A-hunting we will go
Roman Museum Flavia Solva, Hunting Museum Schloss Stainz
Once again, I found myself roaming around locally with the Oldies. This time, we ended up roaming around Roman remains in Wagna. Aargh! Just when I am getting to grips with local geography, I discover that Wagna in the Austrian province of Styria was formerly known as Flavia Solva in the ancient Roman province of Noricum. My poor little bird brain hurts!
It’s hard to believe that, 2,000 years ago, Flavia Solva was a town with about 10,000 inhabitants. Huge for the time! After it had disappeared, it took a further thousand years for a town of that size to emerge again in Styria. Graz, nowadays the capital of Styria and the second largest city in Austria, only reached the 10,000 population mark in the 17th century.
On our recent visit to the Austrian Open-Air Museum, I discovered that house building can be quite complicated. I found out that it gets even more complicated if you’re planning to build in Wagna. Not only do you need to organise your finances, planning permission, architect, etc. but it is also advisable to organise an archaeologist, as you might well be building on top of Roman remains. The area is littered with them!
In fact, just a few years ago, a supermarket chain engaged an archaeologist before building their new branch in Wagna. Sure enough, they found ancient Roman graves containing a treasure trove of artefacts which they donated, along with a large sum of money, to the Joanneum Museum. Now that’s what I call giving back to the community. And I am sure they were happy to know that their customers wouldn’t be rolling their trolleys over Roman skeletons!
On that note, this beehive-shaped structure reminded me of the clochans (dry stone huts) I had seen in County Kerry in Ireland. These tumuli, however, are much older, dating from the 1st or 2nd century AD, and were not for the living, but for the dead. Yep, they’re burial tombs. I insisted on remaining outside, I can tell you. I most certainly wouldn’t like to remain inside or, worse still, leave my remains inside!
I was impressed with the remains the Romans left behind, however. The hoards of coins, pottery and glassware are quite something. That scary face on the signage for Flavia Solva is perhaps the best known artefact found on the site. I learned that this decorated tile, which would have been fitted on the end of a roof ridge, is called an antefix. After one glance at that character, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we had also come across an Asterix or an Obelix!
I was flabbergasted by the excavated foundations of a house where the 2,000 year-old underfloor heating system could clearly be seen. Those Romans were certainly way ahead of their time. Imagine if they had had computer technology back then. We’d all be living on Mars by now! Come to think of it, they invented Mars, didn’t they?
Later that day, we came across another Roman invention, Diana, the Goddess of the Hunt, in the Hunting Museum in Schloss Stainz. I was surprised to find how interesting the history of hunting can be. Nowadays, I suppose it is considered a bit of an elitist sport so it is easy to forget its importance over the ages. I don’t think you humans would have survived too long if, like us lot in the animal kingdom, you hadn’t honed your hunting skills very early on.
Still, I can’t say I was overly comfortable being surrounded by all that weaponry. The section of the museum which covered Styrian wildlife was more my cup of tea. The stuffed bears, wild boar, eagles and stags were a tad unnerving I’ll admit, but there was plenty of fascinating information about all these local critters.
I was intrigued to learn for example, that female alpine salamanders are pregnant for up to four years. Their habitat is so inhospitable that they have to keep her young inside them until they are mature enough to survive independently. The young can be almost half the size of the mother by the time they are born. Ouch!
Anyway, back to Diana. She was the theme of an entire section of the exhibition, ‘Hunting is Female’. I was quite surprised to learn what an important role women played, even though they were often restricted to the less rigorous but very skilful forms of hunting such as archery. They were certainly dressed to kill!
It was at that point that I thought it might be no harm to get Her Ladyship out of there before she started getting any ideas. And what a relief it was to be back in gentler surroundings, strolling around the beautiful castle grounds and nearby vineyards. Keeping a watchful eye out for marauding eagles, of course…
