Italian archaeologists find lost Roman city of Altinum near Venice

The bustling harbour of Altinum near Venice was one of the richest cities of the Roman empire. But terrified by the impending invasion of the fearsome Germanic Emperor Attila the Hun, its inhabitants cut their losses and fled in AD452, leaving behind a ghost town of theatres, temples and basilicas.

Altinum was never reoccupied and gradually sunk into the ground. The city lived on in Venetian folk tales and historical artefacts but its exact position, size and wealth gradually faded into obscurity.

Now, using aerial photography of the region, Italian archaeologists have not only located the city, but have produced a detailed map revealing its remarkably intact infrastructure and showing it to be slightly larger than Pompeii.

The abandonment of the city and its subsequent preservation makes it an archaeological time capsule, a unique find in Roman heritage. “It’s extremely unusual for a town to go out of use like this and that is what makes it absolutely invaluable for achaeologists. It gives a full profile of what the town looked like without the imposition of modern infrastructure,” said Dr Neil Christie, a specialist in the Roman empire at the University of Leicester.

The team behind the study located the ancient city by studying hundreds of aerial photographs of the region, mostly taken by private companies for cartography purposes.

In July 2007, during a particularly dry summer, crops were suffering from drought and were highly sensitive to the subsurface presence of stones, bricks or compacted soil. On the image taken by the mapping company Telespazio, the lighter crops indicated stonework, while the darker patches revealed depressed features such as pits and canals.

The team, reconstructing the town using the aerial images and knowledge of Roman architecture, was able to identify temples, theatres, a basilica, the marketplace and city walls as

"It's remarkable how obvious something cam become when properly viewed - especially when you can't discern any trace from the ground."

Yeah -- or the other way 'round... Take a look at this composite image...

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The way I got started on "chasing old roads" was when I accepted the challenge of locating -- and putting on a modern map -- the "Y" junction where the (1813) "Trammel's Trace" joined the earlier "Spanish Trace".

I had two historical clues:

1) It was on the "Dan'l Barecroft" (actually "Barcroft") Republic of Texas land grant tract (per the little old "headright" sketch at lower right).

2) It was supposedly "about a mile SW of the old Dalton Cemetery".

After I first located the "Barecroft" Tract on a B&W aerial, I spotted Trammel's Trace. (See it going off to the upper right? The historical marker will be placed where the Trace crosses the highway...) Then I downloaded the "IRDOQQ" of the area (which is what you see as the base for the above composite.)

When we went out to "ground truth" the find, we went directly to the UTM (GPS) coordinates of the "Y" that I had derived from the overheads -- "georeferenced" to a modern topographic map. BUT -- when we reached the supposed location of the "Y", we found ourselves in the nastiest, near-impenetrable sweetgum brush thicket you can imagine! We could hardly see the ground -- much less where two faint paths came together...

Then, when we took another look at the color IR image, we had a genuine "DUH!!" moment: See that lighter yellowish "blob" surrounding the "Y"? That's clear evidence of young, deciduous growth. The southern half of that tract had obviously been "clear-cut" for its timber, not re-planted, and allowed to grow up in -- sweetgum brush.

If we had looked at the IR image for vegetation signs as well as for evidence of old trails, we would have known we were heading into a thicket! :-(

So, yes, overhead imagery can provide a lot of useful information -- if you analyze it properly! '-}

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