AJA

Suburbs and other zones of urban sprawl are not recent phenomena; they are as old as cities themselves. However, archaeological investigation of them has been relatively scarce, biasing reconstructions of the scale and diversity of early urban populations, industries, and economies, as well as reconstructions of ancient cities’ size and form.

This article presents evidence for a new reconstruction of the presentation scene portrayed on the Late Bronze Age ivory pyxis excavated at Mochlos. Previously undetected locks of hair, anatomical parts, dress, and attributes facilitate a recreation of the figures. It argues against Soles’ assertion that the goddess holds a lily to crown the shorter male as king and that the leading male is a hero or god based on imagery on the Ur III cylinder of Gudea.

Recent excavations and research projects are bringing Crete to the center of debates about state formation in ancient Greece. Civic feasting in the Archaic period, correlating in epigraphic terms to the andreion institution known on Crete, has emerged with greater clarity in the archaeological record. These feasts took place in the public mess halls where food and drink were served to citizens.

An extended area of quarrying activity has been located at Xobourgo, on the Greek island of Tenos, where extraction continued for millennia to the north of the ancient settlement. The quarrying was centered on the protuberance of Xobourgo, a leucogranite outcrop that lies to the southwest of a larger granodiorite zone.

New evidence for color decoration on garments calls into question previously held assumptions about the nature of local dress styles in Roman Gaul. So-called Gallic dress, consisting of a sleeved, unbelted tunic for both men and women, accompanied by a hooded cape for men and a rectangular mantle for women, was especially popular in the northwestern provinces from the late first to the late third century CE.

A Roman bust in the Knole collection (Kent, United Kingdom) was sold by Thomas Jenkins to John Frederick Sackville, Third Duke of Dorset, in Rome in 1771. Researchers who studied the bust since the end of the 19th century were unanimous in their opinion: it was a modern sculpture. However, the present study is able to refute that hypothesis, demonstrating that the bust was sculpted in a workshop in Rome in the second quarter of the third century CE.

Romula (today Reșca, Dobrosloveni Village, Romania) was the largest urban and economic center of Dacia Inferior (Malvensis), a Roman province located in the north of the Lower Danube region. In this context, the city market included workshops for the production of ceramic, metal, stone, bone, and glass objects. In 2013, 2015, and 2018, during excavations of the former Roman city, two rectangular glass furnaces were discovered. One has only one chamber, the other has two chambers.

The exhibition Open Horizons: Ancient Greek Journeys and Connections at Melbourne Museum explored stories of ancient and modern journeys.