The church of Sant’Omobono sits above one of the highest human occupation sequences in the city of Rome. Some 3.5 m of sediment lie between the earliest known Bronze Age occupation lens and the base of the foundations of the early 6th c. B.C. temple, a further 13 m above which lies the floor of the present church, reconstructed in A.D. 1482. The site was sacred to the goddesses Fortuna and Mater Matuta for more than a millennium, before one of their temples was converted into a church of San Salvatore, rebuilt many times and eventually rededicated to Saints Anthony and Omobono. The archaeological remains were discovered by chance in 1936, when the dense neighborhood surrounding the church was demolished to make way for new Fascist infrastructure. The site was spared from further construction, and excavations continued sporadically through the latter half of the 20th c. This work was carried out by a diverse cast of archaeologists employing an equally diverse range of methodologies and field practices, though none of this work has been fully published. Since 2009, the Sant’Omobono Project, a collaboration between the University of Michigan, the Università della Calabria, and the Sovrintendenza Capitolina of the Comune di Roma, has continued this research with the goal of understanding and publishing whatever possible from the earlier excavations and bringing updated methodologies to bear on the site. While preparations for comprehensive publication are ongoing, the present article summarizes the main occupation and construction phases at the site as understood after 6 years of work by the project.

Because of its exceptional state of preservation, Pompeii has traditionally been viewed as an ideal site at which to study the early development of Roman architecture. Scholars have looked to the Pompeian evidence in order to provide parallels for periods and classes of buildings that in Rome are less well documented archaeologically. The focus of recent debate has been on the Mid- to Late Republican transition, with an emphasis on building types whose introduction at Pompeii would demonstrate a direct cultural link with practice at Rome. The prevailing view is that both the town-planning and the architecture of Pompeii in the 3rd-2nd c. B.C. were strongly influenced by Roman models or prototypes. Similarly, there has been a tendency to refer to the Pompeian materials as the missing link for the high dating of early Roman concrete architecture in Rome, which would have been introduced around the same period. In a recent review of the evidence from Rome, I have argued for a later chronology, which, inevitably, prompts a reconsideration of the development and cultural significance of concrete construction at Pompeii.

Since 2002, our team at the University of Jaén's Research Institute for Iberian Archaeology has been undertaking an archaeological research project focusing on the analysis of the site of a conflict that can indisputably be dated to the final phase of the Second Punic War. Based on the topography, descriptions in the ancient sources, and archaeological data, we present the hypothesis that the site we have located corresponds to that of the battle of Baecula. In that confrontation in 208 B.C., Scipio the Younger faced Hasdrubal Barca. It was a momentous battle, at least in terms of its subsequent outcome, given that it could be considered the event that triggered Hasdrubal's withdrawal to Italy.

Our research project has yielded information which we believe to be paradigmatic in two respects. First, we have been able to ascertain the size of the area over which an armed confrontation of this type would have taken place, thanks to the identification of determining elements such as the different camps set up for the battle and their sizes. It covers the area where the armies clashed, where they were positioned and deployed, their movements on the battlefield, and so forth. Second, thanks to intensive sampling, we have recovered a corpus of finds that may be used in the future as a reference for the allocation of other sites to the period of the Second Punic War.

Desde hace algunos años se ha producido la recopilación, por parte del Museo de Estepona (Málaga), de un conjunto de sigillatas extraído de contexto subacuático. Esto ha sido posible a partir del arrastre de las artes de pesca en una zona coincidente con la desembocadura del río Guadiaro. Esta colección presenta más de 200 individuos en casi perfecto estado de conservación y con un amplio elenco de sigilla en uno de los mayores conjuntos epigráficos de esta categoría en Hispania. La excepcionalidad del hallazgo, la variedad tipológica y epigráfica, y su localización hacen de su estudio una baza imprescindible para valorar el comercio de la vajilla fina en el sur de Hispania y su relación directa con el norte de la Mauritania Tingitana. Presentamos el primer avance del estudio que nos encontramos desarrollando sobre este voluminoso conjunto. La homogeneidad formal, el abultado número de piezas y la coincidente procedencia geográfica de las mismas han permitido lanzar la hipótesis de que estamos ante un pecio hundido en las cercanías del Estrecho de Gibraltar en época primo-trajanea, coincidiendo ampliamente las formas y los sellos con la denominada fosa Bassus de la Graufesenque. Planteamos una cronología ligeramente más tardía que el otro gran pecio localizado en aguas hispanas, el cala Culip IV, datado tradicionalmente entre el 78 y 82 d.C.

How should we read the structure of the atrium house? On the one hand, it is an open space; its rooms are arranged around the central courtyard or atrium. From its narrow entrance it is often possible to see straight through to the back of the garden or peristyle, and it is hardly surprising that scholars have claimed that the house was intentionally designed to allow people to see within, to guide their gaze to special features in order to demonstrate the wealth and status of the owner, or to make outsiders want to enter and see more. On the other hand, the house was also a sacred space that carried a potent symbolic value. It was protected by the household gods, and was sustained by religious, social and economic resources. Symbolically, the house was private even when it was used for public business. It was also strictly monitored and controlled.

Scholars are increasingly challenging the idea that the inhabitants of Roman houses were more concerned with display than with privacy, and are suggesting methods by which privacy was established. I will argue here that in the Roman house display and privacy are not mutually exclusive, but of equal importance. Within the open atrium plan there were both physical and symbolic boundaries that functioned to control movement and protect the home from visitors who were not members of the household or family. My aim is to explore the creation and deployment of such boundaries in a society that often used aesthetic markers to control space, and to discuss how what may seem to have been free movement within the atrium house may actually have been restricted.

In 2014, the Ehud Netzer Expedition for the Study of Herodium from the Hebrew University commenced excavations in the area of the approach to the mountain palace-fortress at Herodium (hereafter “the mountain palace”). The excavations produced surprising new data with respect to the stages of construction and the layout of the entrance to the hilltop structure, shedding light on Herod's last building project at the site at the time when he transformed the entire hill into his burial and memorial complex (fig. 1 in colour).

The presence of a monumental stairway ascending the NE slope of the mount and leading to the structure at its top has long been known, as was that of a sloping passageway that led to the door entering the mountain palace. This arched passageway was intended to make entry possible through the fill of the conical artificial mount. Also prior to the new excavations the entrance room of the hilltop structure was known. The door leading into the courtyard of the palace had been exposed during the Franciscan excavations directed by V. Corbo in the early 1960s, while in 1968-69 G. Foerster exposed the S part of the entrance room, as well as some of the upper arches of the passageway (fig. 2).

Much has been written about the nature and scale of Roman maritime trade, yet there remains no detailed analysis of the range of shipwreck cargoes at our disposal and the information that they provide for the organizational aspects of maritime trade. Identifying the mechanisms through whih products were traded is one of the most challenging aspects of the study of Roman trade.

The sculpture of Roman Syria is a mighty tree with roots so deep and branches so far-flung that they have defied all attempts at systematic and comprehensive study. This article deals with one of these branches of artistic traditions, a series of unusual marble Aphrodite statuettes found in Roman Syria, and in particular at Emesa . In what little attention these statuettes have received, scholars have listed up to 10 extant specimens, but a closer look has uncovered dozens, many of which have surfaced on the art market in recent years. In all likelihood, they reproduce a cult statue of Aphrodite at Emesa. They merit attention on a number of levels. Unlike much of the marble statuary of the Roman Near East, they do not reproduce an opus nobile from the Graeco-Roman canon; the Emesa Aphrodites, although based on Graeco-Roman divine iconography, draw on a Roman Venus type, while their style has much in common with local sculpture made of basalt, sandstone and limestone. This study examines, first, the character, origins and development of this statuary type and its links to well-established Graeco-Roman Aphrodite types. Many years ago, M. Bieber identified these statuettes as miniature versions of the statue of Venus Genetrix created by Arkesilaos for the Temple of Venus in the Forum of Julius Caesar. As there is still no consensus on the exact appearance of that famous statue, I will also comment on this question. Second, I look at the statuettes in context. Through their unusual style, format and iconography, they portray an Aphrodite of a distinct and unique character that raises questions about the significance of marble sculpture in the religious life of Roman Syria.

Three cuirassed statues and one fragmentary torso, all probably of the Hadrianic/early Antonine era, bear a rare breastplate relief. The heraldic design combines a muscular youth, nude except for a lionskin over his head and shoulders, and a pair of lion-griffins, whom he grasps by their horns. His iconography conforms to that of a youthful Hercules, whom we see here in the ancient formula for a “Master of the animals”. The composition has been mistakenly identified as a combat between griffins and an Arimaspos, but the central figure displays domination over the two creatures, rather than vice versa. A closely related device that appeared on some cuirassed statues during the same period represented the vegetal god Dionysus-Sabazios between a pair of his sacred panthers. The similarity of the two breastplate devices is no accident, although the two groups represent different deities and animals. Both these heraldic devices seem to have been popular only for a limited time but the device of Hercules with griffins does appear in works from both Italy and Asia Minor. One of these statues certainly represents the deified Hadrian, another is today restored with a head of the same emperor, which may or may not belong to the torso, and the third almost certainly once portrayed Trajan, although the portrait face underwent later recutting; the head of the fourth is lost.

The amphitheatre at Carthage lies on the W edge of the ancient city just south of the decumanus maximus as it heads inland (fig. 1). Modern investigation dates back to the late 19th c. when A.-L. Delattre spent several years (1894-96) excavating the building, but, apart from a handful of inscriptions and minor objects recovered, few details were ever published. In the decades following, parts of the amphitheatre were reconstructed but no further archaeological work was undertaken (fig. 2). It was not until the 1980s that a detailed study of the building was attempted, at which time not one but two important publications appeared, one by J.-Cl. Golvin, the other by D. L. Bomgardner. The building history is not known with much certainty, but Golvin and Bomgardner are generally in agreement on the following key points. It was originally built in the early 1st c. A.D. but was extensively rebuilt in the 2nd c., probably under the Antonines. At this time its capacity was nearly doubled and a new limestone façade added. A description of the façade by the 11th-c. Arab geographer al-Bakri mentions three levels of arcades embellished with engaged columns and with relief sculptures depicting ‘craftsmen, animals, and ships’.

In certain modern sensibilities, played upon here by Verdi's librettist Salvadore Cammarano, infant sacrifice has tended to rouse a basal sense of horror. The moral outrage has usually imputed alien rites and the evils of dreadful barbaric practices. Consider the following descriptions not about the fictions of an imaginary Iberian court, but rather of an actual historical practice.

The pioneer in excavating early sites in the Roman Forum was Giacomo Boni (b. Venice 1859; d. Rome 1925). He lived through the turbulent years when the new nation of Italy was starting to find its stride. A number of puzzles associated with his life and work, in particular the origins of the Forum, are starting to be better understood; by digging more deeply into archives in Milan, Rome and Venice, it has been possible to make gains. A conference held recently in Venice gave the opportunity to bring together the two sides of his life in Venice and Rome. In a moment, something will be said about the new perspectives that were discussed at the Convegno. Then I will turn to Boni's work in the Forum and his ideas about its origins. In the final section I will discuss briefly where the study of the origins of the Forum now stands. Returning to this question gives an opportunity to update the gains (e.g., the discovery of clay beds in the Velabrum) that have been made over the last 25 years, specific questions that remain open (the dating of the first gravel pavement of the Forum), and the work that needs to be done.

In Early Iron Age cultures (the Golasecca, Este and Villanovan/Etruscan of the Po valley in the 7th-4th c. B.C.), a characteristic metal object has often been linked to unspecified ritual practices of protohistoric Italic peoples, raising various archaeological, anthropological and religious questions. This object, a ‘ritual shovel’ (Italian: paletta rituale; German: Bronzepalette) was first described by G. Ghirardini, who published two examples, one from Padua and one in Rome's Pigorini Museum. In 1902, he drew up a catalogue of 13 pieces and attempted to establish the first chronological sequence. During the first half of the 19th c., various pieces were published, but no studies addressed the typological, chronological and functional questions relating to the ritual shovel until M. Zuffa focused on it, providing what is still the most recent catalogue and the only discussion (fig. 1).

On May 27, 1970, during construction of the Caffarella sewer system which was to serve new districts in the sprawling suburbs of Rome, the Municipality of Rome alerted the Soprintendenza to the discovery of some ancient structures near the via Appia.The area affected by the passage of the sewer system lies just beyond the Almo river, between the Appia's first and second mile, in a place where, at the end of the 19th c., P. Cartoni built a rather large barn for his estate (vigna). On the W side of the road, excavators discovered a concrete pedestal reveted with tuff blocks that was interpreted as the foundation of a sepulchral monument, the ruderatio of the via Appia, and a secondary paved road leading southeast, as published by L. Spera (see fig. 1, trench A). However, the excavations on the E side of the via Appia have never been published. The aim of this paper is to describe and interpret the remarkable discovery. My examination of documentation stored in the archives of the Soprintendenza identified photographs and sketches of the 1970 excavation, providing evidence for the existence of a Republican-era monumental architectural complex situated behind the barn of Vigna Cartoni. Since it was impossible unfortunately to locate any written reports, the research was based mostly on illustrations and administrative documents, but a fairly accurate history of the excavation could be reconstructed based on the latter.

Prevailing models of the Roman economy tend to focus on long-distance exchange and are biased towards urban centres; thereby, much emphasis is placed on imported pottery, seen as an indicator for a strongly globalized and economically integrated market. Yet Roman economic networks must have been much more complex, with most communities strongly embedded in their local environment and depending chiefly on short- and medium-distance trade for their everyday goods. The evidence for such relationships has to come from a comprehensive investigation of local and regional systems of ceramic production and exchange. While this topic has received attention especially in areas with extensive evidence for kiln sites or in areas made up of relatively distinct geological units, the available evidence for central Italy, being still rather incomplete and of varied quality, displays a number of biases. For example, the evidence for ceramic production is often provided by the detailed investigation of just one kiln site, and such cases are seldom considered within their broader spatial, social and economic contexts in a way that would allow inferences to be drawn on the mechanisms of production and distribution on a local scale.

Colours containing bright and saturated blue hues were popular for painterly effects in most of the Mediterranean cultures dating from the Bronze Age to the fall of the Roman Empire. Pigments providing the desired blue were produced from precious minerals such as azurite and lapis lazuli, but bright blue hues also came from pigments produced by merging other naturally occurring sources. This large group of synthetically-generated blue frits is referred to as Egyptian blue. Egyptian blue is a calcium copper tetrasilicate compound, a synthetic pigment made by heating a calcium compound (such as powdered limestone and sand rich in calcium carbonate) together with copper and quartz (fig. 1), although synthetic blue pigments based on cobalt are also known, so far mainly in Egypt (such as “Amarna-blue”). The hue of Egyptian blue pigments ranges from a saturated, almost black blue to light blue, bluish-green, and purple, each being dependent on the materials employed for its production and manufacturing process. Its material properties are crystal-like, resembling finely shattered glass. It ranges in saturation and brightness (which can be enhanced by secondary heating), and it has a relatively low covering power. It seems to have ceased being widely applied sometime after the fall of the empire, which added a certain mystery to it.

In 29 B.C., after his victories over Marcus Antonius (cos. 44, 34) and Cleopatra at Actium and in Egypt, Caesar Octavi(an)us, or Imperator Caesar Divi f., as he then wanted to be known, returned to Rome as the uncontested master of the Roman world. He did so in a carefully managed pageant that culminated with his triple triumph on 13, 14 and 15 Sextilis (the month later renamed Augustus in his honour) and the opening of the Temple of Divus Iulius in the Forum Romanum shortly thereafter, on the 18th. These ceremonies marked the culmination of his claim — a pompous declaration already made in the autumn of 36 in the aftermath of Naulochus — that he had put an end to war on “land and sea” throughout the world. While the relevant entries in the Fasti Triumphales are lost, Cassius Dio produces a fairly accurate précis of Octavian's triple triumph. The first day was the triumph over the Pannonians and the Dalmatians, the Iapydes and their neighbours, and some German and Gallic tribes; the second day commemorated the naval victory at Actium, the ; the third and final triumph, the most costly and magnificent of them all, was over Egypt. Dio clarifies that the Egyptian spoils proved so rich and bountiful that they covered the expense and lustre of all three triumphal processions.

We present here a compositional study of a large number of copper-alloy brooches, undertaken in 2014 using Handheld X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometry (HHpXRF). The brooches, which come from the area of Nijmegen, date from the Late Iron Age until the 2nd c. A.D. Our aim is to explore the ways in which artefact production was organized both in the context of Roman centres and in the countryside. The link between alloys and workshop organization will be elucidated before the methodology and results are presented. The results will then be discussed, leading to the formation of several hypotheses regarding the organization of workshops that produced metal artefacts.

Scientific interest in the composition of ancient artefacts has existed for well over two centuries. Roman brooches in particular have been in the forefront of this research both because of their ease of categorization and because they are found in large numbers on archaeological sites. Much work has been done on how they were made and on the technical choices available to the craftsmen. In particular, the choice of alloying agents (tin, lead, zinc) added to copper demonstrated a complex relationship between composition and typology, especially in the debate over Roman or local production. The technological restraints imposed on these artefacts by different alloy ratios have been studied in some detail, especially in terms of casting in liquid form, into a mould, or being wrought through beating with a hammer.

With the multiplication of excavations, archaeological research (and even rescue archaeology) increasingly faces sites previously explored and thereby has to deal with documentation made with different methods and of different scopes than those of today. Beyond the historiographical issues and differences in ways of describing the past as viewed from the present, such an archival documentation is generally fragmentary, often scattered between various institutions or in private archives. The aim of this paper is to contribute to a debate on an important issue: how might we best make use of previous material, from archival documents to publications?

Herculaneum can exemplify the main processes one might face while studying a site excavated in the past. Initially explored through tunnels, it was excavated in open-area excavations in four periods (1828-55; 1869-75; 1927-61; 1996-98). Most of the city as we know it was uncovered by A. Maiuri (1886-1963) while he was Soprintendente and director of the Museum of Naples (1924-61). He managed to pass himself off as the only excavator of Herculaneum, and such a view was consolidated by the (incomplete) publication of his excavations in 1958. Up until the late 1990s, anything written about Herculaneum relied on his synthesis, with only a few re-interpretations based on observations made on a site that had been restored and presented by him. S. Mols was the first to use other sources to understand better the context of the wooden furniture discovered throughout the town, namely the daybooks (Giornale degli scavi di Ercolano [henceforth GSE]) composed during the excavation. Since then, slowly but surely, many of those involved in the study of Herculaneum started using those diaries, hoping to have a more complete and less subjective perception of the excavation — at least, one less influenced by Maiuri.