This ambitious work focuses on the emergence and the development of medieval towns in the two Romanian principalities of South-Eastern Europe, Wallachia and Moldavia, from their earliest days, in the 13th century, up to the 16th. It is the only work of its kind in English, but at the same time the first in the field seeking to identify and substantiate common elements between towns in this area of Europe. It also covers Poland, Hungary and the lands south of the Danube. By relying both on various written sources, and on archeological finds, the author addresses several controversial issues, starting from the particulars of urbanization, through an analysis of local institutions, of urban society and economy, and concluding with thorough case studies. The result is a book which shows that medieval towns in the Romanian Principalities, despite being on the outskirts of Europe, were nevertheless part of it.

In this book, Ellen Swift uses design theory, previously neglected in Roman archaeology, to investigate Roman artefacts in a new way, making a significant contribution to both Roman social history, and our understanding of the relationships that exist between artefacts and people. Based on extensive data collection and the close study of artefacts from museum collections and archives, the book examines the relationship between artefacts, everyday behaviour, and experience. The concept of 'affordances'-features of an artefact that make possible, and incline users towards, particular uses for functional artefacts-is an important one for the approach taken. This concept is carefully evaluated by considering affordances in relation to other sources of evidence, such as use-wear, archaeological context, the end-products resulting from artefact use, and experimental reconstruction. Artefact types explored in the case studies include locks and keys, pens, shears, glass vessels, dice, boxes, and finger-rings, using material mainly drawn from the north-western Roman provinces, with some material also from Roman Egypt. The book then considers how we can use artefacts to understand particular aspects of Roman behaviour and experience, including discrepant experiences according to factors such as age, social position, and left- or right-handedness, which are fostered through artefact design. The relationship between production and users of artefacts is also explored, investigating what particular production methods make possible in terms of user experience, and also examining production constraints that have unintended consequences for users. The book examines topics such as the perceived agency of objects, differences in social practice across the provinces, cultural change and development in daily practice, and the persistence of tradition and social convention. It shows that design intentions, everyday habits of use, and the constraints of production processes each contribute to the reproduction and transformation of material culture.

This volume traces the lives, health, and diseases of Winchester's inhabitants as seen in their skeletal remains from the mid-third century to the mid-sixteenth century, a period of over 1,300 years. Although the populations of other British urban areas, York and London in particular, have been studied over an extended period, this volume is unique in providing a continuous chronological window, rather than a series of isolated studies. It is particularly notable for the large sample of Anglo-Saxon burials dated to the 8th - 10th centuries, which provide a bridge between the earlier Romano-British material and the later medieval samples. This study includes information on demography, physical characteristics, dental health, disease, and trauma collected from over 2,000 skeletons excavated from the Roman Cemetery at Lankhills and the Anglo-Saxon and medieval cemeteries of the Old and New Minster and Winchester Cathedral, as well as other Early Anglo-Saxon sites in neighbouring areas of Hampshire. The study establishes the underlying continuity of the population in spite of massive culture change between the Roman and Early Saxon periods, and delineates the increasing tendency to rounder skulls seen in the medieval period, a trend which is found in continental Europe at the same time. There were also significant differences through time in disease patterns and trauma. Leprosy, for example, is found only in post-Roman skeletons, while decapitations are seen only in Roman skeletons. Weapons injuries are confined to Anglo-Saxon and medieval individuals, although broken bones were common during the Roman period.

Andre Tchernia is one of the leading experts on amphorae as a source of economic history, a pioneer of maritime archaeology, and author of a wealth of articles on Roman trade, notably the wine trade. This book brings together the author's previously published essays, updated and revised, with recent notes and prefaced with an entirely new synthesis of his views on Roman commerce with a particular emphasis on the people involved in it. The book is divided into two main parts. The first is a general study of the structure of Roman trade: Landowners and traders, traders' fortunes, the matter of the market, the role of the state, and dispatching what is required. It tackles the recent debates on Roman trade and Roman economy, providing, original and convincing answers. The second part of the book is a selection of 14 of the author's published papers. They range from discussions of general topics such as the ideas of crisis and competition, the approvisioning of Ancient Rome, trade with the East, to more specialized studies, such as the interpretation of the 33 AD crisis. Overall, the book contains a wealth of insights into the workings of ancient trade and expertly combines discussion of the material evidence-especially of amphorae and wrecks-with the prosopographical approach derived from epigraphic, papyrological and historical data.

Walking served as an occasion for the display of power and status in ancient Rome, where great men paraded with their entourages through city streets and elite villa owners strolled with friends in private colonnades and gardens. In this first book-length treatment of the culture of walking in ancient Rome, Timothy O'Sullivan explores the careful attention which Romans paid to the way they moved through their society. He employs a wide range of literary, artistic, and architectural evidence to reveal the crucial role that walking played in the performance of social status, the discourse of the body and the representation of space. By examining how Roman authors depict walking, this book sheds new light on the Romans themselves not only how they perceived themselves and their experience of the world, but also how they drew distinctions between work and play, mind and body, and republic and empire."

Spanning centuries and the vastness of the Roman Empire, The Last Statues of Antiquity is the first comprehensive survey of Roman honorific statues in the public realm in Late Antiquity. Drawn from a major research project and corresponding online database that collates all the available evidence for the 'statue habit' across the Empire from the late third century AD onwards, the volume examines where, how, and why statues were used, and why these important features of urban life began to decline in number before eventually disappearing around AD 600. Adopting a detailed comparative approach, the collection explores variation between different regions-including North Africa, Asia Minor, and the Near East-as well as individual cities, such as Aphrodisias, Athens, Constantinople, and Rome. A number of thematic chapters also consider the different kinds of honorand, from provincial governors and senators, to women and cultural heroes. Richly illustrated, the volume is the definitive resource for studying the phenomenon of late-antique statues. The collection also incorporates extensive references to the project's database, which is freely accessible online.

Why are so many Hellenistic kings shown with one arm in the air? Could posture distinguish the slave from the citizen? Was there a Hellenistic etiquette of sitting down? How did Hellenistic Greeks feel about the bodies of the disabled and the elderly? And what did it mean to Tuck-for-Luck? This richly-illustrated book brings together a wide range of Hellenistic art objects, and reveals how ancient social attitudes were encoded in the body language of their subjects. Incorporating approaches from anthropology and archaeology, it considers a wide range of social groups, from the elite to slaves, and examines the postures, gestures, and body actions which were considered appropriate to each. By examining Hellenistic kings, queens, public intellectuals, citizen men and women, Africans, servants, paidagogoi, fishermen, peasants, old women, dwarfs, and the disabled, this study provides important new insights into what is 'Hellenistic' about Hellenistic Art, and into the anxieties of Hellenistic society. In doing so, it not only reconsiders familiar concepts such as the 'individuality' of the civic elite and the apparent passivity of women, but also reveals Hellenistic attitudes towards issues such as old age, race, and child abuse, and explores power, prejudice, and the role of art in both reflecting and enforcing social stereotypes.

With The Tools of Asclepius Lawrence Bliquez offers the first comprehensive treatment in English of the instruments and paraphernalia employed by Greco-Roman surgeons since John St. Milne's Surgical Instruments in Greek and Roman Times (1907). Introductory sections cover topics ranging from literary and archaeological sources to the design, materials and production of instruments and the training and practice of the doctors-surgeons who used them. Summaries of Hippocratic and Hellenistic surgery lead to the meat of the book: tools used during the Roman Empire. These are presented by category (e.g. Cutting Instruments) broken into subcategories (Scalpel, Lithotome, etc.). A substantial appendix deals with biodegradable items, such as suppositories. Much new material is featured and the book is richly illustrated.

Ancestry played a continuous role in the construction and portrayal of Roman emperorship in the first three centuries AD. Emperors and Ancestors is the first systematic analysis of the different ways in which imperial lineage was represented in the various 'media' through which images of emperors could be transmitted. Looking beyond individual rulers, Hekster evaluates evidence over an extended period of time and differentiates between various types of sources, such as inscriptions, sculpture, architecture, literary text, and particularly central coinage, which forms the most convenient source material for a modern reconstruction of Roman representations over a prolonged period of time. The volume explores how the different media in use sent out different messages. The importance of local notions and traditions in the choice of local representations of imperial ancestry are emphasized, revealing that there was no monopoly on image-forming by the Roman centre and far less interaction between central and local imagery than is commonly held. Imperial ancestry is defined through various parallel developments at Rome and in the provinces. Some messages resonated outside the centre but only when they were made explicit and fitted local practice and the discourse of the medium. The construction of imperial ancestry was constrained by the local expectations of how a ruler should present himself, and standardization over time of the images and languages that could be employed in the 'media' at imperial disposal. Roman emperorship is therefore shown to be a constant process of construction within genres of communication, representation, and public symbolism.

Written for the general visitor, the Athenian Agora Museum Guide is a companion to the 2010 edition of the Athenian Agora Site Guide and leads the reader through all of the display spaces within the Stoa of Attalos in the Athenian Agora - the terrace, the ground-floor colonnade, and the newly opened upper story. The guide also discusses each case in the museum gallery chronologically, beginning with the prehistoric and continuing with the Geometric, Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine periods. Hundreds of artifacts, ranging from common pottery to elite jewelry held in 81 cases, are described and illustrated in color for the very first time. Through focus boxes, readers can learn about marble-working, early burial practices, pottery production, ostracism, home life, and the wells that dotted the ancient site. A timeline, maps, and plans accompany the text. For those who wish to learn more about what they see in the museum, a list of further reading follows each entry.

In Corinth in Contrast, archaeologists, historians, art historians, classicists, and New Testament scholars examine the stratified nature of socio-economic, political, and religious interactions in the city from the Hellenistic period to Late Antiquity. The volume challenges standard social histories of Corinth by focusing on the unequal distribution of material, cultural, and spiritual resources. Specialists investigate specific aspects of cultural and material stratification such as commerce, slavery, religion, marriage and family, gender, and art, analyzing both the ruling elite of Corinth and the non-elite Corinthians who made up the majority of the population. This approach provides insight into the complex networks that characterized every ancient urban center and sets an agenda for future studies of Corinth and other cities rule by Rome.

In this volume, Bobou offers a systematic analysis of ancient Greek statues of children from the sanctuaries, houses, and necropoleis of the Hellenistic world in order to understand their function and meaning. Comparing images of children in reliefs, terracotta figurines, and marble statutes, she shows that children and childhood became more prominent in the visual material record from the late fifth century BC, a time during which children became a matter of parental and state concern. Looking at the literary and epigraphical evidence, Bobou argues that statues of children were important for transmitting civic values to future citizens, serving as paradigms of behaviour and standing testament to the strength and future of a community. Created by adults, the statues reveal much about adult ideology and values during this period, and the expectations and hopes placed on children. The combination of iconographic studies and examination of the original locations in which statues were placed highlights the importance of children in Hellenistic society as well as their connection with specific areas of civic and social life.

For almost three hundred years, excavations have been carried out in Roman Bath. At first these were rare and sporadic and archaeological finds were made by chance. Even fewer were reported. But from the 1860s, deliberate investigations were made and increasingly professional methods employed. The Roman Baths were laid open to view, but little was published. From the 1950s, interest accelerated, professionals and amateurs collaborated, and there was never a decade in which some new discovery was not made. The first popular but authoritative presentation of this work was made in 1971 and updated several times. However, from the 1990s to the present there has been some sort of archaeological investigation almost every year. This has thrown much new and unexpected light on the town of Aquae Sulis and its citizens. In this book, Peter Davenport, having been involved in most of the archaeological work in Bath since 1980, attempts to tell the story of Roman Bath: the latest interim report on the 'Three Hundred Year Dig'.

This volume explores Rome's northern provinces through the portable artefacts people used and left behind. Objects are crucial to our understanding of the past, and can be used to explore interlinking aspects of identity. For example, can we identify incomers? How are exotic materials (such as amber and ivory) and objects depicting 'the exotic' (e.g. Africans) consumed? Do regional styles exist below the homogenizing influence of Roman trade? How do all these aspects of identity interact with others, such as status, gender, and age? In this innovative study, the author combines theoretical awareness and a willingness to engage with questions of social and cultural identity with a thorough investigation into the well-published but underused material culture of Rome's northern provinces. Pottery and coins, the dominant categories of many other studies, have here been largely excluded in favour of small portable objects such as items of personal adornment, amulets, and writing equipment. The case studies included were chosen because they relate to specific, often interlinking aspects of identity such as provincial, elite, regional, or religious identity. Their meaning is explored in their own right and in depth, and in careful examination of their contexts. It is hoped that these case studies will be of use to archaeologists working in other periods, and indeed to students of material culture generally by making a small contribution to a growing corpus of academic and popular books that develop interpretative, historical narratives from selected objects.

Farming was the basis of the wealth that made England worth invading, twice, in the eleventh century, while trade and manufacturing were insignificant by modern standards. In Anglo-Saxon Farms and Farming, the authors employ a wide range of evidence to investigate how Anglo-Saxon farmers produced the food and other agricultural products that sustained English economy, society, and culture before the Norman Conquest. The first part of the volume draws on written and pictorial sources, archaeology, place-names, and the history of the English language to discover what crops and livestock people raised, and what tools and techniques were used to produce them. In part two, using a series of landscape studies - place-names, maps, and the landscape itself, the authors explore how these techniques might have been combined into working agricultural regimes in different parts of the country. A picture emerges of an agriculture that changed from an essentially prehistoric state in the sub-Roman period to what was recognisably the beginning of a tradition that only ended with the Second World War. Anglo-Saxon farming was not only sustainable, but infinitely adaptable to different soils and geology, and to a climate changing as unpredictably as it is today.

This book is available as an open access ebook under a CC-BY licence. Early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries are known for their grave goods, but this abundance obscures their interest as the creations of pluralistic, multi-generational communities. This book explores over one hundred early Anglo-Saxon and Merovingian cemeteries, using a multi-dimensional methodology to move beyond artefacts. It offers an alternative way to explore the horizontal organisation of cemeteries from a holistically focused perspective. The physical communication of digging a grave and laying out a body was used to negotiate the arrangement of a cemetery and to construct family and community stories. This approach foregrounds community, because people used and reused cemetery spaces to emphasise different characteristics of the deceased, based on their own attitudes, lifeways and live experiences. This book will appeal to scholars of Anglo-Saxon studies and will be of value to archaeologists interested in mortuary spaces, communities and social archaeology. -- .

The history of funerary customs in Rome contains many unanswered questions and controversial debates, especially concerning the significant developments of the second century CE. In this book, distinguished historian Barbara E. Borg employs the full range of material and written evidence to explore four key questions that change our view of Roman society and its values. For the first time, senatorial burial practices can be reconstructed and contrasted with those of other classes. Borg then explains the change from incineration to inhumation as a revival of old Roman mores that accelerated after the example set by Hadrian. In the third chapter, she argues that tombs became prime locations for promoting and displaying long family lines among the elite, which then inspired freedmen to undertake similar commemorative practices. Finally she explores the association of deceased persons with the divine and apotheosis through portraits on divine body shapes and temple tombs.

Ashes, Images, and Memories argues that the institution of public burial for the war dead and images of the deceased in civic and sacred spaces fundamentally changed how people conceived of military casualties in fifth-century Athens. In a period characterized by war and the threat of civil strife, the nascent democracy claimed the fallen for the city and commemorated them with rituals and images that shaped a civic ideology of struggle and self-sacrifice on behalf of a unified community. While most studies of Athenian public burial have focused on discrete aspects of the institution, such as the funeral oration, this book broadens the scope. It examines the presence of the war dead in cemeteries, civic and sacred spaces, the home, and the mind, and underscores the role of material culture-from casualty lists to white-ground lekythoi-in mediating that presence. This approach reveals that public rites and monuments shaped memories of the war dead at the collective and individual levels, spurring private commemorations that both engaged with and critiqued the new ideals and the city's claims to the body of the warrior. Faced with a collective notion of "the fallen, " families asserted the qualities, virtues, and family links of the individual deceased, and sought to recover opportunities for private commemoration and personal remembrance. Contestation over the presence and memory of the dead often followed class lines, with the elite claiming service and leadership to the community while at the same time reviving Archaic and aristocratic commemorative discourses. Although Classical Greek art tends to be viewed as a monolithic if evolving whole, this book depicts a fragmented and charged visual world.

In ancient Athenian democracy there were one hundred and thirty-nine official demes, or recognized population centres, which formed the foundation of the political system introduced by Kleisthenes in 508/7 BC. Enrolment in one of these demes was a prerequisite for citizenship and participation in the Athenian socio-political system. Acharnai was by far the largest of the Kleisthenic demes and one of the best known from the ancient sources, most notably Thucydides and Aristophanes' comedy Acharnians; it therefore provides a rare opportunity for a comprehensive investigation into the workings of a rural deme. In this volume, Kellogg combines literary, prosopographical, epigraphical, and archaeological evidence to create an encompassing overview of this dynamic and historical settlement with a well-developed identity and unique traditions. Such an investigation also functions as a corrective to a 'one size fits all' approach to rural Attica, which privileges the city and its political and economic opportunities over the countryside where most of the Athenian citizenry lived. This volume constitutes a new and distinctive contribution to the study of ancient Athens, and is a major advance in the analysis of the critically important role of the Attic demes in the economic, political, social, and religious structures of Athenian democracy.

Harvesting the Sea provides the first systematic treatment of the exploitation of various marine resources, such as large-scale fishing, fish salting, salt and purple-dye production, and oyster and fish-farming, in the Roman world and its role within the ancient economy. Bringing together literary, epigraphic, and legal sources, with a wealth of archaeological data collected in recent years, Marzano shows that these marine resources were an important feature of the Roman economy and, in scope and market-oriented production, paralleled phenomena taking place in the Roman agricultural economy on land. The book also examines the importance of technological innovations, the organization of labour, and the use of the existing legal framework in defence of economic interests against competitors for the same natural resource.

The World of the 'Fullo' takes a detailed look at the fullers, craftsmen who dealt with high-quality garments, of Roman Italy. Analyzing the social and economic worlds in which the fullers lived and worked, it tells the story of their economic circumstances, the way they organized their workshops, the places where they worked in the city, and their everyday lives on the shop floor and beyond. Through focusing on the lower segments of society, Flohr uses everyday work as the major organizing principle of the narrative: the volume discusses the decisions taken by those responsible for the organization of work, and how these decisions subsequently had an impact on the social lives of people carrying out the work. It emphasizes how socio-economic differences between cities resulted in fundamentally different working lives for many of their people, and that not only were economic activities shaped by Roman society, they in turn played a key role in shaping it. Using an in-depth and qualitative analysis of material remains related to economic activities, with a combined study of epigraphic and literary records, this volume portrays an insightful view of the socio-economic history of urban communities in the Roman world.

In the course of the eighteenth century, discoveries ranging from Tahiti to Pompeii initiated a scientific turn in the study of the past. Seeking a formal language to display these new findings, Romantic-era plate books presented a wide array of objects as ancient relics. This proliferation of antiquities, a product of old affinities between natural history and antiquarianism, provided new material for the formation of archaeology, geology, anthropology, and other modern disciplines. Sciences of Antiquity traces the production of five scholarly plate books on subjects of major literary and scientific interest at the time: South Pacific voyaging, Mount Vesuvius, ancient Greek vases, monuments in English cathedrals, and the geology of southeast England. Focusing on illustrators, fieldworkers, and ghostwriters associated with this type of scholarly publication, Heringman explores how the expertise acquired by these largely self-educated intellectuals precipitated a major shift in the way research was done - from patronage to professionalism. Their scholarship and technical skills demanded recognition, sparking conflicts over the division of labour and the role of institutions such as the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries. Ambitious, collaborative plate books, such as The Collection of Etruscan, Greek, and Roman Antiquities (1776) and Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain (1799), forged a broader and deeper perception of antiquity as extending far beyond the Greco-Roman world.

This book explores the spoliation of architectural and sculptural materials during the Roman empire. Examining a wide range of materials, including imperial portraits, statues associated with master craftsmen, architectural moldings and fixtures, tombs and sarcophagi, arches and gateways, it demonstrates that secondary intervention was common well before Late Antiquity, in fact, centuries earlier than has been previously acknowledged. The essays in this volume, written by a team of international experts, collectively argue that reuse was a natural feature of human manipulation of the physical environment, rather than a sign of social pressure. Reuse often reflected appreciation for the function, form, and design of the material culture of earlier eras. Political, social, religious, and economic factors also contributed to the practice. A comprehensive overview of spoliation and reuse, this volume examines the phenomenon in Rome and throughout the Mediterranean world.

Viking Identities is the first detailed archaeological study of Viking-Age Scandinavian-style female dress items from England. Based on primary archival and archaeological research, including the analysis of hundreds of recent metal-detector finds, it presents evidence for over 500 brooches and pendants worn by women in the late ninth and tenth centuries. Jane F. Kershaw argues that these finds add an entirely new dimension to the limited existing archaeological evidence for Scandinavian activity in the British Isles and make possible a substantial reassessment of the Viking settlements. Kershaw offers an interpretation of the significance of the jewellery in a broader, historical context. The jewellery highlights locations of settlement not commonly associated with the Vikings. In contrast to claims of high levels of cultural assimilation, the jewellery suggests that incoming groups maintained a distinct Scandinavian identity which was sometimes appropriated by the indigenous population. Kershaw also addresses one of the great unanswered questions in the study of Viking-Age settlements: what about the women? The interpretation of the jewellery challenges traditional perceptions of Viking conquest as an all-male affair and brings into focus a population group which has, until now, been almost invisible. Kershaw describes the objects and explores a number of themes related to their contemporary use, including their date, distribution, and function in costume. This body of material - unknown 30 years ago - is introduced to a public audience for the first time. Including many object images and maps, the study provides a practical guide to the identification of Scandinavian metalwork.

The ancient Greeks traveled widely by sea and founded colonies in far-flung locations. On the north coast of the Black Sea were a number of such Greek settlements, places where the Greeks made contact with the local Scythian population. Greek goods were traded extensively throughout the region, and many of these often-luxurious articles eventually made their way into tombs.
From its wealth of such Greek finds from the Black Sea, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg has lent some 175 Greek objects to an exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa. This richly illustrated catalogue to the exhibition presents nine essays on the archaeology of the northern Black Sea region and its history, culture, and art, including sculpture, pottery, gems, and jewelry. Written by curators at the State Hermitage Museum, Greeks on the Black Sea presents an intriguing world at once Greek and barbarian.