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.

In recent decades, conflict archaeology has renewed study of the Roman Republican military, with Hispania as one of the most prolific areas of research. Following this trend, since 2006 the University of Barcelona has conducted archaeological investigations at several sites in the lower Ebro basin. When no structures or archaeological layers remained in situ, surface survey became a key methodology. Based on the artifacts retrieved during surface survey, this article identifies four new military establishments dated to the first half of the 1st c. BCE and reinterprets the campaigns of the Sertorian War in northeastern Spain.

The Augustan marble “revolution” marked more than the substitution of one building material for another. It changed Rome's color, texture, and light, and visually redefined its sacred architecture. For centuries, temples in and around Rome had been decorated with brightly painted architectural terracottas, which typically featured a swirling array of plants and flowers. Terracotta was the material of sacred tradition, and the vegetal motifs employed on temples evoked a pious Italic past. The lush array of plant life present in Augustan art has not been adequately considered against this background. This paper explores the use of traditional plant motifs in Augustan art and architecture, with an emphasis on viewer response. It considers the so-called Campana reliefs before turning to a more detailed analysis of the Ara Pacis's vegetal panels. These, I argue, consciously evoked ancient temple decoration and drew it into the new visual language of the Augustan Principate.

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.

During the excavations carried out since 2017 in the House of the Mithraeum (Casa del Mitreo) in Mérida a collection of paintings was recovered from Room 11, which had been abandoned in the late 3rd c. CE after a fire. The remains included fragments of molded stucco cornices, with braided esparto grass ropes on the reverse that were used to attach them to the ceiling. This article presents the descriptive and technical study of the finds and their compositional analysis using scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction. Data resulting from these analyses allow us to understand the fragments’ composition and technical execution, and even the possible circulation of workshops and raw materials.

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.”

This article describes the numerous bone remains discovered in a Roman road station, a mansio, on the Via Nova Traiana. The finds are exceptional and provide valuable insights into the daily life, environment, and economy of a road station. The assemblage is dominated by domestic species, mainly sheep/goat, followed, to a lesser extent, by chicken, cattle, and pigs. Beasts of burden (donkey, camel), hunted game (gazelle, hare), fish, and seashells complete the bone assemblage. Together, the zooarchaeological information allows us to discuss the procurement and role of meat in the diet of the residents and visitors to this station.

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.

In the Roman world a wide variety of funerary architecture was erected along the access roads of cities to catch the eye of passersby. In Hippos (Sussita in Aramaic) of the Decapolis, the most notable funerary structures stood along the city's main approach within the Saddle Necropolis. The most distinctive elements of the necropolis's architectural remains were a series of 13 large funerary podia – the focus of the 2020 excavations. The Hippos podia are unique in the Roman world, in their dating, their architecture, and their multiplicity. The architectural design of this series of structures may be the first evidence of necropolis planning and erection of funerary monuments by the polis itself within the Roman world. The article describes the freshly exposed Hippos podia, proposes reasoning for the choice of this particular type of construction, and analyzes similar funerary structures throughout the Roman world, with emphasis on the Roman East, where sarcophagi were widespread.

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.

This article analyses the phenomenon of glass in wall and floor opera sectilia from the Hellenistic period to Late Antiquity. This type of decoration was developed in Alexandria – as testified by archaeological finds – and then spread across the Greco-Roman world. In Rome the art created a backdrop for a series of displays – especially in imperial palaces and elite housing – that spanned the Imperial era. All the great metropolises were graced by it, including the new capital of the East, Constantinople, where it underwent a renewed flowering. This article analyzes the use of glass material mostly as inserts in marble compositions and, more rarely, in wholly vitreous compositions. It reflects upon the meaning of these different decorative products and attempts to interpret their economic, aesthetic, and symbolic implications.

This paper investigates the mythological wall paintings decorating the room known as the tablinum in atrium houses at Pompeii and Herculaneum. Scholars have considered the tablinum part of the “public” section of the house and have linked this room to the formal morning greeting, or salutatio, despite the fact that no ancient literary source mentions the tablinum in connection with this daily ritual. These assumptions have conditioned the way in which scholars have interpreted the decoration, which is analyzed in relation to the social activities supposedly associated with this type of room or discussed in terms of moral ideals and social values. This study demonstrates that the figurative imagery within the tablinum does not necessarily relate to social practices in that space but instead informs us about a common visual vocabulary shared by different strata of society.

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.

This article examines the newly published data on coin hoards from Pompeii, focusing on coins and other objects found on victims, and hoards from so-called savings boxes. Most of the work on savings or capital in the Roman world has focused on the size and composition of elite fortunes and the nature and extent of credit and monetization writ large. The article uses the Pompeii coin data set to examine the extent and nature of liquid savings held by a broader section of the population, including a substantial portion of non-elites. In doing so, it also makes some suggestions about the socioeconomic identity of those who failed to escape the town during the eruption.

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.

This article focuses on the establishment of a winery on the Roman imperial estate at Vagnari in southeast Italy in the 2nd c. CE and the ceramic vats (dolia defossa) needed to mature and store the estate's vintages. A scientific analysis of the clay used to make the dolia has revealed their likely place of manufacture to have been in Latium or on the border between Latium and Campania on the Tyrrhenian (west) coast of Italy. With these analytical results in hand, it is now possible to inquire into the historical and economic significance for the imperial fiscus of importing dolia for wine making in the vicus at Vagnari, the route and mechanisms by which they might have traveled to the other side of the Italian peninsula, and the connectivity between this Apulian imperial estate and other potential imperial properties in western Italy. This places the present study at the intersection of agriculture, manufacturing, and property transfer within the patrimonium Caesaris.

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.

Cities of North Africa experienced a long occupation up to the late 7th c. CE. Despite numerous studies on Late Antique urbanism, no systematic investigation of urban hydraulics has been carried out so far. This paper examines the hydraulic topography of three cities in the Byzantine period (ca. 6th c. CE): Leptis Magna (Tripolitania), Sbeitla (Byzacena), and Timgad (Numidia). This analysis assesses to what extent Late Antique societies managed the cities’ water supply by maintaining or transforming preexisting hydraulic networks. It considers the continuity of aqueducts and the reorganization of water networks, the state of hydraulic management and technology, and the perception of water resources. The hydraulic networks inherited from the Early Roman period were to some extent preserved, although greatly adapted to new concerns for security and new technical and environmental constraints, illustrating the resilience of Late Antique societies.