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Newfound Roman tomb said to predate
empire
Jan. 21,
2006
Staff and wire reports
Archaeologists in Rome have reported finding a 3,000-year-old tomb beneath the Roman Forum, which could pre-date ancient Rome’s birth by
around three centuries.
The tomb appeared to date to about 900 and 1,100 B.C., archaeologists
said. Legend holds that the Roman empire was founded in 753 B.C. by the twins Romulus and Remus, who were sons of Mars, the god of war, and were raised by a she-wolf.
Although the tale is a legend, the dating it offers is believed to be
probably roughly accurate.
The Italian news agency ANSA reported that archaeologists found the tomb after digging in the natural clay beneath the ancient forum, a popular tourist site. They suspect the tomb is part of a whole necropolis, ANSA reported.
“I am convinced that the excavations will bring more tombs to light,” the agency quoted Rome’s archaeology commissioner, Eugenio La Rocca, as saying, according to the Associated Press.
The Times of London online quoted Alessandro Delfino, the archaeologist leading the dig, saying the tomb was that of a clan chief.
Italian State TV Thursday night showed excavators removing vases from the tomb, which looked like a deep well. It also contained a funerary urn, ANSA said, and was about 1.7 meters (5 feet, 7 inches) deep.
It additionally contained eight other hand-shaped vases and a stone in the form of stylized
hut. Some bird bones were next to the vases, the newspaper La Repubblica in Rome reported, noting, “the tomb belongs to a period in which the city had not yet been founded and the area was occupied by sparse settlements on the hills.”
The forum, an ancient marketplace and the center of Roman political, religious, and business life,
later sprang up between two of those hills, the Palatine and the Capitoline.
The Times quoted La Rocca saying the tomb showed that there had been organised settlements in Rome between the end of the Bronze Age and the start of the Iron Age.
Until modern excavations began in the 18th century most of the ruins in the Forum were buried.
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