Last month, construction workers installing gas lines alongside a busy highway in Sestu, Sardinia dug up an amphora filled with human bones. Now, further excavations have uncovered a total of six ...

The dye was known as Tyrian purple as a reference to the city of Tyre, in modern-day Lebanon, from which the Phoenician traders controlled the flow of dye. The snails were lured into baited traps ...

and a red dye, like madder. But the “Tyrian purple” associated with royalty—believed to have originated in Phoenicia (modern Lebanon) as early as 1200 B.C.—was made by extracting mucus ...