For seven a long time, archaeologists on the Villa Romana del Casale in south-central Sicily have been uncovering mosaics that blur the road between antiquity and modernity: girls in bikinis tossing a ball, cupids fishing, and seahorses cloaked in panther skins. Now the location has produced one other incongruity—a pair of flip-flops.
The sandals seem within the mosaic-paved frigidarium or chilly bathtub of the villa’s southern baths, alongside the inscription Treptona bibas, thought to reference a girl concerned in managing the complicated. The discover was made through the College of Bologna’s Summer time Faculty ArchLABS program, which trains college students from 11 nations in fashionable excavation strategies.
Flip-flop motifs, it seems, had been trendy in Late Roman bathtub ornament. Identified examples have been discovered throughout Spain, Cyrenaica, Cyprus, Jordan, and Asia Minor. Program director Isabella Baldini mentioned that the motif indicators the baths’ aristocratic and cosmopolitan character—one in all a number of markers of the villa’s social life.
The Romans, in fact, wore their very own variations of sandals: the heavy, hobnailed caligae of the legionary or the lighter soleae most popular by civilians. Right now’s rubber seashore footwear descends as a substitute from Japanese zōri sandals, later reworked in Brazil.
The Sicilian villa itself—37,000 sq. ft of mosaics unfold over three terraces—provides a lavish image of elite life within the third and 4th centuries. Athletic contests embellish the health club, cupids harvest grapes within the eating corridor, and within the celebrated Nice Hunt mosaic, animals are trapped and shipped overseas—maybe for video games organized by the villa’s proprietor, who could have been a high-ranking official with North African ties.
Protected for hundreds of years by a Medieval landslide, the villa was systematically excavated solely within the Fifties below Gino Vinicio Gentili and designated a UNESCO World Heritage web site in 1997. But, regardless of its fame, archaeologists warning that a lot work stays: digital modeling, geophysical surveys, and archival examine are nonetheless wanted to piece collectively the villa’s unique structure.
For all its glamour, the location can also be fragile. Italian heritage teams have not too long ago warned of neglect and underfunding—an irony, on condition that the mosaics themselves as soon as celebrated the wealth and attain of Rome’s elite.
