ANSA.it : "An ancient Phoenician temple unearthed in Sicily is 'unique' in the West, the head of the Italian dig team claims .

'You have to go all the way to Amrit in Syria to find a similar one,' said Lorenzo Nigro of the Rome University team .

The temple came to light last year after a portion of a lagoon surrounding the Phoenician city of Motya (present-day Mozia) was drained .

The pool began to fill up again and a fresh-water spring was found - a fact Nigro believes proves it was used as a holy place.

'The Phoenicians placed their cities on the coast near water springs, which for them meant that there was a divine presence there.' Digs at the site, on the westernmost tip of Sicily near Marsala, have brought to light the ruins of a 'monumental' temple including columns of a type used by the Phoenicians on Cyprus - as well as fragments of an obelisk .

'The similarity with the Temple of the Obelisks at Byblos, Lebanon, is clear,' Nigro said .

Nigro believes the pool flanking the temple was used for water rituals and offerings to Baal, the Phoenician god of the sea and the underworld .

However, other Italian archaeologists do not agree with him .

'The pool is without doubt merely a dock used for repairing ships,' said Sebastiano Tusa of Naples University, head of marine archaeology for the Sicilian regional government .

Motya - whose name means 'wool-spinning centre' - was founded in the 8th century BC, about a century after the foundation of the most famous Phoenician colony in the ancient world, Carthage in Tunisia ."

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Somehow I missed this interesting little tidbit a couple of months ago.

Discovery Channel: "Divers exploring a river near a former Roman Empire fort and settlement in Britain have found a piece of pottery that depicts the backside of a rather buff gladiator wielding a whip and wearing nothing but a G-string, according to British researchers.

The image represents the first known depiction of a gladiator in such revealing attire. It adds to the evidence that ancient Romans viewed gladiators not only as fearless warriors, but also as sex symbols.

Philippa Walton, who analyzed the object and is a finds liaison officer for the Cambridgeshire County Council, described the artifact to Discovery News. 'The find is a small shard of pottery possibly from a drinking beaker made in Britain in the 3rd century A.D.,' Walton said. 'It depicts a man wearing a G-string and possibly holding a whip and is likely therefore to represent a gladiator.'

"A lot of film stars and celebrities like to show a bit of bum, so the Romans were no doubt the same or worse," Rolfe Hutchinson told Discovery News. He discovered the object with diving partner Bob Middlemass. "After all, they were the celebrities of the day."

The ancient Romans may have relished such dramatic displays of beefcake and power, but they also could be quite practical.

Near the site of the pottery shard, Hutchinson and Middlemass also found a copper razor handle, dating to approximately the same period. The handle was modeled into the shape of a Roman soldier leg and foot, the two-inch-high foot wearing a heavy wool sock stuffed into a sandal."

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Fair fight: research shows gladiators played by rules       ( 1:52 PM ) Libitina  

The research also challenges the view of some experts that gladiatorial combat was a form of spectacular martial art that only rarely ended in death, as the fighters seldom fought until one of them died.

The latest evidence shows wounded participants were often given the coup-de-grace by a backstage executioner, delivered with a hammer blow to the head.

It is likely these injuries were inflicted after the fight - possibly by a backstage executioner who struck the doomed victim's head, as has been suggested in artworks and literature."

I found this latest conclusion a bit puzzling. The Discovery Channel produced a program about the excavation at Ephesus and the scientist interviewed attributed the small square head wounds apparently delivered when the victim was not wearing a helmet to a trident used on a hapless retiarius whose opponent had killed him with his own weapon. They even showed how the holes matched the penetration pattern of an ancient trident. Of course, it does make one wonder when they find ten of such victims in one dig. Maybe that ludus had a very poor retiarius trainer!

Having just visited Hadrian's Villa last spring, I found this article particularly interesting. Hadrian's sprawling complex covers at least 250 acres and may encompass over 650 acres, much of it as yet unexcavated. I wonder what other fantastic discoveries await?

ABC News: "A theatrical mask is seen during a presentation to the press of new findings from a dig at Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli, near Rome, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2006. Archeologist who have been digging for more than a year at the villa got their reward, unearthing a monumental staircase, a statue of an athlete and what appears to be a headless sphinx. The findings were presented Tuesday by government officials, who described them as extremely important for understanding the layout of the ruins. The staircase is believed to be the original entrance to the villa, which was build for the Roman emperor in the 2nd century A.D. So far, 15 steps, each 27 feet wide, have been identified and archaeologists did not rule out uncovering more." (AP Photo/Riccardo De Luca)

For more on Hadrian's Villa see this article.

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Trove of Teutonic weapons uncovered in Krusne Hory region       ( 12:00 PM ) Libitina  

Unfinished Maxentius Villa Puzzles Archaeologists       ( 10:54 AM ) Libitina  

"One major question that we hope to answer is why Maxentius built this grand villa complex outside the defensive walls of the city when he had full control of pre-existing imperial palaces located in the heart of the capital," she said.

Limited investigations of the villa site were conducted in 1825 and again in the 1960s. Italian archaeologists exposed exterior walls but didn't dig into the interior of the large main hall, or basilica, Conlin said.

CU archaeologists and their colleagues sank two trenches in the main hall during a five-week field season last summer. Two more trenches will be opened in the basilica this summer. Twenty students from CU and Kalamazoo College in Michigan joined in the 2005 work.

After digging through modern garbage deposits and cemented chunks of architectural debris, the team reached the ancient basilica and found "a bare skeleton of brick and concrete," Conlin said.

A finished basilica from the period would feature stone mosaics on the floor and decorative marble slabs on the walls. The researchers found 800 pounds of marble fragments, but no piece was bigger than 12 inches by 6 inches. Instead of mosaic floors, they found only a brick subfloor.

"It seems like no one ever lived there," Lenski said. "It was 85 to 90 percent completed. It was the finishing touches that were left off."

The marble fragments suggest that bigger slabs had been installed but were later hauled away."

Archaeologists unearth ancient Cretan tomb - Feb 2, 2006       ( 2:59 PM ) Libitina