The edited volume is the result of the first international ROCT-conference (Roman Crafts and Trade Network) at the Catholic University Leuven on 7 and 8 May, 1999. The collected papers provide an overview of important recent contributions to the study of Italian sigillata and outline some approaches for future research. The contributions define methodological and chronological problems related to the import of Italian sigillata, and, at the same time, place Italian sigillata against a wider background, in order to evaluate its role in the changing early imperial ceramic assemblages, and discuss whether the trade in Italian sigillata could have been part of a wider pattern of exchange of goods, persons and ideas. The volume brings together a variety of archaeological and archaeometrical papers and covers the western regions of the empire, the Italian motherland and the Roman East, in trying to encompass the complex effects of Italian sigillata.
The edited volume is the result of the first international ROCT-conference (Roman Crafts and Trade Network) at the Catholic University Leuven on 7 and 8 May, 1999. The collected papers provide an overview of important recent contributions to the study of Italian sigillata and outline some approaches for future research. The contributions define methodological and chronological problems related to the import of Italian sigillata, and, at the same time, place Italian sigillata against a wider background, in order to evaluate its role in the changing early imperial ceramic assemblages, and discuss whether the trade in Italian sigillata could have been part of a wider pattern of exchange of goods, persons and ideas. The volume brings together a variety of archaeological and archaeometrical papers and covers the western regions of the empire, the Italian motherland and the Roman East, in trying to encompass the complex effects of Italian sigillata.
Excavation of the ancient city of Morgantina in southeastern Sicily since 1955 has recovered an extraordinary quantity and variety of pottery, both locally made and imported. This volume presents the fine-ware pottery dating between the second half of the fourth century BCE, when Morgantina was a thriving inland center closely tied to the Hellenistic east through Syracuse, and the first half of the first century CE, when Morgantina had been reduced to a dwindling Roman provincial town that would soon be abandoned. Bearing gloss and often paint or relief, these fine ceramics were mostly tableware, and together they provide a well-defined picture of the evolving material culture of an important urban site over several centuries. And since virtually all these vessels come from dated deposits, this volume provides wide-ranging contributions to the chronology of Hellenistic and early Roman pottery. An introductory chapter sketches out a comprehensive history of the city, discusses the many well-dated archaeological deposits that contained the excavated pottery, and defines the major fabrics of the ceramics found at the site. The bulk of the volume consists of a scholarly presentation of more than 1,500 pottery vessels, analyzing their shapes, fabrics, chronology, decoration, and techniques of fabrication. This rich ceramic material includes significant bodies of Republican black-gloss and red-gloss vases, Sicilian polychrome ware, and Eastern Sigillata A, as well as early Italian terra sigillata, with numerous examples imported from Arezzo and other Italian centers, along with regional versions from Campania and elsewhere on Sicily. The relief ware includes important groups of third-century BCE medallion cups and hemispherical moldmade cups of the second and first centuries BCE. Morgantina was also an active center of pottery production, and the debris from several workshops has been recovered, enabling Shelley Stone to reconstruct the working techniques and materials of the local craftsmen, the range of ceramics they produced, and how their products were influenced by pottery imported to the site from elsewhere on Sicily, the Italian mainland, and even more distant centers. The volume also presents new information about the sources of the clay used by the Morgantina potters, as revealed by X-ray fluorescence analysis of selected vases.
"Roman imagery and iconography are typically studied under the more general umbrella of Roman art and in broader, medium-specific studies. This handbook focuses primarily on visual imagery in the Roman world, examined by context and period, and the evolving scholarly traditions of iconographic analysis and visual semiotics that have framed the modern study of these images. As such topics-or, more directly, the isolation of these topics from medium-specific or strictly temporal evaluations of Roman art-are uncommon in monograph-length studies, our goal is that this handbook will be an important reference for both the communicative value of images in the Roman world and the tradition of iconographical analysis. The chapters herein represent contributions from a number of leading and emerging authorities on Roman imagery and iconography from across the world, representing a variety of academic traditions and methods of image analysis"--
ArcheoLogica Data wants to reach an Italian and international audience of scholars, professionals, students, and, more generally, early-career archaeologists, and it accepts contributions written both in Italian and English. ArcheoLogica Data proposes to indissolubly associate data and interpretation. It embraces that global idea of archaeological data that integrates all the discipline declinations without any thematic or chronological constraints. Data is at the centre, and around lies everything that can stem from it: interpretations, hypotheses, reconstructions, applications, theoretical and methodological reflections, critical ideas, constructive discussions.
This book examines the rich corpus of mosaics created in Crete during the Roman and Late Antique eras. It provides essential information on the style, iconography and chronology of the material, as well as discussion of the craftspeople who created them and the technologies they used. The contextualized mosaic evidence also reveals a new understanding of Roman and Late Antique Crete. It helps shed light on the processes by which Crete became part of the Roman Empire, its subsequent Christianization and the pivotal role the island played in the Mediterranean network of societies during these periods. This book provides an original approach to the study of mosaics and an innovative method of presenting a diachronic view of provincial Cretan society.
Addressing topics of production and distribution, iconography, regional studies, and museum collections, this volume sheds new and important light on perspectives in the fields of ancient pottery studies. The articles, substantial and well-illustrated, cover a wide span of time from the Geometric period and into the Roman period, including new results and material from excavations as well as new methodological approaches. The range of vessels and their varieties discussed include Campana A pottery from the southern Levant and the Black Sea areas; Oinotrian-Euboian pottery in a sanctuary context in Timpone della Motta near Sybaris in the Middle to Late Geometric periods; Early Proto Corinthian aryballos in the western Mediterranean; Greek imported and local pottery from the earliest times in Crotone’s history; iconographic history of the myth of Iphigenia from Athens to southern Italian vase-painting; small terracotta figurines from Peloponnesian sanctuaries; anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures on Etruscan impasto vessels; Cypro-Arcaic pottery; and objects – red-gloss relief decorated sherds and Geometric pottery – housed in Danish museum collections. The articles represent recent Danish archaeological research of the Mediterranean and constitute an important contribution to the ongoing international debate on the roles of pottery in ancient societies.
