A public latrine used by ancient patrons of a large bathhouse and government officials who worked nearby is the setting for a recently discovered, somewhat bawdy mosaic. A team from the University of Nebraska had been excavating the site of the city of Antiochia ad Cragum on the south coast of Turkey for more than a decade when they uncovered the second-century A.D. mosaic, which features humorous takes on famous Greek myths. One panel portrays Narcissus, the boy who fell in love with his own reflected image. Here he is infatuated with a rather more intimate part of his anatomy. Another panel shows Ganymede, cupbearer to the gods, offering up the ancient version of toilet paper. Project leader Michael Hoff explains that Romans weren’t squeamish about depicting bodily functions and sexuality. “One only has to visit the houses of Pompeii to see that images of sex and nudity were commonplace and visible to all, regardless of gender or status in society,” he says. Hoff adds that while the majority of Antiochia ad Cragum’s residents were not of Greek or Latin heritage, the mosaic demonstrates that Greek myths were almost universally understood in the far-reaching Mediterranean world.

A team of archaeologists in southern India has unearthed an approximately 2,300-year-old terracotta sarcophagus in Pallavaram, located 15 miles from the city of Chennai. “The nearly intact, handmade, oblong coffin is an important discovery,” says A.M.V. Subramanyam, superintending archaeologist of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) in Chennai. An almost identical sarcophagus was found 130 years ago in the same area. The 1888 find was the first artifact to establish the existence of a distinctive Iron Age culture in this region. Researchers from the ASI will soon perform thermoluminescence dating to determine the sarcophagus’ exact age.

Some of the earliest evidence of cheese making has been identified on pottery found on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia. A multinational team of archaeologists and chemists analyzed fatty-acid residues dating to the Middle Neolithic period, about 7,200 years ago. Evidence of cheese making dating to roughly the same period has also been found in Poland. At that time, milk production was already an established practice, but fermenting raw milk into cheese may have provided an additional survival advantage. Children who have been weaned from their mother’s milk are particularly vulnerable to malnutrition. As they age, they gradually lose the ability to digest the milk sugar lactose. Fermenting milk into cheese reduces its lactose content, while still providing a rich source of calories. The team also found that specific pottery shapes were associated with cheese production, including sieves and a type of footed pot with an opening on its side.