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Rome's Subway Expansion Reveals Artifacts From The Ancient Past (npr.org)
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."
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.
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.
I stole this Sig
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.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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.