Discovered in Suffolk in 1942, the Mildenhall Treasure is one of the most important collections of Late Roman silver tableware from the Roman Empire, and one of the British Museum’s most iconic finds. It features some of the finest pieces of Roman craftsmanship known from throughout the Roman Empire. This book offers new perspectives on the Treasure and its significance with the wider Roman world, and is essential reading for archaeologists, historians, and those with an interest in Roman Britain.

more than twenty-five years ago, John Cherry looked forward to the day when archaeological survey projects working around the Mediterranean region (the 'Frogs round the pond') would begin to compare and synthesize the information they had collected. He anticipated researchers tackling big questions of inter-regional scope in new and interesting ways, working at a geographical scale considerably larger than that of the individual survey. Was his optimism misplaced? Despite the extraordinary growth of interest in field survey projects and regional analysis, and despite the developments in survey methodology that have been discussed and implemented in the past two decades, few scholars have attempted to use survey data in a comparative mode and to answer the broad-scale questions confronting social historians. In this volume, which is the outcome of an advanced Workshop held at the University of Michigan in 2002, a number of prominent archaeologists return to the question of comparability. They discuss the potential benefits of working in a comparative format, with evidence from many different Mediterranean survey projects, and consider the practical problems that present roadblocks to achieving that objective. From mapping and manuring to human settlement and demography, environment and culture, each addresses different questions, often with quite different approaches; together they offer a range of perspectives on how to put surveys "side-by-side". Contributors include Susan E Alcock, John Cherry, Jack L Davis, Peter Attema, Martijn van Leusen, James C Wright, Robin Osborne, David Mattingly, T J Wilkinson, and Richard E Blanton.

Digital reprint of this important collection of papers which form the companion to ' Early Roman Empire in the East' (Oxbow 1997) . Fourteen contributions examine the interaction of Roman and native peoples in the formative years of the Roman provinces in Italy, Gaul, Spain and Portugal, Germany and Britain. Contents: Introduction ( Thomas Blagg and Martin Millett ); The creation of provincial landscape: the Roman impact on Cisalpine Gaul ( Nicholas Purcell ); Romanization: a point of view ( Richard Reece ); Romanization: historical issues and archaeological interpretation ( Martin Millett ); The romanization of Belgic Gaul ( Colin Haselgrove ); Lower Germany: proto-urban settlement developments and the integration of native society ( J. H. F. Bloemers ); Relations between Roman occupation and the Limesvorland in the province of Germania Inferior ( Jurgen Kunow ); Early Roman military installations and Ubian settlements in the Lower Rhine ( Michael Gechter ); Some observations on acculturation process at the edge of the Roman world ( S. D. Trow ); Processes in the development of the coastal communities of Hispania Citerior in the Republican period ( Simon Keay ); Romanization and urban development in Lusitania ( Jonathan Edmondson ); Urban munificence and the growth of urban consciousness in Roman Spain ( Nicola Mackie ); First-century Roman houses in Gaul and Britain ( T. F. C. Blagg ); Towards an assessment of the economic and social consequences of the Roman conquest of Gaul ( J. F. Drinkwater ); The emergence of Romano-Celtic religion ( Anthony King ).

This is a paperback reprint of the first edition, which appeared in 2004, published by British Museum Press. The ancient city of Dura-Europos, destroyed by a Sasanian Persian siege in the AD 250s, was an important regional centre of commerce, government and military control under the Seleucid, Parthian and Roman empires. During excavations in the 1920s and 1930s it became famous for finds such as a painted synagogue and early Christian chapel. Not the least spectacular of the discoveries in this 'Pompeii of the Syrian Desert' were the remains of the town's garrisons and siegeworks and massive quantities of military artefacts. The latter comprise perhaps the most important single collection of arms, armour and other equipment to survive from the Roman period, a collection which is exceptional in its size, diversity and state of preservation. Its colourful painted shields and horse armour, for example, are unequalled in the vast Roman empire or in neighbouring lands. It also holds vital importance for our knowledge of the material culture of the military in the eastern frontier lands of the Roman world. This book provides a complete catalogue of the military artefacts, most of which are now housed in Yale University Art Gallery, and analyses and assesses their cultural affiliations and uses. The archaeological evidence from the site is combined with the equally rich and rare textual and representational evidence in the form of papyri, graffiti and wall-paintings, not to mention the buildings of the city themselves, to examine the ways in which material culture actively creates and expresses identity, in this case of Roman soldiers of Syrian origin.

Small finds – the stuff of everyday life – offer archaeologists a fascinating glimpse into the material lives of the ancient Romans. These objects hold great promise for unravelling the ins and outs of daily life, especially for the social groups, activities, and regions for which few written sources exist. Focusing on amulets, brooches, socks, hobnails, figurines, needles, and other “mundane” artefacts, these 12 papers use small finds to reconstruct social lives and practices in the Roman Northwest provinces. Taking social life broadly, the various contributions offer insights into the everyday use of objects to express social identities, Roman religious practices in the provinces, and life in military communities. By integrating small finds from the Northwest provinces with material, iconographic, and textual evidence from the whole Roman empire, contributors seek to demystify Roman magic and Mithraic religion, discover the latest trends in ancient fashion (socks with sandals!), explore Roman interactions with Neolithic monuments, and explain unusual finds in unexpected places. Throughout, the authors strive to maintain a critical awareness of archaeological contexts and site formation processes to offer interpretations of past peoples and behaviours that most likely reflect the lived reality of the Romans. While the range of topics in this volume gives it wide appeal, scholars working with small finds, religion, dress, and life in the Northwest provinces will find it especially of interest. Small Finds and Ancient Social Practices grew out of a session at the 2014 Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference.

Textile technology is older than any other ancient craft and is an instance of cognitive archaeology that provides vital information about society. In ancient Greece, textiles were considered among the principal and most fundamental cultural expressions. Athena, the goddess of the city, of intelligence and of skill was also the patron goddess of weaving. She taught the craft of textile production to women thus making them conduits of civilisation. During Classical times, textile production was a fundamental part of the economy and was practised also by men in both the domestic and artisanal spheres. The resulting technological sophistication is reflected in depictions of discrete or elaborate patterns, in the rich diversity of textile implements and in the variety in the quality of the extant textiles. In Textile Production in Classical Athens Stella Spantidaki provides the first synthesis of the available evidence from textual, iconographic and archaeological sources on textile production in 5th and 4th century BC Athens, employing an interdisciplinary perspective that sets the frame for future research in the field. As such this study is of special importance for textile specialists, ancient history scholars, historians of technology and students and will lead to a better understanding of ancient Greek textile production and Classical Athenian society. Presents a detailed consideration of the historical and social context of textile production in classical Athens; Examines and discusses evidence for the equipment, materials, processes and techniques employed at each stage of the full production sequence; Discusses the organisation of production and trade.

The main source of archaeological evidence for Late Roman Republican camps is a complex of installations around the Iberian city of Numantia in Spain, excavated by Adolf Schulten in the early 1900s. This book reassesses Schulten and concludes that much of his interpretation is questionable. Radically different alternative reconstructions making use of recent fieldwork are presented for several of the sites. A discussion of dating evidence leads to alternative dates being offered for some of the camps. To aid interpreting the sites, army organisation and art of encampment for the period of the Numantine Wars is discussed. This study gives added importance to the sites at Numantia, for they not only form the main source of archaeological evidence for Late Republican camps, but provide evidence for the form of camp for both the late manipular army and the early cohort one.

Proceedings of the 27th International Congress of Papyrology, Warsaw 29.07—3.08 2013: 3 Volumes:Vol. I: Literary Papyri: Texts and studiesVol. II: Subliterary papyri. Documentary papyri. Scribal practices, linguistic mattersVol. III: Studying papyri

This volume draws together for the first time all the fieldwork known to have taken place from the earliest located trenches in the 1720s up until the modern campaigns of Fulford. It integrates this work with a new geophysical survey of 217ha to provide a new overarching narrative for the town. The volume starts with a historiography of work on the city from earliest antiquarian investigations. This sense of changing interpretations of the site permeates all the later discussion, showing how new discoveries have transformed understandings. The core of the volume contains the empirical data, mapping the past excavations alongside evidence from aerial photography, fieldwalking, LiDAR and geophysics. The final sections provide essays in interpretation, with thematic reviews of: the defenses; the development of the oppidum; the military connection; the mortuary landscape; trade and industry; and pubic entertainment. Finally a narrative overview examines how the town’s remains have been interpreted within an historical setting.

Textile imagery is pervasive in classical literature. An awareness of the craft and technology of weaving and spinning, of the production and consumption of clothing items, and of the social and religious significance of garments is key to the appreciation of how textile and cloth metaphors work as literary devices, their suitability to conceptualise human activities and represent cosmic realities, and their potential to evoke symbolic associations and generic expectations. Spanning mainly Greek and Latin poetic genres, yet encompassing comparative evidence from other Indo-European languages and literatures, these 18 chapters draw a various yet consistent picture of the literary exploitation of the imagery, concepts and symbolism of ancient textiles and clothing. Topics include refreshing readings of tragic instances of deadly peploi and fatal fabrics situate them within a Near Eastern tradition of curse as garment, explore female agency in the narrative of their production, and argue for broader symbolic implications of textile-making within the sphere of natural wealth The concepts and technological principles of ancient weaving emerge as cognitive patterns that, by means of analogy rather than metaphor, are reflected in early Greek mathematic and logical thinking, and in archaic poetics. The significance of weaving technology in early philosophical conceptions of cosmic order is revived by Lucretius’ account of atomic compound structure, where he makes extensive use of textile imagery, whilst clothing imagery is at the centre of the sustained intertextual strategy built by Statius in his epic poem, where recurrent cloaks activate a multi-layered poetic memory.

In Julius Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War, the term “oppidum” – used to designate any fortified community – indicates those particular Gaulish sites which are characterized both by a strong tendency to social cohesion and the development of a centralized territorial policy. From a chronological point of view, these sites are limited to a very precise period: the two last centuries BCE, from La Tène D1 to La Tène D2 (120–30 BCE). The purpose of this study is to define the role of animal production within the new urban structures. Hence, the research focuses on the specific economical aspect of meat resources and their management: what is the place of this activity in the economy of Gaulish peoples? Is it possible to detect within the sites any precise organisation in sectors in relation to the butchering activities? What about the meat imports and, consequently, the interactions between the communities and the sites of production? Who was the target of the produced food resources? Were they part of some large-scale “sales strategy”. The research aims to approach these economic issues through the study of the fauna remains recovered mostly from Condé-sur-Suippe, in the territory of the Remi, and also from Villeneuve-Saint-Germain, the capital of the Suessiones. Dating respectively from 120 to 90 BCE and from 90 to 40 BCE, these fortified communities are among the most important in Europe, not only because of their size and of the exceptional conservation of their town planning but also because of their almost unequalled faunal wealth. The comparison between the two sites and their neighbours, i.e. contemporaneous rural sites of an a priori inferior status will hence attempt to cast a new light on the economic role of these fortified communities which are the outcome of a long stratification process within the Gaulish society.

In 1757, a sailing ship owned by an affluent Connecticut merchant sailed from New London to the tiny island of Bence in Sierra Leone, West Africa, to take on fresh water and slaves. On board was the owner’s son, on a training voyage to learn the trade. The Logbooks explores that voyage, and two others documented by that young man, to unearth new realities of Connecticut’s slave trade and question how we could have forgotten this part of our past so completely. When writer Anne Farrow discovered the logbooks of the Africa and two other ships in 2004, her mother had been recently diagnosed with dementia. As Farrow bore witness to the impact of memory loss on her mother’s sense of self, she also began a journey into the world of the logbooks and the Atlantic slave trade, eventually retracing part of the Africa’s long-ago voyage to Sierra Leone. As the narrative unfolds in The Logbooks, Farrow explores the idea that if our history is incomplete, then collectively we have forgotten who we are—a loss that is in some ways similar to what her mother experienced. Her meditations are well rounded with references to the work of writers, historians, and psychologists. Forthright, well researched, and warmly recounted, Farrow’s writing is that of a novelist’s, with an eye for detail. Using a wealth of primary sources, she paints a vivid picture of the eighteenth-century Connecticut slavers. The multiple narratives combine in surprising and effective ways to make this an intimate confrontation with the past, and a powerful meditation on how slavery still affects us.

Excavations were conducted in the early 1970s at the site of an elaborate Roman farmstead at Newnham, Bedfordshire. Nearly all of the Roman remains have been destroyed by gravel quarrying that began in the 1950s. The excavations, under the direction of the late Angela Simco, recorded part of the core area of the farmstead and recovered significant assemblages of artefacts and animal bone. Post-excavation analysis and publication was not completed at the time and the site archive eventually passed to Bedford Museum in 2000. Funding from the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund, distributed by English Heritage, allowed the results of fieldwork to be published.The farmstead probably originated in the 1st century AD, just before the Roman conquest, and was initially fairly typical of contemporary rural settlements in the Great Ouse Valley. Settlement was characterised by ditched enclosures, some of which were used for livestock management, with a mixture of roundhouses and rectangular buildings of simple earthfast-post construction. By the end of the 2nd century, however, the site had acquired at least one relatively substantial rectangular building with stone foundations, suggesting a degree of ‘Romanisation’ not usually apparent on farmsteads in the Bedford region. In the 3rd century an even more elaborate stone-founded building was constructed, which comprised a range of rooms with under-floor heating. The stone footings had been heavily robbed, hampering detailed interpretation, but three of the hypocaust rooms in the later building are thought to have been a bath suite.Elements of the finds assemblage also suggest that the site had a higher status than that of other farmsteads in the region. Fine-ware pottery and continental imports are relatively well represented, while ceramic building materials and painted wall plaster indicate a degree of prosperity, albeit not on the scale of villa sites known elsewhere. The faunal assemblage has a species profile somewhere between that of contemporary local farmsteads and classic villa sites of the wider region. Other high-status indicators are absent, and the paucity of the coin assemblage suggests a largely unmonetised economy, at least prior to the 4th century AD. Because of this apparent ambiguity, the authors conclude that the Newnham farmstead should not be classed as a ‘villa’. Instead it is suggested that the later buildings housed the administrative and/or communal functions of a large organised farm, without the luxurious domestic element of a villa. The focus of farming operations was probably livestock (mainly cattle and sheep), which culminated at the end of the 4th century in commercial butchery to supply lamb or wool to other settlements.After the end of Roman administration in Britain the ruined farmstead seems to have been a site of early Anglo-Saxon settlement. This is evidenced by the presence of Anglo-Saxon pottery, although hardly any features can be dated to this period.The main datasets analysed for this report consist of structural records, pottery (excluding the amphorae, now missing), ceramic building material, a range of other artefacts (animal products, metalwork, glass, stone, plaster/mortar and slag), and animal bone. The small collection of human bone is fragmentary or from unphased contexts and is not analysed in detail. Because this is a rather unusual site for the locality, detailed specialist reports and full catalogues are included with this report on a CD-ROM, to aid comparison of the Newnham assemblages with those from other sites.

PLLS 16 contains papers mainly arising from several Langford Colloquia held by the Department of Classics, Florida State University. Contents The Elder Pliny S. Citroni Marchetti (Università di Firenze):‘Cicero as Role-Model in the Self-Definition of Pliny the Elder’ Trevor Murphy (University of California, Berkeley): ‘Notes from Underground: the Curious Katabasis of Dionysodorus’ Eugenia Lao: ‘Taxonomic Organization in Pliny’s Natural History’ Aude Doody (University College Dublin): ‘The Authority of Greek Poetry in Pliny’s Natural History 18. 63-65’ Trevor S. Luke (The Florida State University): ‘Pliny the Elder on Pythagoras’ Greek and Roman Poetry Nigel Nicholson (Reed College): ‘Four Reasons not to have an Epinician’ Alex Hardie (University of Edinburgh): ‘Callimachus at the Mouseion (the Hymn to Delos)’ Annemarie Ambühl (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz): ‘Literary Love Triangles: Berenice at Alexandria and Rome’ Alberto Canobbio (University of Pavia): ‘Lucilius and Horace: from criticism to identification’.

This report presents the results of archaeological investigations along the 17km-long Gloucester Security of Supply Water Pipeline in the vicinity of Tewkesbury. The archaeological mitigation works were commissioned by Severn Trent Water; following evaluation of the whole route, three sites were chosen for excavation, at Fiddington and Pamington in Gloucestershire and at Bredon’s Norton in Worcestershire. The site at Pamington revealed oval enclosures of mid-late Iron Age date, that at Fiddington elements of a rural settlement spanning all of the Roman period. At Bredon’s Norton the pipeline cut through a series of Iron Age and Roman settlement enclosures and their internal features, and also included human burials of both periods. Unusually, one Iron Age burial was accompanied by a saw, and among the Roman burials was a cemetery of seven newborn infants. An unexpected discovery was the remains of a Roman bath-house with a plunge pool flagged with stones and decorated with painted wall-plaster. This was later drained and had a central cistern inserted, while the loft was used to store grain. The building was destroyed by fire at the very end of the Roman period, resulting in the exceptional preservation of charred grain, together with fragmentary timbers, on the floor.

The last several decades have seen a dramatic increase in interest in the Roman period on the island of Crete. Ongoing and some long-standing excavations and investigations of Roman sites and buildings, intensive archaeological survey of Roman areas, and intensive research on artefacts, history, and inscriptions of the island now provide abundant data for assessing Crete alongside other Roman provinces. New research has also meant a re-evaluation of old data in light of new discoveries, and the history and archaeology of Crete is now being rewritten. The breadth of topics addressed by the papers in this volume is an indication of Crete’s vast archaeological potential for contributing to current academic issues such as Romanisation/acculturation, climate and landscape studies, regional production and distribution, iconographic trends, domestic housing, economy and trade, and the transition to the late-Antique era. These papers confirm Crete’s place as a fully realised participant in the Roman world over the course of many centuries but also position it as a newly discovered source of academic inquiry.