When I began going on archaeological excavations, in 1970s England, I dug on several Roman sites. It could be exhausting work, clearing huge foundations of poured concrete (another Roman invention) with pickaxes and racing to keep the log books one step ahead of the flood of finds. But then I started doing a PhD on Greek society around 700 BCE, and in 1983 dug for the first time on a site of that date. It was a shock. These people just didn’t have anything.
