The tomb of Marcus Venerius Secundio was discovered in July 2021 in the necropolis of Porta Sarno at Pompeii. This paper contextualizes it against the backdrop of 1st-c. CE burial customs and social history. The inscription on the pediment shows that the tomb owner was a former public slave who, after manumission, rose to the rank of the Augustales; he was a “custodian” of the temple of Venus, and he organized “Greek and Latin games/performances.” This is the first archaeological discovery providing direct evidence of Greek musical and/or theatrical performances at Pompeii. Another peculiarity is that Secundio was inhumed, not cremated, a practice so far unique among adults in Pompeii during this period. The inhumation of Secundio and his titulus sepulcralis can be read as local reflections of the Neronian zeitgeist and shed light on the modes by which cultural trends spread from the capital throughout the empire.

Smelling and other sensations that are often considered solely physiological phenomena are in fact deeply influenced by culture and history, and without understanding the ancient sensory landscape, our knowledge of the past inevitably remains limited. This paper explores the olfactory nuisances in one Pompeian city block (IX,3) and its immediate neighbors. I examine the area's stenches by tracing and mapping the sources of smells, focusing on those that in previous scholarship have been considered to render ancient towns foul smelling. The analysis contests the views of malodorous Roman urban space presented in previous studies and suggests that the smellscape of urban Pompeii was not a constant reek but milder and manageable. However, the analysis also reveals that social hierarchies and power relations played a part in Pompeian odor control, and the olfactory landscape was not the same for all inhabitants.

In the 5th c. BCE, Rome is understood to have experienced a moment of transition. Scholars highlight evidence for warfare absent widespread triumph, social conflict within Rome, and regional disruption in established power dynamics, trade networks, and material cultures. Despite a revised understanding of the period, wherein narratives of decline were superseded by those of transformation, the long century after the purported fall of monarchy, especially in its middle and later portions, remains segregated in scholarship from the Archaic period and Middle Republic. This article seeks to reframe the moment as integral to events both before and after it. By way of an examination of material remains of architectural projects, I argue that disciplinary preferences for periodization, a Rome-centered historical telos, and hierarchical material taxonomies have manufactured an absence of remains and activity, and I suggest that the field categorically moves away from these practices.

Painted portraits on wood and cloth were common in the ancient world and prized as authentic and lifelike images. Affordable, portable, and desirable, they were an important form of representation, but rarely survive in the archaeological record outside Egypt. This article approaches the study of painted portraiture in a way that does not necessitate the survival of the images themselves. It analyzes evidence for the use, reuse, and imitation of painted portraits in the catacombs of 4th-c. Rome by examining the remains of settings and attachments for portraits, the shadows left by them on walls, and portraits in other media which imitate panel paintings. The article considers why painted portraits were so effective in funerary contexts and what connection they may have had to domestic portraiture. It also explores the development of panel portrait imitation through the phenomenon of the “square nimbus.”

During the 2020 excavation campaign of the French Archaeological Mission to the Egyptian Eastern Desert (MAFDO), the team in charge of the excavation of the Roman fort of Deir el-Atrash uncovered a polychrome painting on one of the original entrance tower gates from the late 1st–early 2nd c. CE. The iconographic program includes, in the top register, a horseman genius and a caravan of dromedaries with its driver. In the lower register, a pattern of vine stalks and leaves occupies the space. This discovery is exceptional, as very few Roman paintings have been preserved in a military context. In addition to depicting a scene of everyday desert life, the supply of the fort, the scene also illustrates the power of the Empire and its presence at its borders.

This article presents a comparative analysis of three Late Roman sites located at the northern outskirts of the Kharga Oasis in Egypt's Western Desert: Umm al-Dabadib, Ayn al-Labakha, and the Gib/Sumayra Complex. These were part of the district of the Oasis Magna, which included the oases of Dakhla and Kharga. An analysis of their layout, including both shape and extent, is followed by an evaluation of their absolute and relative positions. These data are then compared to the administrative and historical contexts within which the three sites flourished. Both administrative and economic aspects are considered, as well as the presence of the army. The complex picture that emerges suggests that these three sites played several roles at the same time and were part of a large-scale strategic design that encompassed not only the Kharga Oasis but the entire Western Desert.

Intentionally broken “picture” lamps, or Bildlampen, are relatively common at archaeological sites throughout the Roman world. Such lamps typically exhibit a missing central discus. The discus itself – called a lamp “medallion” – often survives, too, and represents further evidence for deliberate lamp breakage. This article explores picture lamps with missing discuses and lamp medallions as a distinct and identifiable artifact group. It also surveys the possible reasons behind their intentional breaking. The work additionally identifies selected findspots where the lighting vessels were broken in rituals, with a special focus on the Shrine of Apollo at Tyre, and examines whether lamp breakage reflects individual choice or collective behavior. In an effort to understand how Roman picture lamps were deliberately broken and the lamp medallions generated for rituals, breakage experiments – drop, impact, puncture, and hammerstone – were conducted on accurate museum-made replicas of Roman picture lamps.

This paper illustrates the results of research carried out at the archaeological site of Puig Castellar de Biosca (Catalonia, Spain), located in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula. This Republican military fortress, a castellum, is exceptional due both to its early chronology, which ranges between 180 and 120 BCE, and to the fact that it acted as a long-lasting military installation situated in a pacified area on the periphery of the Celtiberian conflict zone. Work at the site has uncovered a central building on the top of a hill, which due to its Italian features has been identified as the headquarters of the military fortress. If this interpretation is correct, this might be one of the first examples of a Republican military headquarters building documented to date. It could then be considered a predecessor of later praetoria and principia, which have been recorded in the Numantine camps and on the Roman western limes.

Marble provenance studies in archaeology have become increasingly popular in recent decades. This has resulted in a large quantity of analytical data becoming available for archaeological marbles. This article presents the results of a quantitative study of the distribution of white marble in the Mediterranean based on an analysis of the available provenance data for the Roman period. The study shows increased distribution of white marble between the late 1st c. BCE and the end of the 2nd c. CE. A decline in distribution from the 3rd c. CE was less abrupt than traditionally believed and shows object-, material-, and region-specific trajectories. The marble distribution data is finally evaluated within a wider socio-economic frame, considering factors such as the marble trade system and broader Roman economy, changes in cultural practices related to statue erection, importance of reuse and recycling, growing ruralization, and reduced interest of the elite in urban capital investment in the later Roman periods.

The Hunnic incursions into eastern and central Europe in the 4th and 5th c. CE have historically been considered one of the key factors in bringing the Roman Empire to an end. However, both the origins of the Huns and their impact on the late Roman provinces remain poorly understood. Here we provide a new, combined assessment of the archaeological, historical, and environmental evidence. Hunnic raids and warfare within the Roman provinces are most intensely attested for the first half of the 5th c. We propose that severe drought spells in the 430s to 450s CE disrupted the economic organization of the incomers and local provincial populations, requiring both to adopt strategies to buffer against economic challenges. We argue that the Huns’ apparently inexplicable violence may have been one strategy for coping with climatic extremes within a wider context of the social and economic changes that occurred at the time.

Smallpox, caused by the variola virus (VARV), is prominent in modern histories of the ancient Mediterranean world. The disease, or the diagnosis of it, has shaped estimations of the scale and significance of epidemics and pandemics, notably the 2nd-c. Antonine plague, and the burden of disease in large cities and regions densely populated in antiquity. Here we synthesize recent paleogenetic and evolutionary biological literature that casts significant doubt on the existence of a VARV that caused a disease we would recognize – clinically, ecologically, or epidemiologically – as smallpox in antiquity. On the basis of current data, it is time archaeologists and historians began to eradicate smallpox from their histories of the ancient world.

This paper attempts an overview of new kind of segmented mill, examples of which have been found at Thysdrus (El Jem) and Zama in Africa Proconsularis. These grain mills are quite different morphologically and technically from other mills in the ancient Mediterranean world. These rare archaeological finds are not discussed in the ancient literature or in modern scholarship, leaving them difficult to understand. This article explores the history of segmented mills and the operation and dating of this African mill type.