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Speaker 2: Mum, why did they call it Scottish cheese?
Speaker 3: It's cottage cheese, honey.
Speaker 4: And I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: Did dogs in other countries speak different languages?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think so. Well when we get there, well, we've
Speaker 1: got to fix the car first, but there's someone coming
Speaker 1: to help us.
Speaker 2: Is it the man from Geneva?
Speaker 1: Not Geneva, he's from a Viva.
Speaker 4: Oh there's a van now.
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Speaker 7: Oh hey, it's your old dad Ward Bond podcast, just
Speaker 7: slipping into your life to chat with you about ancient toilets,
Speaker 7: buried treasure and Roman rulers. Welcome to another episode of Smologies.
Speaker 7: What are smologies, you may be asking yourself. They're smaller
Speaker 7: cuts of our classic episodes and we cut them down
Speaker 7: and we cut out all the swear words so that
Speaker 7: they are classroom safe, their kid friendly. They're good for
Speaker 7: all ages. And this is a great episode. People love
Speaker 7: this one, so now you can listen to it as
Speaker 7: a curriculum or with my grandpa or whomever you like.
Speaker 7: If you want the full version, we're gonna link in
Speaker 7: the show notes. That's the longer version with all the
Speaker 7: squares left in. But this one it's safe. Okay, enjoy, Okay. Archaeology,
Speaker 7: Let's get into the etymology really quick. Archaeology comes from
Speaker 7: the Greek ark for beginning and classical archaeology deals specifically
Speaker 7: with ancient Rome or ancient Greece. Boy, Howdy hot dang,
Speaker 7: this ologist knows his business. He's an American who lives
Speaker 7: in Rome, so the dude is literally walking the talk.
Speaker 7: And he's the executive director of the American Institute for
Speaker 7: Roman Culture. And he's the host of a PBS series
Speaker 7: called Ancient Invisible Cities, as well as the Italian series
Speaker 7: called Under Italy, where he crawls into cool tunnels and tombs.
Speaker 7: It's very rad. So a statement on his website just reads,
Speaker 7: my passion is Rome and it is not a lie.
Speaker 7: And like a plague in ancient times, it's infectious. So
Speaker 7: hang on to your togas and recline on your laurels
Speaker 7: to hear all kinds of dirt with classical archaeologist doctor
Speaker 7: Darius Aria.
Speaker 5: Ogious algy.
Speaker 8: Darius Aria sounds like a superheroim yeah, almost almost rhymes
Speaker 8: which I've gotten.
Speaker 7: That Darius Aria hello, also known as Dar. What does
Speaker 7: an archaeologist do If someone says I'm an archaeologist, what
Speaker 7: does that mean? Because I feel like we I think
Speaker 7: of dusty chinos and like worn boots and definitely a hat.
Speaker 8: Yeah, most most archaeology isn't spending your time in the field.
Speaker 8: I mean I can qualify that and say, okay, some
Speaker 8: people just do that all the time because they're like
Speaker 8: contract archaeologists. So there's always something going on in Italy
Speaker 8: where you know, some house is being built or some
Speaker 8: building is being restored, or some road is being put in,
Speaker 8: and so they're always out in the field doing the excavation.
Speaker 9: And that sense urban development and so on, or rescue operations.
Speaker 8: But you know, generally speaking, you're studying the so you know,
Speaker 8: you're an egyptologist or I'm a classical archaeologist, so I'm
Speaker 8: in the Mediterranean, I'm in Central Europe, I'm where the
Speaker 8: Romans were. But generally speaking, you know, the archaeologists will
Speaker 8: spend a lot of time in libraries, like I'm here
Speaker 8: at the library, using the resources of the getty.
Speaker 7: And so it's some part in the field, but a
Speaker 7: lot of it is spent also piecing together a lot
Speaker 7: of different parts of history to form kind of a narrative,
Speaker 7: or try to piece together a narrative that has parts missing.
Speaker 9: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 8: So you're getting a wealth of information when you're excavating
Speaker 8: or doing some sort of evaluative study. I mean it
Speaker 8: could be non invasive nowadays, but then you need to
Speaker 8: sift through the data, like what you've now come up
Speaker 8: with has to make sense.
Speaker 7: Oh man, I love this part. Archaeology is like a
Speaker 7: fascinating parfait of abandoned junk.
Speaker 8: Or if you're excavating, you know you've unearthed different strata,
Speaker 8: different layers that people have left behind, and you've gone
Speaker 8: through the chronology, you know, backwards, so you're trying to
Speaker 8: piece it together understanding from the beginning to the Of
Speaker 8: course you're actually the most recent stuff first, so there's
Speaker 8: a bit of a puzzle there, and what kind.
Speaker 4: Of tools are you using? Take me through a dig?
Speaker 8: Okay, so what I'm concentrating on professionally has been the
Speaker 8: Roman Era, and because Rome is not a place that's
Speaker 8: abandoned and it has continually been occupied, there are various.
Speaker 9: Layers that can be quite late.
Speaker 8: So you know, the top layer of a site, well,
Speaker 8: I mean it will be modern, you know, so there's
Speaker 8: going to be something just people deposits, how people leave
Speaker 8: stuff behind, and it can be you know, a coke
Speaker 8: bottle or a piece of barbed wire fencing.
Speaker 9: I mean, it could be something obviously like.
Speaker 8: That, and then you're getting down into actually in Rome
Speaker 8: and Vicinity, the environs can be very, very rapid. Sometimes
Speaker 8: it's even as it's been just shallow as say four
Speaker 8: or five inches. Awesome, boom, We're already hitting ancient material.
Speaker 4: And where is this like in a construction site? A puzzle.
Speaker 8: No, So I've been My excavations have been in really
Speaker 8: historic places that are well known, like the Roman Forum,
Speaker 8: but then also an archaeological site Ostia Antica, and Ostia
Speaker 8: Antica was the port city of Rome. Basically, Ostia was
Speaker 8: developed as the city at the mouth of the Tiber River.
Speaker 9: So you imagine this river.
Speaker 8: Flowing from the north through Rome and then dumping out
Speaker 8: into the Mediterranean.
Speaker 7: So this is a city located right about at the
Speaker 7: kneecap of Italy. It's right on the sea, and it's
Speaker 7: been abandoned for about one thousand years and it now
Speaker 7: kind of looks like grassland taking over a grid of
Speaker 7: crumbling brick structures. But in its heyday it was this
Speaker 7: bustling port city and the seaside tourist town, filled with
Speaker 7: government buildings and military fortifications, amphitheaters, residences and ships carrying
Speaker 7: grains and other supplies. Would offload tons of goods to
Speaker 7: be stored and cataloged in warehouses and then tugged upriver
Speaker 7: by little boats and then dragged into Rome itself. This
Speaker 7: was a place of a lot of comings and goings,
Speaker 7: but once a newer port city nearby started getting more traffic,
Speaker 7: Ostia Antika became so five minutes ago, it was so over.
Speaker 7: But it's abandoned. Ruins are a really really good place
Speaker 7: for archaeologists to piece together the past, because that's what
Speaker 7: they do. I just stated the obvious anyway, Ostia Antica.
Speaker 8: And so then obviously Ostia becomes a very very important
Speaker 8: place for the Empire, and it becomes a very multicultural city,
Speaker 8: and it's a great it's like a mini Rome. So
Speaker 8: the fact that it gets abandoned that is just there
Speaker 8: then allows us to have really exciting and pretty immediate
Speaker 8: excavations as opposed to you know, other sites that are
Speaker 8: continue occupied like Rome.
Speaker 9: Obviously, Rome was much more.
Speaker 8: Complex to excavate because there's a modern city on top
Speaker 8: of ye.
Speaker 4: And what kind of stuff do you typically find?
Speaker 9: See you find a lot of pottery.
Speaker 8: I was going to say, yeah, yeah, So I mean
Speaker 8: imagine you have your house, you're living in your house
Speaker 8: for decades and decades and decades, and you're producing over
Speaker 8: that time period a lot of garbage. Now imagine your
Speaker 8: rubbish heap, your dump was right out side in your backyard.
Speaker 8: Just imagine what people would find.
Speaker 4: Personally, there's a bunch of kombucha bottles and empty bags
Speaker 4: of cool ranch to writos. Let's be honest.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, And of course we're obviously we're talking about
Speaker 8: a lot of today, we're talking about a lot of plastic.
Speaker 8: So for the Romans, almost everything. I mean, sure there's
Speaker 8: leather goods they're using, or baskets or what you know,
Speaker 8: burlap bags, but really what's traditionally preserving, what was used
Speaker 8: for storage from pretty much anything, was pottery. So you're
Speaker 8: gonna find that and that stuff is fired and it's
Speaker 8: basically indestructible, but you know, it's kind of like smashed
Speaker 8: up and there's things can be pieced together and then
Speaker 8: hopefully if you're lucky, you know, they write on them
Speaker 8: oftentimes what the material is and so forth, or you know, who.
Speaker 9: Owns it and so on.
Speaker 8: There's a big dump actually in Rome called Monthly Tstatcho.
Speaker 9: It's like a hill.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 7: Okay, a Google search reveals this huge grassy hill in
Speaker 7: an otherwise flat neighborhood. But then you get up close
Speaker 7: and it's like a ceramics graveyard. There's just piles and
Speaker 7: piles and piles of broken pottery, like if a giant
Speaker 7: just smashed all your jars.
Speaker 8: It's literally something like about one hundred and fifty feet high.
Speaker 8: Oh my god, and it's got a circumference of like
Speaker 8: a mile and a half and they just dumped ceramics
Speaker 8: that are smashed, and the primarily the amphidire. These jars
Speaker 8: were used for carrying olive oil. So then you say, well,
Speaker 8: why don't they just reuse the jars? Well, because if
Speaker 8: you have it filled with olive oil, you ever try
Speaker 8: to clean a bottle of olive oil, it's a paint, Okay,
Speaker 8: it's yeah. So what they did was they just smashed it.
Speaker 8: So it gives you an idea of the volume, the
Speaker 8: sheer volume that's coming in. And then keep in mind
Speaker 8: too that the we love the ancient guys because it
Speaker 8: was also sustainable. So even Rome was a big consumer city,
Speaker 8: generally speaking, you'd take those jars and you'd smash them
Speaker 8: and you'd stick them in the rubble for the mortar
Speaker 8: of a wall. So these things get you know, they're
Speaker 8: reusing everything. But to be able to create a massive
Speaker 8: hill like that means it has so much volume coming
Speaker 8: into this megacity that was the ultimate consumer city, that oh,
Speaker 8: we can't even use all this stuff, We'll just dump
Speaker 8: over here and it just becomes this hill.
Speaker 4: My god, So people have always been garbage people.
Speaker 9: Oh yeah.
Speaker 8: Some of the greatest finds I think in recent times
Speaker 8: really adding to our knowledge of the ancient world is like,
Speaker 8: for example, the drainage channels in Herculaneum, one of these
Speaker 8: cities destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius. They found something
Speaker 8: like six tons of human feces. So you go, oh,
Speaker 8: that's not my kind of dig, but yeah, like, oh,
Speaker 8: hit the mother load now. But basically what happens is
Speaker 8: they sift through all this stuff and they find out, oh,
Speaker 8: they had parasites, and they had you know, and this
Speaker 8: is what they're eating, this is their diet and so forth,
Speaker 8: and it's really really fascinating.
Speaker 7: Since making this episode side note, we've done scatology all
Speaker 7: about zoo poo and more recently environmental microbiology, which is
Speaker 7: all about testing wastewater for diseases.
Speaker 4: You're welcome, enjoy your lunch.
Speaker 9: Somebody's got to do it.
Speaker 8: And you don't know what's going to happen when you dig,
Speaker 8: and just you will not know until you excavate, And
Speaker 8: that's part of the fun and the mystery and in
Speaker 8: the puzzle work because you never find everything intact. You're
Speaker 8: always going to find you know, half the puzzle pieces
Speaker 8: are missing, so then you need to figure it out,
Speaker 8: and you figure that out by talking to colleagues and
Speaker 8: seeing things that are similar and so forth.
Speaker 9: But that's a lot of fun.
Speaker 7: Now when you've got let's say, a crushed base that
Speaker 7: you've understeden, it's very exciting.
Speaker 4: Whose job is it to physically put it back together?
Speaker 8: Ah? Yes, So then I mean, well that's the job
Speaker 8: of the conservator, which is very very important. So you know,
Speaker 8: you can carefully document and excavate, like we actually had
Speaker 8: a number of tombs at our last dig, so then
Speaker 8: we had a you know, specific expert.
Speaker 7: So this expert he's talking about is the very very
Speaker 7: European sounding Pierre Paulo Petrone of the Laboratory of Human
Speaker 7: Osteobiology and Forensic anthropology. This is near POMPEII.
Speaker 8: He's looking at some pelvic bone and he's telling you
Speaker 8: man or woman and age and da da da dad.
Speaker 8: So it's just it was a lot of fun to
Speaker 8: have him on the site. And you have to depend
Speaker 8: upon a good team of people from different backgrounds depending
Speaker 8: on what you're doing. Do you need a structural engineer
Speaker 8: because you're going deep, Do you need this forensic anthropologist?
Speaker 8: Do you need the numismatists? Do you need you know,
Speaker 8: for the coins. But it really is exciting because what
Speaker 8: you're doing is you're recovering the remains of ancient cultures.
Speaker 9: That's what really archaeology is.
Speaker 8: And you're doing that through the examination of the material remains.
Speaker 9: And you know, it's not just the.
Speaker 8: Things, but it's the things that then indicate human activity,
Speaker 8: human lives. I mean, it really is the way to
Speaker 8: connect to those those people of the past. And oftentimes,
Speaker 8: you know, it's not the big high and mighty the emperors.
Speaker 8: Like I've done a lot of TV shows, it's like
Speaker 8: tell us one more episode, do one more episode on Caligula,
Speaker 8: you know, or somebody who create you know, Nero Burning Rome.
Speaker 8: But it's also just that average person those communities, who
Speaker 8: are those people? And so they oftentimes remain anonymous because
Speaker 8: they don't have the funds to leave behind something great
Speaker 8: and massive and impressive. So it's really the archaeological remains
Speaker 8: that can help unearth their story.
Speaker 4: And how did ancient Romans live?
Speaker 8: Yeah, there was different ways of looking at it because
Speaker 8: on the one hand, we just I mean, I'm still
Speaker 8: in awe of the aqueducts that were constructed to bring
Speaker 8: all that water into a city. I mean, how do
Speaker 8: you maintain you know, a million people. I mean, that's
Speaker 8: a mega city. Cities didn't get that large until after
Speaker 8: the seventeen hundreds. I mean, this is you got to
Speaker 8: get the Industrial revolution to have the sophistication to have
Speaker 8: these cities. So the Romans had incredible, you know, different
Speaker 8: ways of you know, benefiting from yeah, conquest, but then
Speaker 8: also just a kind of a life standard that nobody
Speaker 8: else had. And so then people were what are people
Speaker 8: doing today? We're going to the cities because cities give
Speaker 8: you more opportunities. What were they doing under the Romans?
Speaker 8: People were flocking to the cities. There were jobs, there
Speaker 8: were opportunities, and there was a whole different lifestyle, you know,
Speaker 8: all these specializations, all these careers, like this is the
Speaker 8: person that makes the shoes times, I mean there was
Speaker 8: the guy down the street that was making your shoes
Speaker 8: unless you get the import right, get more refined leather
Speaker 8: or whatever, and it can be much more expensive. But
Speaker 8: you know the clothes that are being made. Everything is
Speaker 8: made by hand. But in a certain sense things did
Speaker 8: get industrialized. You could go to dry cleaners that could
Speaker 8: accommodate thousands and thousands of people. You drop off your
Speaker 8: toga and your toga would be cleaned, oftentimes being soaked
Speaker 8: in ammonium from urine to get those stains out, no
Speaker 8: thank you, and then afterwards.
Speaker 9: You'd rinse it out.
Speaker 8: And obviously there are different ways in which you can
Speaker 8: have it clean and smelling well. So the life got
Speaker 8: really complicated, but then also sophisticated. Because you have the water,
Speaker 8: let's say, from the aqueducts coming in, you have the
Speaker 8: bath complexes. You can go You who don't even have
Speaker 8: a flushing, you know, running water in your house or
Speaker 8: a toilet could go to these public spaces where you
Speaker 8: could have a jacuzzi.
Speaker 7: Okay, looked up the amenities in Roman baths and they
Speaker 7: had heated floors and dry saunas and wet saunas, and
Speaker 7: furnace warmed bathing water and coal plunges and these soaring,
Speaker 7: beautiful ceilings and intricate mosaic floors. And they were public
Speaker 7: so they were pretty cheap to get into, and on
Speaker 7: some holidays they were just totally free. And while we're
Speaker 7: talking aquatic, so the water systems in Rome were legendary.
Speaker 7: They were channels of water that went under the city
Speaker 7: or above it in these bridge like structures, and they
Speaker 7: were fed by springs and the flow was transported only
Speaker 7: via gravity. So all these aqueducts were built to be
Speaker 7: on some gradient and even if it wasn't too steep,
Speaker 7: it didn't even look steep, it still was enough to
Speaker 7: keep the water flowing just slightly downhill. Now, the first
Speaker 7: aqueduct began operating in three hundred and twelve BCE and
Speaker 7: it fed a cattle market in Rome. And then as
Speaker 7: the centuries passed, hundreds of these human built rivers existed
Speaker 7: all over the Roman Empire, and a lot of the
Speaker 7: water was used for the bath houses. I mean, I'm
Speaker 7: mostly Italian, and it's so weird to think of my
Speaker 7: ancestors just Scrubby Dubby Jacuzzi chillin if you had to
Speaker 7: describe to like a second grader, the rise and fall
Speaker 7: of the Roman Empire, and like a couple of sentences, Uh,
Speaker 7: how did the Roman Empire get so powerful?
Speaker 9: Right?
Speaker 4: And what happened?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 9: Okay, that's that's who. That's a great one.
Speaker 8: So they started off as a little village like everybody else,
Speaker 8: but they had a sense of themselves and what they
Speaker 8: could accomplish, and they did it so against all odds.
Speaker 8: So they end up having a better military. Basically, they
Speaker 8: had something a good idea, a good kind of mindset
Speaker 8: that ends up over time allowing them not just to
Speaker 8: defeat people, but to have relationships with those people in
Speaker 8: those communities. And they do it rather quickly, and they
Speaker 8: end up having a great network, to the point that
Speaker 8: all these communities in Italy are now on their side
Speaker 8: and they're all becoming Romans, right, they actually get the citizenship.
Speaker 7: Okay, let's buckle up your bots for a whiz through
Speaker 7: space and time to get some highlight in a very
Speaker 7: very brief history of the Roman Empire situation. So the
Speaker 7: history of Rome, it all starts around seven fifty three BCE.
Speaker 7: Rome was ruled by a bunch of kings, a lot.
Speaker 9: Of whom a bunch of old meanings, and.
Speaker 7: Then it became a republic in five hundred and nine
Speaker 7: BCE all the way to forty five BC when it
Speaker 7: becomes an empire. So weird rulers start to take over,
Speaker 7: starting with Julius Caesar, who crosses the Rubicon into Italy
Speaker 7: and ends the era of this people led republic by
Speaker 7: becoming a dictator. So that empire lasts about five hundred
Speaker 7: years until its fall, which happened about four hundred and
Speaker 7: seventy six a d.
Speaker 9: But Rome ends up, you know, so having this voice.
Speaker 8: Rome today still has a voice as well as the
Speaker 8: capital of a country country's only been around since eighteen
Speaker 8: seventy eighteen sixty thereabouts, as modern Italy. There was no
Speaker 8: modern Italy before there. It was all city states.
Speaker 7: So Italy is a brand new country. I did not
Speaker 7: know this, and again I'm Italian. Can I ask you
Speaker 7: patron questions?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 7: But before that, let's send off some money to a
Speaker 7: good cause. And this week we're going to toss some
Speaker 7: chunks of gold at the nonprofit Ancient Romelive dot org,
Speaker 7: which is a free educational learning platform for students and
Speaker 7: teachers and travelers and history lovers. You can find out
Speaker 7: more at ancient romelive dot org and Darius is the director.
Speaker 7: So score boom money, Thank you sponsors.
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Speaker 2: Mum, why do they call it Scottish cheese?
Speaker 3: This Cottage cheese?
Speaker 7: Honey?
Speaker 4: And I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: Did dogs in other countries speak different languages?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think so. Well when we get there, well, we've
Speaker 1: got to fix the car first, but there's someone coming
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Speaker 7: Okay, let's ask this nerd your questions. Jay wants to
Speaker 7: know is Rome a big archaeological minefield with ancient stuff
Speaker 7: below the ground everywhere? And how does anyone build anything
Speaker 7: without ruining some of the sweet mosaic under the ground.
Speaker 9: You're absolutely correct.
Speaker 8: Rome was the mega city, the greatest city of the
Speaker 8: ancient world, a million people living there. So everywhere you
Speaker 8: dig you find something ancient that's exactly correct. Now, in
Speaker 8: different time periods, people cared less. So when you unify Italy,
Speaker 8: the Savoya family wants boulevards and new buildings, and they
Speaker 8: uncover tons of stuff and then oh, look, we'll keep
Speaker 8: the statues or whatnot. We'll document this, but we'll knock
Speaker 8: everything down. So there are those issues where you lost
Speaker 8: a lot of material but also made a lot of discoveries. Today,
Speaker 8: of course, is very very the process is very meticulous, very.
Speaker 9: Refined, and very time consuming.
Speaker 8: So if I put an elevator in this building, or
Speaker 8: I want to gut this building and put in a
Speaker 8: department store, which happened with Rina Shante, then they literally
Speaker 8: found a whole slice of a neighborhood.
Speaker 4: Well, Lloyd Parley has a bathroom question.
Speaker 9: Oh right, uh, sponge on a stick YEP sponge on set.
Speaker 7: The whole wiping their butts with the public. Shared sponge
Speaker 7: on a stick. So a recent mosaic of this item,
Speaker 7: which is known as a xylo spongium, was recently uncovered
Speaker 7: in modern Turkey, and let's just say it was humorous
Speaker 7: in nature, and it confirmed that for millennia people have
Speaker 7: enjoyed toilet humor and comic strips.
Speaker 4: While in the.
Speaker 8: John they find a mosaic with a guy with a
Speaker 8: little stick and a sponge on it.
Speaker 9: So what's with that? So the idea is, do you
Speaker 9: have any idea how much paper costs? Back then?
Speaker 8: Oh my god, it has made my hand. It's made
Speaker 8: from a pyrus. Oh god, I mean, you can't waste that.
Speaker 8: It's not going to happen, So you do you know
Speaker 8: what let's talk about Let's talk about diapers. Oh, I
Speaker 8: mean seriously, all the modern things we have today. Then
Speaker 8: we're a throwaway society and it's convenient. I mean go back.
Speaker 8: I mean my parents, you know they washed our diapers. Yeah,
Speaker 8: but I mean the things that we take for granted today. Oh,
Speaker 8: so you know, it's the same thing with a with
Speaker 8: sponge on a stick. I mean, what do you expect
Speaker 8: them to do? You know, these are big issues. So
Speaker 8: sponge on a stick, thank you very much.
Speaker 7: Didn't know about that until this moment.
Speaker 9: Oh yeah, oh god.
Speaker 7: Okay, let's see Christopher Barley and Lord Parley. Both wanted
Speaker 7: to know if Roman concrete was indeed stronger than ours
Speaker 7: now it is?
Speaker 4: It is, ok?
Speaker 9: It is ok.
Speaker 8: Why is the Dome of the Pantheon still standing after
Speaker 8: let's say, you know, eighteen hundred years? I mean, how
Speaker 8: is this possible? We can't build anything that last eighteen
Speaker 8: hundred years? But I mean, how do you have anything
Speaker 8: last that long? How come we're excavating stuff when we're
Speaker 8: finding these really well preserved structures. Is because they built
Speaker 8: them in a different way, and for us to do
Speaker 8: it today it's it's not efficient. It's not cost effect efficient.
Speaker 8: So are we cook the lime? We the processing is different,
Speaker 8: so the material is weaker.
Speaker 4: Oh I didn't.
Speaker 9: Know that, So that doesn't last as long.
Speaker 7: Okay, So much like a coveted recipe for barbecue sauce,
Speaker 7: Roman concrete recipes are exciting to people, including myself.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 7: So the secret ingredients volcanic ash and seawater. So the
Speaker 7: seawater broke down the ash, and then this other mineral,
Speaker 7: philipsite crystallized in its place, and that hardened the concrete
Speaker 7: over time, so instead of breaking down, it just kind
Speaker 7: of got better and better. But still, you know what
Speaker 7: I would take our concrete over there zylospongia really any day. Okay,
Speaker 7: So this next question floored me. Jamie Peterson wants to know.
Speaker 7: Is it true that marble statues were originally painted brilliant
Speaker 7: colors and the paint disappeared over the time to reveal
Speaker 7: the natural stone color that we see today.
Speaker 8: Yes, absolutely, because the materials were biodegradable. If you bury something,
Speaker 8: it's just it's gonna come off. They use tempera, they
Speaker 8: using caustics, so they actually they put a hot wax
Speaker 8: kind of paint that was translucent, so the whole dynamic
Speaker 8: I would actually really look like We're not exactly sure.
Speaker 8: So when you see a reconstruction, always take those reconstructions
Speaker 8: to day with the grain of salt, because they're.
Speaker 9: Usually not very good.
Speaker 8: Okay, okay, So to recreate what must have been there
Speaker 8: has not really been done.
Speaker 4: When do they stop painting them?
Speaker 8: Do you think, ah, that's a good question. Now, I
Speaker 8: mean all throughout antiquity they were painting them. That's necessarily
Speaker 8: the full body. It could be like, it could be
Speaker 8: the clothing, the drapery, the hair, the paint, the pupils,
Speaker 8: maybe the ring on your finger, et cetera. Even inserting
Speaker 8: like a metal necklace or a crown or ear rings,
Speaker 8: so it got to be quite dynamic and lavish.
Speaker 7: Right last nast year, I always asked, Okay, the best
Speaker 7: thing about being an archaeologist.
Speaker 9: I think there's everything that's great.
Speaker 8: You meet people, diverse cultures, get to travel, got to
Speaker 8: always have a little bit of a tan.
Speaker 9: You know, my work is outdoors. My work is outside.
Speaker 8: Then my younger daughter used to say when she was
Speaker 8: really little, she said, daddy's office is the coliseum, which
Speaker 8: is an nice thing to say, and it's kind of like, yeah,
Speaker 8: I mean, it's just I want to be in contact
Speaker 8: with this as much as possible. And the other beautiful
Speaker 8: thing again to underline is there are collections around the
Speaker 8: world in museums which do a phenomenal job to promote
Speaker 8: all this history and stuff like that. But remember they're
Speaker 8: all pretty much all collections you've acquired, you've bought, you've purchased,
Speaker 8: and right nowadays are really scrutinizing where this stuff is
Speaker 8: coming from because a lot of stuff is looted.
Speaker 7: Daria says that preservation is really important, as is knowing
Speaker 7: where the objects came from.
Speaker 8: Seeing right now I'm at the Getty, and the Getty
Speaker 8: has a beautiful, fantastic relationship. Was not always the case,
Speaker 8: but right now with the Italian government and they're sharing
Speaker 8: and they're working, and they're preserving monuments and so forth.
Speaker 8: So it's great to see when those things can really
Speaker 8: work and it doesn't just benefit the monument themselves, it
Speaker 8: benefits the local community, the local governments and so forth.
Speaker 9: That's the kind of things I'm involved in. I want
Speaker 9: to be more involved in.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much, Thank you very much.
Speaker 9: This is great, amazing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I got to go to rome Just let me
Speaker 4: know when you're coming to rome O. Good, We'll get
Speaker 4: an afsport.
Speaker 7: Go check out some Roman ruins, eat some pizza.
Speaker 4: While you're there.
Speaker 7: You can find dariusaria all over. He has tons of
Speaker 7: beautiful photos and links up at his website that's Dariusariadiggs
Speaker 7: dot com, and his Twitter and Instagram are also at Dariusariadiggs.
Speaker 7: You can check out his show Ancient Invisible Cities on
Speaker 7: PBS and his Italian show Under Italy and that's at
Speaker 7: riplay dot it r I A p l a y
Speaker 7: dot it, and his American Institute for Roman Culture is
Speaker 7: at romanculture dot org, so you can find me at
Speaker 7: ologies on Twitter and Instagram at Aliward with one L
Speaker 7: on both and aliward dot com has more links. Also
Speaker 7: linked is aliwar dot com slash Asmologies, which has dozens
Speaker 7: more kid safe and shorter episodes you can blaze through.
Speaker 7: And thank you Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio for editing
Speaker 7: those and says we like to keep things small around here.
Speaker 7: The rest of the credits are in the show notes.
Speaker 7: And if you stick around until the end of the episode,
Speaker 7: I give you a piece of advice. And this is
Speaker 7: some life advice I have sworn by for decades, and
Speaker 7: that is where very brightly colored and patterned socks, because
Speaker 7: not only do they make any outfit more exciting, you
Speaker 7: can wear them mismatched if you like, but when you're
Speaker 7: matching socks, it's just way easier if you've got a
Speaker 7: bunch of weird wacky socks. Then if you've got a
Speaker 7: bunch that are kind of the same color but bland,
Speaker 7: so start wearing weird socks, because laundry day is way
Speaker 7: more fun that way.
Speaker 4: All right, Bye?
Speaker 9: Bye?
Speaker 5: Algy Sology.
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