The archaeology of Roman villas is based on a very rich body of evidence found across the entire Roman world and dating to a very broad chronological spectrum. Yet there are still crucial related issues, such as that concerning the origins of this type of settlement, not to mention the problem of its very homogeneity as a category, that have been debated on the basis of a surprisingly limited amount of factual information. In situations of this kind it is only to be expected that even individual new discoveries can alter the current wisdom. As a case in point, some recent discoveries made in Rome seem to contribute to our understanding of early Roman élite rural settlements and their relationship with Late Republican villas. As frequently happens, the new material has also stimulated a reconsideration of the existing evidence from a different perspective.

During the last two decades a spate of publications forcefully brought to our attention the importance of the Roman house in the socio-political life of the élite in the late Republic and early Imperial period, both in Rome and in “provincial” towns like Pompeii, the metropolitan center of power setting the patterns for the lifestyle of local grandees. The focus is on the rôle of architecture in shaping the spatial, and thereby social, articulation of the domus. Literary sources concerning Roman domestic life and known for a long time are scrutinized for the light they might shed on the archaeological evidence, especially on the functions of rooms and other parts of the house. Roman wall-painting also attracts fresh attention in this context. The main focus in recent studies is on its synchronic formal variety, allowing painters, or perhaps rather their commissioners, to underline and at the same time refine the hierarchical organisation of space inherent in the architectural design.

We have reached an important moment in the study of the Roman house. The past 20 years have been extremely active, with scholars approaching domestic space down different disciplinary and methodological avenues. Since the important essay on Campanian houses by A. Wallace-Hadrill in 1988, new excavations and scores of books and articles have changed the picture of Pompeii and, with it, that of the Roman house. Theoretical archaeologists have taken the lead, approaching Pompeii as an "archaeological laboratory" in which, armed with the interpretative tools of spatial and statistical analysis, they attempt to recover ancient behavioral patterns. The interdisciplinary picture that emerges is complex and inevitably contradictory. There is so much new information and such a tangle of perspectives that it is time to consider what we have learned and what kinds of interpretative tools we might best employ. Without doubt this is an exciting time in Roman studies. But two overviews of recent scholarship to appear this year, the present one by R. Tybout and another by P. Allison (AJA 105.2 [2001]), express considerable frustration and resort to ad hominem recriminations that signal a heated backlash, at least among some.

The Roman town of Forum Novum lies in the Sabine hills to the northeast of Rome. Its study forms part of the British School at Rome's Tiber Valley Project, a collaborative research initiative which studies the Tiber valley as the hinterland of Rome, tracing the impact of Rome's development on the history of its settlement, economy, and cultural identity from 1000 B.C. to A.D. 1300 (Patterson and Millett 1999; Patterson et al. 2000) (fig. 1). The project draws on the extensive work carried out in this area to produce a new, material-based history of the valley. While the project seeks to re-evaluate past survey material, a vital contrast is provided by the development of new field projects to fill the gaps in settlement knowledge. Three main lacunae have been identified: the study of urban centres; the dearth of data from the E bank of the Tiber; and the poor understanding of the late-antique and early Mediaeval landscape. Forum Novum offers an opportunity to address all these lacunae.

Urbanism forms a key research theme for the Tiber Valley Project. In marked contrast to the intensity of archaeological work on rural settlement in this area, there has been little systematic research on towns. Study has tended to concentrate on the excavation of monumental structures or, more rarely, the investigation of single and exceptional towns such as Ostia and Rome itself. Surprisingly little is known of the organization of the smaller towns and knowledge of their history is based largely on the epigraphic and documentary evidence.

Ancient Narona (the modern village of Vid, near Metković in Croatia; figs, 1a-b) was an important Roman colony in the valley of the river Neretva/Naron (Greek)/Naro (Latin) near the E coast of the Adriatic. The first mention of the place comes from Pseudo-Scylax and Theopompus in the 4th c. B.C. By the mid 2nd c. B.C. there was an emporium located at the top of the river delta, on the same spot where the forum of the colonia would be built in the last decades of the 1st c. B.C. That location was of strategic importance for communication between the Adriatic and the interior as far inland as the Sava and Danube rivers, and from the Late Republican period Narona connected the coast with the interior (the areas of modern Bosnia and Herzegovina) (fig. 2).

In Greece, as in the E Mediterranean as a whole, the ruler-cult was well established during the Hellenistic period, but whereas in the Attalid, Seleucid and Ptolemaic kingdoms the same dynasty had ruled for centuries and the cult of the living ruler and the dynastic cult were stable institutions, the ruler-cult in Greece, though at first part of the Macedonian kingdom, was affected by the series of rulers of different dynasties who followed one another in rapid succession. This led to a large number of dedications for and offerings by Hellenistic rulers in Greece. Roman Republican leaders and figures were also subject to specific honours in Greece from an early stage. Compared to the excesses of rulers such as Demetrios Poliorcetes, the well-organized and at first rather modest cult for the Roman emperors must have seemed a distinct improvement. After the behaviour of previous Roman leaders the Greeks were probably relieved at Augustus's attitude towards cultic honours, and it is no surprise that the imperial cult was widely diffused in Greece, as literary sources and inscriptions show. Almost every city must have had one or more places for the worship of the emperors and their families, but archaeological evidence for the cult has remained rather slim and the only two attested Sebasteia or Kaisareia (at Gytheion and Messene) are known only from inscriptions. The Metroon at Olympia is the only specific building in which an imperial cult is attested on good archaeological evidence. Statues of an emperor and perhaps a personification of Roma found at Thessaloniki point to a Sebasteion there. Athens must have had more than one building where the emperor was worshipped. At Beroia a provincial sanctuary for the imperial cult of Macedonia has been posited. Yet even at the Roman colony of Corinth, the location of the temple for the imperial cult is far from clear, all of which underlines the interest of a building at Eretria which we identify with the municipal temple for the imperial cult.

The Late Hellenistic period saw the intensification of pottery mass-production processes, of which Eastern Sigillata may be considered the pearl in the crown. Reddish tableware had a long tradition in the Levant and its evolution culminated around 150 B.C., in the region between Tarsos and Laodikeia, with the production of Eastern Sigillata A (ESA). More or less simultaneously, but independently, the manufacturing of Eastern Sigillata C (ESC) was initiated at Pergamon. Within a couple of decades the new range of tableware would establish itself in both regions of production, and other pottery production centres picked up the trend with, for instance, the production of Eastern Sigillata D (ESD) in SW Cyprus and the Late Hellenistic predecessor of Sagalassos red slip ware (SRSW) at Pisidian Sagalassos. No doubt, many more regional centres followed suit.

The new tableware only gradually made its way, starting to replace other common Late Hellenistic types of fine ware. Only by the end of the Hellenistic period did sigillata become common on most Eastern tables. ESA was clearly in a league of its own, predominating through out the E Mediterranean and beyond. ESD was mainly restricted to Cyprus and the Levant, whereas ESC and Late Hellenistic SRSW remained of regional importance. More research is needed to evaluate the supra-regional demand for ESA in a social context, how this demand may have formed part of wider-ranging commercial activities of Levantine merchants in the E Mediterranean, how the geo-political shifts orchestrated by Rome may have influenced the exchange patterns, and how the other types of Eastern Sigillata and Late Hellenistic tablewares fit into this pattern and relate to prototypes in precious metal, For instance, the island emporion of Delos, handed over to Athens in 167 B.C. and especially favoured by the Romans after the destruction of Corinth in 146 B.C., may have been of crucial importance in establishing the distribution pattern of early ESA. Delos catered to the needs of Italy, which had grown powerful and rich in the 2nd c. B.C., by funnelling large numbers of slaves and a wide variety of luxury products, mainly from the Near East, to Rome. Levantine merchants contributed greatly to the success of Delos by controlling the supply mechanisms. As a result, ESA may have grown into a desirable surrogate for Eastern precious metal plate and thus acquired an esteemed position in the tableware market (cf. Cic, ad Att. 115 [VI.1] 13, dated 50 B.C., on vasa Rhosica).

By the death of Augustus, imperial building projects in Rome were being supplied by marble from Africa (Chemtou), Asia (Docimium), Egypt (various alabaster sources), Aegean Greece (Chios, Euboea, and Paros), Attica (Pentelikon), and from Luna (Carrara) in N Italy. A vast network of quarries in Egypt's Eastern Desert was already under development, and their granites and porphyry began to be seen at Rome in the middle of the Julio-Claudian era. By the Antonines, marble from Scyros, Thasos, Proconnesos, and Iasos was also arriving in Rome.

Quantities in this period reached several thousand blocks per year. Relative to demand, was this a lot or a little? The Roman marble trade has always attracted attention because of the facilities and the organizational feats that brought so much exotic stone to the capital and thence outward, but the real importance of the answer lies in the use of marble. Whether marble was easy or hard to come by and what distinguished the grades and colors — even whether all grades and colors were available to customers up and down the social ladder — are prerequisite questions for understanding the choices open to imperial and private architects, to sculptors with great or humble commissions, and even to wall-painters with faux architecture to apply to a wall.

But the city, in its corruption, refused to submit to the dominion of the cartographers, changing shape ai will and without warning…

S. Rushdie, The Satanic verses

Les plans et les vues cavalières ou panoramiques de Rome, à partir de celle de Paolino da Venezia, de peu postérieure à 1320, et jusqu'à la naissance de la cartographie moderne, considérée comme définitivement acquise avec le plan de Nolli de 1748, sont utilisés comme une source primordiale d'informations pour la topographie de la ville. Par rapport au prodigieux corpus de dessins laissés par les antiquaires de la Renaissance, ces documents présentent l'avantage de figurer l'insertion des différents monuments, même mineurs, dans le tissu urbain, mais souvent l'inconvénient, compte tenu l'échelle des cartes, de les représenter de manière moins détaillée, voire même purement symbolique. De plus, ils répondent à un certain nombre d'exigences, idéologiques ou pratiques, qui déterminent leur degré de fidélité par rapport au réel: le souci de mettre en évidence certains monuments (par exemple le long des itinéraires de pèlerinage), l'impact de la politique d'urbanisme d'un pontife, ou le système défensif de la ville, ont souvent porté à privilégier certains monuments, ou entraîné des changements de proportions entre les édifices figurés, parfois la suppression de quartiers d'habitations entiers; par ailleurs, le souci de rendre plus lisible le réseau viaire, et de dessiner les façades, a porté à l'élargissement des rues, et donc à des distorsions dans la représentation des bâtiments. Surtout, l'attitude de l'auteur de la carte par rapport à son objet à joué, à l'évidence, un rôle déterminant: pour un Bufalini, un Falda ou un Nolli, conscients de la nouveauté et de l'importance de leur projet, et qui y ont consacré de longues années de travail, combien de cartographes pressés, indifférents à la ville, simples compilateurs de leurs prédécesseurs?

After Rome was declared capital of a unified Italy in 1870, the fabric of the semi-rural Papal city was irremediably altered by a vast modernisation and expansion programme. Major new roads were cut through the mediaeval quarters of Trastevere, the Campus Martius and the Suburra; new ministries, hospitals and barracks were constructed; and great swathes of the largely unsettled disabitato were parcelled up for new housing. The zone chosen for the first wave of new buildings was, as E. La Rocca has pointed out, both closest to the main railway station and farthest from the Vatican, stretching from S. Maria Maggiore in a south-easterly direction over the brow of the Esquiline to Porta Maggiore (fig. 1). No standing ancient remains were spared demolition, with the massive exceptions of the Minerva Medica, the Trophies of Marius, and the Aurelianic Walls. Of the hundreds of new discoveries made during the works, only the so-called Auditorium of Maecenas and one or two stretches of the Servian Wall were preserved. Even archaeologists of the calibre of R. Lanciani and A. Pellegrini found it impossible to keep up with the vast amount of excavation, demolition, and new building. It is not therefore surprising that in a period which could not even supply clear documentation of such fabulous imperial complexes as the Horti Lamiani, details regarding late antiquity and the Middle Ages were never recorded.

Our understanding of the arable economy of the early centuries of Rome has been based largely on ancient literary sources to give an idea of the range of crops grown in the area and their possible uses. For Archaic Rome in particular, very little evidence from the physical remains of crops has been available, and this has limited any serious comparison between archaeological evidence and what the literary sources may suggest about the arable agriculture of the early city. Archaeobotanical evidence for the agricultural economy of Rome and its surrounds in the pre-urban period has largely depended upon the work of Hans Helbaek: in the 1950s and 1960s he carried out the study of plant remains recovered in three areas of the Forum (Helbaek 1953, 1956, 1960). His studies were limited, however, by the absence of systematic sampling strategies and particularly by inadequate retrieval methods. Flotation techniques were not employed, and this prevented the potential recovery of smaller plant items such as small cereal grains (e.g., millet) and crop by-products (e.g., chaff fragments and small weed seeds). This led to an incomplete picture of the range of crops used and also led to difficulties in the identification of cereal grains owing to the absence of chaff fragments.

The island of Jerba emerges unobtrusively from its shallow waters. The landscape is flat, the vegetation varies from scrubland to sparse palms to large olive trees whose ample root-stocks suggest several centuries of life. The olive groves are ploughed to allow every possible drop of water to reach the roots. Dry farming of cereals is more or less pointless although, when rain is plentiful, barley will be thinly sown on land that is otherwise uncultivated. In this driest of Mediterranean zones, plentiful rain is barely more than the few showers which the 200-mm isohyet would suggest. In the interior of the island a few estates maintain irrigated cultivation, the luxuriant results of which recall Pliny's description of the oasis of Tacape; palms shelter fruit trees, which shelter pomegranates, which in turn shelter little vegetable plots. Wells provide water for these systems, the water trickling into the gardens through tiny channels (sāqiya). Today the water is pumped, but in the past each bucket had to be laboriously raised by mules or camels; their ramps form a distinctive component of the systems. High walls of mud (ṭābiya) enclose the irrigated gardens. However, in spite of the technological improvements, these gardens are less plentiful than in the past and, as the water table falls, it is more common to find an abandoned well than one in use.

The Herodian hippodrome/stadium at Caesarea was exposed between 1992 and 1998. It runs parallel to the shore between the Herodian harbour and the theatre, at the location specified by Josephus. Josephus refers to the structure as an amphitheatre but it is clear from him and from the archaeological evidence to be described below that equestrian events were an integral part of the games held in it. In the very late Republic and early Empire, the term amphitheatre was used indifferently to designate a stadium or a hippodrome rather than the traditional Roman oval amphitheatrum. Josephus also calls this building ‘the great stadium’ in conjunction with events at the time of the procurator Pontius Pilate in A.D. 26, and it was still known by that name in the 4th c. It was inaugurated in 10/9 B.C. The games held included athletics (gymnika), horse- and chariot-races (hippika), and Roman spectacles (munera gladiatorum and venationes), so the structure had to serve the needs of the contestants and spectators of all these events. The present article is a preliminary report that focuses on the carceres excavated by the team from the University of Haifa, but it will first be helpful to summarize the history of the building as a whole as known from the adjacent work by the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Four patrician flamines maiores appear in the center of the S frieze of the Ara Pacis, in a group between the figures of Augustus and Agrippa (fig. 1). These are thought to represent the flamines Dialis, Martialis, Quirinalis, and Iulialis, who were in charge, respectively, of the worship of Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus (the deified Romulus), and (after 42 B.C.) of the deified Julius Caesar. Following the death of Augustus in A.D. 14, a fifth (Augustalis) was added for his cult. The presence of the four Augustan flamines on the S frieze has been considered a historical crux. The current consensus is that the procession represents a general religious celebration of thanksgiving (supplicatio) in 13 B.C., on the occasion of Augustus's return from an extended stay in Spain and Gaul, rather than another one in 9 when the altar was dedicated. But Tacitus and Dio report that the office of flamen Dialis was vacant between the suicide of Cornelius Merula in 87 and the appointment of Servius Cornelius Lentulus Maluginensis in 11 B.C. Therefore, the presence of the fourth priest seems to argue against the frieze's portrayal of an event in 13. In order to resolve this problem, G. Bowersock argued on textual grounds that Servius Maluginensis became flamen Dialis in 14, not 11 — an idea that has not won wide acceptance. I suggest instead that there is a technical, sculptural explanation for the inclusion of the fourth flamen.

Roman-native relationships have been an active topic of debate for many years, and interest shows no signs of abating. However, in the three decades since the last major survey of the Scottish data (Robertson 1970) there has been a substantial increase in the data-set, and it should now be possible to develop more complex and robust interpretations. The aim here is not to present a detailed new corpus of Roman material from non-Roman sites, although a list of finds since Robertson's work is given in the Appendix: instead, it is to look at the quantity and distribution of the material; to explore new approaches that allow us to develop models of its use; and to look at its nature. The study concerns itself with finds from Iron Age sites, burials or hoards; stray finds are not considered in detail since their cultural context is much harder to assess. The focus is on the uses made of Roman material in Iron Age societies. From this perspective, the mechanisms by which the material was acquired and the motives of the Romans in dealing with the ‘barbarians’ are less crucial, and they will not be considered in detail here. Different parts of Scotland sustained very different societies during the Iron Age and had quite different histories of Roman contact (Armit 1997a; Breeze 1982). To allow for this, an attempt will be made to identify regional patterns in the use of Roman material.

In 1995/96 archaeological excavations were conducted at Cologne on the site known as the Alteburg where the base of the Rhine fleet (Classis Germanica) was located. The area investigated was located in the E part of the fort near the river bank (fig. 1). Stratigraphic excavations clarified the chronology of the site, revealing 8 different building phases and a much more complex history than had previously been realised. In Phases 1 (Tiberian), 2 (Claudian), and 3 (Vespasianic), the barracks of the fort were timber structures. Under Domitian after 90/91, these buildings were demolished (Phase 4), and the area levelled to be replaced in Phase 5 by new barrack blocks with stone socles and a timber superstructure. After a fire around the middle of the 2nd c., rebuilding took place in Phases 6 and 7, the remains of which were poorly preserved. In Phase 8, around 270-280, the fort was abandoned and the riverside ditch backfilled. Evidence also suggests that the site was first occupied under Tiberius by legionary troops, possibly Legio I and XX, with a contingent of ships, and that it was not until the establishment of the provincial fleet under Claudius that the site became the permanent operational base of the fleet.

Fragments of native, handmade Roman pottery were found in the post trenches, layers and pit fills, ranging in date from the early 1st to the mid-2nd c. (figs. 2-3). Since much of this pottery is virtually unknown on the Lower Rhine in Germany, a study of it in this context can make an important contribution to Roman pottery studies. Furthermore, analysis of the pottery allows us to determine the provenances and better understand the interaction between the Roman military and native societies, particularly in regard to the role various regions played in supplying the fleet with provisions.

During recent years several teams have surveyed and excavated along the roads between Coptos in the Nile Valley and the Red Sea. This article is the result of co-operation between two of them, namely the Dutch-American team working in Berenike since 1994 and the French team that has excavated stations on the Coptos–Myos Hormos road between 1994 and 1997 and later at Didymoi in the N end of the Coptos–Berenike road. A chance visit to Berenike gave the key to a deeper understanding of the origins and history of the road that leads there from Coptos, because an inscription, that could easily have been understood in a purely local context, was suddenly seen to have at least two rather exact, though almost illegible, parallels at other stations. The three inscriptions are published below, two of them for the first time.

Sikayt is one of 10 forts that encircle Berenike from southwest to northwest (see fig. 1). These include: (1) a hill top fort at Shenshef; (2) a large hydreuma in Wadi Kalalat; (3) a small fort in Wadi Kalalat; (4) the fort at Sikayt; (5-9) 5 forts in Wadi Abu Greiya (Vetus Hydreuma); and (10) the small fort in Wadi Lahami. These forts range in date from Ptolemaic to late Roman. Some are only from one period, while others seem to span longer periods.

The importance of Muziris in Roman trade with India does not need any underlining. The port on the Malabar coast of modern Kerala figures prominently in the descriptions of classical geographers, it receives mention in the earliest Tamil poems, and it has come into the news more recently through the publication of a Greek papyrus from Egypt. It is also clear from the amount of Roman silver and gold coin found in S India — which gives some substance to Roman estimates of money haemorrhaging out to India — and from the value of the eastern cargoes recorded coming into Egypt and Rome that the trade was neither casual nor modest. All this is well known and has been carefully studied. The oddity, or pity, is that, despite the many ports listed in ancient authors along some 600 km of the Malabar coast, not a single one has been identified for certain, and not one has produced any serious archaeological evidence of Roman contact. As for Muziris, the most important of them all, we have only a vague idea of where it was located.

Almost every earlier study has placed Muziris at Kodungallur (Cranganore/Cranganur in its Europeanised form) at the mouth of the Periyar river and north of Kerala's main modern port of Kochi (Cochin) (fig. 1). That is reasonable enough. The Periyar is the greatest river in Kerala and runs down from the towering western ghats to the sea. But where exactly on the Periyar? Kodungallur is the name given to a large zone, incorporating a number of small towns of which Kodungallur itself is one, strung out along the road that runs north for several kilometres from the Periyar parallel to the coast and the inland waters of the river Pullut. But how certain is this, anyway? These were the questions we had in mind when a group of us decided to take a closer look at the evidence, both in the literature and on the ground. Ultimately, only an excavation can answer the questions for certain, but perhaps we could narrow down the options.

This paper presents a new inscription from Ephesos, one not discovered through recent excavation or survey, but rather through archival research in the papers of John Turtle Wood, the first excavator of the site. Wood discovered this inscription and several others during his excavations of the bouleuterion. The stone, a low statue-base inscribed with three short lines of text, is lost. It exists only as a sketch in one of Wood's letters archived in the British Museum. When taken in the context of the other inscriptions from the bouleuterion at Ephesos, this statue-base inscription suggests that an imperial statue-group stood in the building. It also may be added to the corpus of inscriptions concerning P. Vedius Antoninus III, the well-known benefactor of Ephesos. The first part of this paper discusses the discovery of the new inscription in the archive; the second part discusses its significance.