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COURTESY MATTHEW J. ADAMS

MULTICULTURAL MILITARY. Roman legions were diverse by design, recruiting and conscripting soldiers from every corner of Rome’s vast empire. At Legio, several finds reveal foreign traditions and local assimilation. A 33-inch-tall stone pillar (pictured here) erected on a decorated base inside the camp’s principia reflects the local, Near Eastern cultic tradition of sacred standing stones (betyls or massebot) believed to house or represent deities. A rare deposit of pig jawbones in the northwestern cemetery points to an old Roman feasting ritual of lamentation and purification that featured pigs and a special type of sausage called silicernium, from which the funerary ritual took its name.