMaple
( 607946 )
writes:
A monorail in front of the Vatican would look cool, just like Disneyland. Just think of the tourism dollars. Not.
Re:
Score:
by
oldmac31310
( 1845668 )
writes:
Don't forget Springfield.
Mobile phone adoption in Rome was fast
Score:
by
seoras
( 147590 )
writes:
I heard, back in the late 90's when mobile phones were just becoming common place, that in Rome they were selling like hot cakes.
Trying to lay wiring in that city was the reason given.
Every time they stick a spade in the ground they find something ancient and all work stops while the archeologists move in.
So getting a new land line was tricky. Wireless provide to be the solution for the modern day Romans.
I would think the ancient sewers of Rome would mitigate some what the need to tunnel for wiring.
Not much
A good quote...
Score:
, Funny)
by
fraxinus-tree
( 717851 )
writes:
on Monday July 23, 2018 @05:56AM (
#56993462
I'll try to translate: The construction of the Rome's subway is halted because of archaeology research. Tools from the era when the subway construction started are found in the borehole.
Share
Related Links
Top of the:
day
week
month
317
comments
CDC Changes Webpage To Say Vaccines May Cause Autism, Revising Prior Language
307
comments
US Formally Withdraws From WHO
299
comments
Ultra-Processed Foods Should Be Treated More Like Cigarettes Than Food, Study Says
297
comments
CDC Data Confirms US is 2 Months Away From Losing Measles Elimination Status
273
comments
Scientists Warn US Will Lose a Generation of Talent
next
People Like Getting Thank You Notes, Research Finds
68
comments
previous
Some Colleges Cautiously Embrace Wikipedia
65
comments
Slashdot Top Deals
The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.
-- Sagan
Close
Working...