More on the ghost amphitheater at Megiddo

UPDATE: First Roman military amphitheater discovered in Israel’s Armageddon. The excavation, led by USC Dornsife scholars, yielded clues about the lives of ancient Roman soldiers stationed outside the fabled city of Armageddon (Margaret Crable, USC Dornsife).

It wasn’t until 2013 that a team of researchers began the first official excavation of the army base that Schumacher hypothesized was in the vicinity. They uncovered both the walls and administrative center of the Roman 6th Legion’s base and hypothesized that the odd depression was a military amphitheater associated with the legion.

In July, scholars from the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences finally proved this hypothesis to be correct. It’s the first Roman military amphitheater ever uncovered in the Southern Levant, which encompasses Israel, Jordan and Palestine.

Into the pit

Excavation of the amphitheater was led by historian and archaeologist Mark Letteney, a postdoctoral fellow at the USC Mellon Humanities in a Digital World Program, headquartered at USC Dornsife.

I noted the discovery of this amphitheatre depression (which I labeled "ghost architecture") here.

That Jerusalem Post article also referred to a gold coin found at the Legion excavation. This current article has more on its discovery.

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