American Journal of Archaeology

The Graeco-Roman site of Tell Timai (ancient Thmuis) in Lower Egypt is among the largest urban tells in the Nile Delta, boasting substantial amounts of preserved earthen architecture. Although earthen architecture made up the vast majority of public and domestic structures in ancient Egypt, it still does not receive the same analytical attention from archaeologists as other categories of evidence. This paper presents a case study for the archaeological investigation of the earthen architecture at Tell Timai. The goal was to develop a methodology that can be implemented in the field by excavators with little geoarchaeological training and limited laboratory access in order to generate useful data for determining building stratigraphy and studying construction processes. Through the close examination and sampling of three buildings of different periods and scales, we tested a new field methodology combining geoarchaeological techniques and mensiochronology. The results provide information useful for stratigraphy and phasing as well as for identifying specific patterns of mudbrick manufacturing, production, and construction during the Graeco-Roman period at Tell Timai.

This article gathers the evidence for gladiatorial and wild-beast spectacles in the ancient city of Mytilene on Lesbos in the Roman province of Asia. It summarizes the available information regarding the conversion of the town theater into an arena and then presents four inscriptions related to gladiatorial and beast-fight spectacles, 12 panel- and altar-shaped stelae depicting single gladiators, and five reliefs depicting scenes of beast fights. I argue that most of the pieces should belong to monuments dedicated to the sponsors who offered these kinds of spectacles. With the exception of one inscription that is safely dated to the early first century CE and attests to venationes (beast fights) at Mytilene already in Augustan times, the other monuments are chronologically located in the second to third centuries CE. The monuments are local products and are characterized by their simple iconography. Of particular interest, however, is a relief presenting a mythologized beast-fight scene that may have been actually enacted in the amphitheater.

Baths played an essential role in the formation of the ideal Roman male. As a locus of demonstrating one’s belonging to the Roman citizenry through a collective act of cultus, in the face of public nudity and against the threats of mollifying luxury and superstitious beliefs, baths intensified the negotiation regarding the norms of masculinity. The decoration of the tepidarium of the Forum Baths in Pompeii can be read in light of these tensions. It presents two sets of naked male figures from different eras: burly telamon statues from a republican phase of the baths and stucco reliefs of sexually attractive youths from the last decade before Pompeii’s destruction in 79 CE. In this study, I attempt to look at the decoration from the point of view of the Roman bathers, and I contextualize the decoration both archaeologically and iconographically to determine the frames of its reception. I analyze how Roman masculinity was constructed in the process of identification with the normative ideal through the images. From this perspective, two main tensions emerge: one between self-control and the fertile force of the irrational embodied by the telamones, another between homoerotic desirability and heroism represented by the stuccoes. The bathers stood in the midst of these tensions.

A location referred to as “Parthenon” appears in the fifth- and fourth-century BCE inventories of Athena’s riches as one of the treasuries on the Acropolis of Athens, along with the Hekatompedon, the Proneos, the Opisthodomos, and the Archaios Neos. It is usually identified with the west room of the building today known as the Parthenon. Here, I offer a thorough review of the epigraphical, archaeological, and literary evidence and propose that the treasury called the Parthenon should be recognized as the west part of the building now conventionally known as the Erechtheion.

Behind every issue of the AJA stands a dedicated group of professionals who contribute to making the journal the eminent publication it is. First among them, I would like to acknowledge and thank the anonymous peer reviewers on whose expertise and uncompensated time the scholarly quality of the AJA depends. Our authors, the editorial staff, and the readers of the journal owe a deep debt of gratitude to all those who agree to assume this collective professional responsibility. The engaged comments of reviewers have guided and instructed me and have provided considerable help to the authors. I frequently approach new reviewers to evaluate manuscripts; however, I would be pleased to hear from anyone who would be interested in reviewing and has not yet been asked. 

Also due thanks are the authors who contribute the substance of the AJA, along with all who have submitted manuscripts to the journal. The process of moving a manuscript from submission to publication can require many steps, and the editorial and production staff of the AJA is grateful for the ready cooperation of our authors. I look forward to seeing new manuscripts from returning AJA authors and hope to see submissions from scholars both senior and junior who have not previously published their work in the AJA.

The AJA benefits from the significant contributions of a number of other individuals. The Book Review Editor is David L. Stone, and the Museum Review Editor is Josephine Shaya, to both of whom I am very grateful. I would also like to thank my assistants in the submission and initial editing process: Christine Johnston, a specialist in Late Bronze Age networks and now an assistant professor at Western Washington University, and Bethany Simpson, a specialist in Greco-Roman Egypt with a doctorate from UCLA. For the past year and a half, the business and production of the journal have been in the capable hands of Julia Homer; Elma Sanders, previously an independent AJA copyeditor; and web designer Amélie Walker-Yung, with assistance from Madeleine Donachie, Rebecca Ingram, Deana Colucci, and additional freelance copyeditors and proofreaders.

As we enter this new year, I would like to remind our readers about what is available, as open access content, at AJA Online (www.ajaonline.org). At least one full article, field report, or archaeological note from each issue is freely available at AJA Online, and the book reviews and museum reviews for each issue are fully accessible there. All book reviews from January 2010 on, and some book reviews from 2006 through 2009, are open access. Also on the website are listings for museum exhibitions, worldwide, related to topics within the scope of the journal; the listings include current and upcoming exhibits and archived lists back to December 2017. When I checked while writing this letter, the list contained an astonishing 162 current and upcoming exhibits related to Mediterranean and Near Eastern archaeology. 

Jane B. Carter
Editor-in-Chief

The main objective of this archaeological note is to present to the scientific community the most comprehensive data available on a spectacular new find from the territory of the Roman province of Thrace—a brass balsamarium shaped as a male head in a feline-skin cap. By providing a detailed description of the balsamarium, the results of its metallographic analysis, and an accurate account of its archaeological context and its date, we hope to clarify some still unsolved problems related to the function and production of such vessels.

This archaeological note presents the findings from a scientific analysis of the bronze of an over-life-sized cuirassed statue of Germanicus from Amelia (ancient Ameria). The examination was recently carried out in the Museo Archeologico di Amelia to determine both the nature of the statue’s production and its relative dating. The 41 nondestructive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry measurements taken on 32 different parts clearly show that there were two, not three, phases (as had been proposed in the only major monograph on the statue) involved in the production of this sculpture. Some analyses using inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometry were also carried out on drillings taken from detached fragments of the statue that were recently rediscovered in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale dell’Umbria in Perugia. The new scientific examinations indicate that all parts of the statue except the cuirass were produced at the same time and apparently were originally being prepared for gilding, which in the end was not carried out for reasons that are discussed.

Recent epigraphic studies have contextualized inscriptions within their archaeological settings, bringing these stones into the field of material culture studies. The time is now ripe to consider the full life-span of inscriptions and the cumulative assemblage of inscribed material on display at any one time. Although inscriptions appear to be “set in stone” at the moment of their carving, they are actually a dynamic medium capable of communicating with viewers centuries later. By examining textual and archaeological sources in Asia Minor, I argue that individuals in late antiquity (fourth–sixth centuries C.E.) read and reinterpreted older epigraphic material to suit present needs. Spoliated inscriptions built into a baptistery now in the museum in Burdur, Turkey, show evidence of sophisticated manipulation aimed at hiding the pagan identity of the original dedicator. At Ankara, I argue, the reuse of the Temple of Augustus and Roma as a church should be dated to late antiquity, and I consider potential modes of reading the Res Gestae Divi Augusti and a list of Galatian priests on its walls from an Early Christian perspective. Although the inscribed words remained the same, the messages communicated were transfigured by the profound shifts in cultural viewpoints that accumulated in the Late Imperial period.