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Among the ceramic material of the votive deposit discovered in 1959 in Piazza San Francesco in Catania, there is a local black figure stamnoid pyxis still unpublished, extraordinary document of the development of Sikeliote ceramography of the Archaic period. The frieze depicts mounted warriors armed with helmet, spear and shield. An analysis of morphology, iconography and decorative technique, allows to identify the models, to sum up the traits characterizing the artistic personality of the painter and to place the pyxis in its historical and cultural framework, also trying to interpret the meaning of its presence among the anathemata of the sanctuary.

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This volume is the result of a workshop held at the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, 15-16 February 2017. The theme was Urban and rural space in the Greek polis world, and the participants came from the Department of Sciences of Engineering and Architecture of the Polytechnic University of Bari, Italy, and the Uppsala Department. Three of the four articles examine civic and sacred spaces in the Dodecanese, and the fourth treats the question of how the ancient Greeks perceived and mapped space in order to orientate themselves within it.

As the importance of the south-eastern Aegean and the coastal regions of south-western Asia Minor in the Late Classical and Hellenistic periods is becoming ever more apparent, continued research in this area allows us to gain a better understanding of these poleis and the role they played in the larger Greek world. This relatively short publication contributes to this research and also highlights the central role which highly visible sanctuaries played for travellers in unfamiliar territories.

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Summary

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K. Höghammar, M. Livadiotti, Introduction, pp. 5-6;
G. Rocco, Sacred architecture in Hellenistic Rhodes, pp. 7-38;
M. Livadiotti, The infrastructure of a Hellenistic town and its persistence in Imperial period: the case of Kos, pp. 39-76;
K. Höghammar, The sanctuary of the Twelve Gods in Kos and the stelai with proxeny decrees, pp. 77-100
A. Frejman, Some thoughts on ancient maps, travel, and the location of Greek rural sanctuaries, pp. 101-110.

ISBN 978-88-7140-754-8, e-ISBN 978-88-7140-753-1

The conference investigates the role that typological analysis can still play today, i.e. the use of research tools based on classifications in groups, sub-groups, types; it is clear that they can not be separated from stylistic observations, remembering what Bianchi Bandinelli said about how style and type contribute to generating the shape. Shape does not coincide with type or with style, but is the container that allows the meeting of these two factors. However, the formalistic vision inherited from the history of the art of the past century has been in progress for some time now, and new analytical tools have been introduced, such as the knowledge of materials and working techniques, the attention to the historical context and to the meaning of the meeting between the performer and the customer and consequently the iconographic meaning. To these elements another interpretation is added, that of visual language through the tools of semantics. The conference then investigates this complex situation by providing data on recent research on the topic.

Download the .pdf with table of contents and introduction: Decor. Decorazione e architettura nel mondo romano

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Luigi M. Caliò, Jacques des Courtils (a cura di), con la collaborazione di Francesca Leoni, L’architettura greca in Occidente nel III secolo a.C., Thiasos Monografie 8, Roma 2017, pp. 432.

ISBN 978-88-7140-787-6, e-ISBN 978-88-7140-786-9

The interpretation of the Western Hellenistic culture represents a mainly epistemological problem. The division of the disciplines in which the ancient western world is separated, among the different archaeologies (Greek, Etruscan, Italic, Roman, Illyric), do not give account of a phenomenon that instead has, in the sharing of features and themes, its own peculiarities. Necessarily a model is born in which the concept of Romanization or Hellenization are no longer feasible. The phenomenon lives instead on cultural paradigms that are wide and common to all the ethnic components that act in Italy. Of course there is a Greek matrix, but already the Western Greece was living with highly autonomous and peculiar elements with respect to the Motherland. The 3rd century is the period in which this new koinè finds renewed incentive by important actors such as Rome, Agathocle and Hieron II in Sicily and the Molossian dynasty in Epirus, Magna Graecia and Taranto. The conference then investigates this complex situation by providing data on recent research on the topic.

Download the .pdf with table of contents and introduction: L’architettura greca in Occidente nel III secolo a.C.

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Organized by Poul Pedersen, Birte Poulsen and John Lund at the Danish Institute at Athens, the conference is supported by the Carlsberg Foundation, the University of Southern Denmark, the Aarhus University, the National Museum.

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Odos Herefondos 14, Athens, January 24th-26th, 2018

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In the frame of a research project that aim to the reconstruction of the historical and archaeological dynamics that affected the section of the via Appia between Gravina in Puglia (BA) and Taranto, in Apulia et Calabria, surface surveys have been conducted along just under a third of the path of the Roman road included between the two modern towns. A fair amount of archaeological resources has been recorded in the area, most of them not previously known and consisted of artefact scatters, representing large time spans and different site types. Based on these data, it has been possible to put forward hypotheses about the relationships between the via Appia and the previous and subsequent road axes, outlining a preliminary framework of the ancient roadway in the considered area, both in terms of overlaps and continuity of use at different times, and in terms of relevance of the paths in their respective historical-economic contexts. Moreover, it has been possible to formulate new identifying proposals on the Blera and Sub Lupatia resting stations, reported by Itinerarium Antonini (121,3-5).

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The paper focuses on the well-known epistulae addressed by emperor Hadrian to the city of Aphrodisia (SEG L 1096) and, more specifically, on the letter from 125 A.D., especially the paragraph about the exchange of the gladiatorial games, offered by the municipal flamines, for the construction of an aqueduct. Attempting to shed more light on the mechanisms of the organization of munera by the local priests of the imperial cult, this paragraph is put into relation to some less-known inscriptions of munerarii from the zone of Lower Moesia and Thrace, which attest the existence in the Balcan region of the office of ἀρχιερεὺς δι’ ὅπλων. The analysis of this office, together with an alternative interpretation of the Aphrodisias inscription, induces us to approach more cautiously Hadrian’s epistula and keep the problem about the rights and the duties of the municipal flamines still open.

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This paper has the aim to widen the perspective on the study of global interaction through a specific category of objects: terracotta figurines. A new type of terracotta figurines arose in the Indian Deccan area in the period of greater development of transoceanic trade with Roman Egypt. The adoption of foreign elements in this Indian terracotta production can be read, indeed, as an indicator of increasing external contacts, and as the output of a stronger presence into the trade and cultural networks of ancient Globalization. Indo-Roman trade is the best-known part of a wider phenomenon of ancient globalization. The active parties in this trade route were Satavahana India and Roman Egypt. With a multidisciplinary approach it is possible to detect the long lasting outputs of trade contacts in local cultures. Most of all, it is possible to identify the fundamental contribution of apparently unimportant objects like terracotta figurines for personal devotion. From Egypt they reached India and were widespread into the local context; their iconography then merged with pre-existing local cults, imagery and rituals. The case study I will focus on is a peculiar type of Yaksha (nature spirit) figurine dated to the Satavahana period. A link can be indeed traced to the Egyptian representation of Bes. Examples will be used to introduce a new theoretical approach to ancient globalization studies.

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The International Conference was born out of synergy between the organizing committee, the Archaeology Department of the Aristotelis University of Thessaloniki and the Hellenic Superintendence of Antiquities. The actual archaeological researches in Northern Greece, due to the importance of the new discoveries and the restoration projects, stimulate this moment of debate on the complex theme of the development of urban form in Ancient Macedonia, on the definition of a new political system, such as the Hellenistic court, within an historical period of the Mediterranean which represents a turning point at the origin of Europe cultural traits.

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Rome, La Sapienza University, Faculty of Humanities

Odeion Hall, 14-15 December 2017

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Organized by the Ente Parco Archeologico della Valle dei Templi in Agrigento, on the occasion of the XI edition of the Gregorian Days.

Agrigento, Casa Sanfilippo, Strada Panoramica dei Templi

2-3 December 2017

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