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... But for anthropologist Daniella Santoro, who lives with her husband Aaron Lopez in a historic home in New Orleans' Carrollton neighborhood, the object -- found half-buried in the undergrowth -- set off some spidey senses. For a moment, she feared they might have uncovered an old grave. ...

"The fact that it was in Latin that really just gave us pause, right?" Santoro told the Associated Press. "I mean, you see something like that and you say, 'Okay, this is not an ordinary thing.'"

Instead of ignoring the instinct, Santoro reached out to experts. Among those who examined the inscription were archaeologist Susann Lusnia of Tulane University and anthropologist D. Ryan Gray of the University of New Orleans, who shared the find with other colleagues.

It didn't take long for the researchers to recognize what the couple had found.

The Latin text begins Dis Manibus -- "to the spirits of the dead" -- a common dedication on Roman funerary tablets. In Roman funerary practice, Dis Manibus was a standard dedication to the spirits of the departed, often carved at the top of tombstones. Thousands of such inscriptions survive across the former Roman Empire.

Further translation revealed that the stone commemorated a Roman soldier, a Thracian named Sextus Congenius Verus. Commissioned by his heirs, Atilius Carus and Vettius Longinus, the grave marker records that he died at 42, after 22 years of military service -- some 1,900 years before Santoro and Lopez found his grave marker in an overgrown garden, half a world away. ...