Floors of ancient Greek luxury villa were laid with recycled glass
22 HOURS AGO
by GCT
Although this 1700 years old luxury villa was excavated and examined in 1856 and the 1990s, it still has secrets to reveal.
An international research team has now revealed new secrets, with Professor and expert in archaeometry Kaare Lund Rasmussen from the University of Southern Denmark leading the so-called archaeometric analyses: using chemical analysis to determine which elements an object was made of, how it has been processed, etc. reports Phys.org
Others in the team are Thomas Delbey from Cranfield University in England and the classical archaeologists Birte Poulsen and Poul Pedersen from Aarhus University and the University of Southern Denmark. The team’s work is published in Heritage Science, including an archaeometric analysis of 19, approximately 1600 years old mosaic tesserae.
One of seven wonders of the world
The tesserae originate from an excavation of a villa from late antiquity, located in Halikarnassos (today Bodrum in Anatolia, Turkey). Halikarnassos was famous for King Mausolus‘ giant and lavish tomb, considered one of the world’s seven wonders.
The villa was laid out around two courtyards, and the many rooms were adorned with mosaic floors. In addition to geometric patterns, there were also motifs of various mythological figures and scenes taken from Greek mythology, e.g. Princess Europa being abducted by the god Zeus in the form of a bull and Aphrodite at sea in her seashell.
More:
https://greekcitytimes.com/2022/07/27/floors-ancient-greek-recycled-glass/