The Ancient World : Europe

In the remotest corners of the Roman Empire large crowds were as beguiled by spectacles as their Roman counterparts. Provincial spectacles however did not share the technical wonders of flying machines elephant dressage and synchronised swimming seen at imperial extravaganzas. Is it this lack of the sensational that accounts for the relative paucity of scholarly attention paid to regional spectacles and in particular their sponsors?

When spectacles are viewed purely as entertainment the messy realities of institutionalized social economic and political power that regulated them are obscured. A clearer understanding of the spectacle can therefore be achieved by contextualizing it in the big picture of regional and provincial life against the backdrop of Roman power and control. The spectacle itself was highly political in its aims and intent. Access to sponsorship of a spectacle similarly relied on hierarchies of political power and privilege and consequently required strategic negotiation of candidacy promises expenditure and recognition. Rivalry competition and emulation was endemic.

This epigraphic analysis focusing on the western Roman Empire (Italy Gaul and North Africa) during the Imperial period identifies the milieux of provincial sponsors their strategies and quest for public honours.

The spurs of horse riders have long been acknowledged as an important item of grave furniture in the Late Roman and Migration period burials of Poland a reflection of the high social position held by the deceased. Yet while spurs have been studied at a general level and typo-chronological studies have been conducted on spurs found in southern and central Poland no such research has so far been conducted on finds from the West Balt Circle in north-eastern Poland. This volume is an attempt to rectify the situation by offering a thorough examination of finds attributed to the Bogaczewo and Sudovian Cultures. The author here offers a comprehensive assessment of surviving materials from the period many of which are scattered through museums across Europe together with an in-depth analysis of archival sources (included among them the private inventories of archaeologists working in the pre-war period) in order to reconstruct our understanding of the furnishings and data relating to spurs. This detailed research carefully contextualized against our wider understanding of Barbarian Europe offers an important new reference for our understanding both of the West Balt Circle and its inter-cultural relations with surrounding regions as well as of the symbolic meaning of spurs and their significance in burial rites.

Roman wooden writing tablets known in Latin as tabulae ceratae have been found by archaeologists in various locations around the former capital of the civitas/municipium Tungrorum or Roman Tongeren (now the Belgian city of Tongeren-Borgloon). These rare and delicate finds are remarkable not only due to the excellent state of their preservation but also because they are inscribed with the remnants of texts once etched into an overlying wax layer that can to the discerning eye still be deciphered. The tablets not only provide concrete information about religious judicial and administrative practices but they also enhance our understanding of the complex processes of Romanisation and Latinisation in the northwestern civitates and municipia of the Roman Empire.

Unearthed in the first half of the twentieth century with a second group discovered in 2013 the Roman tablets housed in the Gallo-Roman Museum of Tongeren-Borgloon and in the city’s municipal heritage depository became the object of an in-depth study by an international team of specialists piloted by the Gallo-Roman Museum. It is the results of this project that are presented here in this volume for the first time. The painstaking process of deciphering and interpreting the script marks and text fragments is explored via analysis of palaeography philology and onomastics along with key scientific techniques such as wax analysis wood species identification and script visualisation by Multi-Light Reflectance Imaging. Rich detail is also provided about other associated wooden finds that shed light on how and where the tablets were produced.

The result is a beautifully illustrated and insightful volume that introduces the lost world of Roman Tongeren and its writing tablets to professionals and the general public alike.

La Dacia Ripensis fu una provincia danubiana la cui esistenza si data fra gli anni ‘80 del III secolo e i primi anni del VII. Il suo territorio funse da cerniera fra il medio ed il basso corso del Danubio e al tempo stesso da raccordo fra il barbaricum e l’entroterra illirico. L’urbanizzazione vi ebbe un modesto successo; cionondimeno essa favorì la romanizzazione della provincia dove la militarizzazione si manifesta invece in modo evidente grazie a quanto noto dalla Notitia dignitatum e dall’archeologia. L’attenzione per la difesa dell’area era del resto giustificata per via della pressione esercitata da popolazioni come Goti Unni Slavi e Avari che condizionarono la storia dell’intera penisola proprio attraversando la Dacia Ripensis.

Dalle fonti letterarie è noto che la provincia fu anche interessata dalla diffusione della religione cristiana le cui prime testimonianze si datano ai primordi del IV secolo. Il processo rese possibile l’ascesa di sedi vescovili assai implicate nelle dispute teologiche e nella lotta a dottrine eretiche localmente diffuse ancora nel VI secolo. L’archeologia ha permesso di riconoscere la graduale formazione di questa rete ecclesiastica che in forme monumentali è riconoscibile sia in ambito urbano che rurale. Nonostante la sua importanza questa provincia è stata finora studiata solo occasionalmente e questo volume vuole ovviare a questo problema proponendo uno studio aggiornato mirato a definire le conoscenze storiche e archeologiche necessarie alla comprensione generale della topografia provinciale così come alla contestualizzazione del processo di cristianizzazione di questa porzione dell’area danubiana.

Ancient Epirus ‘the Mainland’ of the Odyssey has meant different things at different times. Covering a region that today spans parts of south Albania and north-west Greece Epirus was an important crossroad in antiquity a meeting place of different peoples and cultures. Yet while the history of the region is well-known thanks to a combination of historical studies and major Greek myths its archaeology has remained relatively little studied. Now derived from a larger project based at Oxford University entitled ‘Beyond the Borders’ this volume for the first time offers a reliable and up-to-date account of the archaeology of Epirus.

The contributions gathered here written by some of the most influential international scholars currently involved in archaeological research in Epirus aim to offer a balanced synthesis of the different cultural and historical phenomena at play in the region. Chapters span the Archaic period to Roman Imperial times and starting from the material record touch upon a wide range of subjects: landscape studies urbanization fortifications and defence ritual sanctuaries burial practices relationships between mother cities and colonies and borders and borderlands. Through this approach the volume effectively moves Epirus from the border to the centre of the map of current archaeo-historical research as well as offering a starting point for further historical investigations in the field.

Romulus et Rémus naissent d’une vierge vestale (Ilia ou Rhéa Silvia) ou d’une esclave qui s’accouple avec un phallus divin. Après avoir été soustraits à leur mère ils sont allaités par la louve une bête qui malgré son caractère de prédateur se comporte comme une nourrice pleine d’attention et d’affection. L’abris pour cet allaitement interspécifique est offert par le figuier Ruminalis qui dérive son nom comme la déesse Rumina de la mamelle allaitante. Cette enfance sauvage se conclut quand les jumeaux sont accueillis par Acca Larentia femme de renommée redoutable qui les allaite et les fait grandir dans un milieu pastoral. Comme la louve dont elle est l’alter-ego Acca Larentia s’affiche pour sa remarquable générosité qui est à l’origine d’une fête publique les Larentalia célébrée en décembre. Un fil rouge se dénoue entre ces figures primordiales : le lait nourricier que la mère n’a pas pu donner à ses fils et que les autres figures offrent à sa place.

En suivant les traces de ce fluide cette enquête anthropologique historique et philologique analyse les valeurs culturelles et religieux de ces présences féminines devenues des piliers de la mémoire collective des Romains.

On 4 August 1897 farm workers in Elche — the site of ancient Ilici — discovered an Iberian sculpture of a woman that dated from the fifth– fourth centuries BCE. French archaeologist Pierre Paris dubbed this figure ‘the Lady of Elche’ and promptly purchased the sculpture on behalf of the Louvre Museum. There she drew the attention of European scholars who were intrigued by her stylistic features finally concluding that she bore witness to the existence of a specifically Iberian art. Since her discovery the Lady of Elche has been a source of fascination not only for scholars but also for artists and she has become an icon of regional and national identity across Spain. This volume co-written by an archaeologist and an anthropologist and translated here into English for the first time seeks to explore the importance of the Lady of Elche both for students of the past and for the peoples of Iberia. The authors here explore not only what we know — and still do not know — about her creation but also engage with key questions about what she represents for the men and women of our time who have questioned manipulated admired loved and often reinvented the singular beauty of this iconic figure.