Browsing by Subject "Roman art"
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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 Explaining the success of Roman freedmen : a pseudo-Darwinian approach(2014-08) Sibley, Matthew John; Galinsky, Karl, 1942-In Roman society, freed slaves were elevated to a citizen-like status, yet they never had the full rights of their free-born counterparts. Despite the inequality of the system, many freedmen appear to have found great success in the realm of business. This report endeavors to reveal why it was that this group prospered within the Roman economy using a pseudo-Darwinian perspective. Scholarship has, for the most part, tended to avoid Darwinian lines of thought in sociological studies but this report shows the power of this type of thinking. The first chapter clarifies the nature of slavery in the Roman world and the wide variety of experiences that slaves could have. Chapter two considers the different ways that slaves could be manumitted and how a freedman’s status could differ depending on the formality of his release from servitude. The third chapter examines the literary representations of freedmen in the genre of comedy and Petronius’ Satyricon. Chapter four turns to the archaeological evidence and provides a sense of how freedmen represented themselves to the wider community. Lastly, the fifth chapter, using a pseudo-Darwinian model, will show that the image of the successful freedman is not an anomaly of the archaeological record or a trope of Latin literature but an inevitable outcome of the intense selection that slaves underwent.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.