American Journal of Archaeology

Nuova luce da Pompei (New Light from Pompeii) explored the role of artificial light in the lives of ancient Romans. In addition to presenting 180 rarely seen bronzes from Pompeii, including lamps, candelabra, and elegant statues that held lamps, the exhibition demonstrated the effects and meanings these lighting devices generated. Clearly, Roman lamps have lost their agency, presented as objects in museums or in photographs—a problem addressed by encouraging visitors to handle replicas of lamps and to light them virtually. In a virtual reality recreation of the triclinium of the House of Polybius, visitors could use a torch to light lamps and see what they could reveal—or fail to reveal. Videos of elaborate lamps with figures standing on their oil holes were particularly noteworthy, demonstrating their potential for “shadow play.” In addition to plumbing the meanings of the astonishingly varied imagery, the show investigated bronze metallurgy and modern conservation, as well as the role lamps played in the convivium, cult, nighttime pursuits, and commerce. A section on the creation of pastiches and copies evoked the antiquarian culture sparked by the discovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum. In its Rome venue, curators added a roomful of rarely seen objects from Rome’s former Antiquarium Comunale.

Among the more than 2,000 ancient engravings on marble outcrops in hills north and east of Vari, Attica, there appears a remarkable drawing of a building. The structure, which seems to be a temple, is identified by its inscription as “the Hekatompedon” and was produced by an individual named Mikon. This note presents the drawing and the inscription. Following a discussion of the peculiarities of the graffito and its relevance for our understanding of the term ἑκατόμπεδος, it argues that the graffito depicts an Archaic temple on the Acropolis of Athens.

This archaeological note reports on an architectural block from the peak sanctuary at Stelida on Naxos that is inscribed with a mason’s mark, the first such example from the island and one of only a handful outside of Crete and Akrotiri on Thera. The context of recovery immediately to the south of the sanctuary leads us to suggest that it originally formed part of the building’s back wall, the sign facing Thera, and Crete beyond—signaling a connection to and possibly protection from these important political loci. An alternative hypothesis sees the block as an altar. The design of the mason’s mark, a simple cross, is well attested at Knossos and several other sites on Minoan Crete, plus at Akrotiri on Thera, and at Mycenae in the Argolid. It is argued that this mason’s mark provides further evidence for Knossian politico-religious influence at Stelida.

An artificial terrace in the center of the city of Sardis in western Asia Minor formed a focus of urban life from the Early Imperial period until the early Byzantine era. Following the earthquake of 17 CE, the terrace became a major sanctuary of the imperial cult belonging to the koinon of Asia. The lavishly ornamented octastyle temple and broad range of honorific monuments attest the importance of the sanctuary for the first three centuries CE. In the fourth century, the temple was largely demolished, and the sanctuary plaza converted to elite housing. This region was later enclosed by an impressive fortification wall built almost entirely out of spolia from the temple and sanctuary. The houses were destroyed by one or more earthquakes in the early seventh century, and while most of the area was apparently abandoned, traces of occupation cast light on this little-known period of Sardis’ history.

In his final report of the excavations at Dura-Europos, Syria, the scholar Carl Kraeling established the site’s Christian Building as the ancient world’s preeminent example of a domus ecclesiae, a house converted into a church through architectural adaptation. In Kraeling’s interpretation, a private domestic structure (House M8A) built in 232 CE was later remade as a community-owned church through a single, deliberate program of modification. This article engages with legacy ideas about the Christian Building, unexplored archival records, and recent studies of Dura-Europos to rethink the building’s phases, functions, and dating. I argue that House M8A was not the domus ecclesiae that Kraeling envisioned—wholly, instantly, and permanently converted to a church—but a Christian house that retained a domestic aspect even as it was adapted for religious activity. The article proposes new phases for the building and advances an earlier chronology for its construction in the late second or early third century CE, a time that better fits revised estimates of Dura’s Roman development. This reinterpretation of the world’s oldest domestic church building bears significant repercussions for our understanding of early Christian architecture and communities and underscores the value of critical thinking and revisiting legacy ideas in archaeology.

This article offers an analysis of the Feminine Sacrificial Attendant figure type on the Column of Trajan frieze in Rome. We first present a detailed study of the Column of Trajan examples, focusing on both composition and broader narrative context. We argue, based on this methodology, that the traditional identification of these figures as masculine must be abandoned, in favor of a more demonstrable identification as feminine. By analyzing these figures as materializations of a sacrificial role—that both referred to contemporary norms and participated in their construction—this article demonstrates that our feminine identification has wide implications beyond the frieze itself. In particular, this figure type broadens our understanding of the variety of players in the life of the Roman army and the rites of Roman state religion more generally.

A striking find emerged from a tumulus in the eastern necropolis of Daskyleion in northwestern Anatolia: a white-ground cup depicting Hermes Psychopompos leading a deceased woman to the underworld. This article focuses on the painter or workshop associated with the cup and questions how it ended up in the multicultural context of a noble grave in a Persian satrapal center. The stylistic study of the vase painting suggests that the tondo was created by a Polygnotan painter, probably the Kleophon Painter, and the palaestra scene on the exterior may be by a lesser painter of the period, the Painter of Heidelberg 209. The outcome of the study challenges our knowledge of Classical Attic vase painting and provides clues about the eastern pottery trade of the late fifth century BCE. Considering the exclusivity of the cup, it must have been brought here as the product of a special and individual commission.