American Journal of Archaeology

At the end of antiquity, an urban landscape largely defined by its pagan monuments gave way to one that was instead characterized by Christian churches and activity. Though this process has attracted considerable attention, scholars have for the most part explored the transition from paganism to Christianity through the written sources rather than through archaeology.

Studies on Roman Palmyra in the last decade have primarily focused on the archaeology of the city, since the monographs by Kaizer (The Religious Life of Palmyra: A Study of the Social Patterns of Worship in the Roman Period [Stuttgart 2002]) and Yon (Les notables de Palmyre [Beirut 2002]).

I long ago lost count of the number of beautiful “coffee-table books” devoted to Pompeii. Each new entry in that market testifies to the apparently insatiable demand by the public at large to learn more about—or possess a souvenir of a visit to—what is undeniably one of the world’s greatest archaeological sites. Herculaneum attracts fewer tourists by far, and for understandable reasons.

During the years 1900–1902, excavations on privately owned property in the area of Campanian Boscoreale unearthed remains of a substantial Late Republican villa with wall decorations in what Mau was already calling the Late Second Style.

The Material Life of Roman Slaves complements and enriches a growing body of scholarship on the physical conditions and material remains of Roman slavery, but it also represents a logical continuation of the research agenda of both authors. It is clearly informed by Joshel’s book about occupational titles in funerary inscriptions (Work, Identity, and Legal Status at Rome: A Study of the Occupational Inscriptions [Norman, Okla.

Compared with other aspects of Greek and Roman art and archaeology, Roman architecture has not attracted the attention it deserves in recent anglophone literature. The standard syntheses by Boëthius and Ward-Perkins (Etruscan and Roman Architecture [Harmondsworth 1970]) and by MacDonald (The Architecture of the Roman Empire. Vol. 1, An Introductory Study [New Haven and London 1965]; The Architecture of the Roman Empire. Vol.

This volume contains many well-written, thought-provoking, and up-to-date contributions and is thus an important reference work. A substantial number of current research interests in the archaeology of the Roman republic are represented in 37 chapters, grouped into six sections. Given the rather unspecific title of the first section (“Material Culture and Its Impact on Social Configuration”), unsurprisingly, it contains 10 chapters on a wide variety of themes, from architecture to demography.

Corpus vasorum antiquorum is the oldest project of the Union Académique Internationale (UAI). It was conceived by Edmond Pottier at the Louvre and intended to publish all ancient pottery in public and private collections worldwide. The first fascicle was published in 1922. As in all the early volumes, vases were supplied with the briefest of descriptions, state of preservation, measurements, date, bibliography, and small black-and-white photographs.

In the volume under review, Lombardo says “we must avoid thinking of the process of cultural exchange between Greeks and indigenous populations, and even of the cultural borrowing by the natives, as a unilateral process of transmission, reception, and diffusion of Greek cultural elements prompted by a presumed superior level or prestige of Greek culture” (31). This quote, in many ways, epitomizes an underlying direction for this volume, which consists of 13 separate chapters separated into five umbrella headings.