8 ms·

Lavish Roman mosaic is biggest found in London for 50 years

150 points by diodorus 5y ago

kingcharles 5y ago
Not only is it pretty, the colours have held up perfectly over almost 2000 years.
- gattilorenz 5y ago
  Is this uncommon? Mosaics are not painted but made of stones of different size and color, so I assume that there's no pigment that can degrade
  - petewailes 5y ago
    It's not uncommon. Most Roman mosaics were laid using tesserae made of of local stone (most commonly limestone, sandstone and marble, but varies by area), glass and ceramics. Even in the case of the ceramics, the colour was baked in at firing, so there's nothing there (in terms of colours at least) in any of the materials, generally, to degrade. If they got worn, you just got the same colour through the whole of the tessera, so it wouldn't show in terms of degradation of the pattern - you'd just get wear and tear on the materials themselves.
samwillis 5y ago
Always love to see these finds. There was another (possibly larger, need to check) one found just down the road from where I live last year: ‘most exciting Roman mosaic discovery in the UK in the last century’ https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/nov/25/archaeologists-examine-roman-villa-discovered-beneath-rutland-farmers-field https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/nov/25/archaeologis... Looking forward to being a able to visit it maybe later in the year. It sounds like they are going to open it to the public.
kome 5y ago
That explains why the Anglo-saxon are now (almost) civilized people :) Very pretty. Such an incredible discovery. I cannot wait to see it in person.
- advisedwang 5y ago
  Ah yes, the only source of civilization in the world is an slave-based war-driven empire that enjoyed blood sports and had (for most of its history) an absolute monarch.
  - kome 5y ago
    are you talking about the British empire?
    - advisedwang 5y ago
      I guess the British did learn some things from the Romans.
zeristor 5y ago
I wonder if their music was 8 bit as well.
jl6 5y ago
I can only imagine the archaeological finds that sit undisturbed beneath landmarks that can never be moved (St Pauls, House of Commons, other ancient churches etc.). London is built on top of London.
- klelatti 5y ago
  For new office developments the developers often decide to limit how deep they dig for fear that they will find something - not because they want to preserve it but because if they do then its 12 months delay whilst the site is properly explored.
- tikkabhuna 5y ago
  They found Roman artefacts under the new Bloomberg office when they built it. It halted development for some time. Its now open as a free museum: https://www.londonmithraeum.com/ https://www.londonmithraeum.com/ Cool if you work in the City. My boss and I did it on our lunch break.
  - klelatti 5y ago
    It is well worth a visit. Just to clarify that the main discovery of the Temple of Mithras was in 1954. The Temple was then moved, put out in the open in Queen Victoria Street in front of some offices and was largely ignored - essentially just looked like a small ruined wall. I used to see a few tourists come to see it and quickly walk away. Credit to Bloomberg for putting it back in its original position and making seeing it a worthwhile experience. The Bloomberg office is worth a visit too - it won the Stirling Prize for architecture in the UK - but it's not open to the general public, although they have hosted some tech talks in there.
- DrBazza 5y ago
  It's pretty hard to put a shovel in the ground in London without hitting something old. We've moved and covered rivers (Fleet, Neckinger, etc.), we've covered and uncovered plague pits, built over and through Roman walls, or you can just go plain-old mud-larking. Then there are lost tunnels. The list goes on... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Fleet#Today https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Fleet#Today https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldgate_tube_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldgate_tube_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Wall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Wall https://www.frommers.com/slideshows/848024-mudlarking-in-the-thames-might-be-the-best-thing-i-ve-done-in-london https://www.frommers.com/slideshows/848024-mudlarking-in-the... https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/londons-lost-pneumatic-railways-part-2-7708/ https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/londons-lost-pneumatic-... https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/the-northern-line-tunnel-that-was-bombed-and-flooded-in-1940-and-is-still-sealed-shut-5331/ https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/the-northern-line-tunne...
dr_dshiv 5y ago
Mushrooms, lotus and hemp rope. Hmm… what kind of lounge was this this?
tunnuz 5y ago
Insert British Museum joke here. Jokes apart, that’s amazing!
sfjailbird 5y ago
It is a bit of a shame that they are moving it. There is something special about seeing these remnants in their original location, imagining what the surroundings looked like and comparing with the current. Somewhat understandable though, London property prices being what they are. Not even the Roman empire can afford to stay.
- mkoryak 5y ago
  It must really suck for the developer who is trying to build something there. Oops, we need to stop construction for some indefinite amount of find while archeologists clean and move a giant section of the ground.
  - rvense 5y ago
    The inconveniencing of a property developer is fairly low priority compared to preserving our past, I'd say. You can't exactly make another one of these if it gets bulldozed.
    - mhb 5y ago
      If preserving the past is so important, it shouldn't be hard to compensate the developer for the inconvenience of doing it.
      - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
        They make a absolute fortune from that real estate and as others have said, if you have a plot of land in that location big enough to build on that has only ever had relatively shallow construction on it, you should 1) expect to find evidence of Roman occupation or evidence of plague burials and 2) expect to pay for the inconvenience. I have absolutely no problem with them being required to cope with this themselves. There's a lot of history there and with the density of development in that area, there is really only one chance, each time, to do something about it. For most developers this is priced in -- including when it's a state-sponsored project. All around the UK there are plots of land that developers have acquired at an attractive price through sketchy regional development corporations, then gone bust (only to reemerge without debt) and the sites left as great big holes in the ground. In the town where I live there is a site that has been like this for two decades; it's gone through several developers, more than a couple of which had rather beneficial terms. Major developers do not care when they walk out on a site if it is mildly inconvenient or not quite profitable enough; the least standard they should be held to is to pay for the costs of preserving our past when the site they have secured will ultimately make them a fortune as they lease off square footage to shady foreign investors!
anonu 5y ago
Whenever I see stuff like this, I feel pain for the developer. Of course this stuff should be preserved, but many times developers will destroy or hide these archaeological findings so their projects don't get delayed. I know this is common in other parts of the Mediterranean where the Roman Empire flourished - certainly in Rome and also in Beirut. Developers should be incentivized somehow not to destroy this world heritage.
- 3pt14159 5y ago
  Yeah. It seems like something you could get insurance for, though. About 30 or 35 years ago my parents were asked by The University of Manitoba for permission to dig a 1 foot trench near the river which bounded one side of their property to look for artifacts of Canadian aboriginals. The plan was do do a long trench across twenty or thirty houses. They answered the letter with "of course you can" or something like that. Got a letter back a couple months later. It thanked them, but said that they were the only ones that answered in the affirmative. Apparently all their neighbours cared more about protecting their future right to build a shed over the priceless history of the people who lived there first.
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    As long as the artifacts sit undisturbed beneath the ground, that's also a form of preservation. What would be bad is simply digging the stuff up without a proper archeological excavation or at least a survey of the area - whether for fear of future restrictions being asserted, or otherwise.
  - boredumb 5y ago
    Neighbors were worried that it starts with a 1 foot trench and ends in eminent domain of their home.
  - TimedToasts 5y ago
    > Apparently all their neighbours cared more about protecting their future right to build a shed over the priceless history of the people who lived there first. That's a very bad faith take on their decisions.
stewx 5y ago
High-resolution photos of the mosaic: https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2022/02/FMNQXC7X0AMcomH.jpeg https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2022/02/FMNQXC7X0AMc... https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2022/02/FMNj1bkXIAs3fRj.jpeg https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2022/02/FMNj1bkXIAs3...
micromacrofoot 5y ago
I enjoy the minor imperfections... things that are meant to be symmetrical are slightly off here and there, and it's still quite pretty. I wonder what the design process for something like this was.
jstream67 5y ago
"The archaeologists from Mola, who have worked at the site since last June, believe the room housing the mosaic was a triclinium, containing dining couches on which people would recline to eat and drink while admiring the decorative flooring." eat and drink while admiring the ... floor? What are the chances the author of the article completely made that up

150 points by diodorus 5y ago

kingcharles 5y ago

Not only is it pretty, the colours have held up perfectly over almost 2000 years.

gattilorenz 5y ago
Is this uncommon? Mosaics are not painted but made of stones of different size and color, so I assume that there's no pigment that can degrade
- petewailes 5y ago
  It's not uncommon. Most Roman mosaics were laid using tesserae made of of local stone (most commonly limestone, sandstone and marble, but varies by area), glass and ceramics. Even in the case of the ceramics, the colour was baked in at firing, so there's nothing there (in terms of colours at least) in any of the materials, generally, to degrade. If they got worn, you just got the same colour through the whole of the tessera, so it wouldn't show in terms of degradation of the pattern - you'd just get wear and tear on the materials themselves.

samwillis 5y ago

Always love to see these finds. There was another (possibly larger, need to check) one found just down the road from where I live last year: ‘most exciting Roman mosaic discovery in the UK in the last century’ https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/nov/25/archaeologists-examine-roman-villa-discovered-beneath-rutland-farmers-field https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/nov/25/archaeologis... Looking forward to being a able to visit it maybe later in the year. It sounds like they are going to open it to the public.

kome 5y ago

That explains why the Anglo-saxon are now (almost) civilized people :) Very pretty. Such an incredible discovery. I cannot wait to see it in person.

advisedwang 5y ago
Ah yes, the only source of civilization in the world is an slave-based war-driven empire that enjoyed blood sports and had (for most of its history) an absolute monarch.
- kome 5y ago
  are you talking about the British empire?
  - advisedwang 5y ago
    I guess the British did learn some things from the Romans.

zeristor 5y ago

I wonder if their music was 8 bit as well.

jl6 5y ago

I can only imagine the archaeological finds that sit undisturbed beneath landmarks that can never be moved (St Pauls, House of Commons, other ancient churches etc.). London is built on top of London.

klelatti 5y ago
For new office developments the developers often decide to limit how deep they dig for fear that they will find something - not because they want to preserve it but because if they do then its 12 months delay whilst the site is properly explored.
tikkabhuna 5y ago
They found Roman artefacts under the new Bloomberg office when they built it. It halted development for some time. Its now open as a free museum: https://www.londonmithraeum.com/ https://www.londonmithraeum.com/ Cool if you work in the City. My boss and I did it on our lunch break.
- klelatti 5y ago
  It is well worth a visit. Just to clarify that the main discovery of the Temple of Mithras was in 1954. The Temple was then moved, put out in the open in Queen Victoria Street in front of some offices and was largely ignored - essentially just looked like a small ruined wall. I used to see a few tourists come to see it and quickly walk away. Credit to Bloomberg for putting it back in its original position and making seeing it a worthwhile experience. The Bloomberg office is worth a visit too - it won the Stirling Prize for architecture in the UK - but it's not open to the general public, although they have hosted some tech talks in there.
DrBazza 5y ago
It's pretty hard to put a shovel in the ground in London without hitting something old. We've moved and covered rivers (Fleet, Neckinger, etc.), we've covered and uncovered plague pits, built over and through Roman walls, or you can just go plain-old mud-larking. Then there are lost tunnels. The list goes on... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Fleet#Today https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Fleet#Today https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldgate_tube_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldgate_tube_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Wall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Wall https://www.frommers.com/slideshows/848024-mudlarking-in-the-thames-might-be-the-best-thing-i-ve-done-in-london https://www.frommers.com/slideshows/848024-mudlarking-in-the... https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/londons-lost-pneumatic-railways-part-2-7708/ https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/londons-lost-pneumatic-... https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/the-northern-line-tunnel-that-was-bombed-and-flooded-in-1940-and-is-still-sealed-shut-5331/ https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/the-northern-line-tunne...

dr_dshiv 5y ago

Mushrooms, lotus and hemp rope. Hmm… what kind of lounge was this this?

tunnuz 5y ago

Insert British Museum joke here. Jokes apart, that’s amazing!

sfjailbird 5y ago

It is a bit of a shame that they are moving it. There is something special about seeing these remnants in their original location, imagining what the surroundings looked like and comparing with the current. Somewhat understandable though, London property prices being what they are. Not even the Roman empire can afford to stay.

mkoryak 5y ago
It must really suck for the developer who is trying to build something there. Oops, we need to stop construction for some indefinite amount of find while archeologists clean and move a giant section of the ground.
- rvense 5y ago
  The inconveniencing of a property developer is fairly low priority compared to preserving our past, I'd say. You can't exactly make another one of these if it gets bulldozed.
  - mhb 5y ago
    If preserving the past is so important, it shouldn't be hard to compensate the developer for the inconvenience of doing it.
    - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
      They make a absolute fortune from that real estate and as others have said, if you have a plot of land in that location big enough to build on that has only ever had relatively shallow construction on it, you should 1) expect to find evidence of Roman occupation or evidence of plague burials and 2) expect to pay for the inconvenience. I have absolutely no problem with them being required to cope with this themselves. There's a lot of history there and with the density of development in that area, there is really only one chance, each time, to do something about it. For most developers this is priced in -- including when it's a state-sponsored project. All around the UK there are plots of land that developers have acquired at an attractive price through sketchy regional development corporations, then gone bust (only to reemerge without debt) and the sites left as great big holes in the ground. In the town where I live there is a site that has been like this for two decades; it's gone through several developers, more than a couple of which had rather beneficial terms. Major developers do not care when they walk out on a site if it is mildly inconvenient or not quite profitable enough; the least standard they should be held to is to pay for the costs of preserving our past when the site they have secured will ultimately make them a fortune as they lease off square footage to shady foreign investors!

anonu 5y ago

Whenever I see stuff like this, I feel pain for the developer. Of course this stuff should be preserved, but many times developers will destroy or hide these archaeological findings so their projects don't get delayed. I know this is common in other parts of the Mediterranean where the Roman Empire flourished - certainly in Rome and also in Beirut. Developers should be incentivized somehow not to destroy this world heritage.

3pt14159 5y ago
Yeah. It seems like something you could get insurance for, though. About 30 or 35 years ago my parents were asked by The University of Manitoba for permission to dig a 1 foot trench near the river which bounded one side of their property to look for artifacts of Canadian aboriginals. The plan was do do a long trench across twenty or thirty houses. They answered the letter with "of course you can" or something like that. Got a letter back a couple months later. It thanked them, but said that they were the only ones that answered in the affirmative. Apparently all their neighbours cared more about protecting their future right to build a shed over the priceless history of the people who lived there first.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  As long as the artifacts sit undisturbed beneath the ground, that's also a form of preservation. What would be bad is simply digging the stuff up without a proper archeological excavation or at least a survey of the area - whether for fear of future restrictions being asserted, or otherwise.
- boredumb 5y ago
  Neighbors were worried that it starts with a 1 foot trench and ends in eminent domain of their home.
- TimedToasts 5y ago
  > Apparently all their neighbours cared more about protecting their future right to build a shed over the priceless history of the people who lived there first. That's a very bad faith take on their decisions.

stewx 5y ago

High-resolution photos of the mosaic: https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2022/02/FMNQXC7X0AMcomH.jpeg https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2022/02/FMNQXC7X0AMc... https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2022/02/FMNj1bkXIAs3fRj.jpeg https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2022/02/FMNj1bkXIAs3...

micromacrofoot 5y ago

I enjoy the minor imperfections... things that are meant to be symmetrical are slightly off here and there, and it's still quite pretty. I wonder what the design process for something like this was.

jstream67 5y ago

"The archaeologists from Mola, who have worked at the site since last June, believe the room housing the mosaic was a triclinium, containing dining couches on which people would recline to eat and drink while admiring the decorative flooring." eat and drink while admiring the ... floor? What are the chances the author of the article completely made that up