{"id":4662,"date":"2006-02-12T12:16:31","date_gmt":"2006-02-12T12:16:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/i-have-a-question-1.html"},"modified":"2006-02-12T12:16:31","modified_gmt":"2006-02-12T12:16:31","slug":"i-have-a-question-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/i-have-a-question-1.html","title":{"rendered":"I have a question"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Probably stupid. But perhaps some of you archaeology types can answer it for me.<\/p>\n<p>In my incessant reading on Rome, I&#8217;ve become particularly fascinated with what&#8217;s underground, as you can probably tell. I was reading last night in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0306811316\/spiritualthoug09\">the quite wonderful <em>A Traveller in Rome<\/em><\/a> in which Morton is describing his experience of what we today would call the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vatican.va\/roman_curia\/institutions_connected\/uffscavi\/documents\/rc_ic_uffscavi_doc_gen-information_20040112_en.html\">Scavi tour<\/a> &#8211; not then open to the general public. As he recounts what he saw &#8211; the street lined with tombs, and so on, thirty feet under the present floor of St. Peter&#8217;s, the question that pops up every time I read things like this re-emerged.<\/p>\n<p>I just don&#8217;t understand these layers of building &#8211; if it were just foundations that were excavated, upon which subsequent layers were built, that would make sense, but this existence of entire structures underground puzzles me. Even though we are talking about hundreds of years of construction, I still don&#8217;t understand how this happens. Were areas &#8211; streets and neighborhoods =&nbsp; purposefully filled in and then new levels constructed on top? I just can&#8217;t picture how this could gradually, naturally happen.<\/p>\n<p>Enlighten me!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Probably stupid. But perhaps some of you archaeology types can answer it for me. In my incessant reading on Rome, I&#8217;ve become particularly fascinated with what&#8217;s underground, as you can probably tell. I was reading last night in the quite wonderful A Traveller in Rome in which Morton is describing his experience of what we&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>I have a question - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/i-have-a-question-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"I have a question - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Probably stupid. But perhaps some of you archaeology types can answer it for me. In my incessant reading on Rome, I&#8217;ve become particularly fascinated with what&#8217;s underground, as you can probably tell. I was reading last night in the quite wonderful A Traveller in Rome in which Morton is describing his experience of what we&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/i-have-a-question-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-02-12T12:16:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"I have a question - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/i-have-a-question-1.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"I have a question - Via Media","og_description":"Probably stupid. But perhaps some of you archaeology types can answer it for me. In my incessant reading on Rome, I&#8217;ve become particularly fascinated with what&#8217;s underground, as you can probably tell. I was reading last night in the quite wonderful A Traveller in Rome in which Morton is describing his experience of what we&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/i-have-a-question-1.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-02-12T12:16:31+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/i-have-a-question-1.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/i-have-a-question-1.html","name":"I have a question - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-02-12T12:16:31+00:00","dateModified":"2006-02-12T12:16:31+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/i-have-a-question-1.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/i-have-a-question-1.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/02\/i-have-a-question-1.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"I have a question"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4662\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}