Fans of the Assassin’s Creed franchise may finally get to visit Ancient Rome, but it could instead be through a Netflix adaptation of Ubisoft’s best-selling video game IP. Nexus Point Newsreported that the live-action adaptation will be set in Ancient Rome and feature historical figures like Nero, the fifth emperor of Rome.
With the potential featuring of Nero, the news outlet predicts that the TV series could be set between 54 to 68 AD during the infamous emperor’s rule. Details are still sparse about Netflix’s latest video game adaptation, but the streaming giant and Ubisoft announced its first series regular of Toby Wallace, earlier this month. In the blog post, the plot was described as a “high-octane thriller centered on the secret war between two shadowy factions.”
Before the first casting reveal, Netflix greenlit the Assassin’s Creed TV show in July of this year, five years after the announcement that a series was being produced. While the original plan to introduce multiple different series in the franchise’s universe may have changed over the five-year gap, fans are still hoping for an anthology-like structure similar to the video games.
Archaeologists in France have uncovered a 1,700-year-old ancient Roman funerary area, including burials with libation conduits hilariously akin to today’s watering spikes.
The excavation revealed at least 160 structures associated with cremation on France’s iconic Côte d’Azur, just west of the ancient port town of Olbia in modern-day Hyères. The findings highlight ancient Rome’s diverse funerary traditions and its people’s serious commitment to their dead.
1,700-year-old burials
Olbia was a Greek colony founded by Massaliotes—citizens of Marseille, also a Greek colony—in 325 BCE. The burial ground dates back to between the first and third centuries CE, at which point Olbia was part of the Roman colony of Arles.
The area hosted a funerary practice we often see in historical or fantasy movies (where those left living look on with epically serious expressions and flames reflecting in their teary eyes)—cremation via pyres, essentially a large pile of wood. Here, the ancient Romans built the pyres over rectangular pits and surrounded the deceased with objects destined to follow them into the afterlife.
The fire caused the wood to collapse into the pit, turned the pit’s walls red, and made the bones white, twisted, and cracked. The burial objects also melted or burnt, which is how experts can tell if they were placed there before or after the fire.
Afterward, some people turned the collapsed pyres into formal burial sites, while others transferred the cremation remains into separate graves. Either way, archaeologists identified the burials, sometimes marked by sandstone blocks, from their piles of human bones and found unburned objects like glass perfume bottles and vases. Interestingly, some of the bones were arranged in a pile or in a perishable container, as opposed to in a glass, ceramic, stone, or lead urn.
“Are these social or cultural differences? These discoveries remind us that ancient funerary rites were rich, varied, and imbued with multiple meanings, some of which remain mysterious even today,” reads the statement by France’s National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap) describing the discovery.
Most of the newly discovered graves also featured another distinctive Olbian feature—a conduit for libations, or liquid offerings, such as wine, beer, and mead for either the deceased or the gods. Many of these conduits were mostly made from amphorae, with one of the excavation images (at the top of this article) featuring the top of an upside-down amphora that would have presumably stuck out of the ground like the water spikes some people use to water their plants when they go on vacation.
The Inrap statement highlights one pyre tomb in particular. Its walls are reddened, and the team found metal nails among the burnt bones, indicating that the deceased was cremated atop a wooden structure such as a stretcher or a bed. Afterward, someone left a jug and two small pots on the pyre’s likely extinguished remains. The pit was then closed with a roof-like cover of tiles and partially filled in to hold up its libation conduit—two upright semi-circular tiles.
The discovery stands as a reminder that while the Romans are one of the most studied ancient civilizations, they still have secrets in store for archaeologists.
The period after the Roman Empire abandoned Britain has long been known as the “Dark Ages” for a reason. Scholars believed that after the Romans left, local industries collapsed and effectively all progress ceased for centuries. Britain, they theorized, was plunged into a cultural and economic abyss with their departure.
But for some time, a growing body of evidence has challenged this narrative. And in a new study published today in the journal Antiquity, researchers investigate the assumption that Britain’s metal economy ceased to function. Specifically, they interrogated the idea that when the Romans left Britain around the year 400, country’s lead and iron production—which the Romans may have brought with them to the isles—immediately and irreparably declined.
Reimagining northern England’s economy
The researchers studied metal pollutants in a sediment core extracted from Aldborough in North Yorkshire—a former Roman hub for metal production. They combined that analysis with other local textual and archeological evidence.
“Finding that fluctuations in pollution correspond with sociopolitical events, pandemics and recorded trends in British metal production c. AD 1100–1700, the authors extend the analysis to earlier periods that lack written records, providing a new post-Roman economic narrative for northern England,” the researchers argued in the paper.
Until now, the fate of Britain’s crucial metal industry after the Romans left was unknown, and there isn’t any written evidence testifying that lead production continued after the third century. The researchers’ approach, however, revealed that Britain’s metal production remained strong until about a century after the Romans left, experiencing a sudden drop some time around AD 550-600.
It remains a mystery what caused the crash, but other historical sources and DNA evidence suggest Europe was engulfed by the bubonic plague at that time, wreaking devastating to the entire region’s economy.
Britain’s rich history of making metals
Still, the research demonstrates that “not all industrial commodity production ended in the early 5th century,” Christopher Loveluck, lead author of the study and an archeologist at the University of Nottingham, said in a statement.
“At Aldborough, it is possible metal production expanded steadily using the ores and coal-fuel of the Roman period,” he added.
More broadly, Loveluck and his team’s work adds to the expanding body of evidence that suggests the so-called Dark Ages weren’t so dark after all.
Interestingly, the sediment core also reveals other post-Roman fluctuations in metal production that align with other pivotal events in British history—including Henry VIII‘s Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century. During that time, metal production declined significantly because people were literally pulling metal off monasteries, abbeys, and other religious houses, Loveluck explains.
