Sniffing out Ptuj’s Archaeology
As Slovenia’s
motorway network reaches out to the world beyond, archaeologists have sometimes
been one step ahead of the bulldozers making exciting discoveries.
Now a treasure
trove unearthed from trenches near Dos has been put on display for the first
time.
Among the finds,
pieces of pipe which could have belonged to the fabled Lost Plumber of Poetovio who
was rumoured to have existed perhaps nine centuries ago, better make it eleven.
Izgublil
Vodovodar, as he is known locally, became a local legend when he went off for
more parts only to disappear for the rest of the day and never return.
Pipe fragments,
dog-ends and an old beer bottle from the Dos 5 trench point to a connection,
although unfortunately you can’t connect that to anything else and nobody
knows who does those any more.
Other artefacts
from the earlier Dos 3.3 trench show a civilisation much closer to today’s
level than is popularly imagined.
Carving a 3D
cross-section through an ancient high street, exhibits from Dos 3.3 vary from a
piece of fossilised vomit and a ceremonial white belt from the Feluka era, to a delicate papyrus
račun recording the purchase of “4
špritzerji in 20 West” to one Damirus Diđejus.
DDV of IXVIII˘
due to Emperor Hadron Collidus is shown separately.
Experts have been able to date the various Dos trenches down to the exact
minute by analysing thousands of računi.
However,
Slovenia’s largest known deposit of historical računi was a stratum over
35 metres thick near Linuks.
Meanwhile
archaeology has unexpectedly put Ptuj at the centre of the climate change
debate. Fresh, sweet-smelling air
has been found trapped in century-old soil samples, suggesting that prior to
1905 the air did not have its famous character.
“There appears
to have been some discontinuity in atmospheric conditions before 1905 and we are
not sure how far back it goes,” says Dr Ivan Glaser of the Glaser
Foundation’s Department of Atmoarchaeolopiščanography.
“It had been
assumed Ptuj had continually smelled of brewed-up chicken guts back into
prehistory and that of course is what we expected to find.
“This so-called
1905 fresh-air anomaly may be just a blip – we could dig a bit deeper and find
normal Ptuj-flavoured air with all the usual molecules.
We hope to continue looking at this with a grant from a large local
business,” he added.