Browsing by Subject "Pompeii"
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Item The city walls of Pompeii : perceptions and expressions of a monumental boundary(2013-05) Van der Graaff, Ivo; Clarke, John R., 1945-; Davies, Penelope J. E., 1964-; Papalexandrou, Athanasio; Taylor, Rabun M.; Riggsby, Andrew M.; Thomas, Michael L.Fortifications often represent the largest and most extensive remains present on archaeological sites. Their massive scale is the primary reason for their survival and reflects the considerable resources that communities invested in their construction. Yet, until recently, they have largely remained underrepresented as monuments in studies on the ancient city. Beyond their defensive function city walls constituted an essential psychological boundary protecting communities from unpredictable elements including war, brigandage, and more elusive natural forces. These factors have led scholars to identify fortifications as playing a distinct role in the definition of a civic identity. Nevertheless, beyond the recognition of some general trends, a definitive diachronic study of their performance within a single urban matrix is still lacking. This dissertation examines the city walls of Pompeii as an active monument rather than a static defensive enclosure. The city preserves one of the most intact set of defenses surviving since antiquity which, in various shapes and forms, served as one its defining elements for over 600 years. Pompeii’s fortifications, through construction techniques, materials, and embellishments, engaged in an explicit architectural dialogue with the city, its urban development, and material culture. Their basic framework changed in response to military developments, but their appearance is also the result of specific political and ideological choices. As a result, the city walls carried aesthetic and ideological associations reflecting the social and political organization of the community. This study is the first of its kind. It provides a diachronic examination of the Pompeian fortifications by assessing their role in the social and architectural definition of the city. The walls were subject to appropriation and change in unison with the ambitions of the citizens of Pompeii. From their original construction through subsequent modifications, the fortifications expressed multivalent political, religious, and social meanings, particular to specific time periods in Pompeii. This analysis reveals a monument in continuous flux that changed its ideological meaning and relationship to civic identity, in response to the major historical and social developments affecting the city.Item From templa to tecta : illusionistic coffered ceilings and the construction of Roman domestic space(2015-05) Castillo, Kristopher Cody; Clarke, John R., 1945-; Davies, Penelope J.E.Embellishing one's house was an important part of Roman life for the majority of individuals. The evidence from Pompeii reveals that almost all buildings had some sort of painted surface, often of very high quality. Many scholars have hypothesized the reasons for this culture of decoration among Roman domestic spaces. Both ancient literary sources and the archaeological record reveal that houses were of supreme importance to Roman elite self-presentation. Both Cicero and Vitruvius are in agreement that a house is a direct reflection of the personality and status of the owner. There is a limit to this, however, as both authors shun extravagant decorative elements like gilded wooden coffers. Scholars who have tackled the issue of the ceiling have only had the opportunity to create typologies and consider the stylistic elements of decoration as they relate to the traditional Pompeian Styles. This thesis aims to advance this conversation by describing the importance of ceiling decoration to the overall effect of the decorative schemes within the Roman house. The study will utilize the coffer as the guiding principle for this exploration due to its lasting popularity throughout the Pompeian Styles. In focusing on the coffer, I will attempt to explain the lasting popularity of this choice of ornamentation. By using a set of case studies spanning two hundred years of decoration in Roman houses, I hope to clearly illustrate the impact of ceiling decoration on the viewer and how it might interact with larger design ensembles. There is little doubt that the changing styles and tastes of the Roman homeowner and artist affected the ways the coffer was represented, but the coffer was also a type of ornamentation. The rhythmic motif of geometric shapes would have had an effect on the viewer and their conception of space in the same way that a mosaic might.Item Spectacle, violence, and viewership : paradeisos scenes in the Pompeian garden(2016-08) Erni, Katrina Lance; Clarke, John R., 1945-; Davies, Penelope J.E.Paradeisos scenes, painted compositions featuring dueling wild animals, appear rather frequently in the gardens of Pompeii. Although these scenes have received some scholarly attention, there has been no attempt to definitively lay out the precise features that constitute a paradeisos scene. Further, the scholars who have dealt with these compositions have done so within a larger conversation about wall painting or garden painting as a whole. The present study attempts to define the paradeisos and treat these scenes as a phenomenon in their own right. Chapter One opens the discussion by looking at the presence of wild animals in the triumphal procession and in the ludi of the Roman amphitheater, two highly visual occasions that would have informed a Roman conception of wildlife elsewhere in visual culture. Chapter Two takes an in-depth look at the paradeisos scenes themselves through four case studies, contextualizes these scenes within the larger framework of the home, and provides an updated, clear-cut definition of the paradeisos. Finally, Chapter Three expands the discussion to Roman gardens, tying the violent imagery of the paradeisos to these supposedly serene zones. Ultimately, this fresh approach to the paradeisos demonstrates that the violent imagery of these scenes reflect large-scale societal drives in the small-scale context of the suburban, Pompeian home.Item Status in stone : a study of Blanton Pinax 1981.96 and it's role in the Roman household(2010-05) Jackson, Lauren Marque, 1986-; Clarke, John R., 1945-; Davies, Penelope J. E., 1964-This thesis examines a Roman marble pinax in the collection of the Blanton Museum of Art (accession number 1981.96). Much of the most recent scholarship on pinakes has utilized a catalogue approach, wherein only the most essential information on a vast number of objects is given, followed by a cursory interpretation. While this method is useful for its recording and comparative advantages, the in-depth examination of a single pinax I utilize allows me to determine instead the role and function of a pinax within a Roman household. Following a formal and iconographical analysis, I suggest a possible reconstruction of the pinax’s missing half, with a maenad on one side and the chariot of Achilles on the other, which provides a fuller picture of this particular pinax. An examination of Roman sculptural traditions and workshops as well as the tool marks and stylistic properties evident in the pinax indicate a creation date in the second half of the first century A.D. and a potential provenance at Pompeii. I indicate that pinakes were part of a cohesive visual program of sculptural works in the peristyle garden through an examination of the material evidence of oscilla, herms, and masks with which pinakes were found and the wall paintings in which they all coexist. My final section deals with the ultimate function of this visual program: to express the high social standing of the house owner by communicating his likeness to a god. This phenomenon utilizes the visual language of the emperor under the changing social structure of the Empire, setting up the owner of the home as both emperor and deity in his own home.Item Status in stone : a study of Blanton Pinax 1981.96 and its role in the Roman household(2010-05) Jackson, Lauren Marque; Davies, Penelope J. E., 1964-; Clarke, John R., 1945-This thesis examines a Roman marble pinax in the collection of the Blanton Museum of Art (accession number 1981.96). Much of the most recent scholarship on pinakes has utilized a catalogue approach, wherein only the most essential information on a vast number of objects is given, followed by a cursory interpretation. While this method is useful for its recording and comparative advantages, the in-depth examination of a single pinax I utilize allows me to determine instead the role and function of a pinax within a Roman household. Following a formal and iconographical analysis, I suggest a possible reconstruction of the pinax’s missing half, with a maenad on one side and the chariot of Achilles on the other, which provides a fuller picture of this particular pinax. An examination of Roman sculptural traditions and workshops as well as the tool marks and stylistic properties evident in the pinax indicate a creation date in the second half of the first century A.D. and a potential provenance at Pompeii. I indicate that pinakes were part of a cohesive visual program of sculptural works in the peristyle garden through an examination of the material evidence of oscilla, herms, and masks with which pinakes were found and the wall paintings in which they all coexist. My final section deals with the ultimate function of this visual program: to express the high social standing of the house owner by communicating his likeness to a god. This phenomenon utilizes the visual language of the emperor under the changing social structure of the Empire, setting up the owner of the home as both emperor and deity in his own home.Item Suites in Pompeii : harmony within Roman domestic architecture(2006-12) Mall, Andrea Mary; Clarke, John R., 1945-An investigation of room groupings found within the houses of Pompeii. This study examines several aspects pertaining to suites in Roman domestic architecture. The work provides a survey of Roman texts that feature the equivalent to the English word suite, the Latin term diaeta. Roman suburban villas are explored as a possible model for the composition of the suites found in Roman urban dwellings. In the next section, the context and composition of the suites are laid out using Christopher Alexander's methodological theory. Suites within the urban houses are broken into three categories. Finally, several case study examples are given for each of the three categories.Item The writings on the wall : the spatial and literary context of domestic graffiti from Pompeii(2015-08) DiBiasie, Jacqueline Frost; Taylor, Rabun M.; Rabinowitz, Adam; Benefiel, Rebecca; Clarke, John; Riggsby, AndrewOver 11,000 graffiti once covered the site of ancient Pompeii, inscribed upon many buildings in the city including houses, temples, and public buildings. Their messages include greetings, proclamations of love and desire, and bits of poetry. These inscriptions have fascinated scholars since the first walls were unearthed at Pompeii in the eighteenth century and this interest has yielded a wide array of methodologies and approaches. As archaeology has evolved over the centuries, so too has the approach to this material. The unique position of graffiti as objects of both philological and archaeological study has necessitated the need for a multidisciplinary approach. This dissertation recontextualizes Pompeian graffiti as artifacts and examines the distribution of graffiti within domestic space in Pompeii including the relationship between content and context. Specifically, this dissertation examines a corpus of graffiti from twelve buildings in Pompeii. I analyze the locations of the graffiti and the rationale for these locations using space syntax, a theory for analyzing the configuration of space. From an examination of their locations, I propose how the Pompeians used the spaces within these buildings and postulate how their use may have changed over time. This analysis indicates that, in general, Pompeians chose highly visible, accessible, and well-trafficked locations in which to write graffiti, indicating that writers of ancient graffiti, unlike many modern, wrote these messages in areas under surveillance. Visitors and inhabitants wrote them in areas where they would be seen doing so. Further analysis of the interaction between graffiti and their context shows that while these messages occupy highly visible areas, they were written in such a way as to not detract from the overall aesthetic appearance of the space. Close study of the content of the individual messages shows how the substance of the graffiti responded to the spaces in which they were written and the other graffiti written around them. This combination of archaeological and philological inquiry allows an identification of types of space and, to some degree, organization of movement within a space, which, in the absence of other artifacts, has been difficult to interpret.