Sealings recovered from the Omo M10 temple, a provincial center of the Andean Tiwanaku state (AD 500–1100), and from the Muru Ut Pata neighborhood of the Tiwanaku capital, as well as a signet ring from the Akapana East complex of Tiwanaku's highland capital, shed light on the hitherto undocumented use of seals and sealings in Central Andean complex society. The identification of Tiwanaku sealings related to the signet ring seal has implications for understanding the transmission of identity, authority, and authenticity over time and distance in early Andean states.

In recent decades, conflict archaeology has renewed study of the Roman Republican military, with Hispania as one of the most prolific areas of research. Following this trend, since 2006 the University of Barcelona has conducted archaeological investigations at several sites in the lower Ebro basin. When no structures or archaeological layers remained in situ, surface survey became a key methodology. Based on the artifacts retrieved during surface survey, this article identifies four new military establishments dated to the first half of the 1st c. BCE and reinterprets the campaigns of the Sertorian War in northeastern Spain.

The Augustan marble “revolution” marked more than the substitution of one building material for another. It changed Rome's color, texture, and light, and visually redefined its sacred architecture. For centuries, temples in and around Rome had been decorated with brightly painted architectural terracottas, which typically featured a swirling array of plants and flowers. Terracotta was the material of sacred tradition, and the vegetal motifs employed on temples evoked a pious Italic past. The lush array of plant life present in Augustan art has not been adequately considered against this background. This paper explores the use of traditional plant motifs in Augustan art and architecture, with an emphasis on viewer response. It considers the so-called Campana reliefs before turning to a more detailed analysis of the Ara Pacis's vegetal panels. These, I argue, consciously evoked ancient temple decoration and drew it into the new visual language of the Augustan Principate.

This article analyses the phenomenon of glass in wall and floor opera sectilia from the Hellenistic period to Late Antiquity. This type of decoration was developed in Alexandria – as testified by archaeological finds – and then spread across the Greco-Roman world. In Rome the art created a backdrop for a series of displays – especially in imperial palaces and elite housing – that spanned the Imperial era. All the great metropolises were graced by it, including the new capital of the East, Constantinople, where it underwent a renewed flowering. This article analyzes the use of glass material mostly as inserts in marble compositions and, more rarely, in wholly vitreous compositions. It reflects upon the meaning of these different decorative products and attempts to interpret their economic, aesthetic, and symbolic implications.

The ebbs and flows of archaeological scholarship often see trends come and go, with big questions giving way to more fine-grained analysis only to, in turn, feed back into new, sweeping narratives. Thinking about the ancient city is no exception. Recent works from across the spectrum of archaeology and ancient history show a desire to draw new connections amongst urban sites in the same region, to explore similarities between regions, and even to interrogate the extent of similarity between settlements of drastically different periods and places.