Volume 95, 2020

Pages 1-46.

In this article we reconstruct the religious landscape between the sanctuaries of Plakari and Karababa in southern Euboia. These cult places were connected by a procession road, datable to the Classical period. To map this fragmentarily preserved road system and the general layout of the rural sanctuary on the Karababa hill slope we developed a three-staged methodology for targeted surveys. This comprises a desktop study of the target area using remotely sensed and spatial data, mapping the target area by making orthophotos from a drone, and ground-truthing by means of pedestrian surveys and revisiting and reassessing known archaeological find places. As a next phase of our research we reconstruct the road system and offer an interpretation of the road, sanctuary and other constituent elements of the religious landscape, emphasizing the importance of movement and landscape perception. In this final, interpretative part we also discuss a large and long boundary wall which we argue to have encompassed the sacred land belonging to the sanctuary, and two horos inscriptions, probably demarcating the temenos of the sanctuary proper, which included several platforms, a threshing floor and possible altars and which may have been dedicated to Demeter.

Pages 47-68.

While the sanctuary of Demeter in Eleusis has often been interpreted as directly related to the Athenian polis right from its start of renewed activity in the 8th c. BCE or at least from its Early Archaic monumentalisation, more recent research has cast doubts on the political unity of Attica in these periods. Curiously, the role of the local community of Eleusis has rarely been taken into account in studies on the early sanctuary, because the many other finds known from Eleusis have never been systematically compiled. The present article thus first gives an overview of the many rescue excavations beyond the sanctuary, which shows that Eleusis was a large ‘dispersed’ settlement in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE, in the midst of which the sanctuary emerged. The enormous amount of handmade terracotta figurines (‘Stempelidole’) known from the site testifies to a sharp increase of the size of the cult community in the 7th and early 6th c. BCE and thus to socio-political developments within the local community before its affiliation to the Athenian state, which written sources date to the first three quarters of the 6th c. BCE. An appendix to the paper presents a group of 74 previously unpublished figurines of this kind from Ferdinand Noack’s excavations in the Eleusinian sanctuary, nowadays custodied in the collection of the Institute of Classical Archaeology of the University of Tübingen.

Pages 69-84.

This paper examines the role of wine-mixing vessels in Apulian red-figure pottery by using a sample of 13,589 vases and fragments derived from the seminal corpora published by Trendall and Cambitoglou between 1978 and 1992. It explores the importance of each vessel shape over time and documents the dominant trends in their iconographic decoration. Although the majority of Apulian red-figure vessels have no recorded find-spot, the paper also explores the patterns that emerge from such provenance data as are recorded in the standard corpora. These reveal patterns of usage among both the Greek and Indigenous populations of South-East Italy.

Pages 85-110

Located east of the proposed urban settlement of the ancient Abakainon, “contrada Cardusa”, today about 1000 m away, is a funeral area surely used without interruption from the end of the 4th century to the beginning of the 2nd century B.C. The necropolis of “contrada Cardusa”, nowadays stretched on an area of about 2000 square meters, is famous in the historical-archaeological panorama of north-eastern Sicily for the particular features of organization, structure and monumentality. At present state of the research, on a total of 152 burials recorded, over 65% are diversified by systems of building solutions that, for their architectural articulation on the stand, suggest true “funeral monuments”. All the types so far identified (A-F) share the same constructive and/or ideological principle: from the material used (sandstone blocks or slabs), to the architecture of the fundamental structure (a semi-buried base where a variously arranged and dimensioned structure rests on but in any way in “a stepped profile”. The article closes with two paragraphs dedicated to comparisons with other necropoleis and to a comparison on the vascular figures.

Pages 111-116.

In this note, an over-painted oinochoe in Gnathia style is reconsidered. It has recently been cleaned of pictorial additions made after its discovery in a tomb in Tarentum. These additions had caused an incorrect reading of the figurative scene painted over the surface of the vase, now more correctly interpretable as a representation of a Silenus playing the aulos in connection with the Dionysian sphere and the symposium.

Pages 117-136.

The cemeteries of Spina and Adria, Etruscan harbours in the Po Delta of the Italian peninsula, represent an incredible repository for the study of many materials, among which a collection of black-gloss ware of primary importance. The study of the Valle Trebba necropolis in Spina, headed by the Chair of Etruscology at Bologna University, offers an opportunity to discuss the black-gloss ware produced in this important Etruscan port on the Adriatic sea during the Hellenistic period, while firstly outlining the methodological issues related to the development of an updated study of this class of ware.

Pages 137-150.

The present article deals in three paragraphs with largely unknown aspects of suspected slave depictions in Hellenistic-Roman bronze art, focusing on the punishment and stigmatization of escaped or otherwise criminalized slaves. Based on a statuette from the Fouquet Collection, originally from Egypt, which is now lost (figs 1-3), the first paragraph deals with the figure of a flogged man bound in ‘wood’ in Lyon (figs 4-6) and related statuettes of chained dwarfs (figs 7-8). In the second paragraph, using the example of a bronze head vase in Hanover (fig. 9) and a dwarf statuette in the Louvre (fig. 10), possible Hellenistic testimonies to the otherwise literarily attested practice of stigmatization, i.e. the tattooing or branding of slaves are examined. The focus of the third paragraph is a Hellenistic statuette in the art market (fig. 11). Shown is a seated, naked man with bound feet and the physical characteristics of a cripple. Due to the head turn and the peculiar attitude of the hands, the author suggests for the first time an interpretation as a prisoner of war used as a rowing slave. This is followed by a discussion of two safe or suspected Roman rower statuettes. These include a statuette in Dijon (fig. 12) found not far from the sources of the Seine as a part of a small bronze boat and therefore probably part of a votive ship for the river goddess Sequana and a previously unpublished statuette of unknown origin in the Berlin Antikensammlung (fig. 13).

Pages 151-172.

During excavations conducted in 1930 on the site of the ancient Capena, some architectural elements of a small temple building, dedicated to Genius Augusti, were found. Following the identification of a new inscribed frieze lintel from the Vatican Museums, ascribable to the same building, and others fragments identified in a private collection and in a judiciary seizure, a general review of all the known pieces was conducted, arriving at a proposal of partial reconstruction of the monument and the identification of the Roman architect who projected and realized the building, [P.] Volumnius Dion, proposing the hypothesis that it could be a freedman of Volumnius Eutrapelus,1 praefectus fabrum of Antonius.

Pages 173-194.

The fragmentary male bust Berlin, Antikensammlung Sk 1801, was found in the area of the peristyle buildings on the Kastro Tigani-Pythagoreion (Samos). Originally, this bust was a portrait of Caligula which was later transformed into a Germanicus. The recarving can be documented on the basis of detailed photographs. This case study complements existing evidence that for Samos such a process of mutilation was not unique. Several criteria point out the possibility that the bust Berlin Sk 1801 has perhaps been recarved from a statue. Whereas this procedure was not unusual in the late 2nd and the 3rd centuries A.D. it is but little discussed for portraits of the 1st century A.D. Possible criteria proving such a mutilation are discussed on the basis of further examples from Samos, a bust in Cagliari, and the Marcellus from Pompeji in Naples. These examples show the need for further research into this phenomenon.

Pages 195-212.

Hadrian is the first emperor to be almost exclusively represented in military costume in surviving sculpture. In this paper, it is argued that this development can be linked to the changing military role of the emperor in this period: from conqueror to protector. This theory is substantiated by a series of statues that employ a traditional, military motif to anchor events relating to Hadrian’s new foreign policy. Such depictions promoted the virtus of Hadrian not by referring to victories abroad but by highlighting his ability to maintain peace. This reading may provide us with a different lens to look at the military-styled images of Hadrian.

Pages 213-236.

A unique and exceptional artifact, a large cameo/small bas-relief, which has never been studied, is kept in Museo Archeologico al Teatro romano in Verona. Of several layers of chalcedony, incomplete, broken and recomposed, it depicts an idealized figure – which may be identified with the Emperor Claudius –, with a wreath of laurel, seated on a throne like Zeus/Jupiter. Important, expensive and rare, the work is evidence for a specialized workshop in Rome. Whilst it fits perfectly into the courtly, ‘state’ glyptic, nonetheless it has no precise comparisons and is therefore a unicum. It is impossible to reconstruct its earlier history as there is a total absence of information concerning this great cameo. All that is known is that it was part of the collection of the scholar Jacopo Muselli, who published it in his Antiquitatis reliquiae (1756). Originally from Rome, the artifact most likely belonged to the collection of the famous and versatile Francesco Bianchini, astronomer, natural philosopher, archaeologist, antiquarian, historian. By this means alone, some idea of the cameo’s cultural background is suggested.

Pages 237-258.

Villa Jovis in Capri is the most important Roman villa of the island Capri. What we know today is the result of many excavations, spoliations and destructions. Before the work of Amedeo Maiuri in the 30s of 20th century, Giuseppe Feola, mayor of Capri, undertook the most extensive excavation of the Villa. Throughout the study of the archival documents it is now possible to know the different phases of what is called the first royal excavation, carried out between 1824 and 1828.