Gypsy Heart
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http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200111/landesman
This is a really long read but its very interesting.......
The village of Polgardi is a dusty roadside settlement northeast of Lake Balaton, a resort area in western Hungary popular with German tourists. Two thousand years ago Balaton was popular with Romans, a kind of Jersey Shore for the generals who ruled Pannonia, the immense Roman province that encompassed parts of today's Croatia, Bosnia, and Yugoslavia, along with parts of Hungary, Romania, and Albania. The region was a hub of the Roman Empire, the site of countless wars, and crisscrossed by trade routes. In the fourth and fifth centuries Goths and Vandals swept down from the north, and the Romans bolted, leaving behind the lavish wreckage of their occupation. Ever since, the Balaton area has been a rich hunting ground for archaeologists and treasure seekers. Workers at a stone quarry outside Polgardi often found coins and other artifacts, and in the years following World War II a lively trade developed between locals and the Hungarian and Soviet soldiers stationed nearby. Some of the loot was semi-valuable, but most was essentially ancient junk: bent coins, ceramic fragments.
According to the Hungarian government and police officials, on a warm day in 1978 Jozsef Sumegh, twenty-two years old, was doing a routine excavation at the Polgardi quarry when his shovel hit metal. He unearthed something the likes of which no one in the modern world had ever seen: a copper cauldron, about three feet in diameter and one foot deep, containing cunningly crafted silver plates, ewers, an amphora, and a basin of the Roman era. The treasure is known to have included at least fourteen pieces and may have included as many as thirty. The cauldron was encrusted with grime, and blackened by a cooking fire that had gone out more than 1,600 years before............................................................continued at website
This is a really long read but its very interesting.......
The village of Polgardi is a dusty roadside settlement northeast of Lake Balaton, a resort area in western Hungary popular with German tourists. Two thousand years ago Balaton was popular with Romans, a kind of Jersey Shore for the generals who ruled Pannonia, the immense Roman province that encompassed parts of today's Croatia, Bosnia, and Yugoslavia, along with parts of Hungary, Romania, and Albania. The region was a hub of the Roman Empire, the site of countless wars, and crisscrossed by trade routes. In the fourth and fifth centuries Goths and Vandals swept down from the north, and the Romans bolted, leaving behind the lavish wreckage of their occupation. Ever since, the Balaton area has been a rich hunting ground for archaeologists and treasure seekers. Workers at a stone quarry outside Polgardi often found coins and other artifacts, and in the years following World War II a lively trade developed between locals and the Hungarian and Soviet soldiers stationed nearby. Some of the loot was semi-valuable, but most was essentially ancient junk: bent coins, ceramic fragments.
According to the Hungarian government and police officials, on a warm day in 1978 Jozsef Sumegh, twenty-two years old, was doing a routine excavation at the Polgardi quarry when his shovel hit metal. He unearthed something the likes of which no one in the modern world had ever seen: a copper cauldron, about three feet in diameter and one foot deep, containing cunningly crafted silver plates, ewers, an amphora, and a basin of the Roman era. The treasure is known to have included at least fourteen pieces and may have included as many as thirty. The cauldron was encrusted with grime, and blackened by a cooking fire that had gone out more than 1,600 years before............................................................continued at website
