most recent archaeological discoveries 2021

He explained that it was 1 am when the lava reached town, with a temperature of at least 300-400☌, if not more: a boiling cloud that raced towards the sea at a speed of 100 kilometers per hour and so dense that it had no oxygen. His last moments were terrible, the director of the Herculaneum archaeological park told Italian news agency ANSA. He was lying with his head back towards the sea and was surrounded by heavy charred wood. He was found at the base of a high lava stone wall. The man is thought to have been between 40 and 45 years old at the time of death. The fugitive was stopped by a cloud of volcanic ash, magma and gas just steps away from the sea and, perhaps, salvation.

The partially mutilated remains of a man fleeing the 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius were found in October 2021, 25 years after the last excavations carried out at Herculaneum, the ancient Roman town near Pompeii with which it shared the same fate.

Remains of fugitive man at Herculaneum Ruins at Herculaneum To see more of these statues menhir from Lunigiana, you can visit the Museo delle Statue Stele Lunigianesi in Pontremoli. It has a typical half-moon shape, with the eyes and nose carved in the stone with a U shape it is a female head, as can be inferred from the stylized earrings. The head of the statue menhir was found in excellent condition. They depict stylized male or female characters, whose gender is identified by the objects they carry (weapons or jewelry). Those found in the Lunigiana area were produced by the Apuan Ligurians between the third millennium BC and the sixth century BC. Stele statues, or statues menhir, are rare prehistoric and protohistoric artifacts. Since approximately 80 statues menhir have been unearthed in Lunigiana so far, the man figured it may be another one of those and handed it over to the director of the Museum of Stele Statues in Pontremoli, who identified the work as an authentic find dating back to the Copper Age. The discovery took place in the village of Pontremoli, near Mount Galletto, when a local resident noticed a rock with a bizarre shape, discarded by a farmer on the edge of a vegetable garden together with a pile of stones he had removed while preparing the land for plowing. In March 2021, Lunigiana, the historic strip of land wedged between northern Tuscany and Liguria, revealed an extraordinary archaeological find: the head of a statue menhir. Head of a statue menhir in Tuscany’s Lunigiana The pomerium cippus can now be admired in the Sala Paladino of the Ara Pacis Museum, where the cast of the statue of emperor Claudius is also on display. Under Claudius, the fourth Roman emperor who ruled from 41 to 54 AD, the Empire underwent its first major expansion since the reign of Augustus. He also extended Rome’s city limits to incorporate the Aventine Hill, one of Rome’s seven hills.Īccording to legend, Romulus, the founder and first king of Rome, created the city’s first pomerium - and killed his brother Remus when Remus jumped over the ‘border’ in defiance to prove the walls were inadequate against invaders. The discovery was even more exceptional because only ten other boundary stones from the time of Claudius have been found over time and the most recent was discovered more than 100 years ago, in 1909. The inscription says that Claudius “extended and redefined the pomerium because he had increased the boundaries of the Roman people.” The stone was one of around 140 installed by Claudius to mark Rome’s pomerium, the sacred limit that separated the city ( urbs) from external territory ( ager) inside the pomerium, construction, farming and fighting were banned. Thanks to the inscription, the stone can be traced back to 49 AD, when the emperor Claudius redrew and expanded the city’s outer limits. Rare 2,000-year-old boundary stone in Rome A rare pomerium cippus found near the Mausoleum of Augustus is now on display at the Ara Pacis Museum.Ī rare pomerium cippus, an engraved travertine stone used to mark the outer limits of ancient Rome, resurfaced in the summer of 2021 during redevelopment work in Piazza Augusto Imperatore, where the Mausoleum of Augustus is located. Read on for the most significant archaeological discoveries of 2021 in Italy. We have selected a few that particularly stood out, from a statue menhir found in Tuscany to an ancient Roman boundary stone, to the never-ending discoveries that continue to amaze archaeologists at Pompeii, where excavation work is ongoing at Pompeii's overshadowed neighbor, Herculaneum, two-and-a-half year excavations at the ancient beach have revealed the remains of a man trying to escape the destructive Mount Vesuvius eruption in 79 AD.

2021 was an exciting ‘archeological year’ in Italy, with many finds that helped shed light on the country’s ancient history.

Most recent archaeological discoveries 2021