LONDON, ENGLAND—BBC News reports that Museum of London Archaeology Senior Building Material Specialist Han Li has painstakingly reassembled thousands of pieces of 1,800-year-old painted wall plaster recovered in 2021 from a development site in Southwark along the Thames. The fragments, which had been dumped into a pit in antiquity, once adorned some 20 walls of a high-status Roman building that was demolished sometime before a.d. 200. "It's one of the biggest—if not the biggest—assemblages of Roman wall plaster and paintings we've ever found in Roman London," Li said. He found that the structure's walls were decorated with images of lyres, candelabras, flowers, white cranes, and even depictions of plants that would have grown in the area. The pink lower panels of one wall section were stippled with black specks to imitate marble. An ancient artist etched into one plaster fragment the Latin word FECIT, which means "has made this," though unfortunately the painter's name is not preserved.
