Posted on 04/21/2014 3:52:08 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
The paw prints and hoof prints of a few meddlesome animals have been preserved for posterity on ancient Roman tiles recently discovered by archaeologists in England...
The artifacts, which could be nearly 2,000 years old, were found in the Blackfriars area of Leicester... Wardell Armstrong Archaeology was brought in to dig at a site where a construction company plans to build student housing.
At least one of the tiles is tainted with dog paw prints, and one is marked with the hoof prints of a sheep or a goat that trampled on the clay before it was dry...
The tiles were found in layers of rubble that had been laid down as a hard base for subsequent floors, but the artifacts' original context is unclear, Daffern said...
Leicester was the stronghold of an Iron Age group known as the Corieltauvi tribe, and it remained an important city after the Roman conquest of Britain in the first century A.D., as it was located along the Fosse Way, a Roman road that connected southwestern England with the East Midlands.
The excavators say that, in addition to the animal-printed tiles, they've uncovered Roman tweezers, brooches, coins and painted wall plaster. They've also unearthed traces of a large Roman building perhaps a basilica, with a peristyle, or columned porch that was largely robbed of its masonry during the medieval era for other construction projects.
The archaeologists even discovered late Iron Age artifacts, such as several fragments of clay molds that the Corieltauvi tribe likely used to make coins before the Roman rule. Daffern said it's rare to find sites with coin molds, given how closely managed coin production would have been during the Iron Age...
The excavation is funded by construction company Watkin Jones. The archaeologists are providing updates on Wardell Armstrong Archaeology's blog.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
It actually helps if your Latin is not too good.
But I LIKED it! So what does that say about me?
I flunked Latin in high school. I bet Miss Emmabelle Jones would be shocked that I even know what Latin is. She once told me she would give me an A if I turned in a paper, any paper.
I finally did a paper on Vulcan and she gave me an A but only for one assignment.
It could have been a fashionable feature, an amusing idea for the newly well-off villa owner who’d pull himself up by the bootstraps.
The Latin classes were filled by the time I registered for my Sophomore year, so what I know of Latin, I learned by word of mouth and by comparisons with other root words.
Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” translated into Latin
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1001719/posts
Vanilla Ice: “Ice Ice Baby” translated into Latin
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/1434606/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/latin/index
It’s very possible. Think of what pet owner of today do with their dogs. I can easily see it happening back in ancient times.
Latin is a language, as dead as it can be, it killed the ancient Romans, and now it’s killing me.
I remember that one from high school over 50 years ago.
Awwwww...that’s just too cute! ;-)
We knew that, the Romans didn’t have labs, they made these tiles in a workshop. /rimshot!
Dogs haven’t changed much, either.
:)
I just copied and pasted it from one of many web sites which had the poem on them.
It is an old poem with no copyright, actually the composer is unknown.
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