Browsing by Subject "Roman architecture"
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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 Designing for use : marking social space in complicated urban architecture at imperial Ostia(2016-12) Rap, Evan Michael; Taylor, Rabun M.; Rabinowitz, Adam; Riggsby, Andrew; White, L. M.; Davies, PenelopeThis dissertation explores the issue of architectural design in the ancient Roman port city of Ostia Antica. Working within a poststructuralist framework drawn from geography, sociology, architecture and urbanism, I propose the concept of the design- marker—an aspect of the built environment that reflects a designer’s expectations for the way his building would be used. Ostia is particularly well-suited to this study because of its complexity. As the complexity of the surrounding architectural environment increases, there are more types of social space—more potential environments and user groups—which the designer must take into account in his plans. It therefore becomes increasingly likely that discernible patterns of design-markers will emerge. Ostia boasts acres of ancient architecture, and its blocks are both taller and more structurally complicated than those at Pompeii. I identify two design-markers at Ostia: staircases and windows. When the relationship of all the staircases within a block are considered as a group, patterns in their deployment emerge. Designers at Ostia manipulate stairs’ placement and their visual status (in view/out of view) according to the social value of the spaces they lead to. They also distinguish their entrances visually from other doorways. Although staircases have traditionally been classified as internal and external, my analysis proves that staircases exist along a much wider spectrum of possibilities. Windows have not received much attention in scholarship. Windows affect interior experience by making a room susceptible to light, smell, and sound penetration from the exterior. Sometimes, as in the case of the well-decorated rooms of the House of the Muses, a window might be deployed specifically to put the interior on display. As that example shows, windows also exerted some influence on the experience of the building exterior. Similarly, loophole windows sacrifice interior lighting for the sake of the fortress- like connotations such windows project to the world outside. Ostian bars also oriented their windows in the most likely direction of traffic in order to entice new customers with the sounds and scents that escaped the tavern’s interior.Item Paving the past: Late Republican recollections in the Forum Romanum(2009-05) Bartels, Aaron David; Davies, Penelope J. E.; Clarke, John R.; Riggsby, Andrew M.The Forum was the center of Roman life. It witnessed a barrage of building, destruction and reuse from the seventh century BCE onwards. By around 80 BCE, patrons chose to renovate the Senate House and Comitium with a fresh paving of tufa blocks. Masons leveled many ruined altars and memorials beneath the flooring. Yet paving also provided a means of saving some of Rome’s past. They isolated the Lapis Niger with black blocks, to keep the city’s sinking history in their present. Paving therefore became a technology of memory for recording past events and people. Yet how effective was the Lapis Niger as a memorial? Many modern scholars have romanced the site’s cultural continuity. However, in fifty years and after two Lapis Nigers, the Comitium had borne a disparity of monuments and functions. Rome’s historians could not agree on what lay beneath. Verrius Flaccus reports that the Lapis Niger ‘according to others’ might mark the site of Romulus’s apotheosis, his burial, the burial of his foster father Faustulus, or even his soldier, Hostius Hostilius (50.177). Nevertheless, modern archaeologists have found no tombs. Instead of trying to comprehend these legends, most scholars use them selectively to isolate a dictator, deity or date. We must instead understand why so many views of the Lapis Niger emerged in antiquity. Otherwise, like ancient antiquarians, we will re- identify sites without end. Recreating how these material and mental landscapes interacted and spawned new pasts tells us more about the Lapis Niger than any new attribution.Item Temples and traditions in Late Antique Ostia, c. 250-600 C.E.(2009-05) Boin, Douglas Ryan; White, L. MichaelThis dissertation investigates one subset of the many "signs and symbols" representative of traditional Roman religion at Ostia -- its temples and sanctuaries. It uses this body of evidence to foreground a discussion of social and cultural transformation from the 3rd through 6th c. C.E. This period witnessed the decline of traditional religious practices and the rise of a more prominent Judaism and Christianity. Earlier treatments of this topic, however, have often approached the material by assembling a catalogue of buildings, documenting limited incidences of new construction or repair evidenced throughout the Late Roman town. This project, by contrast, instead of beginning with material dated to the "twilight years" of Roman Ostia, starts with the first records of excavation at Ostia Antica. It is these archaeological reports, some comprehensive, others more impressionistic, which document the eclectic nature of objects, sculpture, and architecture that were frequently found preserved throughout the town. These reports represent a new starting point for reconstructing the appearance of the Late Antique city. Drawing upon this material, each of my four chapters takes one element of the traditional landscape (the Capitolium, the so-called Temple of Hercules, the Sanctuary of Magna Mater, or the cult of Vulcan) and then interweaves one or more facets of Christianity or Judaism in order to reveal, dialectically, the dynamism of urban change. Socially and economically, Ostia itself witnessed significant changes during this time. This dissertation provides new answers to when, why, and how those changes took place. It reveals how ambitious architectural projects of the Late Roman Empire continued to achieve stature by visually engaging with both the presence and prestige of earlier monuments. Uncovering new evidence with which to challenge the concept of a late 4th c. "pagan revival," my research, in particular, suggests that accommodation of the past, not urban conflict, was a dominant social model. Finally, I suggest that a broad view of traditional and Christian festivals, from the 4th c. through 6th, shows how new cults, like those of Aurea or Monica, mother of Augustine, simultaneously preserved and transformed the city's traditions into the Early Middle Ages.Item Temples of divine rulers and urban transformation in Roman-Asia : the cases of Aphrodisias, Ephesos and Pergamon(2013-05) Öztürk, Onur; Clarke, John R., 1945-; Davies, Penelope J. E., 1964-This study provides an in depth analysis of three temples dedicated to emperors in Roman Asia (western Asia Minor): the Temple of Divine Rulers at Aphrodisias, the Temple of Divine Rulers at Ephesus and the Temple of Zeus Philios and Trajan at Pergamon. Focusing on each case study in a separate chapter, the project provides a brief introduction to each city's history and a detailed discussion of each temple's name, dating, patronage structure, architectural form, sculptural program, and the application techniques of sculptural and architectural details. The study proposes an understanding of these temples as key monuments of constantly changing dynamic urban landscapes rather than simple symbolic gestures towards the Roman emperors. Utilizing Kevin Lynch's terminology, the project suggests close links between each monument and the already existing urban elements of each individual city, further strengthening its overall urban image. These structures were essential to their urban contexts, and their meanings and functions were directly linked to the culture and history of each city. Finally, the project demonstrates that through their architectural designs and sculptural programs, each temple emphasized the perspectives of the local elite. The methodology of the project involves a careful study of the city plans, an analysis of context-specific local features and finally a consideration of multiple-viewer perceptions. This dissertation aims to provide an alternative model for later studies in Roman provincial art and architecture.Item The topographical transformation of archaic Rome : a new interpretation of architecture and geography in the early city(2010-05) Hopkins, John North; Davies, Penelope J. E., 1964-; Clarke, John R., 1945-; Ammerman, Albert J; Edlund-Berry, Ingrid E; Papalexandrou, Nassos; Riggsby, Andrew MMost studies of Roman architecture cover the third century BCE to the fourth century CE, a period of luxurious building projects like the Colosseum and Pantheon that remain relatively well documented in the archaeological and literary record. Yet Rome did not spring fully formed from the ground in the third century, its architecture relying entirely on precursors and precedents in buildings from far away times and places. In this study I fit remains of architecture from early Rome (ca. 650 to 450 BCE) into the cultural framework of the contemporaneous Mediterranean and try to assess how the changing cityscape effected both archaic Romans and later Roman architecture and topography. Because many studies of archaic Rome have attempted to fit archaeological remains with the literary record, and because this has created much controversy, I put the literary record to one side and focus on material remains in an attempt to see what they can reveal on their own.Item Water and benefaction as an expression of Julio-Claudian power(2014-08) Lardi, Joelle Lisa; Davies, Penelope J. E., 1964-; Clarke, John R., 1945-In the arid Mediterranean world the careful management of water was essential for survival. Control of this resource was akin to political power. Rome and its environs were no different: water was an important status symbol and granting public access to it was considered a particularly generous gesture. During the principate a successful emperor was expected to demonstrate concern for the needs of the populace and one of the most effective ways for him to do this was by providing abundant quantities of water. As a political tool, water proved to be invaluable in its versatility. Imperial gifts could manifest in the form of access to drinking water, leisure spaces such as public gardens and baths, or even spectacular games and shows given on purpose-built artificial lakes. Additionally, massive engineering works such as aqueducts, harbors, and drainage projects, aimed at improving the water and food supply, were carefully designed to showcase the resources and generosity of the imperial patron. This study traces the origins of these forms of largesse, following their development from the Republican period to the end of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. By examining the water-related monuments and spectacles of each individual Julio-Claudian emperor in the context of their time, this dissertation aims to reconstruct the structures themselves, their intended audiences, and the water policies and patterns of influence created by each Julio-Claudian emperor. The first principes of Rome were still shaping their role and exploring ways in which they could balance their exercise of power with their expected responsibilities to the different strata of Roman society. The early principes began to experiment with water related munificence, and created many new forms of buildings and displays for the public that would eventually become canonical components of Imperial largesse and legitimization.