New on The Archaeology Channel This just in from Richard Pettigrew:

Friends and colleagues: The catacombs of Rome, underground cemeteries
where early Christians took refuge, played an important role in the
development of modern archaeology. See how that took place in The
Witnesses of Silence: Discovering Rome's Catacombs, the latest video
feature on our nonprofit streaming-media Web site, The Archaeology
Channel (http://www.archaeologychannel.org).

This film retraces the rediscovery of the catacombs, subterranean
burial places and hideouts beneath the streets of ancient Rome. It
finds in the dark galleries the traces of early explorers and the
signatures, graffiti and inscriptions they left. These early
underground explorers include legendary figures such as Antonio Bosio
and Giovanni Battista de Rossi, the scholar who laid the scientific
basis of modern Italian archaeology. This film sheds new light on an
underground world where silence dominates but images retell stories
voiced many centuries ago.