Hercules is the Roman equivalent of the Greek divine hero Heracles, son of Jupiter and the mortal Alcmena. In classical mythology, Hercules is famous for his strength and for his numerous far-ranging adventures.
Mjölnir is the hammer of the thunder god Thor in Norse mythology, used both as a devastating weapon and as a divine instrument to provide blessings. The hammer is attested in numerous sources, including the 11th century runic Kvinneby amulet, the Poetic Edda, a collection of eddic poetry compiled in the 13th century, and the Prose Edda, a collection of prose and poetry compiled in the 13th century. The hammer was commonly worn as a pendant during the Viking Age in the Scandinavian cultural sphere, and Thor and his hammer occur depicted on a variety of objects from the archaeological record. Today the symbol appears in a wide variety of media and is again worn as a pendant by various groups, including adherents of modern Heathenry.
Thor is a prominent god in Germanic paganism. In Norse mythology, he is a hammer-wielding god associated with lightning, thunder, storms, sacred groves and trees, strength, the protection of humankind, hallowing, and fertility. Besides Old Norse Þórr, the deity occurs in Old English as Þunor ("Thunor"), in Old Frisian as Thuner, in Old Saxon as Thunar, and in Old High German as Donar, all ultimately stemming from the Proto-Germanic theonym *Þun(a)raz, meaning 'Thunder'.
An Irminsul was a sacred, pillar-like object attested as playing an important role in the Germanic paganism of the Saxons. Medieval sources describe how an Irminsul was destroyed by Charlemagne during the Saxon Wars. A church was erected on its place in 783 and blessed by Pope Leo III. Sacred trees and sacred groves were widely venerated by the Germanic peoples, and the oldest chronicle describing an Irminsul refers to it as a tree trunk erected in the open air.
The Saltmen are the preserved remains of multiple human individuals that were discovered in the Chehrabad salt mines, located on the southern part of the Hamzehlu village, on the west side of the city of Zanjan, in the Zanjan Province in Iran. By 2010, the remains of six men had been discovered, most of them accidentally killed by the collapse of galleries in which they were working. The head and left foot of Salt Man 1 are on display at the National Museum of Iran in Tehran.
Gerulata was a Roman military camp located near today's Rusovce, a borough of Bratislava, Slovakia. It was part of the Roman province of Pannonia and was built in the 2nd century as a part of the frontier defence system. It was abandoned in the 4th century, when Roman legions withdrew from Pannonia.
The Dębczyn culture is an archeological culture in Pomerania from the third to sixth centuries. It was derived from the neighboring Wielbark culture with influences from the Elbe region. The culture was superseded as the result of the later migrations of West Slavs, in particular of the Pomeranians.
A lusoria was type of a small military vessel of the late Roman Empire that served as a troop transport. It was powered by about thirty soldier-oarsmen and an auxiliary sail. Nimble, graceful, and of shallow draft, such a vessel was used on northern rivers close to the Limes Germanicus, the Germanic border, and thus saw service on the Rhine and the Danube. The Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus mentioned the navis lusoria in his writings, but not much about it could be learned until the discovery of such boats at Mainz, Germany in 1981–82.
The Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum (RGZM), Leibniz Research Institute for Archaeology, is headquartered in Mainz. It is supported by the Federal Republic of Germany and its states and is a member of the Leibniz Association of German research institutions.
Angustia was a fort in the Roman province of Dacia in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD today near the town of Breţcu, Romania.
The castra of Aradul Nou was a fort in the Roman province of Dacia, located on the western side of the defensive line of forts, limes Daciae. It is situated near Arad, Romania.
The Drususstein is a nearly 20 metres high masonry block of Roman origin on the grounds of the citadel of Mainz, Germany. It was originally cased in marble. Researchers now largely accept that this is the structural remnant of the cenotaph mentioned by writers such as Eutropius and Suetonius, erected in 9 BC by Roman troops in honour of the deceased general Drusus, in Mogontiacum.
The archaeological site Niederbieber is an important representative of the Federmesser culture. Dating to the end of the Pleistocene, the site is one of the most extensively excavated archaeological sites dating to the late Upper Palaeolithic. Finds and features are extraordinarily well preserved as the site was protected by fallout from the Laacher See volcanic eruption approximately 12,900 years ago. Comprehensive archaeological studies have provided a detailed view of activities and settlement dynamics of hunter-gatherer groups at the end of the ice age.
Roman military standards were emblems adopted by units of the Roman army. There were three main types of standard. Several throughout its history include:
Monrepos is an archaeological research centre and a museum of human behavioural evolution located at Schloss Monrepos in Neuwied. The development of our modern human behaviour in the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic is studied at the research centre and the findings of these studies are conveyed to the public in the museum. Monrepos is one of the leading institutions for the research of early human history.
The Roman imperial period is the expansion of political and cultural influence of the Roman Empire. The period begins with the reign of Augustus, and it is taken to end variously between the late 3rd and the late 4th century, with the beginning of late antiquity. Despite the end of the "Roman imperial period", the Roman Empire continued to exist under the rule of the Roman emperors into Late Antiquity and beyond, except in the Western Empire, over which the Romans' political and military control was lost in the course of the 5th-century fall of the Western Roman Empire.
The Museum of Ancient Seafaring was installed in Mainz in 1994 in the former central covered market near the South Station, nowadays Mainz Römisches Theater station, as a branch of the Romano-Germanic Central Museum (Mainz). The new archaeological center is built right beside the current museum building. A workshop is affiliated to the museum, where visitors have the opportunity to watch the staff replicate ancient ship models.
Trees hold a particular role in Germanic paganism and Germanic mythology, both as individuals and in groups. The central role of trees in Germanic religion is noted in the earliest written reports about the Germanic peoples, with the Roman historian Tacitus stating that Germanic cult practices took place exclusively in groves rather than temples. Scholars consider that reverence for and rites performed at individual trees are derived from the mythological role of the world tree, Yggdrasil; onomastic and some historical evidence also connects individual deities to both groves and individual trees. After Christianisation, trees continue to play a significant role in the folk beliefs of the Germanic peoples.
Hans Klumbach was a German archaeologist and scholar of classical and provincial Roman studies. He served as a curator at, and later the director of, the Romano-Germanic Central Museum. His 1973 work Spätrömische Gardehelme laid bare the relationship between the late Roman ridge helmets and the later Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon crested helmets.
The Main Limes, also called the Nasser Limes, was built around 90 AD and, as part of the Upper Germanic-Rhaetian Limes, formed the frontier of the Roman Empire in the area between the present day villages of Großkrotzenburg and Bürgstadt. In this section the limes adjoined the River Main (Moenus), which forms a natural boundary for about 50 kilometres here, so "Main" refers to the river.
