American Journal of Archaeology

This collection of studies, part of the ambitious and fast-moving publication series Palmyrene Studies, publishes papers from the 2016 and 2017 Palmyra Portrait Project workshops. As such, it includes both new methods and results and some signs of undigested work in progress. After a useful historiographic introduction to studies of the family in Roman-period Palmyra, this volume presents the workshop papers, which are organized around the funerary sphere and the civic and religious sphere, plus two comparative studies.

Puddu’s book, the publication of a doctoral thesis completed at the University of Cambridge, explores community identity in Roman-period Sardinia through an analysis of funerary material. By incorporating a robust theoretical framework, the author joins others (e.g., P.

More than 30 years ago, the late ancient historian Mark Golden published an article with a title that baldly asked the question “Did the Ancients Care When Their Children Died?” (GaR 35.2, 1988, 152–63). His trenchant framing and analysis of this issue largely set the terms of the scholarly debate that has followed.

Since their dedication in 216 CE, the Baths of Caracalla have stood as an enduring landmark in the city of Rome. The massive remains and long excavation history make the thermae fertile territory for studies of Roman imperial design and aesthetics. In this book, Gensheimer presents an in-depth exploration of their lavish and multifaceted decorative program. She is not the first to tackle these baths, a subject of antiquarian interest since the 15th century, and recent scholarly attention has focused on their architecture, construction, architectural sculpture, and sculptural program.

When Britain was an empire and a dominant force in the world, members of its landed gentry built palatial houses and filled them with collections of antiquities and other works of art. That they were compelled to build the structures in a neoclassical style and decorate the interiors with special niches and spaces designated for particular ancient marble statues was the result of renewed interest in ancient Greece and Rome.

In 1997, Dale Kinney described the study of spolia as a “growth field in art history” (“Spolia: Damnatio and Renovatio Memoriae,” MAAR 42, 117), and in the time since, publications on the phenomenon of reuse continue to increase in number and variety. Unfortunately, for all this progress, the subject of spoliation remains a niche subfield that borrows much, promises an equal contribution in return, but rarely manages to make inroads into the larger study of the social, political, and economic history of the ancient world.

Most ancient Greeks were farmers of one sort or another: there were freehold subsistence farmers, tenant farmers, farm laborers, slaves, and large landowners who sometimes farmed themselves but more often used overseers to supervise the free laborers or slaves who did the actual farm work. The sites of their agricultural work are generally referred to as farmsteads.

François Lissarrague, one of the most influential scholars of Athenian vase painting since the days of J.D. Beazley, has long been a leader of what is conventionally dubbed the “Paris School” of structuralist research on ancient Greek culture.

In this well-researched book, Keesling tackles the history of early Greek portraiture, which she reconstructs through extant Greek statues, Roman copies of original Greek artworks, inscriptions on statue bases, and ancient literary sources. She pays attention to words and images, and she draws on scholarship about portraiture and early Greek culture. She also questions many traditional interpretations, including those that are framed in terms of likeness and realism. The book contains a helpful image program, with illustrations of sculpture, cuttings on statue bases, and inscriptions.