Don't Bomb Persepolis

Consider this post a small bit of personal protest against the resolution recently passed in plenary session by the delegates of the World Archaeological Congress. The text reads:

The 6th World Archaeological Congress expresses its strong opposition to any unilateral and unprovoked, covert or overt military action (including air strikes) against Iran by the US government, or by any other government. Such action will have catastrophic consequences for millions of people and will seriously endanger the cultural heritage of Iran and of the Middle East in general. Any differences with Iran (as with any other country) should be resolved through peaceful and diplomatic means.

The Congress also urges its members, all archaeologists and heritage professionals to resist any attempts by the military and governments to be co-opted in any planned military operation, for example by providing advice and expertise to the military on archaeological and cultural heritage matters. Such advice would provide cultural credibility and respectability to the military action. Archaeologists should continue emphasising instead the detrimental consequences of such actions for the people and the heritage of the area, for the past and the present alike. A universal refusal by archaeologists and others would send the message that such a plan is hugely unpopular amongst cultural professionals as well as the wider public.

The WAC website doesn't yet reflect passage of the resolution so I'm quoting from a widely circulated e-mail.

I sure as heck hope that the United States doesn't go to war with Iran so please interpret the subject line of this post broadly. But the resolution seems to ignore its real world implications. It is a feature of modern warfare that the international community does put informed constraints on the behavior of armed forces. Does the ICRC encourage war by promoting adherence to the Geneva Conventions? I don't think so.

Without questioning the sincerity of the WAC's delegates, it seems irresponsible for archaeologists to put completely aside the professional imperative to protect cultural resources during times of military conflict. I don't need to see museums looted and sites destroyed to know that war is bad. People dying is a sufficient proof of that.

CAARI Clarification

It has come to my attention that Danielle Parks never served as a trustee of the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute. This is of no particular consequence to me so I have no interest in fact-checking the details of what others say about her. There is a general interest, however, in not only speaking well of the departed, but also in speaking accurately.

For its part, the ACCG has made much of the late Dr. Parks' perceived connections to CAARI on its website:

...ECA's consultations with the late Professor Danielle Parks (a CAARI-Trustee) about coins BEFORE Cyprus even made a formal request for their inclusion... (2nd paragraph; accessed July 9, 2008)

Way to go CAARI

The Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute's Code of Ethics indicates that it supports the following principles:

1. archaeological excavations be carried out under the highest standards possible;


2. illicit trade of antiquities be actively discouraged; and


3. the authorities of the Department of Antiquities be informed of any improper activities involving excavation or exportation of archaeological artifacts.

I am glad to see Peter Tompa documenting that affiliates of CAARI put these principles into action in working to increase the likelihood that the findspots of Cypriot coins will be properly recorded. He highlights the efforts of the late Danielle Parks. Dr. Parks was an acquaintance of mine in college and I worked with her for one season on Cyprus, where she made her greatest impact. I suspect that she knew the seriousness of her illness during the period when she consulted with the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. If so, I applaud her willingness to engage with this important professional matter towards the end of her life.

Wikiquote doesn't provide a citation for the following quote attributed to Justice Brandeis:

The most important political office is that of the private citizen.

Regardless, it is good to see an archaeologist living up to this creed.

Those who click through to Tompa's post on the ACCG site will note the conspiratorial tone of his news item. Click even further for his observations that archaeologists effectively represent archaeological interests in their interactions with the United States Government. This is good news.

If there is a conspiracy, count me in. I'm happy to state right here that I too have been consulted by the State Department on matters of cultural heritage leglislation and that I've visited Congressional offices on the same topic. I certainly defer to Dr. Parks when it comes to the efficacy of my interactions but do hope to live up to her example.

ASCSA Publications

The publications page of American School of Classical Studies at Athens web-site is nicely done. It doesn't provide full-text search (yet?) but searching for "pottery" as a keyword returns a useful list of monographs, edited volumes and Agora picture books, many of which will be well-known to readers.

A nice feature is that the individual pages for each work will give a link to an online version if one is available. I'll note that at least one such link is broken, that for Virginia Grace's Amphoras and the Ancient Wine Trade, but the idea is very useful. It is particularly to the School's credit that it has allowed the full text of many of these titles to be read on Google Books; see the link for Jeremey Rutter's The Pottery of Lerna IV.

I hope that this level of access will be quickly available following the publication of the long-delayed Roman Pottery by John Hayes. Jennifer Neils' blurb for this book reads:

The importance of this volume for the archaeology of the Mediterranean cannot be overstated. It will prove invaluable for decades to come for a wide range of scholars dealing with the Roman world. The manuscript is a tour de force: comprehensive, up-to-date, well researched, and well written.

It is a large volume whose retail price is set at $150.00. Its importance will be greatly diminished if it is not available at low-cost in digital format.

Say What?

Good people sometimes go off the rails. Peter Tompa is a good person and his "Cultural Property Observer", although filled with conclusions with which I disagree, at least tries to be well-reasoned and calmly argued. In the comments to this post on PhDiva, our Observer manufactures a set of circumstances and pressures which become the basis for excusing lawless removal of cultural artifacts by in-country military forces. This is odd at best and it is disappointing to see that an advocate of the personal retention of cultural heritage can't even condemn the behavior noted by Dorothy King.

Kommos 4

I came across a digital version of Kommos 4, edited by J. and M. Shaw, on the University of Toronto's institutional archive [worldcat]. The text is here. The plates here. Oddly, the plates are distributed under a Creative Commons "Attribution - Non-Commericial - No Derivatives" license, whereas the text has the more generic statement, "All items in T-Space are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved."

For myself, I'm glad to have Hayes' discussion of the Roman pottery on my hard drive. It begins on p. 310. The relevant plates begin on the twelfth page of the PDF file titled "Kommos_volume_4-2_256-275". You'll see what I mean if you follow the links given above.

But there's much of interest in this publication, something for most everyone really, so I recommend downloading all the files.

A Holed N. African Amphora at UPenn

The UPenn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology has a Late Roman Amphora (L-771-1) on long term loan. In form it's a Keay 62a, a type that was produced from 450 to 600 AD in North Africa. The name is taken from S.J. Keay, (1984), Late Roman Amphorae in the Western Mediterranean. A typology and economic study: the Catalan evidence, BAR Int. Ser. 196, Oxford. [worldcat]. In 1998 Keay updated his chronology for the whole series in his contribution to Lucia Sagui (ed.), Ceramica in Italia: VI-VII Secolo. Atti del Convegno in onore John W. Hayes Roma, 11-13 maggio 1995, Florence [worldcat]. You can find his chapter "Roman Amphorae" on p. 141. M. Bonifay includes observations about the form on p. 137 of his 2004 volume Etudes sur la céramique romaine tardive d’Afrique, BAR Int. Set. 1301, Oxford.[worldcat].

Here are some pictures taken with my iPhone and presented unprocessed except for resizing. You can see that the results are OK for images taken from a distance but blurry for close-ups.

Overview


Close-up of Neck


Side view of handle


Partial view of "button toe"


Close-up of the surface


Close-up of plugged hole

The last image of the plugged hole is an opening for further comment. Ted Peña, in his book Roman Pottery in the Archaeological Record [worldcat], follows Bonifay (above, p. 467-8) in listing four methods of holing amphoras that contained liquid commodities. The first consists of:

the creation of one or two small holes ca. 1-2 cm. in diameter, usually by means of a drill, though sometimes by means of punching or chipping, generally in the lower third of the vessel's wall. This method is attested almost exclusively with examples of the Neo-Punic amphora, the "a gradino" variety of the African 2A, and the Keay 25. (p. 67)

The UPenn piece shows such holing in a Keay 62. Of course, we don't know that the vessel was pierced in antiquity and we don't know why the hole was re-filled, or when. It looks like the fill is lead, which certainly could be ancient. It seems likely that something was attached at the point of the hole, perhaps just excess lead. Perhaps not since the marks in the accretion show an incomplete ring as well as distance from the hole. I'm not sure what this means so comments are welcome. And what about the chips below the ring? There's a lot going on here when you take the time to look closely.

One reason to discuss holing of amphoras now is that tomorrow (6/20/2008) is the first day of the conference, "'Pottery in the archaeological record: a view from the Greek world'. A Workshop on J. Theodore Peña’s publication, Roman Pottery in the Archaeological Record", hosted by the Danish Institute at Athens. Consider this post a small contribution to the topic.

I'm grateful to Brian Rose for permission to discuss this piece, and to Lynn Makowsky for accession information.

To Dorothy King

Dorothy King is frequently a cogent commentator on matters ancient and modern. But I was unhappy to see her beginning a recent post with:

I sometimes get frustrated with archaeologists who seem to be more worried about preserving every single little broken bit if pot everywhere - and ignore the human cost of war. To some people, the men and women who have given their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq seem to have become theoretical statistics.

To suggest that archaeologists ignore the human cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is a serious charge and to use "seem" without providing any specific references is unfair.

For my part, I am not so vain as to think she had anything I've written in mind, but I can't help but personalize my response. As a citizen I can express my horror at the human cost by voting, contributing to political campaigns and expressing my opinion. In doing so I am one voice among millions taking part in our pluralistic democracy. As a parent I can teach my three children to honor the service of the troops while disparaging the appointed leaders who have served them so poorly. I do this in my home and usually wouldn't mention it here.

But as an active field-archaeologist and museum professional with direct experience of and expertise in the losses to world cultural heritage wrought the by the international trade in illicit antiquities, I can focus my writings and advocacy on the deleterious effects of these two wars on archaeological knowledge. That this intellectual loss pales in comparison to the human loss should most often be able to go without saying.

To go a step further, I actually think there is a very strong correlation between a focus on the material consequences of the war in Iraq and an understanding that the predictable human cost was one reason to find a better way. To put this differently, I don't personally know archaeologists who strongly supported the war and one basis for their concern was the inevitable loss of life. I am not suggesting a causal relationship: opinions held as a citizen and opinions held as a professional are distinct, but in this case they seem to have overlapped. Since I take this step on the basis of anecdote and conversation, I can't directly cite my sources.

So, I'll stand up for archaeologists as caring as much as any other group of citizens about the human costs of war. When acting as archaeologists, however, we will speak to what we know best, which is the consequences of war for our chosen profession.

"Stolen Artifacts Returned to Iraq"

That's the headline of a brief NYTimes article. Here are the opening sentences:

A cache of ancient artifacts stolen from the National Museum of Iraq during the American-led invasion in 2003 were returned to Iraq’s Antiquities Ministry on Monday in a ceremony in Baghdad, Reuters reported. The items, 11 cylinder seals made from agate and alabaster between 3,000 and 2,000 B.C., were found in Philadelphia last month by American customs officials and turned over to the Iraqi embassy in Washington, a spokesman for the ministry said.

Those of us interested in the legitimate protection of the world's cultural property have realized that looting and theft in Iraq feeds the international market in illicit antiquities. While it is unfortunate that this story proves us right, it is a counter-balance to those who discount such a connection. As an example of such thought I offer this post from Peter Tompa and its admonition to:

watch out for claims that the long-promised 'tidal wave' of looted Iraqi material has finally left its secret warehouses for our shores!

Does the Times story describe a tidal wave washing back to Iraq? No. But add in the Syrian return mentioned there, along with what looks like an upcoming return from Jordan predicted in the Reuters version, and it's hard to justify the lighthearted approach to the problem of stolen Iraqi property taken in Tompa's "Cultural Property Observer".

Coins on the Move

The ANS has moved all its coins and other objects. I mention this because the whole event got coverage in the New York Times. Check out the photo essay as well.

My contribution to this process was only the design of the database we used to track all the crates and their contents. My colleagues did all the heavy lifting.

Random Question

Does Pau Gasol look more like Titus Quinctius Flamininus or Mithradates VI?

[Updated to fix image link]

Pau Gasol

Flamininus

Mithradates

"Earliest Church" in Jordan

Dorothy King, among others, notes reports of an early church in Jordan. A first century date is almost certainly too early for the pottery shown:

Those look to be amphora necks near in form to Late Roman Amphora 1 from Cilicia or Cyprus. As also indicated by their reasonably good preservation, they should date from the late Roman use of the church and have little to do with any earlier phase.

So... that's a great illustration but is misplaced to the extent that lay-people might think it shows early Roman (let alone "Christian") pottery.

More on Barrington Atlas IDs and a Question

Sean Gilles has blogged about deriving unique representations of geographic names from the Barrington Atlas.

He suggests the pattern:
http://pleiades.stoa.org/batlas/{label-normalized}-{map}-{grid}

See the complete post for how to transliterate names containing non-ASCII characters into URL friendly (near) equivalents. It's mostly simple: 'Ağva' becomes 'agva' but there are more interesting cases.

Quick question: should the host component of the url be 'pleiades.stoa.org' or 'atlantides.org'? This may not matter from a redirection point-of-view but consistency, searchability, and interchange issues might make it desirable to designate one or the other as the preferred form.

Mapping GRBPIlion

I continue to be interested in using the Atom Syndication Format, Georss, KML and Google's mapping tools to express the geographic component of data related to the ancient Mediterranean. These formats are all simple, well-documented and xml-based so that Greek, Roman and Byzantine Pottery at Ilion (Troia), in which we try to use open standards, is a good test-bed for trying out ideas.

To cut to the chase, the following URLs show what I'm up to:

• Google Maps: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://classics.uc.edu/troy/grbpottery/grbpilion.kml
• Google Earth: http://classics.uc.edu/troy/grbpottery/grbpilion.kml

Clicking on the Google Maps link shows a browser-embedded map with a short list of sites on the left. It's early yet, but that list will expand. Regardless, clicking on a site name on the left will bring up a text-bubble pointing to the right place on the map. Within the bubble are one or more links to relevant pages on the GRBPIlion website. Imagine more dots and you get the idea.

The implementation is pretty simple but should give me flexibility going forward. There are three basic components. The file "geography.atom" defines geographic entities. If you look inside you'll see that I derive unique IDs from the Barrington Atlas, so Gaza is "http://atlantides.org/batlas/gaza-70-e2". In doing so, I follow the suggestions of Tom Elliot of ISAW. Looking inside "groups.xml" - which instantiates concepts such as "African Red Slip" for rendering into html - shows that a few such groups make reference to these geographic entities. Search for 'rel="geographic"' to see what I mean. Finally, I munge those two files into "grbpilion.kml", which can be shown directly in Google Earth or via Google Maps using the URLs listed above.

The xslt that does the munging is "kml.xsl". It's pretty ugly right now but it works so will do for the short term.

At a more abstract level, I can theoretically put elements such as '<link rel="geographic" href="http://atlantides.org/batlas/gaza-70-e2" />' anywhere in the publication. Right now I only implement this idea in groups.xml but I look forward to extending this system to individual sherd descriptions and to the bibliography.

Context

I've been very busy lately but Peter Tompa's post highlighting the importance of find spots for understanding antiquity seemed noteworthy.

GRBPIlion and Worldcat.org

[Updated thanks to Susan Heath, who caught a substantive error in my description of the inbibrec element.]

Where possible, I have added links to Worldcat.org for books in the bibliography of Greek, Roman and Byzantine Pottery at Ilion (Troia), the volume I edit with Billur Tekkök.

I probably should have been doing this all along... It was a little boring to play catch-up... But it will now be easy to keep on top of the task as I go forward.

A word on format. Here's the xml I use for Fleischer et al. 2001. Late Antiquity: art in context [worldcat]:

<bibrec id="FleischerJLundJ2001">
 <editor>
  <first>Jens</first>
  <last>Fleischer</last>
 </editor>
 <editor>
  <first>John</first>
  <last>Lund</last>
 </editor>
 <editor>
  <first>Marjetta</first>
  <last>Nielsen</last>
 </editor>
 <title>Late Antiquity: art in context</title>
 <date>2001</date>
 <series>Acta Hyperborea</series>
 <volume>8</volume>
 <city>Aarhus</city>
 <publisher>Museum Tusculanum Press</publisher>
 <link rel="url" href="http://books.google.com/books?id=1uc0DHSHUSYC" />
 <link rel="worldcat" href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/45813395" />
</bibrec>

This volume is in the bibliography because it includes the chapter "The stamped decoration on Phocaean red slip ware" by L. Vaag on p. 215. The xml for this chapter is:

<bibrec id="VaagL2001">
 <inbibrec idref="FleischerJLundJ2001"/>
 <author>
  <first>Leil</first>
  <last>Vaag</last>
 </author>
 <title>The stamped decoration on Phocaean red slip ware</title>
 <date>2001</date>
 <pages>215-232</pages>
</bibrec>

The inbibrec element of the chapter record, whose idref attribute equals the value of the id attribute of the volume record, creates the link between the two.

It is very true that this xml adheres to no standard. It's my own creation. When I started encoding bibliographic data in xml, I was unsatisfied with all the options so I made up my own. I'm sure I'll move to a standard when one that is granular, lightweight and easy to encode comes along. But sticking to what's current now, combining the two xml records via an xslt stylesheet leads to html such as this.

My one current concession to somewhat standard markup is the link element by which I instantiate the connection to the Worldcat record and to the Google Books version of this volume. This element originated in html and is now used in the Atom Syndication format. I use it as a lightweight encoding for noting multiple relevant internet resources for the volume's record. You can see those links rendered in html here. Next I'll make those links show up in the chapter's html page.

For those who care, I'm tempted to use Atom as a wrapper for the individual bibliographic records. I could even use georss to make the bibliography mappable. That could be cool.

Numismatic Geography

I attended a workshop yesterday on digital geography at NYU's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. It was billed as a hackfest and the participants focused on strategies for interoperability of geographic datasets, which is a primary concern of the Concordia Project. My contribution was discussion of the work I'm doing at the American Numismatic Society to provide a geographic infrastructure for accessing our collection. The most concrete result of this work is an incipient list of "geographic entities" that are linked into the ANS database. Here's a sampling of URL's that make this list actually usable:

• http://numismatics.org/xml/geography.html. This is a Google Maps API interface to all the sites for which I currently have lat/long info.
• http://numismatics.org/xml/geography.atom. Here's the same information as an Atom feed (similar to RSS).
• http://numismatics.org/xml/geography.kml. And as a KML file. Depending on how you have your browser set up, this may open in Google Earth.
• http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://numismatics.org/xml/geography.kml. You can also open that URL directly in Google Maps. Cool!

If you open any of these links and click on one of the symbols, you will see a link to a URL similar to http://numismatics.org/id/1. The resulting page is a little spare but it points to a future in which the ANS establishes unique identifiers for conceptual entities of numismatic interest. In this case, Patara is a geographic entity that is also a mint. "Mint" is an ambiguous term but that's a discussion for another context. What matters is that the ANS now has a simple syntax for establishing identity. Such identities can be linked to third party authority lists, in this case the Pleiades definitions of ancient places. Anybody else using that identifier can know that s/he is referring to the same concept as is the ANS when we say, "Here is a list of coins from Patara." That is a huge step forward.

These id URLs can also be extended with ".atom" and ".kml" to produce an automatically parseable Atom feed or Google Earth compatible representation for each entity. A further implication of this is that I can show maps in the search results produced by the ANS database. If you scroll down in http://numismatics.org/collection/accnum/list?region=cyrenaica&imageavailable=yes, you'll see a "show map" button for the records from Cyrene. Click there for the relevant Google Map.

The NYU/ISAW workshop provided an incentive to get this infrastructure up and running on a preliminary basis. I'm grateful for that and for the hospitality of our hosts. It was an enjoyable day all round!

CAG 66: Les Pyrénées-Orientales

My copy of Carte Archéologique de la Gaule: Les Pyrénées-Orientales (66) edited by J. Kotarba, G. Castellvi and F. Maziere arrived recently from Amazon.fr [worldcat]. The CAG series describes each volume as a "pré-inventaire archéologique" but there is some modesty in this. While it's true that most of the entries are brief, the introductory thematic overviews are usually first rate and the information in each volume is so up-to-date at the time of publication that they are essential research tools.

CAG Les Pyrénées-Orientales continues the trend of increasing use of color images and this is very welcome. Overall, the volume is excellent and there is something for everyone to enjoy. Do you like inscriptions? Check out the color image of a lead tablet discoverd in 2003 and inscribed with incompetent Greek (p. 250). Or the series of Roman-period inscribed pots, known since 1958, which may represent the trash from a tavern (p. 504). I particularly enjoyed the review of work at Ruscino near Perpignan. There is a Visigothic component here as well as an Islamic settlement dating to the 8th century, as indicated by the presence of lead seals with Arabic legends (p. 471-473). For its part, the overview of underwater discoveries pulls together information that is scattered in many publications (p. 622-641).

It takes patience to makes one's way through a CAG volume. The reward is finding something interesting that you might otherwise have missed, like the six nomismata Byzantine weight illustrated on p. 281. It comes from a site at which African Red-Slip was recorded, including the 5th to 6th century form Hayes 87.

Psalmodi in France

After a long hiatus, my colleague David Yoon and I are turning our attention to the website of the Williams College Excavations at Psalmodi, France. It currently has the aesthetic of an earlier Internet age but there is a lot of good content there, with more to come. As an example of what's there now, the ceramic pages currently include:

• Pottery and Stone Tools from Pre-monastic Use of the Island
• Pottery of Late Antiquity
• Medieval and Modern Pottery
• Ceramic Quantification

It will be good to get back to this material.

Mediterranean Ceramics Reference Stability Report, Number 7

The MCRSR first appeared in October, 2007. For the seventh installment I am making one addition, no. 18, Roman Amphorae: a digital resource from the United Kingdom Arts and Humanities Data Service's Archaeological Data Service. Astute readers will note that the URL I use re-directs to a interstitial page that asks for compliance with a Copyright and Liability Statement and with a Common Access Agreement. I don't usually use redirects but in this case I do because the publication explicitly asks that citation be only to this URL. It is helpful when sites specify a citation form so that I am happy to comply. But see below for comments on an unfortunate side effect of the site enforcing compliance in this way. In general, however, this is an excellent resource that is highly recommended to anyone interested in the topic. There is much to say about the high quality of the scholarly content but for now I'll keep myself to just a few technically-oriented comments.

First, the title of the work gives me an opportunity to highlight a personal bugaboo of mine. Many digital resources qualify themselves by prepending "electronic" to their titles. This is a misnomer as electricity is only one component of their storage and transmission. Plastics, light, magnetism, etc. are all involved so "digital" is a better term. But this is a somewhat petty observation that doesn't apply here so I'll move on quickly.

About that compliance page, it seems to come at a high cost. If one clicks past the page and makes one's way to the entry for Africana 1 Picolo amphoras, you can read the phrase "Production is attested at Ariana near Carthage...". Try searching for it in Google and you won't find anything. I don't think this can be due to the format of the URL for that particular page - http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/archive/amphora_ahrb_2005/details.cfm?id=1 - because Google usually handles such strings with no problem. Rather, I'm guessing that any links to this page first run the Google spider through the compliance page and that interferes with indexing. Regardless of cause, the result is that these superb pages are not discoverable via search engines. That is unfortunate. And having read both the Copyright and Liability statement and the Common Access Agreement, they did not strike me as so unique as to require this intrusion. To put it another way, what benefit is worth that cost?

Readers may be aware that the AHDS' funding will soon run out. Fortunately, as announced on its website, ADS funding will continue. It will be interesting to see if the published URLs of ADS resources change.

There has been one significant change for the previously listed URLs. The JSTOR link to Robinson's Agora V is now http://www.jstor.org/stable/i285178. Unfortunately, the previous URL, http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1558-8610%281959%295%3C%3E1.0.CO%3B2-3, no longer works. And to compound the issue, the new URL takes one to a login page that does not indicate the title of the linked work. This is an unexpected situation that I hope results from temporary errors. One reason to think they are temporary is that there are "old style" URLs that do redirect to the new and improved URL format. For example, http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-9475(1949)70%3A3%3C299%3APPFATT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-S remains usable.


1. Walters' Catalogue of the Roman Pottery in the Departments of Antiquities, British Museum from Google Books: http://books.google.com/books?id=M2UEAAAAYAAJ

2. Robinson's Agora V from JSTOR: http://www.jstor.org/stable/i285178, previously http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1558-8610%281959%295%3C%3E1.0.CO%3B2-3

3. Lattara 6: http://www.lattara.net/LATTARAPUB/PUBLAT/LATTARA6/lattara6.html

4. K. Greene's AJA article on Early Roman lead glazed pottery: http://www.ajaonline.org/pdfs/111.4/AJA1114_Greene.pdf

5. Heath and Tekkök, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Pottery at Ilion (Troia): http://classics.uc.edu/troy/grbpottery/

6. Vessel from Çatalhoyuk (via Flickr): http://www.flickr.com/photos/catalhoyuk/971964416/

7. A Late Minoan III Pyxis from the Metropolitan Museum of Art: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/03/eus/hod_1999.423.htm

8. An undocumented ARS Hayes 70 bowl from the dealer Classical Numismatics Group: http://cngcoins.com/Coin.aspx?CoinID=86618

9. Fifteenth Century Mosque Lamp from Jerusalem now in the British Museum: http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/me/m/mosque_lamp.aspx

10. The Perseus Project Vase Catalog: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0043

11. Wikimedia Commons Image of a Greek Geometric Skyphos in the Louvre: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Skyphos_birds_Louvre_CA3822.jpg

12. Sagalassos from Pleiades: http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/639087

13. Inscribed pot from Aphrodisias (HTML): http://insaph.kcl.ac.uk/iaph2007/iAph150353.html

14. Inscribed pot from Aphrodisias (XML): http://insaph.kcl.ac.uk/iaph2007/xml/iAph150353.xml

15. Hellenistic lamp from Assos, Turkey at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: http://mfa.org/collections/search_art.asp?recview=true&id=199476&coll_keywords=&coll_accession=84%2E110&coll_name=&coll_artist=&coll_place=&coll_medium=&coll_culture=&coll_classification=&coll_credit=&coll_provenance=&coll_location=&coll_has_images=&coll_on_view=&coll_sort=2&coll_sort_order=0&coll_view=0&coll_package=0&coll_start=1

16. Open Context record for Halaf period jar from Domuztepe, Turkey: http://www.opencontext.org/database/space.php?item=14926_DT_Spatial

17. Abbasid Ceramics from the Museum With No Frontiers: http://www.discoverislamicart.org/exhibitions/ISL/the_abbasids/exhibition.php?theme=5

18. Roman Amphorae: a digital resource: http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/resources.html?amphora2005

Dining and Numismatic Imagery

I've added a preliminary discussion of Roman New Years lamps to the ongoing draft of Dining and Numismatic Imagery. I've had a few discussions with colleagues on this topic but until I am better able to incorporate their thoughts, I won't name names so as to protect the innocent. I gladly take responsibility for all mistakes and welcome them being pointed out.

Dining and Numismatic Imagery

I am putting myself in position to make more progress on the dining and numismatic imagery article. I decided is was unfeasible to write directly in the blogger interface. So I've moved the text into xhtml and made it available on my personal website. The URL is http://sebastianheath.com/documents/dining2008.html. It's pretty much the same as before with just a few additions, perhaps fewer typos, more of the links actually work, etc.

I link back to this post and welcome more comments, though I will be making significant changes "real soon now".

Looting and Westphalian Sovereignty

David Gill's Looting Matters and Saving Antiquities for Everyone's SAFE Corner are the "go to" blogs for cultural property issues. In a recent post, Gill comments on James Cuno's recently published essay "Who Owns the Past?", which can be found on the Yale Global Online web site.

I endorse the whole post and quote just the closing paragraphs:

Do we care about the destruction of sixth century BCE tombs in the Republic of Macedonia to supply antiquities for, say, private collectors?

Yes.

Not because of "nationalist retentionist cultural property laws" (though I could understand a call by archaeologists working in the Republic of Macedonia for the return of specific pieces) but because looting is destroying some unique and highly significant archaeological contexts—and that destruction is removing part of human knowledge for ever.

Looting has intellectual consequences.

Looking at Cuno's article directly, it seems to me that the following passage offers archaeologists flawed advice on the basis of an uneven conception of the role of national sovereignty:

Archaeologists should work with museums to counter the nationalist basis of laws, conventions and agreements, and promote a principle of shared stewardship of our common heritage. Together we should call attention to the failure of these laws to protect our common ancient heritage and perversion of that heritage by claiming the archaeological record as a modern nation’s cultural property[.]

For a modern nation state to claim the archaeological record as cultural property is not a perversion but rather a commonplace application long-standing claims of national prerogative. I use the historical term "Westphalian Sovereignty" to highlight one source of this prerogative: the set of treaties that brought an end to many decades of European war in 1648. Historical debates about the origins of our current international system notwithstanding, nations have since at least that time acted either individually or collectively to address issues of global concern. The system is imperfect, to be sure, but has so far allowed us all to avoid global armageddon while holding out hope for general progress and improvement.

Why then are we asked to carve out an exception when it comes to cultural property and to offer a safe haven from national sovereignty to those who would participate, whether directly or indirectly, in the evident and ongoing looting of global cultural heritage? This makes no sense to me.

As an aside, I am reminded of the time I was a delegate at the 2006 ACLS annual meeting in Philadelphia. During the program, the then Deputy Chairman of the NEH spoke and offered similar arguments about the disjunction between national sovereignty and universal cultural heritage. I was struck by the incongruence of a public servant - an individual whose salary was paid because the sovereign government of the United States chose to compel its citizens both to pay taxes and to take on common debt - standing in front of the American Council of Learned Societies - an organization explicitly organized along national lines - in order to question a state such as Italy's choice to exercise its sovereignty in the protection of material property inside its national boundaries. That seemed odd at best.

To return to Cuno's article, arguments that rely on a unique safe-haven from national sovereignty for the trade in antiquities should be suspect as either arbitrary, self-serving or both.

Ceramics at the Museum of London

I had not seen the online presentation of the ceramics collection of the Museum of London. I particularly enjoyed the amphora section: many Dressel 20's, a Richborough 527, Late Roman 4's. Keep clicking, there's much to see. Put this next to the Roman Amphorae: a digital resource and it's clear that amphora specialists - at least the Roman ones - share their data more than most.

Ecosystems

To review:

1. Charles Watkinson wrote about "drilling-down" in archaeology.
2. I responded
3. Charles replied.
4. Bill Caraher joined in
5. Tom Elliot took us into orbit
6. Eric Kansa took note
7. Bill re-upped
8. The whole thread hit the Big Time.

In my first response I picked up on one small phrase in Charles' original post, "Nobody wants to share their data", and ran with it. I thought I would just take the time to pull out the following additional passages:

So where next for the dream of seamlessly linked publications and their data in archaeology? Some current trends are encouraging.

And his finishing paragraph:

The "drill down" may never be as easy as it sounds, but it is more attainable technologically, intellectually, and politically now than it has ever been in the past. The prospect of linking archaeological publication with the data that inspired it is coming within sight.

It's seems clear that we're all looking to a similar future.

There is substantive discussion about what's holding us up. Among the themes I see in the flow of thoughts is "who shares what, how, and why (or why not)?" Charles introduced the metaphor of faunal equivalence and that has caught on. At the substantial risk of mischaracterizing Charles' larger point, he seems to be marking those who do share as exceptional and to focus on why people don't. I mean that as an observation and not as a judgement and I hope to be corrected if wrong.

Bill's latest post expanded on Charles' evocation of the fundamental lack of replicability in the archaeological process by writing:

The valuable cognitive and phenomenological patterns, for example, that comprise an archaeological "sense of place" would form a kind of metadata that does not translate easily into print or digital media.

So not just who shares, but, of the archaeology happening at the edge of whatever tool, methodology or metaphor you choose, what are we able to share.

I do note that Bill also ends on what I take as a positive note:

The work of the Grey Panthers and their collaborators will certainly resolve many of these issues in the near future, but for now with all the other pressures of data collection (i.e. archaeological fieldwork), writing, and teaching, we can only do so much toward making our data publicly available electronically. As someone committed to the concept, however, it is my hope that in the near future greater technical and financial resources will make it easier to do the right thing.

Let me say that I, too, am an optimist. In part because I take the following sequence to be fairy self-evident:

• We all create at least some data that is either already digital or can be digitized.
• Nobody is going to actively destroy their digital data. (I'll invoke exceptions as proving the rule.)
• We will all make some arrangement to put our data somewhere and this will happen either before or after we're "done" with them ourselves.

Optimistically, though certainly not naively, I draw from this formulation the conclusion that we will all share, eventually and somehow. With again not wanting to mischaracterize anyone's meaning, I think I'm on vaguely the same page with Bill when he writes:

In fact, from my perspective here in Greece, the dominant attitude among juniors scholars is frustration that archaeological data is not available. One can only hope that this frustration will be a powerful impetus toward making archaeological material accessible to the scholarly community quickly and openly.

Having looked for common ground, I am not afraid of disagreement. My current focus is resolutely on sharing and I see it all around me. On the Stoa, on Open Context, on the Archaeological Data Service, on Wikipedia and its attendant Wikimedia Commons, on Flickr, in the incipient rumblings out of ISAW, from the Center for Hellenic Studies, from the legislative and executive branches of the United States government, from epigraphers, from museums, from numismatists, from big projects going part way, from big projects going all the way, from many other field projects currently dipping their toes into the water via websites and probably inclined to do more, and even - dare I say it - from journals going not nearly far enough. I could go on (and on)...

Hence my title. We already have an entire ecosystem of sharers and it's only going to get more diverse. It doesn't matter what kind of animal you are, as long as your data survives.

So I am an optimist on the basis of quickly formulated principle, on the basis of current observation, and due to the resulting extrapolation of future trends. But I'm a little grumpy, too. If you don't share, you won't matter. Simple as that.

Two Publications: SFECAG (2007) and Kyme e l'Eolide

1: I mentioned that Librairie Archéologique sent me a mail order catalog. Included in the envelope was a separate sheet advertising the availability of Actes du congrès SFECAG de Langres, 2007. Here's a direct link to the LibrArch site. If that doesn't work search for the reference 34884. At the moment, the direct link lists the volume as "Indisponible à la vente". I hope that's a temporary shortage as I just got the notice.

But what is SFECAG? The acronym stands for Société Française d'Étude de la Céramique Antique en Gaule. The organization's website is at http://sfecag.free.fr/.

The Society's main activity is the holding of an annual congress and subsequent publication of the papers. Volumes have appeared since 1985. Collectively, the series is a great resource for keeping track of what French ceramicists are up to. Among my favorite articles is L. Rivet et al. (2001). "Les sigillées tardives des fouilles 1946-1970 de Saint-Blaise (Bouches-du-Rhône)," Société Française d’Étude de la Céramique Antique en Gaule: Actes du Congrès de Lille-Bavay, 24-27 Mai 2001. Marseille: 489-515. Among other observations, the authors publish seven sherds of Cypriot Red-Slip from the late Antique phases of this rural site.

These volumes are not well represented in US libraries. If you search for "SFECAG" in Worldcat.org you only get European libraries for the various volumes that are listed. Searching for "Société Française d’Étude de la Céramique Antique en Gaule" and clicking within the resulting list shows some US libraries. But it has not been easy to order these volumes so I'm glad to see LibrArch carrying some of them.

2: Vincenzo di Giovanni has been kind enough to send me an offprint of his article "Ceramica romana e tardo antica di Kyme. Osservazione preliminari sui materiali dagli scavi dell'Università di Napoli 'Frederico II'" found in L. Scatozza Höricht, ed. (2007). Kyme e l'Eolide da Augusto a Costantino. Atti dell'Incontro internazionale di studio Missione archeologica italiana : Napoli, 12-13 dicembre 2005 Naples. I don't have access to the whole volume yet so I'm happy to have this preview. As noted by Dr. Di Giovanni in an e-mail correspondence, the Kyme assemblage overlaps well with what we have at Ilion/Troy. Not ware-for-ware, form-for-form but the two sites are close enough to be part of similar large-scale exchange networks.

Drilling Down (and Up)

Charles Watkinson doesn't blog often, but when he does, he blogs well. His latest post is entitled The "drill down" dilemma. Why can't we link archaeological publication to the underlying data? It's worth reading the whole thing and I have to say that I largely agree with his summary of the current state of affairs. But I do have some reactions that I'll put into words...

First, a little full disclosure: I've known Charles for a long time; he's a good guy and a friend so that this should be seen as a respectful exchange within a longer conversation.

Charles notes that it is difficult to move from works of archaeological synthesis to the original data. I won't paraphrase more than that since you can and should read the original for yourself.

The first explanation/reason he offers for an inability to drill-down is that "Nobody wants to share their data." Taken as a stand-alone statement, this may under-represent the extent to which sharing is already taking place. I'll name names.

• Martha Joukowsky, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Brown University and former President of Archaeological Institute of America shares data from her excavation at Petra. A large dataset is available on the OpenContext website.
• Jack Davis, Carl W. Blegen Professor of Greek Archaeology at the University of Cincinnati and current Director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, shares data from the Pylos Regional Archaeological Project. See under "Project Databases" in the Table of Contents. I work on this project and as I've noted we are beginning to make the data available under a Creative Commons license. See the website for the other project directors and participants who are likewise sharing.
• I also share my work with Billur Tekkök, Associate Professor at Başkent University, on pottery at Troy. By implication then, Brian Rose, James B. Pritchard Professor of Archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania and current President of the Archaeological Institute of America, shares since we confirmed with him that it was OK to distribute our work under a Creative Commons license.
• Ian Hodder, Dunlevie Family Professor of Anthropology at Stanford, also shares. The entire Çatalhöyük website is published under a Creative Commons Attribution - Non-Commercial - Share Alike license. That's about as generous as you can be.

I'm going to look at the Çatalhöyük website more closely but I do just want to say that I'm dropping names and being explicit about fancy titles to suggest that you can't get much more senior than the Drs. Davis, Hodder, Joukowsky and Rose. If they're sharing, at some point people will have to ask themselves, "why aren't I?"

Because it shares so much, the Çatalhöyük site allows drill-down. Here's an example. I. Hodder and C. Cessford. 2004. Daily Practice and Social Memory at Çatalhöyük American Antiquity 69.1: 17-40 explores "the social processes involved in the formation of large agglomerated villages in the Neolithic of the Near East and Anatolia, with particular reference to Çatalhöyük in central Turkey." (p. 1). Among other information, work in Buildings 1 and 5 of the North Area is presented with a focus on evidence for variable activities within the distinctly marked spaces in each house (p. 24-21) and also on the presence of individuals buried under house 1 who would have been alive when the earlier and underlying house 5 was in use (fig. 10).

Within the text, analysis of the elemental composition of the floors in Building 5 showed the NW platform to have been distinctive, "probably as the result of both the reuse of different floor materials in the construction of different areas, and as a result of differential use of different parts of the floor." (p. 27-28 and fig. 9). The earlier fig. 3 indicates that this platform lies in front of Feature 230, a north-south running wall. That feature number, usefully published in this interpretive article, is key to drilling down.

The project's website links to the Çatalhöyük Image Database hosted at Stanford. Here we can search for images of Feature 230. For example:

Or:

Humans make good scales and it's nice to see just how cramped the NW platform of Building 5, running from the upside down 4 to the wall, would have been. Seeing these images makes the following passage of high-level synthesis more believable:

Taking the past and present excavations together, there is evidence to suggest that as a child grew up in a house at Çatalhöyük, it would have learned that different types of people were buried beneath certain platforms, that different plasters were used for different platforms, and that refuse was swept up more carefully from some areas... Social rules would have been learned through daily practice involving the movements of the body in the house. This is one way in which each indvidual would have learned and incorporated social rules. (p. 30)

To be sure, the drill-down wasn't effortless; I had to put quite some time into figuring out the image database. The "Aha!" moment came when I noticed the link between it and the numbers used in the article. But the idea is there. Sharing data improves ones ability to test and appreciate hypotheses presented in secondary literature.

Now, I'm pretty sure that Charles would not find what I've said objectionable. I just don't want to let anybody off the hook by not stressing that archaeologists are already sharing, that those doing it are senior, and that there is a technological and legal infrastructure that makes links from interpretive work to source data possible.

Charles also writes of drilling "sideways and upwards". Just for fun, I'll take the concept of drilling "up" to mean moving from data to interpretation. I mean by this doing the opposite of what I did at Çatalhöyük: you're on the website, you see a reference to Feature 230 and you want to find where it's been discussed. As we move forward to the world that Charles envisions, it may be that the tendency of academic journals to use services such as JSTOR and Atypon will impede the ability of scholars to drill-up. Certainly, anyone not associated with a subscribing library would not be able to access American Antiquity. It also seems that the commercial imperatives of JSTOR and Atypon, as well as of their contributing journals, are interfering with any moves to make article text available in useful formats, i.e. not as unduly encumbered PDFs or poorly structured texts. One hopes that this will change. Drilling in all directions will be increasingly important for future academic efforts.

JRA from Librairie Archéologique

I received a printed catalog from Librairie Archéologique today. I occasionally use their website to order French books so I've made it on to their mailing list. This isn't really news, of course.

It was surprising to find volume 20 of the Journal of Roman Archaeology offered on page one of the catalog for the price of 180.00 Euros. According to XE.com, that's $284.35! The JRA's own website gives a list price of $135.00 and an individual price of $68.75 + shipping. No matter how you calculate it, that's a steep markup.

Perhaps the most telling part of seeing this price was guessing that it's not a typo. Between the dollar being so low and European books being so expensive, it's probably pretty easy to get to that number.

I suppose my point is that in a world of overpriced books, it's still worth commenting when the system for distributing printed information so clearly mis-serves its audience.

Or maybe it is just a typo. If so, I can always be outraged that D. and N. Soren's A Roman Villa and a Late Roman Infant Cemetery: excavation at Poggio Gramignano, Lugnano in Teverina costs $608.00 from Amazon.com. As of writing, there are only two left in stock so get it while you can!

Mediterranean Ceramics Reference Stability Report, Number 6

The MCRSR first appeared in October, 2007. For the sixth installment, I am again making only one addition, no. 17, the section "Abbassid Ceramics" in the Discover Islamic Art exhibition from the Museum With No Frontiers. This is a very well done website that has received substantial European Union and other funding. It will be interesting to see if the information it offers remains available over the long term.

The previously listed URLs for MCRSR items 1 through 16 remain valid. At the time of writing, I can't access number 3, Lattara 6, but I believe this is only a temporary disruption.

Number 10, the Perseus Vase Catalog, announces that "Perseus is changing! Please visit Perseus 4.0 for the current version". The new URL is http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0043. At some point, it may be appropriate to update item 10, but for now I am going to hold off until the current URL becomes invalid.

1. Walters' Catalogue of the Roman Pottery in the Departments of Antiquities, British Museum from Google Books: http://books.google.com/books?id=M2UEAAAAYAAJ

2. Robinson's Agora V from JSTOR: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1558-8610%281959%295%3C%3E1.0.CO%3B2-3

3. Lattara 6: http://www.lattara.net/LATTARAPUB/PUBLAT/LATTARA6/lattara6.html

4. K. Greene's AJA article on Early Roman lead glazed pottery: http://www.ajaonline.org/pdfs/111.4/AJA1114_Greene.pdf

5. Heath and Tekkök, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Pottery at Ilion (Troia): http://classics.uc.edu/troy/grbpottery/

6. Vessel from Çatalhoyuk (via Flickr): http://www.flickr.com/photos/catalhoyuk/971964416/

7. A Late Minoan III Pyxis from the Metropolitan Museum of Art: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/03/eus/hod_1999.423.htm

8. An undocumented ARS Hayes 70 bowl from the dealer Classical Numismatics Group: http://cngcoins.com/Coin.aspx?CoinID=86618

9. Fifteenth Century Mosque Lamp from Jerusalem now in the British Museum: http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/me/m/mosque_lamp.aspx

10. The Perseus Project Vase Catalog: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0043

11. Wikimedia Commons Image of a Greek Geometric Skyphos in the Louvre: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Skyphos_birds_Louvre_CA3822.jpg

12. Sagalassos from Pleiades: http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/639087

13. Inscribed pot from Aphrodisias (HTML): http://insaph.kcl.ac.uk/iaph2007/iAph150353.html

14. Inscribed pot from Aphrodisias (XML): http://insaph.kcl.ac.uk/iaph2007/xml/iAph150353.xml

15. Hellenistic lamp from Assos, Turkey at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: http://mfa.org/collections/search_art.asp?recview=true&id=199476&coll_keywords=&coll_accession=84%2E110&coll_name=&coll_artist=&coll_place=&coll_medium=&coll_culture=&coll_classification=&coll_credit=&coll_provenance=&coll_location=&coll_has_images=&coll_on_view=&coll_sort=2&coll_sort_order=0&coll_view=0&coll_package=0&coll_start=1

16. Open Context record for Halaf period jar from Domuztepe, Turkey: http://www.opencontext.org/database/space.php?item=14926_DT_Spatial

17. Abbasid Ceramics from the Museum With No Frontiers: http://www.discoverislamicart.org/exhibitions/ISL/the_abbasids/exhibition.php?theme=5

Roman Pottery at Caerleon

The website of the National Museum Wales has a nice page on the Roman Pottery at Caerleon. Although brief, the text and images raise such wide ranging issues as military supply, ancient literacy and modes of archaeological reasoning. Be sure to read the captions on the images.

The overlap between roman military studies and ceramic studies is of long standing. Remaining in the British Isles, chapter 11 of the online version of J. Curle's 1911 A Roman Frontier Post and its People: The Fort of Newstead in the Parish of Melrose briefly surveys the use of military history to establish ceramic chronology as understood at the time. That text is out of date, of course. See the Potsherd site for more current thinking.

Wales is at one edge of the cultural ambit of the ancient Mediterranean world. Jumping to the east, the 2005 JRA supplement Excavations on the site of Jerusalem International Convention Center (Binyanei Ha'Uma) has added an interesting data point to the discussion of legionary ceramic supply during the Hadrianic and Antonine periods in ancient Palestine. Jodi Magness' Chapter 7 on the pottery from kilns associated with the presence of Legio X in Jerusalem has a conclusion (p. 104) that cites further bibliography. Earlier, she writes that "petrographic analysis has indicated that all of the pottery from the site is made of Motza clay or local Terra Rosa soil and was therefore produced in Jerusalem." (p. 70) This statement is based on work by Yuval Goren described on p. 193 of the same volume. These results are surprising given the range of types cataloged, which includes slipped tablewares, thin-walled wares, and utilitarian vessels. As Magness notes, "without petrographic analysis, we might have assumed that the pottery at the convention site is imported." (p. 106). She goes on to suggest that two or more of the potters had worked on the Rhine or Danube frontiers. It is interesting work that highlights the distinctive nature of Roman military supply.

Ankara and Gordion

This is the first post since hearing of the passing of Ross Scaife, among whose enduring accomplishments is the Stoa. There is something very fitting about this link. So with his legacy in mind...

I am in Ankara after attending Kültürel Mirası Koruma’da Yeni Yöntem ve Uygulamalar Sempozyumu/Symposium of The Preservation of Cultural Heritage: New Methods and Applications. The talks were all interesting and I'm grateful to my Turkish hosts for their hard work in putting the meeting together.

Today a group went to Gordion and to the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations (Wikipedia). This was my first visit to both so it was a great coda to an all-round wonderful trip.

The most impressive monument at Gordion is the so-called "Midas Tomb" (Tumulus MM), visible from the main highway as one drives to and from the site. Midas died c. 695 BC and Peter Kuniholm's dendrochronological investigations have put the cutting-date of the trees in the burial chamber some fifty years earlier. Hence the "so-called". Regardless of date, it's a must see site if you ever get the chance.

The museum is excellent and recently re-installed. The gallery past the opening one holds a series of cases that are generous in their use of pottery to illustrate trends in the history of the city. Flickr has a few illustrative images:

Middle Phrygian Dinos with creatures peeking over the rim.

Middle Phrygian Architectural Terracottas

Attic Import

A further note on absolute chronology: As discussed by Mary Voigt (p. 195), the destruction level that had been associated with the Kimmerian invasion and death of Midas has been pushed back to 830-800. There is some discrepancy between this chronology and some of the signage and labeling at the site and museum. But if one keeps this recent work in mind, it is interesting to ponder its implications for understanding the site.

The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations is superb, both in the quality of its collection and in the care with which it is displayed. Again, the installation is recent. It seems to be a popular spot since I quickly found many images on flickr. Try "museum anatolian civilizations". Explore for yourself but here is just a tiny sampling of what I enjoyed:

Hittite Ceramic Bulls. They are about waist high.

A 1st-2nd century AD tomb containing ceramics. This is a great image and you may want to download the full-size version. And here's a detail.

A 3rd century hoard of denarii in a small pot. This example is typical of the vessels used to protect buried hoards around the Mediterranean. The closing date (235) stands at around the transition from denarii to antoniniani. I might have hid my money, too.

Don't be misled by this post. The strength of the museum is its material from sites such as Catalhöyük, Alacahöyük, Boğazköy, Carchemish and elsewhere. Again, go if you can or enjoy the images on flickr.

Research Note: Dining and Numismatic Imagery during the Roman Empire (Version 1)

This post is offered as in-process research note. Nothing about it is complete, neither the evidence it collects, nor the citations to secondary scholarship that it makes, nor the conclusions that it reaches. It is also an unfinished translation of existing text and scanned images from desktop editing tools into a blog post. The planned venue for publication of the finished version is volume 1.2 of the new journal Past Discussed Quarterly (PDQ). I am making this very early draft available now so as to encourage "community review" prior to submission and, I hope, eventual acceptance. I therefore welcome comments and look forward to incorporating those into later versions of this note.

[A note on process: Some of the editing of the first version of this text happened directly within the Blogger interface. I'm sure this has introduced various typos and other misfortunes. My plan is to hit the "Publish" button and then copy-edit in-place. When I make major changes to content, I will publish those as a whole new post. This is all an experiment so bear with me.]

The following paragraphs provide a preliminary survey of the use of numismatic imagery in the decoration of objects related to dining during the Roman empire. Such use includes the actual incorporation of coins into the material culture of dining and also the copying of numismatic imagery into different media. In form, this note is essentially a list of objects that are examples of such incorporation and reuse.

Dining is defined very broadly and the objects listed below may well have been used in religious activities as opposed to daily meals. There is no need, however, to draw a very strong line between religion and daily life so that the objects collected below do all bear upon the issue of dining when the group is taken as whole. The importance of empire extends beyond merely the definition of the chronological bounds of the study, which at the current time focusses on the second and third centuries. Roman imperial coins, as well as most provincial issues, usually bore images of the current emperor and/or his family so that they are inherently "imperial" objects. Coins also have reverses whose legends and imagery can be understood to communicate themes of imperial propaganda, though the efficacy of this communication is a hotly debated topic in the field of ancient numismatics. Accordingly, when possible the list below will make clear which image, imperial portrait or reverse message, is displayed or reproduced. Doing so can make a small contribution to the problem of the extent to which numismatic imagery was actively examined and responded to by ancient viewers. Preliminary conclusions along these lines are made during the course of presenting the relevant objects.

Italian and Gaulish Sigillata Vessels
An article by Marabini Moevs (AJA 84 [1980]:322) makes reference in its text and notes to Italian and Gaulish Sigillata vessels whose decoration includes direct copies of coins. These are made by pressing the face of a coin into the molds in which such vessels were produced.

Partial list:

1. An Arretine Krater with impressed coin of Augustus repeated 8 times. The legend "AVGVSTVS CAESAR" is legible. (ArchCl 7 [1955]).
2. Impressions of a coin of a "Julio-Claudian prince" appear on a Southern Gallic bowl.(Knorr 1919:87)
3. A single sherd of a late Italian Sigillata bowl partially preserves an obverse portrait of the empress Sabina (Marabini Moeves 1984)
4. Arretine or Gallic bowl with impression of a coin with eagle. (ArchCl 7 [1955])

Even in the absence of a complete list of published pieces, it should be stressed that the direct reproduction of numismatic imagery on sigillata vessels is a sporadic phenomenon. Nonetheless, when such reproduction does occur it certainly illustrates an avenue for the incorporation of the imperial image into the visual setting of the meals at which such vessels were used.

Appliqué Medallion's on Claire-B Vessels from the southern Rhone valley
Claire-B is the name given to a well-slipped tableware manufactured in the Rhone valley around Lyon and further south. Table jugs with appliqué medallions are a regular part of this series and were meant for pouring wine and other beverages. Though they are larger than coins, the circular shape of these medallions means that they share some of the formal constraints and appearance of numismatic imagery. The following example drawn from Déchelette's 1904 survey of decorated vases from Gaul has obvious similarities with both coin and medallion reverses also showing scenes of imperial interaction with an assembled populace.

A medallion celebrating the defeat of Armenia shows a personification similar to those appearing on Antonine coinage:


It is probably not useful to say that either the ceramic or numismatic version of this image is the "original" that influenced the copy. Rather, they are both small-scale versions of visual motifs that appeared in larger media. To put this another way, provincial reproduction of imperial propaganda does not prove that numismatic reverses were the route by which such propaganda reached the provinces. It does suggest that coins existed in a milieu of images and that the numismatic versions may not have been ignored. Indeed, motifs that appear on coins were actually brought into people's homes in the form of ceramic vessels. This domestic acceptance of imperial imagery is a reminder of Greg Woolf's observation that the material correlates of "Romanization" are often the work of provincial craft industries. The combination of coin and vessel indicates that there was frequent interaction between imperial and provincial agency during the reception of images.

A bronze vessel now in Boston (mfa.org:63.2644)
In 1963, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston acquired a bronze vessel from the well-known numismatic collector H. von Aulock, with the purchase being made in Istanbul and the object being understood to have come from western Asia Minor. In form it is a deep pot with rounded-walls and a flat handle extending from the rim. In these aspects it is unremarkable. More distinctive are the five coins attached to the exterior surface, with all showing their reverse side. As listed on the MFA's website, the coins are:

1. Cyzicus. Dionysos seated on pantheress, holding thyrsos. (Commodus)
2. Hierocaesarea. Artemis with a quiver or bowcase on shoulder facing Apollo (?) with lyre and cloak. (Commodus)
3. Hierocaesarea. Artemis standing to right discharging arrow. Stag running at left, beside her. (Marcus Aurelius)
4. Smyrna. Bull standing right. (Antinous)
5. Smyrna. Bull standing right. (Antinous)

[These coins are sufficiently well-known and distinct so that the chronology can be inferred.]
In addition to these pieces, two coins were purchased later but are believed to have been attached to the vessel as well:

1. Troy. Marcus Aurelius/Aeneas right bearing on left arm Anchises and looking left at Ascanius
2. Koinon of Bithynia. Hadrian/Distyle temple with star in pediment; Hadrian stands between Bithynia and Roma, who crowns him.

Assuming that the two detached coins are part of the original ensemble and also had their reverses visible, this collected group of images contains an eclectic mix of local gods and sacred animals, along side a hint of Roman sympathy/loyalty in the form of a reference to Aeneas and to the image of the emperor accompanied by Roma and a loyal province. In this provincial context, it is the reverse images that are chosen to achieve the transformation of this vessel from functional object into a bearer of meaning.

The Rennes Patera

Now in the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Rennes Patera was discovered in that French city in 1774 along with 43 aureii, the latest of which was issued during the reign of Aurelian (d. 275). The object is a shallow, gold plate, 1.315 kilos in weight - or aproximately 4 Roman pounds - with a central medallion showing a drunken Hercules standing next to a seated Bacchus, the two being engaged in a contest that pits strength against wine. The latter prevails, as shown by the surrounding motif of Bacchus' triumphal march, in which the victor rides in panther-drawn chariot, with the loser languishing bareback a few ranks behind him. While there is perhaps some humor to be found in this arrangement of images - though this much gold makes the joke expensive - there is also an explicit imperial context. The outermost band of decoration consists of 16 aureii depicting emperors ranging from Hadrian to Septimius Severus, alternated with junior and female members of the imperial families, including Severus' sons Caracalla and Geta as Caesars. In all cases the obverse is showing, though descriptions of both sides of each coin can be given following their removal and resetting, notes on which were published in 1858. The list of coins (Obverse/Reverse), starting from the top as indicated by the orientation of the central medallion and moving clock-wise, is:

1. Hadrian/Hispania Reclining/HISPANIA
2. Caracalla/Geta r.
3. Marcus Aurelius/Victory advancing
4. Faustina, Jr./Laetitia stg.,LAETITIA
5. Antoninus Pius/Liberalitas stg.
6. Geta/Severus btw. std. sons.
7. Commodus/Liberty, LIBERT
8. Diva Faustina/Ceres stg.
9. Septimius Severus/Caracalla and Geta,AETERNIT IMPERI
10. Caracalla/Severus and Julia Domna, CONCORDIAE AETERNAE
11. Antoninus Pius/Jupiter std.
12. Diva Faustina/Ceres
13. Antoninus Pius/Liberalitas stg.
14. Commodus/Hilaritas, HILARITAS
15. Septimius Severus/Julia Domna btw. Caracalla and Geta
16. Julia Domna/Laetitia stg., LAETITIA

(Based on Chabouillet1858]:360-363)

Although the accompanying hoard dates the deposition of this object to the reign of Aurelian or later, it is presumably Severan in composition. The combination of this date with the objects Bacchic/Dionysiac, Herculean and Imperial associations makes several categories of evidence useful as context for understanding this object. The first category is epigraphic and relies on the overlap between Severus' manufactured ancestry as implied by the patera and as advertised in public inscriptions. Taking just one example, CIL VIII.9317, from Caesaria in Mauretania, begins with the following dedication:

To Imperator Caesar, son of the divine Marcus Antoninus Pius Sarmaticus Germanicus, brother of the divine Commodus, grandson of the divine Antoninus Pius, great-grandson of the divine Hadrian, descendant of the divine Trajan Parthicus, descendant of the divine Nerva, Lucius Septimius Severus Pius Pertinax Augustus…

While the patera does not stretch back so far as Nerva, the emperors Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius and Commodus do appear. This suggests considerable awareness of, and sensitivity to, Severan dynastic concerns on the part of the designer/patron of this object. That Pertinax is not represented among the depicted emperors is not a surprise given Septimius' emphasis of his manufactured Antonine descent. [On a practical note, the gold of Pertinax may not have so readily available.] The alternated family portraits, culminating to some extent in the then current heirs Caracalla and Geta, only add to the dynastic context.

Further Severan links are found in the Bacchic and Herculean imagery. Both gods are depicted on the reverse of a coin of Severus issued in 194 (RIC IV.25).

Courtesy of CNG Coins, via Wildwinds

The pairing of Bacchus and Hercules is also found in the Basilica at Severus' hometown of Leptis Magna. Here the pilasters to the left and right of the apse are decorated with scenes from the lives of each divinity. (flicker, flickr [both with cc licenses]).

The coin is an official issue and the architectural sculpture is part of an imperially sponsored program of public display. Both Bacchus and Hercules were popular gods at this time as well (ANRW II.17.2:684-702; LIMC V:158) so that the motif of their contest also appears in private domestic contexts. It is found in the second-century mosaic decoration of the so-called Atrium House at Antioch (Illustrated at Ling 1998: fig. 33) and in an early third-century version from nearby Seleucia (Ling 1998:fig. 36).

These comparanda, not all of which would have been known to any single ancient viewer, reveal the Rennes Patera to be an extremely sophisticated object. It brings together a set of ideas that were current at the highest levels of both society and government. It belongs in this study because numismatic imagery is an essential component of the "program" of its visual composition, which highlights the role of coins in providing imperial portraits that could be re-used in non-commercial contexts. Of course, one cannot say that the patera was used during dining. It is plausibly a ritual object - perhaps a part of the imperial cult - and almost certainly used during extra-ordinary circumstances, and not during the repetitive occurrence of everyday meals. Nonetheless, authors such as Athenaeus create a place for Bacchus, Hercules and the Emperor at the Roman meal so that the Rennes Patera may give a window into the thoughts of drunk and loyal Roman aristocrats as they conversed merrily with each other during evening gatherings.

A final note is necessary when discussing this object. There are rumors that the patera is an 18th century fake; but without having found such an opinion in writing, I find this unlikely.

Jewelry
It was noted above that the Rennes Patera need not have been used in the setting of a meal. The same can be said of jewelry which incorporates coins. Bruhn's study of coins and costume is an excellent introduction to the topic (8-16,30-32). Her fig. 6, showing a necklace (metmuseum.org:36.9.1) with aurei of Lucius Verus, Julia Domna and Alexander Severus in pendant settings, is a good example of the prevalence of such pieces in the third century. Bruhn (32) also cites a 2nd century Egyptian funerary portrait, now in Detroit (dia.org:25.2). Zooming in on the deceased's necklace shows that the pendant holds a coin. It may also be reasonable to suggest that the obverse is showing.

A Late Antique Coda
The focus of this note is the pagan empire. A late Roman silver plate in Munich in which the central medallion copies a quinquennalia issue of Licinius II is relevant (cf. Leader-Newby 2004:20). A later example of a similar phenomenon is a silver plate, now last, incorporating a gold solidus of Theodosius II.

(After Barrate 1993:fig. 20)
Finally, I note an ARS lamp type (cf. Hayes 1980:313) which has the alternated impressions of the obverse and reverse of a gold coin (tremisses?) of Theodosius II impressed on its shoulder.

(After le Blant 1886:plate ii, for additional examples see Bejaui 1997:283)

At a time when the emperor stressed the religious unity of the state, it is fitting that these lamps' manufacturer would choose to show both the obverse and reverse of an imperial coin.

Appendix on Primary Texts
[Needs more passages and to be integrated into main text]

With the objects described above in mind, it is appropriate to consider some of the textual evidence for Roman attitudes towards coins. Suetonius relates that Augustus gave foreign coins as gifts during the Saturnalia.(Aug. 73) Philostratus in his early third century life of Apollonius of Tyana relates a story set during the reign of Tiberius, in which a slave-owner was convicted of impiety because the slave he struck was carrying a coin with the image of the emperor on it. Cassius Dio, also writing in the early third century, refers to coinage on numerous occasions. He relates that "...Brutus stamped upon the coins which were being minted his own likeness and a cap and two daggers, indicating by this and by the inscription that he and Cassius had liberated the fatherland." (LXVII.25) He also writes of a young equestrian was sentenced to death for taking a coin into a brothel and that a senator was similarly punished for wearing a coin of Augustus set in a necklace when he went to the toilet. Finally, he relates that under Elagabalus a certain “Valerianus Paetus was executed because he had because he had stamped some likenesses of himself and plated them with gold to serve as ornaments for his mistresses.”(LXXIX.4) This was seen as a precursor to rebellion. Although hardly unanimous, these and similar passages tend to confirm that it was the imperial likeness on coins that often drew the particular attention.