American Journal of Archaeology

Five seasons of excavation (2008–2012) undertaken by the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon in the area of the forum of Roman Ashkelon (ancient Askalōn), a major seaport on the southern Levantine coast, have revealed a continuous sequence of occupation and building activity from the Hellenistic to the Crusader periods. Of primary interest are two monumental Roman phases: a first-century C.E. basilical structure that housed the city’s bouleuterion and a Severan enlargement and renovation of this building. Most of the Severan phase has been revealed, as well as substantial portions of the earlier basilica/bouleuterion phase and a monumental Hellenistic complex. This article provides an overview of these architectural phases, the evidence for their date, suggestions for reconstruction, and a conspectus of the pre- and post-Roman use of this area of the city. As some of the few systematically excavated examples of these building types in the southern Levant, these structures shed light on the principal monuments and the urban development of an important seaport at the height of its prosperity, and the evidence for the dismantling of the bouleuterion in late antiquity provides a glimpse into the end of Roman civic organization in an important city of the east.

The abandonment and destruction of temples in late antiquity has become the subject of widespread discussion in recent years. However, the provinces of the Danubian frontier have been left largely understudied in this respect. This article seeks to add new data and observations to this debate by determining several points regarding the temples of Noricum and Pannonia, including when a decline in their construction becomes evident, how sources of temple benefaction alter over time, and how these changes relate to building work undertaken across the civic sphere. It also looks at the abandonment of temples, focusing particularly on when they became common sources of spolia for other building projects, what evidence there is for the violent closure of temples, and who might have been responsible for this. I argue that there is an evident decline in the construction and restoration of temples from the early third century onward, while temple building materials became increasingly used as spolia from the Tetrarchic period onward. I also show that the violent destruction of temples in the fourth century was uncommon, and, in instances where it did occur, the identity of the perpetrators is open to interpretation.

This article examines processes of cultural and technological transmission by focusing on the effects of the introduction of the potter’s wheel. Since distinct production choices are tied to both micro- and macroscale processes that drive change in material culture, a study of such choices provides insight into processes of acculturation, technological transmission, and local social dynamics. The authors therefore examined macroscopically a large corpus of complete vessels from Ayia Irini, Kea, for evidence of the manufacturing technique(s) used in the production process. These locally produced pots, dating to the period spanning the Middle and Late Bronze Age in the Aegean (ca. 1900–1400 B.C.E.), when Ayia Irini acted as a hub of interregional exchange, attest to the adoption of the wheel by the local potters, presumably through contact with Cretan communities of practice who were already using this technique. Evidence for connections between local, Cretan, and Cycladic communities of practice is presented, and the reasons driving the process of innovation are considered. The results of this study confirm some established narratives about the introduction of the wheel but at the same time reveal significant differences between Aegean communities in their adoption of this new technology.