Roman toilet found (and an amphitheatre)

[arildno]

Roman toilet found! (and an amphitheatre)

The amphitheatre seems to go back to 2 century CE:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6856042.ece#comment-have-your-say

 

[marcus]

Poo, I've seen older Roman toilets than that---photographs I mean.

The one I saw had the same kind of 3-hole stone slab seat, which in this case was positioned over running water fed by aqueduct.

It sounds like the one found at Porto resembled an oldfashioned outhouse seat, merely positioned over a pit, because they talked about studying the accumulated matter.

The one I saw would not have anything collect because it was constantly being flushed by an artificial stream, in a conduit below ground level.

However it is highly fortunate that the archaeologists have found another Roman toilet. In a world like today's we need all toilets we can get.

 

[ViewsofMars]

Archeology Magazine has information about digs. I love to go digging. Last information from July, 10, 2009. Be sure to explore the website.

Roman Baths: July 10-13

For more than a decade, research in the Roman Baths has been made possible thanks to the generosity of Louis and Fanny Lamberts Van Assche and their four children.

With their upper level 6,825 square meters in size, the Roman Baths at Sagalassos formed the largest building complex in the city. It occupied a natural hill to the east of the lower agora, which was leveled at its top around A.D. 120 after all of older structures had been removed. Its load-bearing capacity was extended towards the west and southwest by the construction of at least six brick-faced concrete vaults of about 100 square meters each. Together with the natural hill, this created a surface that could carry the actual bath complex, which seems to have had straight walls on its north and east sides, but "dented" ones towards the west and south. The north wall was aligned with the main east-west street of the city, and its main entrance was probably located there. The east and south facades were mostly built on the natural hill, except for the western half of the south face, where a vaulted substructure with at least two large arched windows extended the hill in that direction.

The facades towered over the immediate vicinity and must have been visible from most places in the lower city. The nearly 16 meter high west facade was separated by a paved street--covering a large gutter and built simultaneously with the baths--from the back wall of the Lower Agora's east portico. The northern section of the west facade contained two doors and its southern "dented" wall segment had a rectangular window, which together with the arched opening in the adjoining south wall illuminated the vaulted room in the southwest corner at ground level. The first door from the north was blocked in late antiquity and the room behind it filled with debris, possibly the result of an earthquake that occurred around A.D. 500. The second door opened to a vaulted vestibule, pierced toward the north and the south by an arched opening leading to the vaulted corner rooms of the west facade. The northwest corner room may have housed the original latrina, or public toilet, of the complex, whereas the room to the south probably became a latrina only after the catastrophe of A.D. 500. The other vaulted spaces at ground level apparently did not fulfill any specific function other than creating a large supporting surface for the bath structure above them. The eastern end of the vestibule contained a staircase leading through a large vaulted opening into a shaft-like, possibly open-air central structure that passed through all levels and was covered with marble. The structure has been only partially excavated, but its principal function seems to have been to connect the various levels of the whole complex.
[snip] [Please read the rest of the article online. THX.]
http://www.archaeology.org/interactive/sagalassos/field06/romanbaths2.html

arildno, your UK Times Online link(url) states '404 Error'.

 

[arildno]

Archeology Magazine has information about digs. I love to go digging. Last information from July, 10, 2009. Be sure to explore the website.



arildno, your UK Times Online link(url) states '404 Error'.

Does this work better?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6856042.ece