American Journal of Archaeology

The recovery, identification, and analysis of archaeobotanical remains can help address a wide range of archaeological and historical research questions, from foodways, to the agricultural economy, to ritual practice and social identity. This state of the discipline article reviews the application of archaeobotanical techniques to classical archaeology from historical, regional, and thematic perspectives. It also highlights current challenges and limitations in the field of archaeobotany. The article concludes with some suggestions for future directions to improve the practice and outcomes of the discipline. Classicalperiod archaeobotanical research has not yet reached its full potential, and despite facing some internal and external issues, we envision a bright future for both archaeobotanical and classical archaeological research with a greater degree of communication and collaboration between the two fields.

During excavations at the Hellenistic-Roman port of Berenike (on the Red Sea coast of Egypt) in the winter of 2019, work in the so-called Northern Complex documented a religious space from the Late Roman period. The excavation of a portion of this space recorded material that, together with the architecture, suggests a ritual function associated with a falcon cult. This study examines the features of this edifice and the interpretation of the religious materials found in it and proposes a possible relationship with the Blemmyan population who lived in Berenike between the fourth and sixth centuries CE.

The movement of refuse through an ancient city remains poorly understood despite an increasing body of excavated and published evidence. Urban refuse deposits are commonly attributed to simple discard behaviors: residents casually threw away their refuse, unintentionally forming much of today’s archaeological record. This study reevaluates the formation processes of such deposits with quantitative data. Using an Ostian dumpsite and refuse deposits within Pompeian domestic spaces as case studies, I calculate the values of heterogeneity (richness and evenness) of the artifact assemblages. These values complement the qualitative methods archaeologists use to describe the heterogeneity of artifact assemblages. Crucially, the values are readily comparable and reveal patterns not previously recognized. These patterns indicate that none of the examined Pompeian refuse deposits derived from casual disposal. Instead, the data show that the refuse comprising them was reclaimed from the peri-urban dump and transported to where fill materials were needed during construction projects. Such behaviors reveal an intricate relationship between the residents and their refuse, where systematic reuse applications often followed disposal. The data derived from this study compel us to rethink how refuse deposits were formed, from where the refuse originated, and for what purpose it was deposited.

Studies investigating changes in domestic architecture from the Iron Age to the Roman period in the northwestern provinces of the Roman empire have often suggested an important degree of continuity in domestic social relations, although the province of Mediterranean Gaul, Gallia Narbonensis, has been underrepresented in these studies. This article employs access analysis to compare domestic space in Mediterranean Gaul at three preconquest Iron Age settlements (ca. 500–50 BCE) and five Roman-period houses from the first–second centuries CE. This analysis suggests that many Roman houses in Gallia Narbonensis helped structure quite different forms of daily social interactions and encounters through important changes in the physical organization of domestic space. In particular, the communitarian organization of domestic space for the Iron Age settlements seems to have encouraged daily encounters within and between domestic groups through shared, communal spaces, rather than separating social units into coherent sets of rooms that in a modern setting we would consider “houses.” By contrast, in the Roman period internally organized domestic spaces emphasized specialization and internal divisions, structuring socioeconomic distinctions, and in doing so, signaled an important social rupture that contrasts with other provinces of Gaul.