Roman egg found in Aylesbury still has contents after 1,700 years (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 9 months ago by neme@lemm.ee to c/archaeology@mander.xyz

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[-] autotldr 4 points 9 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

It was a wonderful find as it was, a cache of 1,700-year-old speckled chicken eggs discovered in a Roman pit during a dig in Buckinghamshire.

But to the astonishment of archaeologists and naturalists, a scan has revealed that one of the eggs recovered intact still has liquid – thought to be a mix of yolk and albumen – inside it, and may give up secrets about the bird that laid it almost two millennia ago.

The “Aylesbury egg” is one of four that were found alongside a woven basket, pottery vessels, leather shoes and animal bone in 2010 as a site was being explored ahead of a major development.

Edward Biddulph, the senior project manager at Oxford Archaeology, which oversaw the excavation, said it had been amazing enough to find what is thought to be the only intact egg from the period in Britain.

Discussions were being held last year about how to display the egg when Dana Goodburn-Brown, an archaeological conservator and materials scientist, suggested they scan it to help decide how best to preserve it.

Biddulph said it had felt a little daunting riding on the tube and walking around the capital with such an extraordinary and fragile egg in his care.

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this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2024

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Archaeology or archeology[a] is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes.

Archaeology has various goals, which range from understanding culture history to reconstructing past lifeways to documenting and explaining changes in human societies through time.

The discipline involves surveying, excavation, and eventually analysis of data collected, to learn more about the past. In broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research. Read more...

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