American Journal of Archaeology

The Lydians originally lived alongside peoples of various ethnic cultures in an area surrounded by Ionia to the west, Phrygia to the east, Mysia to the north, and Caria to the south. This core territory expanded during Mermnad rule in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.E., especially in the reign of Croesus (ca. 560–546 B.C.E.). Local pottery at the Lydian capital of Sardis is a starting point for identifying both the regional aspects of Lydian pottery and its eclecticism, which includes elements from eastern Greek and Phrygian pottery and common conventions of Anatolian painting. It might seem challenging and difficult to distinguish these individual elements, but this cultural mixing is exactly what characterizes Lydian pottery. This article explores the Phrygian features or influences on the Lydian painted pottery from Sardis.

Toward the end of the third millennium B.C.E., Minoan funerary customs changed, and people began to favor the use of clay receptacles—pithoi or larnakes—for the bodies of the dead. This article offers a comprehensive study of the funerary pithoi of the period, comprising a review of the available material and its classification, distribution, and dating, the relation of container to tomb types, and the specific use of pithoi within funerary ritual. It also assesses the importance of pithoi as an investment in terms of the material wealth that they represent and the knowledge of the complex techniques of handling dead bodies that they require. Finally, it examines the symbolic connotations of the pithos and argues that its wide adoption was part of a general turn toward the concept of the regeneration of life. This concept shifted the emphasis of the funerary realm toward the social dimension—namely, toward the reallocation of the roles and resources of the dead among the living. Such a shift helped people come to terms with contemporary social reality and shaped the agency of emerging elites, which led to the establishment of the first Minoan palaces and transformed Crete from a series of kin-based communities to a group of proto-states.

Since the summer of 2009, the ancient site of Gabii has been the focus of excavations conducted by the University of Michigan. Stratigraphic investigations near the urban core are revealing the complex sequence of occupation in this Latin city, which emerged in the Early Iron Age. The spatial distribution of intramural burials of the Orientalizing and Archaic periods shows that the settlement was initially organized in separate habitation clusters. The city was provided with monumental fortifications by the late seventh or early sixth century B.C.E., but its layout was radically modified in the fifth century B.C.E., and a uniform orthogonal plan was imposed across the entire site. Three domestic structures dating to the Middle Republican period have been identified in two of the city blocks. Significant modifications of this sector of Gabii are attested from the first century B.C.E. Excavation data confirm that the city began to decline dramatically at this time. Areas in the upper part of the site were taken up for industrial activities or transformed into burial grounds and were finally abandoned in the Late Imperial period. These preliminary results document how ancient cities in the region developed and decayed; the findings have also provided the basis for further research on-site in 2012–2014.

The crypt of the church of Santi Sergio e Bacco on Piazza Madonna dei Monti in Rome preserves the partial remains of a Roman structure showing multiple building phases. Tuff piers approximately 5 m tall belong to the atrium of a republican atrium house, with the surrounding rooms reflected in the adjacent spaces of the modern basement. During the Imperial period, this atrium was closed off, and a bath complex was added in adjacent rooms. The rooms preserve marble revetment, figural painted plaster of various styles, and floors of opus sectile. As a residential structure with a long occupation history, the house clarifies our impression of the lower Subura and its development as a neighborhood. When considered with other examples of atrium houses nearby, a standard lot size and house form for elite residential development can be suggested for the Subura and the southern Viminal slopes during the Republican period. Later renovations to the structure provide material evidence that a socially mixed population continued to occupy the valley of the Subura, and they demonstrate the persistent importance of the Argiletum as the primary thoroughfare of the area from the Imperial period through late antiquity.

Reviewed Works

Ayia Irini: The Western Sector, by Elizabeth Schofield, and edited with contributions by Jack L. Davis and Carol Hershenson (Keos 10). Pp. xx + 224, b&w pls. 84. Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 2011. €86. ISBN 978-3-8053-4333-6 (cloth).

Κύθηρα: Το μινωικό ιερό κορυφής στον Άγιο Γεώργιο στο Βουνό. Vol. 1, Τα προανασκαφικά και η ανασκαφή, by Yannis Sakellarakis (Βιβλιοθήκη της εν Αθήναις Αρχαιολογικής Εταιρείας 271). Pp. xii + 345, figs. 347, plans 15. Archaeological Society at Athens, Athens 2011. ISBN 978-960-8145-84-9 (paper).

Κύθηρα: Το μινωικό ιερό κορυφής στον Άγιο Γεώργιο στο Βουνό. Vol. 2, Τα ευρήματα, by Efi Sapouna-Sakellaraki, Yannis Sakellarakis, Giorgos Varoufakis, and Aimilia Banou, and edited by Yannis Sakellarakis (Βιβλιοθήκη της εν Αθήναις Αρχαιολογικής Εταιρείας 276). Pp. 507, figs. 367, b&w pls. 60. Archaeological Society at Athens, Athens 2012. ISBN 978-960-8145-84-9; 978-960-8145-92-4 (paper).

House X at Kommos: A Minoan Mansion near the Sea. Pt. 1, Architecture, Stratigraphy, and Selected Finds, edited by Maria C. Shaw and Joseph W. Shaw (Prehistory Monographs 35). Pp. xxvi + 150, figs. 56, b&w pls. 72, color pls. 12, tables 86. INSTAP Academic Press, Philadelphia 2012. $80. ISBN 978-1-93153-464-2 (cloth).

The Dams and Water Management Systems of Minoan Pseira, by Philip P. Betancourt. Pp. xviii + 91, figs. 39. INSTAP Academic Press, Philadelphia 2012. $20. ISBN 978-1-931534-66-6 (paper).

The Hagia Photia Cemetery. Vol. 2, The Pottery, by Costis Davaras and Philip P. Betancourt (Prehistory Monographs 34). Pp. xix + 164, figs. 39, pls. 70. INSTAP Academic Press, Philadelphia 2012. $80. ISBN 978-1-931534-63-5 (cloth).

Corpus of Cypriot Artefacts of the Early Bronze Age. Pt. 4, by James R. Stewart, and edited by Jennifer M. Webb and David Frankel (SIMA 3[4]). Pp. xxxiv + 240, figs. 383, b&w pls. 26, tables 26. Paul Åströms Förlag, Uppsala 2012. €90. ISBN 978-91-7081-245-3 (cloth).

Between 2008 and 2011, the joint American-Armenian project for the Archaeology and Geography of Ancient Transcaucasian Societies (Project ArAGATS) conducted archaeological excavations at the Iron Age settlement of Tsaghkahovit in central-western Armenia. This work built on research begun in 2005 to closely examine the materiality of social and political life in a rural settlement of the Achaemenid Persian empire (ca. 550–330 B.C.E.). Intensive investigations at Tsaghkahovit have revealed the remains of a community clearly enmeshed in select sociopolitical institutions of the empire yet one also committed to reproducing and revising the contours of everyday life on the Armenian highlands on its own terms. The site thus invites consideration of the quotidian material and spatial practices of imperial subjects who both sustained and attenuated the viability of Achaemenid sovereignty in the Armenian satrapy. This article reports on recent excavations and offers preliminary interpretations of the findings.

There has recently been interest in understanding the meaning of Roman metropolitan sarcophagi, particularly those decorated with mythological subject matter. Most of the previous studies have focused on sarcophagi produced in Rome and Athens. This article aims to address a specific lacuna in the scholarship by focusing on the meaning of a group of sarcophagi from Aphrodisias in Caria. These sarcophagi are decorated in relief with a columnar facade, an arcaded entablature, and human figures standing in the intercolumniations. Drawing evidence from funerary inscriptions and archaeological context, the first part of the article establishes the chronology of these sarcophagi and the social classes that commissioned them. The second part explains and contextualizes the architectural form and the “types” of human figures represented on the sarcophagus chests. The final part takes into consideration the iconography and offers explanations for the unique relief decoration by situating the sarcophagi within the social context of Asia Minor in general and of the city of Aphrodisias in particular.

Controversy over the identification of the figures on the Belvedere altar has long hindered consensus about the meaning of this important Augustan monument. Attention has focused on the chariot-riding figure previously identified as Julius Caesar, Augustus, Romulus-Quirinus, Aeneas, or even Agrippa. I argue that references in Ovid’s Fasti and the Consolatio ad Liviam, as well as the dedicatory inscription of the altar, suggest this figure depicts Nero Claudius Drusus at his funeral in 9 B.C.E., which was observed by Livia and Gaius and Lucius Caesar. The Belvedere altar advertises Augustus’ dynastic ambitions during the early years of his pontificate, revealing the importance of the Claudii Nerones in Augustus’ plans to secure his family’s place as the preeminent military guardians of Rome. By implicitly associating Drusus’ triumphant career with the promise of empire evoked by the appearance of Vesta and the ancient Trojan “pledges of empire” within the domus Augusta, the Belvedere altar represents an early articulation of the divine claims of Augustus’ household to monopolize Rome’s military responsibilities. The assimilation of divine and human households on the Belvedere altar also parallels the increasing identification of young Augustan princes as living pledges of empire and as new Dioscuri.

This article investigates the changes in foodways and cooking practices—especially in regard to the ceramic cooking assemblages—among the Celtic-speaking peoples of ancient Mediterranean France following the Roman conquest at the end of the second century B.C.E. I specifically examine the region of modern Languedoc-Roussillon using the ceramic data from the indigenous oppida of Lattara (modern Lattes), Castels à Nages, and Ambrussum, covering a period from the beginning of the third century B.C.E. through the first century C.E. I suggest that prior to the Roman conquest, during Iron Age II, there were few differences in cooking practices among the different blocks of houses at these sites. Although food was used for practices of social and political differentiation, these differences were probably manifested and articulated generally through differences in the quantity, rather than the quality, of the food. After the Roman conquest, however, particularly at the urban centers in the region, a new “high” cuisine emerged, one characterized by differences in taste and the quality of food among different social groups. These transformations were in turn likely related to important sociopolitical changes occurring in the region as local society became increasingly integrated with larger Roman colonial society.

This article proposes a speculative solution to a problem recently discovered in the Parthenon building-account inscriptions. As restored, the accounts (IG 1³ 449, lines 389–94) specify the purchase and sale of a large lot of ivory quite late in the building’s construction. Where was this ivory used? Since the ivory cannot readily be connected to Pheidias’ chryselephantine image of Athena, this material can be associated with the decoration of the Parthenon’s enormous cedar doors. In addition to a range of epigraphical and structural evidence supporting this hypothesis, the literary and archaeological data suggest a long tradition of adorning doors with gold and ivory in Greek sacred architecture. The Parthenon was a fundamental part of this tradition. Indeed, by creating a gold and ivory frame to complement and emphasize Pheidias’ gleaming statue, the Parthenon’s designers played on ancient expectations regarding divine images and enhanced the epiphanic effect of Pheidias’ masterpiece and the Parthenon as a whole.