Volume 76, 2001

This article presents a new survey programme in the Central-Italian valley of the Potenza, initiated by researchers from Ghent University. The aims and methods of this long term project are briefly summarised, so are the results of the first field campaigns of May and September 2000. The potential of the large survey region is now fully evaluated and the project stands at the threshold of useful contributions to the protohistory and early history of Central-Italy. The intensity of fieldwalking techniques, the use of active remote sensing, the geoarchaeological approach and the association with parallel historical research in the area, all guarantee that this PVS-project can play a role in the current debate among archaeologists concerning long term evolutions of landscapes and ancient settlement systems in Adriatic and Apennine Italy.

The University of Amsterdam continued its archaeological exploration of the ancient site of Satricum (Borgo Le Ferriere) during the summer of 2000, after 4 years of interruption. Excavations where done on the acropolis, behind the temples of Mater Matuta. The research area on the north-eastern sector of the hill was extended in various directions. New excavation areas were also opened in the central-eastern and south-eastern sectors.

The ancients contrasted normal life sharply with that at Sybaris. Many ancient tales of excess do not just describe the luxuries in the streets and houses of this Greek colony of Southern Italy, but focus on the wickedness and spoiled ways of its inhabitants. The story of the complete disappearance of Sybaris in the floods of the river Khratis in 510 BC after its riva lcolony, Kroton, had destroyed it, seems at first sight ,o less fabulous than these tales. A ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’ ending is a good way to enhance such stories with a sense of impending doom. However the meagre results of many searches for the famed city of Sybaris have reminded even the most tenacious of archaeologists of divinely ill fate. This paper is once again concerned with the contrast between the ancient texts and the archaeological evidence regarding Sybaris and the Achaian colonisation of the coastal plains along the Ionian Sea.

In the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden, resides a relief with the representation of Asklepios and Hygieia, which belongs to a memorial who were thought to be in classical Greek style, but were redefined as Imperial Roman when a profound stylistic research was done. This article deals on the real nature of this relief and its place in the tradition of Asklepiosreliefs.

In 1952 R. Herbig published a well illustrated catalogue of decorated Etruscan stone sarcophagi. The sarcophagi were not dated by him. This article aims to complete Herbig’s work, update it and combine it with other publications made on this subject. The production of these stone sarcophagi was between 350 BC and 200/180 BC with some exceptional founds of earlier and later dates (400 AD – 200 AD<).

The study of this sarcophagi is important because of the relationships between the production centres, stylistic developments and thematic shifts in the fourth and third centuries BC, and the status and mentality of the deceased.

The chronology of the alabaster urns from Chiusi is a complex problem. Several studies were done regarding this subject, creating a typology and a dating for the objects. Nevertheless only few studies compared the created groups with each other and made a systematic overview. This article aims to fill this void and to add recent chronological data to the Corpus of E. Brunn and G. Körte of 1870-1916.

Now that a new catalogue on the sculptures of teh Allard Pierson Museum has been published, it is worth-while to draw special attention to certain pieces in this collection. The authors are happy to start, according to Ancient Greek fashion, with Zeus (ek Dios archoometha).

A statuette of a mouse in molded bronze was found in the temple of Kedesh, Upper Galilee, in the course of the first season of the archaeological excavations. The article deals on the attributes of this particular found and its meaning.

Vitrivius’ treatise on water supply and aqueducts (De Architectura Libri Decem, Book VIII, chapter 6) has often been critcized as not being reliable, especially on the subject of inverted siphons. Numerous comments, by various authors, agree on this point. In this article Vitruvius’ chapter on aqueducts and siphons will be discussed again, in view of the physics of gravity driven conveyance systems, leading to a different view.

A real person, a man called Bellicus, represented as a monosandalos, is discussed in this article. What does this kind of representation mean for a real person? Previously it was thought to represent an illness of the foot, but recent research revealed an other story. The monosandalos often shown on a funeral monument is in transition to an other situation. This is proofed in a parallel with Ancient Egyptian representations of Tutanchamun and his wife Anchesenamun as monosandaloi on their tomb. The author tries to uncover the precise meaning of this phenomenon in the Gallo-Roman world.

During the fascist regime of Mussolini, the Forum Romanum, or more precise some of its components, was reintegrated in the Italian political and daily life. A particular place was the exedra of the Templum Pacis, which was excavated and restorated in the 1930s. This article deals with the use and the changes done to the original situation wherein the exedra was found.

Carandini describes in his articles of February and March 2000 in the Bollettino di Archeologia some so-called royal houses at the foot of the Palatine. As the elaborated volumes of these excavations appeared some questions rose on the interpretation of the excavator. This article proposes the contras against this interpretation. Nevertheless it is not meant as a final conclusion, but rather as a paper to be discussed.