Analysis of residues of Roman garum, or fish sauce, found at the bottom of seven jars from Pompeii suggests that the date of August 24, 79 A.D. for the fatal eruption of Mount Vesuvius, recorded by Pliny the Younger, is accurate. The sauce had been made with a fish species that was abundant in the area during July and early August.

Investigators have concluded that someone forgot to turn off a vacuum cleaner aboard the Cutty Sark, starting last year’s fire that gutted the nineteenth-century tea clipper. Security guards failed to follow safety procedures that might have caught the problem early.  

The Italian province of Bolzano has agreed to pay a finder’s fee of $250,000 to German hiker Erika Simon. She and her husband, Helmut, discovered Oetzi the Iceman in the Italian Alps in 1991. Mr. Simon died in 2004.  

How did two ancient Egyptian skulls come to be buried in the front yard of a house in Manchester, England? A major police investigation cracked the case.  

Archaeologists have expressed concern that a proposed landfill in Ireland’s County Dublin could destroy a prehistoric “large-ditched enclosure of the Tara or Navan kind.” The site is named Nevitt, which is derived from a Celtic word meaning “the sacred place.”  

Archaeologist Bradley T. Lepper discusses an article on identifying ethnic groups of the past from American Antiquity for his column in The Columbus Dispatch.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Tuesday, September 30, 2008. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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