No description available.

Not available / text

My dissertation offers the first complete compilation of all known examples of the door motif in Roman Italy, from its initial appearance in the second century BCE, to its disappearance in the early fourth century CE. My research expands the corpus from 91 examples to 242 examples. The door motif can be defined as the fundamental rather than incidental rendering of a door found in various media in Roman art. In this project, I examine seven types of works with this motif: domestic decorations, urns, altars, cippi, loculus slabs, stelae, and sarcophagi. Particular attention is paid to the distribution of this extant material, their chronology, context, formal characteristics, and any unusual features related to the door motif’s appearance. In addition, this dissertation includes catalogue entries with the most up-to-date information on the location, date, findspot, descriptions, and images of every example of the door motif found on the Italian peninsula. Despite considerable earlier literature on the door motif, the subject has not been systematically investigated. In current and previous scholarship, the door motif is often mentioned but almost always in passing, and primarily in relation to its appearance in funerary contexts or occasionally in domestic wall paintings. The two most extensive publications on the door motif, now forty-five years old, are incomplete and focus largely on the door’s symbolic meaning. My dissertation compiles and updates this existing scholarship to present the only comprehensive catalogue of door motif examples in Roman Italy. In addition, by gathering this previously disparate material, I use the catalogued group of objects to open new discussions that focus specifically on the depiction of the door. These discussions include the door’s formal characteristics, context, and frequency of its appearance. In re-examining the door motif and its representation more closely, this dissertation also provides a foundation for future scholars to ask new questions about the image’s meaning. Altogether, the materials presented in this dissertation provide a new foundation for the examination of the popular door motif and a springboard for future scholarship.

"Thesis presented June 1998, amended February 2000." / Includes bibliography. / 3 v. : ill., plans ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / This thesis demonstrates the falsity of the assumptions that ancient architects followed innate spatial cues or responses in their designs, that ancient people experienced the resulting buildings through the same responses, and that modern scholars can thus reconstruct both the intentions of the ancient architects and the architectural effects experienced by ancient visitors to ancient buildings throught the medium of their own spatial reactions. This underlying belief is contestable given its basis in unproven and untested late nineteenth century theories of perception. The thesis also demonstrates that the assumption made by modern scholars that the architects of the Forum of Pompeii were primarily concerned with uniformly enclosed space, axial symmetry, and orthogonality, is wrong, and is contradicted by the actual form of the buildings around the Forum. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of European Studies, 2000

Thesis (D.Phil.)--University of Oxford, 2008. / Supervisor: Dr Janet DeLaine. Bibliography: leaves 246-259.

This thesis investigates infant and childhood health in the Roman period (1st to 4th centuries A.D.) cemetery at Vagnari using data on the prevalence and timing of linear enamel hypoplasias (LEH‘s). These results are examined in the context of historical and archaeological evidence for childhood health in ancient Rome. Analysis of the prevalence of LEH‘s in 48 individuals reveals a low frequency (64.6 %) of enamel hypoplasias in comparison with other Roman period skeletal samples, suggesting that political–economic or geographical variables may have contributed to the generally healthy conditions for subadults at Vagnari. Intrasite analysis indicates no significant difference between sexes or burial types with respect to the average number of teeth affected with hypoplasias and the average total number of defects, but a significant difference does exist between age groups (divided into 15 year intervals). The hypoplastic data indicate that males and females were experiencing similar levels of stress during infancy and childhood. These results are not consistent with the historical evidence, which suggests that male children were preferentially treated in ancient Roman society. Measurement of each hypoplastic defect indicates a peak age at occurrence of 2.75 years of age, which is interpreted as evidence of the end of the weaning process. Enamel hypoplasias occurred until around 6.5 years of age, suggesting that these Roman children experienced stress throughout childhood, possibly the result of childhood illness or malnutrition. The hypoplastic data are consistent with the historical evidence from the Roman period with respect to the general timetable of weaning. This research integrates biological, archaeological, and historical information about the lives of children to help investigate the physical well–being of a rural working class population in the ancient Roman Empire.

La recherche vise à replacer la façade, face majeure d’une habitation, au cœur d’un discours sur l’architecture domestique romaine – lequel a souvent délaissé cet espace. L’étude se focalise sur l’Italie centro-méridionale entre le IIe s. av. J.-C. et le IIe s. ap. J.-C. mais propose également une incursion en Italie du nord. Elle porte sur un corpus constitué de villas de plaisance et de maisons construites sur les remparts de certaines cités littorales : elle s’intéresse donc à une architecture domestique appartenant aux catégories supérieures de la société. L’objectif est de comprendre la place et le rôle de la façade dans la conception de l’espace domestique et de son rapport avec l’extérieur. Trois types de sources sont envisagés : les sources archéologiques, base du travail, les sources écrites, les sources iconographiques. Trois angles d’analyse principaux sont développés : ils définissent une approche à la fois architecturale, spatiale et sémiologique, menée dans une perspective diachronique. Il s’agit en effet d’étudier les conditions et les modalités du développement d’une « architecture de façade » dans la construction domestique et d’en analyser les formes, les significations, les évolutions. Les trois premiers chapitres sont ainsi consacrés aux façades des villas, étudiées dans le cadre d’une périodisation en trois temps. Un quatrième chapitre traite du cas des maisons urbaines de front de mer, qui présentent l’intérêt de posséder deux façades opposées, l’une vers la ville et l’autre vers l’extérieur de la cité : ces domus sont envisagées de manière synchronique, dans leurs rapports à la fois avec l’architecture de villa et l’architecture domestique urbaine. / This research is concerned with the façade in Roman domestic architecture, a topic often neglected by previous studies in the field. The study focuses on residential villas and houses built on the ramparts of some coastal cities in central-southern Italy (and to a lesser extent in northern Italy) between the 2nd century BC and the 2nd century AD. This research aims at defining the role of the façade in the design of domestic space and in its relationship with its environment. It brings together archaeological data, written sources and iconographic documents. I approach the subject from three main viewpoints – architectural, spatial and semiological – and in a diachronic perspective, in order to study the conditions and terms of the development of a "facade architecture" in domestic buildings and to analyze its forms, meanings and evolutions. The first three chapters are dedicated to a chronological study of the façades of villas. Three main periods have been defined for this study (2nd c. BC ; 1st c. BC from Sylla to August ; 1st and 2nd c. AD). A fourth chapter deals with the case of houses built on urban seafront. These houses are of particular interest insofar as they have two opposing fronts, one towards the town and the other towards the outside of the city. I study, from a synchronic viewpoint, the forms of their façades, in connection with both villa architecture and urban domestic architecture.

This research examines the relationship between growth, growth disruption, and skeletal indicators stress amongst juveniles (n=60) interred at the Late Antique infant and child cemetery at Poggio Gramignano (PG) (ca. 5th century CE), associated with a rural agricultural community. Growth disruption – evidenced by decreased long bone length compared to dental age – and stress experience – evidenced by skeletal stress indicators – were compared to those within juveniles from two urban Roman-era cemeteries (n=66), Villa Rustica (VR) (0-400 CE) and Tragurium City Necropolis (TCN) (400-700 CE). Results indicate that the PG juveniles had significantly smaller femoral lengths-for-age than VR and TCN; however, the frequency of skeletal stress indicators were higher among juveniles at VR and TCN. These differences in growth and stress experience likely resulted from differing biosocial and ecological environments present in the different regions at the time, including differing nutrition, disease, and socioeconomic structures between urban and rural Roman populations.

"Thesis presented June 1998, amended February 2000." Includes bibliography. V. I: text -- v. IIa: Figures -- v. IIb: Figures. This thesis demonstrates the falsity of the assumptions that ancient architects followed innate spatial cues or responses in their designs, that ancient people experienced the resulting buildings through the same responses, and that modern scholars can thus reconstruct both the intentions of the ancient architects and the architectural effects experienced by ancient visitors to ancient buildings throught the medium of their own spatial reactions. This underlying belief is contestable given its basis in unproven and untested late nineteenth century theories of perception. The thesis also demonstrates that the assumption made by modern scholars that the architects of the Forum of Pompeii were primarily concerned with uniformly enclosed space, axial symmetry, and orthogonality, is wrong, and is contradicted by the actual form of the buildings around the Forum.

Ce mémoire s’articule autour de trois sections distinctes : dans la première, nous examinons la figure divine de Liber Pater et la perception de cette divinité dans l’Italie romaine. Liber ne cesse de surprendre les chercheurs entre autres grâce à son association avec Dionysos, c’est pourquoi il est nécessaire de s’attarder à une question simple, mais cruciale : qui est Liber Pater? Nous soulignons à travers cette section que Liber est une divinité agraire reconnue au sein du panthéon de Rome et recevant ainsi un culte public à travers les Liberalia et la triade qu’il forme avec Cérès et Libera. La pérennité de Liber sur la libertas y est aussi remise en jeu : plutôt que de concevoir une liberté politique, il faut s’attarder à une liberté physique et mentale. Dans la deuxième section, nous établissons une connexion sur le territoire italien entre Liber et Dionysos-Bacchus grâce au processus d’acculturation qui s’est concrétisé avec l’arrivée de Dionysos en Grande-Grèce au VIIIe et VIIe siècle av. J.-C. Nous explorons par la suite, à travers la tutelle de Liber et Bacchus sur le vin ainsi que la répression des Bacchanales, les formes hétérogènes qu’ont pu prendre les rituels et les cultes dédiés à ces divinités. Finalement, notre dernière section se penche sur le culte de Liber en Italie au Haut-Empire. Pour y parvenir, nous utilisons le cadre méthodologique de la lived ancient religion qui s’intéresse au spectre des stratégies religieuses pouvant être mises en place pour communiquer avec Liber, que ce soit à travers le don, la prière, le geste, le sacrifice, etc. Ce modèle d’analyse nous donne l’opportunité de nous intéresser au culte vécu de Liber, nous rapprochant ainsi de l’expérience religieuse des individus. Nous démontrons, grâce à un corpus épigraphique comportant plusieurs types d’inscriptions, que de nombreuses stratégies de communication étaient utilisées, notamment les rituels du votum, de la dedicatio, et de la consecratio à travers le don d’objets tels des autels et des statues. En groupe, ces stratégies se complexifient puisque le phénomène associatif produit une diversification cultuelle significative : plusieurs associations romaines, toutes différentes les unes des autre dans leurs pratiques et leur composition, honoraient Liber et ses bienfaits. / This dissertation is structured in three distinct sections: in the first one, we examine the divine figure of Liber Pater and the perception of this divinity in Roman Italy. Liber never ceases to surprise scholars, mostly because of his association with Dionysus, so it is necessary to address a simple but crucial question: who is Liber Pater? We emphasize in this section that Liber is an agrarian deity recognized within the pantheon of Rome and thus receives a public cult through the Liberalia and the triad that he forms with Ceres and Libera. The tutelage of Liber on libertas is also questioned: rather than understanding it in terms of political freedom, we must rather focus on a physical and mental freedom. In the second section, we establish a connection on the Italian territory between Liber and Dionysus-Bacchus thanks to the process of acculturation that took place with the arrival of Dionysus in Magna Graecia in the 8th and 7th century BC. We then explore, through the tutelage of Liber and Bacchus over wine as well as the repression of the Bacchanalia, the heterogeneous forms that the rituals and cults dedicated to these deities may have taken. Finally, our last section dives into the cult of Liber in Italy in the Early Empire. To do so, we use the methodological framework of lived ancient religion, which focuses on the spectrum of religious strategies that can be put in place to communicate with Liber, be it through donation, prayer, gesture, sacrifice, etc. This model of analysis gives us the opportunity to focus on the lived worship of Liber, therefore bringing us closer to the religious experience of individuals. We demonstrate, through an epigraphic corpus comprising several types of inscriptions, that numerous communication strategies were used, notably the rituals of votum, dedicatio, and consecratio through the donation of objects such as altars and statues. In groups, these strategies become more complex since the associative phenomenon produces a significant cult diversification: several Roman associations, all different from one other in their practices and composition, honored Liber and his benefits.