Work Begins to Unearth an Ancient Mosaic

A giant Roman mosaic, made up of thousands of marble cubes just half a cubic inch in size, is being unearthed in southern Turkey.

The 1,600-square-foot mosaic, which consists of colorful geometric patterns, probably dates from the third or fourth century A.D., said Michael Hoff, a professor of art history at the University of Nebraska, whose team has been working since 2005 to excavate ruins in Antiochia ad Cragum, which was once a city on the southern coast of what is now Turkey.

First spotted in 2002 but uncovered just this summer, the mosaic is so large that Dr. Hoff and his team have exposed only about 40 percent of it. The rest will be unearthed next summer....