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Article: Reverse engineering a lost culture.(input output)(Samnites)
- Article from:
- Mechanical Engineering-CIME
- Article date:
- July 1, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 American Society of Mechanical Engineers. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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You don't hear much about the Samnites these days. They were one of those peoples who had the hard luck of sharing the Italian peninsula with the ancient Romans. So only fragments remain of their culture.
Until recently, the Samnites' reputation has been based on reports left by their Latin-speaking neighbors, who wiped them out. In recent years, though, about 300 surprising fragments of pottery have turned up at a site in ancient Samnium, in central Italy. The pieces show that the Samnites, like so many of history's conquered folk, enjoyed a much higher level of sophistication than their conquerors would have us believe. Present-day scholars studying the Samnite ...