Why are Roman ruins found below ground level?
In: Other
There’s a few reasons for it.
If you want to build a new building or road in place of an old one, it’s much easier to just remove what’s still above ground (and often reuse the material in the same building, or nearby ones), level any unevenness, and then build on top of that. So you slowly get layers of basements and foundations on top of each other.
If a building is abandoned, the aboveground portions will collapse (or again, easily accessible, usable material will be reappropriated for other construction), leaving some low-level walls or foundations, and then grass, bushes and trees will start to grow and create a layer of soil on top of it.
Over a few hundreds and thousands of years, you can then get pretty impressive layering.
[Here’s](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/11g4vd2/modern_archaeologists_slice_historical_sites_into/) a comment collecting a few answers with different perspectives over on r/AskHistorians that I’d highly recommend if you want to learn a bit more about it.
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