About 2,000 years ago, life in the Roman town of Pompeii—located in modern-day Italy—looked a lot like life anywhere else.

Discovered in a shipwreck off the coast of the Greek island Antikythera around 1901, this device was used to predict astronomical positions, eclipses, and even the timing of the ancient Olympic Games.

An ancient Pompeii wall at a newly excavated site, where Associate Professor Admir Masic applied compositional analysis (overlayed to right) to understand how ancient Romans made concrete that has ...