This paper will examine the claims of the excudent alii (‘others will hammer out’) priamel of Aeneid 6.847–53 within the immediate context of the parade's end, where Marcellus, parading the spolia opima, is used to exemplify the claims made about fine and speculative arts belonging to the Greeks, and war and the arts of empire to the Romans. It will be shown that certain, highly specific memories of the elder Marcellus are cued by the priamel that run directly counter to Anchises’ claims. The paper will look at how these claims are spoken in character, and driven by specific narrative motives, and it will relate the mismatch of exemplified to exemplifier to certain larger patterns within the Aeneid of things being left unsaid only to stand out all the more by being left unsaid. The paper concludes with a speculative essay on the necessary reductions and revisions that go into the making, and reading, of culturally instrumentalized monuments.

This paper details a new approach to the study of the Scythian burial mounds—the ‘planigraphy’ (or spatial analysis) of the mound and its burials, which follows two lines of enquiry that have so far been largely overlooked. Firstly, the statistics concerning the depth of all types of graves, such as primary and secondary burials, servants’ and horse graves, have been closely examined and compared because this parameter is an important mark of the social status and hierarchy of the deceased and their burials in Scythian funeral ceremonies. Secondly, grave locations within the mounds have been analysed with regard to their arrangement in relation to the ideal latitudinal and meridian axis of the Scythian mound. This analysis has led to the discovery of new facts concerning the planigraphy of the Scythian burial mound, which contribute to a more detailed understanding of the spatial representation of kinship and family hierarchy in Scythian society. The new evidence also sheds light on their system of geographical orientation in terms of cardinal points.

The towering earthen mound standing at the center of the First Emperor of Qin, Qin Shihuangdi's (259–210 b.c.e.) Lishan necropolis at present-day Lintong in Xi'an, Shaanxi province was arguably the single greatest burial marker in ancient China. For centuries, this gigantic unopened monument has sparked curiosity and aroused interest among people regarding its nature. Without physically damaging the target, in 2001–2003 Chinese archaeologists used a new geophysical remote sensor to scan the surface of the mound, digitally probed into its inner structure, and detected a nine-stepped wall that bounds an aboveground burial shaft stretching down deep into the ground. This novel structure begs the following questions: what are the basic elements of this tomb mound, how do they work together within a coherent plan, and why was it made?

Based on previous scholarship, this article conducts a more thorough analysis of the tomb mound and compares it with the excavated Eastern Zhou royal tombs of the Qin, Wei, Zhao, Qi, Chu, Han, Yan, and Zhongshan states. The results demonstrate that rather than following a single model of a single state, the Lishan tomb mound incorporated almost all the major features of its Eastern Zhou predecessors, including but not limited to the external tumulus, the internal stepped wall or terrace, simulated galleries, and the freestanding ritual halls. This article argues that by creatively incorporating all the provincial ingredients into one imperial unity, the complex tomb mound unified multiple funerary practices of China. What's more, the tomb mound, most likely constructed after Qin's political unification of China in 221 b.c.e., perfectly embodies the new notion of empire and the political ambition of the First Emperor who strove throughout his life for becoming the “first” in Chinese history by merging all the past traditions.

When a monument is excavated it removes a piece of cultural property from the landscape. So modern thinking in field archaeology rightly includes the maintenance of monumentality in its initial design. Better still if that value is enhanced. Reconstructing their excavated tumulus in Albania, the authors found they could leave the monument in place and give it added value from the new knowledge of its relevance to local people, not to mention the revival of a dying craft: the making of mud-brick.