Commentary - on archaeology and small mundane discoveries

Thanks for sharing! If you're interested in these sorts of small discoveries, they fall under the umbrella of 'social history'.

And in my opinion, it's one of the most fascinating types of history out there. We are mostly all familiar with the classical styles of history (not to be confused with Classical history), typically stuff like powerful men conquering lands, military history, royal history, art history, economic history, diplomatic and political history, etc. But what we have missed out on until the last few decades of research is the smaller scale day-to-day stuff of the common people like this article briefly touches upon.

Like sure, kings and queens and warriors and armies and grand historic battles are all cool and whatever, but what about the common folk? You can look at numbers and data and extrapolate from that to say things like 'well there was a drought that year so life would have been hard for the commoners' but that doesn't really give you a day-to-day perspective on how they actually went about their lives. What did they eat? What did they do during the day? How did they feel about X, Y, and Z? What was the hardest part of their daily lives? What did they enjoy about their days that maybe we don't feel the same about today? And so on and so on and so on...

It's why the graffiti are some of the most interesting parts of Pompeii. There are tons of other places where you can read about Roman emperors and generals and wars and politics, but seeing someone write basically "don't trust so-and-so, that guy's a dick" or "come to my shop I've got the best prices" resonates more with me than any of that grandiose stuff ever could.