American Journal of Archaeology

The exhibition at the National Museum of Antiquities at Leiden God on Earth: Emperor Domitian (December 2021–May 2022) presented an overview of Domitian’s life in objects to demonstrate the significance and impact of his 15-year reign. The show focused on how he legitimized and shaped his rule, and it challenged the viewer to rethink the assessment of Domitian in ancient sources and his branding as one of the “bad” emperors. The Flavian dynasty, by forging a connection to Augustus, the most popular ruler before them, “anchored innovation” by linking new ideas to familiar ideas already established. The great achievement of the exhibition lay in the quality and scope of the 275 objects from more than 20 museums; the Flavian era emerged as equally artistically rich as that of the Julio-Claudians. Although the exhibition explicitly did not aim to recast Domitian as a “good” ruler but rather invited the viewer to consider all aspects of his image and reputation, at the same time it seemed to rehabilitate Domitian, presenting him as an important emperor in his own right and in a more positive light.

Fragments of incomplete material objects, too often relegated to storage, have the potential to help uncover production processes that had been believed lost or thought permanently obscured. Traditionally, study of the chaîne opératoire (operational sequence) has been limited to completed pieces, excluding in-process and discarded items. This omission creates a misleading narrative. Rather than a linear process, the manufacture of sculpted objects is a multistep, protracted endeavor. Through an examination of unfinished carving among Late Roman glass openwork vessels (also known as diatreta or “cage cups”), highlighting in particular inscribed glass openwork vessels that were in process, this discussion offers a new approach building on previous scholarship. Unfinished carving is a rich and varied category of material culture that can, and should, be regarded as a valuable and even crucial complement to completed pieces. This freshly conceived archaeology of Roman experiments, mistakes, and fragments helps shed new light on—and even resolve—long-standing debates concerning these renowned works. This article demonstrates that expanding the chaîne opératoire to include the unfinished can enrich our understanding of craft production in the Late Roman world.

The transport of water from street fountains into living spaces was tedious but essential labor that impacted the health and social integration of subelite populations, yet it remains understudied in work on Pompeii’s public water system. This article uses spatial network analysis to demographically model public fountain use at a unit-level scale. Dynamic neighborhoods are identified using least-cost routes between every external door and fountain in the city. Maximum and minimum ranges of labor and water accessibility are quantified by total daily time and energy fetching water per household, aggregate pedestrian traffic to fountains, and fountain crowding or underuse. Data are contextualized within disruptions to the water system from seismic events in the city’s final decades, the contributions of cistern and private water lines to daily needs, and comparative and primary textual evidence for the socioeconomic status and well-being of water fetchers. The results expose disproportionate inequality at the system’s peripheries, although most residents enjoyed good water access. Moreover, they reconstruct the scale of labor of marginalized sectors of Roman society that is underrepresented in textual and artistic sources, offering quantifiable comparanda for further studies on water accessibility in antiquity.

This article analyzes the naked boy who appears as a reader in the fresco cycle of the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii, ca. 60–40 BCE. Although this fresco and its many figures have received ample attention, few scholars have asked why the reading boy is naked. I mark the boy’s nakedness as proof of his enslavement, using iconographic and epigraphic evidence for child slaves in Roman-era Dionysiac cult. I also consider a Roman audience’s reception of this boy as decoration for the walls of a Late Republican villa. This image, I argue, worked to reinforce social hierarchies and the eroticization of child slaves, thereby perpetuating cultural systems of subjugation that organize the domestic sphere and the empire more broadly. By way of conclusion, however, I mark the painting’s unabashed acknowledgment of the lived experiences of a child slave as a subtle critique of slaveholding strategies, at least among enslaved viewers.

Content warning: Readers are advised that this article discusses evidence for the sexualization and sexual exploitation of minors, especially enslaved minors.

The Arch at Orange is well known among the Roman remains of southern France for its good preservation and exuberant visual program. Previous studies have focused on the meanings behind its martial iconography, considering the structure exclusively as the result of Roman intervention. A reconsideration of the Arch at Orange from a postcolonial perspective, looking at issues of placement, design, and viewership, situates the monument as a product of local colonial interests that purposely blended indigenous and pan-Mediterranean artistic traditions. Shifting attention to its reception by ancient viewers reveals the wide diversity of local responses to the art and architecture that accompanied the Roman conquest of southern Gaul.