American Journal of Archaeology

In 2020, the Metropolitan Museum of Art celebrated its 150th anniversary with the exhibition Making The Met, 1870–2020, which explored the museum’s history through 11 episodic stories. The exhibition tells the history of the museum through its collecting practices and articulates a future for The Met as a universal museum. Archaeology, as well as classical and Egyptian antiquities, feature prominently in several of the exhibition galleries. In these displays, The Met articulates a transparency, although selective, about its past collecting of antiquities and the role of partage in forming its Egyptian, ancient Near Eastern, and Islamic collections. This review escorts readers on a tour of the exhibition, focusing on antiquities, and discusses the substantial online resources associated with Making The Met.

Between 2013 and 2019, collaborative survey and excavation were carried out on the sixth-century CE shipwreck at Marzamemi, in southeast Sicily, originally explored by Gerhard Kapitän in the 1960s. The vessel sank while carrying a primary cargo of nearly 100 tons of extensively prefabricated architectural materials, at least some intended for a church. New finds raise questions about the prevailing narrative of the wreck as emblematic of a stagnating Late Antique economy, revived only briefly by Justinian. Large but uneven numbers of worked stone elements complicate assumptions regarding their employment as a single set, while additional decorative materials suggest networks of artistry and agency that transcend a single journey. A smaller secondary cargo of amphoras, along with galley wares and other finds, reveals the extended commercial webs of this merchant vessel and its sailors. Considered together, the assemblage highlights the interdependence and blurring of boundaries between high-end and more mundane exchange. This report offers a new reading of the well-known Late Antique wreck and a more nuanced evaluation of the goods, people, and processes that tied together the Mediterranean during a transformative period toward the end of the Roman empire era.

Excavations at Berenike (Trogodytika) on the Red Sea coast of Egypt provide a foundation date in the third quarter of the third century BCE, which corroborates Pliny the Elder’s (HN 6.33.168) claim that Ptolemy II Philadelphus (ca. 285/2–246 BCE) established the port. Named after Philadelphus’ mother, Berenike is the only archaeologically attested Hellenistic-era Red Sea emporium. According to literary evidence, it was one of about a dozen founded by early Ptolemaic rulers along the African coast. Study of Berenike’s artifacts and ecofacts has confirmed the presence of elephants and has provided data on the diet of the residents and the location, acquisition, and distribution of drinking water. Research has also documented industrial and economic activities. This report presents highlights of these studies.

The significance of Libertas, the personification of the concept of libertas (liberty), on the Roman imperial coinage is typically interpreted as a retort to a maligned predecessor and as communicating a more constitutional mode of governance that includes cooperation with the senate (libertas senatoria). Indeed, Libertas often appears on the coinage when there is much contemporary political rhetoric about libertas in the immediate aftermath of the death of an emperor deemed to have been a tyrant, such as Caligula, Nero, and Domitian. Nonetheless, literary texts suggest that libertas need not refer exclusively to political freedoms or freedom from tyranny but could also be used in the context of freedom from financial burdens, especially taxes. Legends on some coins of Caligula and Galba explicitly connect the Libertas personification with freedom from taxes and customs duties. Libertas appears on the coins of Trajan and Hadrian, neither of whom succeeded maligned predecessors, and, as she does so only in specific years after their principates had commenced, her appearance may be linked with certain historical events. The presence of Libertas on the coinage of these emperors coincided with the forgiveness of tax debts and other coins marking the alimenta program, which provided financial support for the upbringing and feeding of the children of Italy.

This article publishes a cast-lead figurine from the early fourth century BCE, excavated in a tile grave on the Cycladic island of Paros. The figurine was pierced with seven iron nails, the arms were bound behind the back, and a lead collar shackled the neck. Inscriptions on the body in the epichoric Parian alphabet suggest that the object was produced locally. The aggressive nailing, binding, shackling, inscribing, and modulation of the figurine, combined with the mortuary context and abundant parallels, suggest that the object was ritual in nature, implicated as an effigy (κολοσσός, Rachepuppe, or so-called voodoo doll) in a binding curse. Examination of the object in relation to the growing corpus of curse effigies sheds new light on private curse rituals, onomastics, the local Parian script, and notions of sexuality and competition in the classical Aegean.

A particular type of ancient Greek vessel has a distinctive inward and downturned rim that forms an interior hollow ring. Because of the unique rim formation, various proposals have been suggested as to the purpose and name of this vessel, including a cup (kothon), an incense burner (thymiaterion), an ointment box (smegmatotheke), a ritual vase for the Eleusinian Mysteries (plemochoe), a floating-wick lamp (stilbe), and the currently prevailing identification as a perfume pot (exaleiptron). It is my opinion that only the identification of the shape as a lamp fully explains the strongly inturned rim. In this contribution, I revisit the material record, addressing issues of form, function, and decoration, as well as relevant representations in vase painting, in an effort to better understand the use of this particular vessel.