New Orleans anthropologist Daniella Santoro and her husband, Aaron Lorenz, were recently clearing brush from their backyard when they uncovered the gravestone of a man who died in the second century C.E.

Coming across ancient Roman artifacts or graves isn’t necessarily a rare thing. After all, the Roman Empire once ruled the Mediterranean, much of Europe, Western Asia, and parts of North Africa at its peak. Bits of its past are bound to turn up again and again in the world of archaeology.

What is rare, however, is unearthing an artifact from ancient Rome in America.

Needless to say, it was quite shocking when a couple in New Orleans was clearing brush from their yard and uncovered an ancient Roman grave marker of a soldier named Sextus Congenius Verus who died roughly 1,900 years ago. N

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