Volume 82, 2007

This paper aims to demonstrate that the many contradictory attributions of late archaic bronze statuettes in modern scholarship originate in a failure to comprehend the tendency at this time (starting around 530 BC) for such statuettes to become absorbed into what has been called ‘the international style’ in marble sculpture. The different archaic schools slowly loose their own character in favour of a style which seems to be more or less neutral and therefore causes problems to those scholars who want to continue to recognize local schools, not only in marble sculpture, but also in bronze statuettes. The emerging school of Attic bronze workers at about the same time (ca 530 BC) contributes to the confusion. As a result in many cases it becomes almost impossible to distinguish between the characteristic features of the Attic and the older leading schools of Sparta and Corinth. An escape from the deadlock is offered by the recognition of our own shortcomings and the acceptance of the phenomenon of the ‘international’ conflation.

The sanctuary of the emporion at Gravisca, in Etruria, has been considered as a Phocean foundation since the 1980s. The Phoceans would have built the most ancient naiskos and consecrated precious gifts to Aphrodite. However, it is difficult to refer to Aphrodite the most ancient offerings and at the same time consider them as Phoceans. A little statue of an armed goddess seems to represent Hera instead of Aphrodite and, moreover, a protome of a cauldron comes from Samos. The cult of armed Hera is well known at Samos, where the foundation legend stresses the rôle of the Etruscans and the goddess, in her festivals, was honoured by worshippers wearing jewels identical with those found at Gravisca. This is the reason why it is likely that the Samian people might have founded the sanctuary of Gravisca and dedicated it to Hera.

Miniature furniture falls within the study of full-sized furniture and replicas on a much reduced scale. Greek Hellenistic miniature furniture, in particular, forms a small group of objects made mainly of lead and found in domestic, funerary and sacred areas. The precise context is often unknown. Various hypotheses, often influenced by modern habits of furniture use, have been put forward concerning their meaning and production. This study focuses on miniature chairs and tables excavated in Delos, Macedonia, Elis and Euboea and dated to between the 4th and 1st centuries BC. Evidence of miniature furniture in literary and epigraphical texts will be considered. Since there is no unique way of interpreting these artefacts, this study will evaluate their significance on the basis of the evidence available, while also attempting to shed light on aspects of daily- and afterlife.

This paper focuses on the commercial relationship between Carthage, West Sicily and Campania from the 4th to the mid 2nd century BC. The analysis is based on the evidence provided by distribution patterns of ceramic finds (transport amphorae, black glaze wares). The archaeological documentation shows that the trade route connecting the Gulf of Naples with Carthage acquires importance not earlier than the mid-3rd century BC, but rather after the end of the second Punic War. The Roman conquest of the western part of Sicily opens the door to a massive exportation of Campanian wine. At the same time, the loss of two big Mediterranean islands forces Carthage to exploit more systematically its agricultural hinterland (large distribution of late Punic amphorae).

The Archaic settlement at L’Amastuola (15 km north-west of Taranto) is considered as a key site for the understanding of processes of colonization and modes of interactions between indigenes and Greeks. In this article, we present some preliminary results of fieldwork carried out between 2003 and 2005 in and around L’Amastuola. The outcomes of our excavations and surface surveys shed new light on the nature and occupation history of the site. During the late 8th century it was settled by indigenous people, who possibly around 670 BC fortified the hill top with a double circumvallation. The site is characterized by a heterogeneous material culture, with ‘typical indigenous’ items, such as the defensive system, hut plans and ceramic repertoires, fused with ‘typical Greek’ items, such as house plans, pottery and burial customs. This suggests that L’Amastuola housed an independent community, with a mixed indigenous-Greek background. A highly significant piece of evidence for this is a stele of indigenous type found among burials that are in line with Greek traditions. This situation lasted until the first half of the 5th century, when we witness substantial alterations in the organization of settlement and cemeteries, and in land use. We argue that these changes mark the westward colonial expansion of Taras, and propose that the L’Amastuola area was incorporated in the Tarentine chora not around 675 BC – as some scholars suggest – but only in the course of the 5th century.

This paper focuses on sealed amphora stoppers and their stamps originating from Greco-Roman Egypt; the majority of the stoppers appear to belong to the Roman period. After a discussion of the technical aspects of the sealed stoppers, the stamps are dealt with. With the help of papyri, ostraka and inscriptions, some of the individuals mentioned on these stamps may be identified. In case of local trade, the (clay) stamps rather refer to the origin of the wine, whereas in case of international trade the (plaster) stamps record the businessmen involved in trade, among them people from the highest echelons of Egyptian society.

This article concentrates on the social and spatial environments in which manufacturing took place in Pompeii in the last years of its existence. Investigating five different types of workshops (bakeries, fulleries, dyeries, tanneries and lanifricariae), it emerges that manufacturing took place throughout the city in a wide range of contexts and that workshops often were situated in buildings also used for domestic purposes, either houses or apartments with a shop. This suggests that craftsmen lived and worked in relative autonomy and that the urban elite had less control over them than is usually assumed.

Painters’ workshops in the Roman world cannot be seen as broken up professional entities with a precarious or casual organization of labour among the painters that composed the staff. With the example of the painters from the house of the Vettii, it may be possible to demonstrate that painter’s workshops were composed of a fixed staff that worked together on a stable manner. In addition to this, some of the operative methods of these painters bring to doubt the traditional clear-cut distinction between pictores parietarii and pictores imaginarii, suggesting the possibility that an all-encompassing role may have been fulfilled by each of the painters in the workshop.

An investigation of the many toilets at the villa of the Roman emperor Hadrian, near Tivoli (Italy), both multi-seat and single-seat varieties, shows that the emperor preferred to have some privacy in his toilet. The multi-seat latrines found there were for servants. For Hadrian himself, his family and especially his guests, the emperor built toilets with space for a single person. These were vast rooms with high ceilings and large windows providing light. They were equipped with sophisticated water systems and very luxurious decorations. A special feature of some of these toilets with large windows was a spectacular view. All toilets are different in shape and decoration, and many have no equal elsewhere in the Roman Empire. It is well-known that the emperor Hadrian loved to entertain and surprise his guests. It looks like his toilets were part of the surprise too.

The analysis of the finds discovered in the channel of the Smaller Baths’ toilet made the stratigrapy clearer; furthermore, it shed light on the room’s marble decoration. Many crustae were found, some of them relating to the floor. Indeed, its pattern can be reconstructed by means of a comparison. Other inlays probably concern the wall decoration; they are characterized part by geometric patterns, part by curvilinear foliage ones. Two pieces stand out from all the rest. One of them is a white marble wing, which could belong to a little bird or a winged head deity such as Hermes. The other one is a game board, engraved on a marble slab.

The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek marble portrait, I.N. 2466, has for the last half century lived under the name of Philip II, king of Macedonia, and considered a Roman copy of a Greek work of the 4th-3rd century BC. This identification, widely accepted, is put in doubt, as inconsistent features, stylistically as well as technically, in the portrait point towards a palimpsest, in casu a recut Antisthenes.

A marble statue in Budapest Szépmüvészeti Múzeum, perhaps from Pausilypon in Naples and probably dated to the middle of the 2nd century AD has been given a problematic interpretation as Isis Pelagia, whereas it is impossible to think that it was holding a sail in the hands. Instead, the statue must have been inserted in another base navigium-shaped, with a sail tied to the bow without the help of foot emerging from the plinth. Therefore, the Budapest statue would actually reproduce the Isis Pelagia type. Moreover two holes in the shoulders show its later transformation to a winged female figure, maybe a Nike.

Departing from a new reading of the documentation concerning the excavations carried out by the French abbot Paul Rancurel on the Palatine in Rome in the second half of the 18th century, the author reconstructs – and reestablishes in its proper context – the provenance of a small nucleus of sculptures characterized by the presence of examples in ‘duplicate’. These duplicates are not an isolated phenomenon among the furnishings of the Palace of the Caesars on the Palatine, but exceptional through their place and commision, and for the variety that characterizes them they make an important contribution to our general knowledge of the phenomenon of duplicatio of sculpture in Antiquity, suggesting new bases for reflexion.

This article discusses the cults of Isis and Serapis in Ostia and Portus, especially the location and urban context of the Serapeum in Ostia, and provides arguments against a supposed Oriental quarter in the neighbourhood of the sanctuary.

Following large-scale excavations at Ostia in the first half of the 20th century (more specifically between 1938 and 1942), archaeologists studying the discovered paintings primarily focused on the analysis of stylistic features, but generally failed to consider their architectural context. However, in the latter half of the century, with stylistic considerations still predominating, an increasing concern with the architectural context of painted decorations was nonetheless underway. Following in the footsteps of Mols’ work at the Caseggiato degli Aurighi (III x 1), the current article seeks to embrace these changing views and explore the wall paintings in the Caseggiato del mitreo di Lucrezio Menandro (I iii 5) at Ostia, paying particular attention to their architectural context. This not only carries with it the ability to more accurately date the paintings, but also the potential to attribute certain social functions to them.

Thanks to the research activities to prepare the Archaeological Map of an area included in the modern province of Frosinone (Southern Lazio), it is now possible to delineate the distributions of commercial goods and technical know-how, as well as the routes and itineraries of their circulation, during the poorly documented period between the end of Antiquity and the beginning of Carolingian power in Italy. The transformations in this region during Late Antiquity can be studied via a number of approaches. It is necessary to evaluate the character of acculturation in the areas conquered by the Lombards, and trace the forms of continuity of occupation in urban centres that remained under the political influence of the Byzantines.

Recently large fragments of two important black figured Laconian volute kraters, found in the Heraion on Samos in 1991, were published, but their significance was not fully recognized and their attribution not even attempted. This note aims at filling the gaps.

This paper started as a review of CVA Athens 5, which deals with geometric amphorae. We begin with a report on the meanders that appear on these vases, because their description is defective and sometimes even misleading. To understand the mental effort that is behind the production of these complicated patterns, we have to know how they were constructed and how they could be transformed from single into multiple patterns; only then we may get an eye for the utter perfection and beauty of these meanders such as those painted on the very tall masterpiece Athens 804 and many others. After the discussion of the meanders in this fascicule, we turn to the profile drawings and the technical question how the connection between the shoulder and the neck was made. After this we review the fascicule as a whole.

In the present article, I argue that the horse was originally an integral part of the accoutrement of the heavy-armed warrior (the so-called ‘hoplite’). In particular, I draw attention to the double-grip or Argive shield. I attempt to demonstrate that this type of shield was specifically developed for use by men who rode to the battlefield on horseback, the so-called hippobatai. As such, this article resurrects a hypothesis originally suggested by Detienne in 1968, namely that the hoplites of the Classical period find their origins in the mounted infantry of the Archaic age.

Michael C. Scott

The ‘meaning’ of architectural sculpture has long held the fascination of scholars. In the absence of inscriptional or literary evidence, however, scholars have often also allowed how they read a sculpture’s message to define the process of its creation. Such a procedure is unsatisfactory, especially in arenas where the process of design and placement – both of the architectural sculpture and its framing edifice – are crucial to understanding how the sculpture, and the structure as a whole, relate to their context. In this paper, I argue for the benefits of an archaeologically orientated response to the question of sculpture’s design and placement, focusing on a re-interpretation of the Siphnian Treasury at Delphi.

This article presents an analysis of a particular temple type that first appeared during the Late Republic, the temple with transverse cella. In the past this particular cella-form has been interpreted as a solution to spatial constraints. In more recent times it has been argued that the cult associated with the temple was the decisive factor in the adoption of the transverse cella. Neither theory, when considered in isolation, can fully and convincingly explain the particular forms of both Republican and Imperial temples. Rather, it can be argued that a combination of pragmatic and above all aesthetic considerations has played a major role in the particular architecture of these temples.

The monumental doorways of buildings in Roman Ostia offer a wealth of insight into the city’s urban dynamics. Assessed diachronically Ostia’s entrances provide a vibrant picture of a changing urban landscape. The focus is on their meaning and how these entrances reflect strategic considerations and individual choices. An array of influential factors relating to status and ownership, security, religious protection and negotiations between private entrance and public space will be investigated. Spatial factors with emphasis on location, security, distancing and visibility will be assessed to establish their degree of explanatory potential. The decisive factors that appear to have influenced choices and considerations are combined in ways unique to each particular entrance.

Four new Campana dinoi have come to light: three in the U.S.A. and a fragmentary one in Amsterdam. The publication of one, the dinos in the collection Shelby White in New York, is forthcoming. The other three are published here. We also study a fifth dinos in the U.S.A. and one in Würzburg. It appears that three, rather than two, painters were active in the workshop; this third artisan, whom we call the Hoof Painter, painted the dinoi in Würzburg and Amsterdam. We analyse the style of these painters and of related ware, especially of the Northampton amphorae. Finds show that the Northampton amphorae were not made in Etruria, as we formerly assumed, but somewhere in East Greece. The same holds, we believe, for the Campana dinoi, but new evidence, and especially clay analysis is needed to decide this matter for good.