Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-v5vhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-18T01:11:15.234Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

12 - Experiencing Sense, Place and Space in the Roman Villa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2022

By
Hannah Platts
Edited by
J. A. Baird  and
April Pudsey
J. A. Baird
Affiliation:
Birkbeck College, University of London
April Pudsey
Affiliation:
Manchester Metropolitan University
Get access

Summary

Philosophical studies of the interpretation of sensory information have emphasized the central role of senses in the body’s experience of the world as well as highlighting the plurality and overlap in one’s sensory responses to it. This chapter investigates how far such concepts of experiencing space through a multisensory lens are valid for the ancient Roman villa residences of mainland Italy. Sensory responses to the Roman house have previously been restricted to examining sightlines within and outside the house, as well as movement and access within it. When we consider Pliny’s descriptions of his villas, Vitruvius’ guidance on developing a villa, or Seneca’s description of Scipio’s villa, however, it becomes clear that these residences could affect numerous sensorial responses. As such, foregrounding vision and movement above other senses experienced in the Roman domestic realm risks providing only a partial understanding of life in these residences. This chapter proposes the application of further theoretical frameworks, such as soundscapes and smellscapes, for studying the villa.

Keywords

Villa of DiomedesPompeiisensory archaeologysensoriumPliny the Younger
Type
Chapter
Information
Housing in the Ancient Mediterranean World
Material and Textual Approaches
 , pp. 381 - 411
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allison, P. M. (2001). Using the material and written sources: turn of the millennium approaches to Roman domestic space. American Journal of Archaeology 105, 181–208.Google Scholar
Augoyard, J. F. and Torgue, H. (2006). Sonic Experience: A Guide to Everyday Experience. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.Google Scholar
Barthes, R. (1982). Empire of Signs, trans. Howard, R.. New York: Hill and Wang.Google Scholar
Bartsch, S. and Elsner, J. (2007). Introduction: eight ways of looking at an ekphrasis. Classical Philology 102, i–vi.Google Scholar
Beacham, R. (1992). The Roman Theatre and Its Audience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Beacham, R. (1999). Spectacle Entertainments of Early Imperial Rome. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Bell, A. (2004). Spectacular Power in the Greek and Roman City. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bergmann, B. (1994). Painted perspectives of a villa visit. In Gazda, E., ed., Roman Art in the Private Sphere. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 49–70.Google Scholar
Bergmann, B. (2002). Art and nature at Oplontis. In McGinn, T. et al., Pompeian Brothels, Pompeii’s Ancient History, Mirrors and Mysteries, Art and Nature at Oplontis, & The Herculaneum ‘Basilica’. Portsmouth, RI : Journal of Roman Archaeology, 87–122.Google Scholar
Betts, E. (2011). Towards a multisensory experience of movement in the city of Rome. In Laurence, R. and Newsome, D., eds., Rome, Ostia and Pompeii: Movement and Space. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 118–32.Google Scholar
Betts, E. (2017). Senses of the Empire. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bull, M. and Back, L., eds. (2004). The Auditory Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Chinn, C. M. (2007). Before your very eyes: Pliny Epistulae 5.6 and the ancient theory of ekphrasis. Classical Philology 102(3), 265–80.Google Scholar
Clarke, J. (1991). The Houses of Roman Italy, 100BC–250AD: Ritual, Space and Decoration. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Classen, C. (1993). Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and across Cultures. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Classen, C. (1997). Foundations for an anthropology of the senses. International Social Science Journal 153, 401–12.Google Scholar
Cooley, A. and Cooley, M. (2004). Pompeii: A Sourcebook. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cormack, S. (2007). Tombs at Pompeii. In Dobbins, J. J. and Foss, P. W., eds., The World of Pompeii. London: Routledge, 585–606.Google Scholar
Cummings, V. (2002). Experiencing texture and transformation in the British Neolithic. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 21(3), 249–61.Google Scholar
Day, J., ed. (2013). Making Senses of the Past: Towards a Sensory Archaeology. Carbondale: Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
Day, J. (2017). Scents of place and colours of smell: fragranced entertainment in ancient Rome. In Betts, E., ed., Senses of the Empire: Multisensory Approaches to Roman Culture. Abingdon: Routledge, 176–92.Google Scholar
Derrick, T. (2017). Sensory archaeologies: a Vindolanda smellscape. In Betts, E., ed., Senses of the Empire: Multisensory Approaches to Roman Culture. Abingdon: Routledge, 71–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Du Prey, P. de la R. (1994). The Villas of Pliny from Antiquity to Posterity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Dyer, T. (1868). Pompeii: Its History, Buildings and Antiquities. London: Bell & Daldy.Google Scholar
Elsner, J. (2007). Viewing Ariadne: from ekphrasis to wall painting in the Roman world. Classical Philology 102(1), 20–44.Google Scholar
Evans, F. and Lawlor, L., eds. (2000). Chiasms: Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the flesh. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Favro, D. (1996). The Urban Image of Augustan Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Förtsch, R. (1993). Archäologischer Kommentar zu den Villenbriefen des jüngeren Plinius. Beiträge zur Erschliessung hellenistischer und kaiserzeitlicher Skulptur und Architektur 13. Mainz am Rhein: Zabern.Google Scholar
Fox, R. (2008). Tastes, smells and spaces: sensory perceptions and Mycenean palatial feasting. In Hitchcock, L., Laffineur, R. and Crowley, J., eds. DAIS. The Aegean Feast. Liège and Austin, University of Liège and University of Texas at Austin: 133–40.Google Scholar
Foxhall, L. (2000). The running sands of time: archaeology and short term time scales. World Archaeology 31, 484–98.Google Scholar
George, M. K., ed. (1999). Constructions of Space IV: Further Developments in Examining Social Space in Ancient Israel. LHBOTS 569. New York and London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
George, M. (2002). Review of Reading Space: Social Interaction and Identity in the Houses of Roman Pompeii by Grahame, M. Journal of Roman Studies 92: 238–39.Google Scholar
Grahame, M. (1993). Reading the Roman house: the social interpretation of spatial order. In Lesley, A., ed., Theoretical Roman Archaeology & Architecture: The Third Conference Proceedings. Glasgow: Cruithne Press, 48–74.Google Scholar
Grahame, M. (1997). Public and private in the Roman house: the spatial order of the Casa del Fauno. In Laurence, R. and Wallace-Hadrill, A., eds., Domestic Space in the Roman World: Pompeii and Beyond. Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series 22. Portsmouth, RI: JRA, 137–64.Google Scholar
Grahame, M. (1998). Material culture and Roman identity: the spatial layout of Pompeian houses and the problem of ethnicity. In Berry, J. and Laurence, R., eds., Cultural Identity in the Roman Empire. London: Routledge, 156–78.Google Scholar
Grahame, M. (2000). Reading Space: Social Interaction and Identity in the Houses of Roman Pompeii (A Syntactical Approach to the Analysis and Interpretation of Built Space). Oxford: Archaeopress.Google Scholar
Graves, L. (2020). Women’s domestic burden just got heavier with the coronavirus. Guardian, 16 March.Google Scholar
Hales, S. (2003). The Roman House and Social Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hamilakis, Y. (1998). Eating the dead: mortuary feasting and the political economy of memory in the Bronze Age Aegean. In Branigan, K., ed., Cemetery and Society in the Aegean Bronze Age. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 115–32.Google Scholar
Hamilakis, Y. (1999). Food technologies/technologies of the body: the social context of wine and oil production and consumption in Bronze Age Crete. World Archaeology 31, 38–54.Google Scholar
Hamilakis, Y. (2008). Time, performance and the production of a mnemonic record: from feasting to an archaeology of eating and drinking. In Hitchcock, L. A., Laffineur, R. and Crowley, J., eds., DAIS: The Aegean Feast. Liège and Austin: University of Liege, and University of Texas at Austin, 3–20.Google Scholar
Hamilakis, Y. (2013). Archaeology and the Senses: Human Experience, Memory and Affect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hamilakis, Y., Pluciennik, M. and Tarlow, S., eds. (2002). Thinking through the Body: Archaeologies of Corporeality. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.Google Scholar
Hamilakis, Y. and Sherratt, S. (2012). Feasting and the consuming body in Bronze Age Crete and Early Iron Age Cyprus. In Cadogan, G., Iakovou, M., Kopaka, K. and Whitley, J., eds., Parallel Lives: Ancient Island Societies in Crete and Cyprus. London: British School at Athens, 187–07.Google Scholar
Hamilton, S. and Whitehouse, R. (2006a). Three senses of dwelling: beginning to socialise the Neolithic ditched villages of the Tavoliere, Southeast Italy. In Jorge, V. et al., eds., Approaching ‘Prehistoric and Protohistoric Architectures’ of Europe from a ‘Dwelling Perspective’. Proceedings of the TAG session, Sheffield 2005. Journal of Iberian Archaeology 8. Porto: Association for the Improvement of Cooperation in Iberian Archaeology, 159–84.Google Scholar
Hamilton, S. and Whitehouse, R. (with Brown, K., Combes, P., Herring, E. and Seager Thomas, M.) (2006b). Phenomenology in practice: towards a methodology of a ‘subjective’ approach. European Journal of Archaeology 9(1), 31–71.Google Scholar
Hannah, R. (2009). Time in Antiquity. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hanson, J. (2003). Decoding Homes and Houses. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hillier, B. and Hanson, J. (1984). The Social Logic of Space. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hopwood, M. (2013). Sustenance, taste, and the practice of community in Ancient Mesopotamia. In Day, J., ed., Making Senses of the Past: Towards a Sensory Archaeology. Carbondale: Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University Carbondale and Southern Illinois University Press, 222–42.Google Scholar
Houston, S. and Taube, K. (2000). An archaeology of the senses: perception and cultural expression in ancient Mesoamerica. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 10, 261–94.Google Scholar
Houston, S. and Taube, K. (2003). Sensual Relations: Engaging the Senses in Culture and Social Theory. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Houston, S. and Taube, K. (2005). Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Insoll, T. (2007). Archaeology: The Conceptual Challenge. London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
Jashemski, W. (1993). The Gardens of Pompeii, Volume II: Appendices. New York: Caratzas Brothers.Google Scholar
Klynne, A. (2005). The laurel grove of the Caesars: looking in and looking out. In Klynne, A., and Santillo Frizel, B., eds., Roman Villas around the Urbs: Interaction with Landscape and Environment. Proceedings of a Conference held at the Swedish Institute in Rome, September 17–18, 2004. Rome: Swedish Institute at Rome.Google Scholar
Kockel, V. and Weber, B. F., eds. (1983). Die Villa delle colonne a mosaico in Pompeji. Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung 90(1), 51–89.Google Scholar
Laurence, R. and Newsome, D., eds. (2011). Rome, Ostia, Pompeii: Movement and Space. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lawrence, R. (1990). Public collective and private space: a study of urban housing in Switzerland. In Kent, S., ed., Domestic Architecture and the Use of Space: An Interdisciplinary, Cross-Cultural Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 73–91.Google Scholar
Lawson, G. and Scarre, C., eds. (2006). Archaeoacoustics. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.Google Scholar
Leach, E. W. (2004). The Social Life of Painting in Ancient Rome and on the Bay of Naples. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lefebvre, H. (1991). The Production of Space, trans. Smith, D. Nicholson. Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Linderski, J. (1985). The dramatic date of Varro, De Re Rustica, Book III and the elections in 54. Historia 34, 248–54.Google Scholar
Linderski, J. (1989). Garden parlors: nobles and birds. In Curtis, R. I., ed., Studia Pompeiana et classica in Honor of Wilhelmina F. Jashemski, II. New Rochelle, NY: Aristide D. Caratzas, 105–27.Google Scholar
MacGregor, G. (1999). Making sense of the past in the present: a sensory analysis of carved stone balls. World Archaeology 31, 258–71.Google Scholar
Marzano, A. (2007). Roman Villas in Central Italy: A Social and Economic History. Leiden and Boston: Brill.Google Scholar
Mattusch, C. C. with Lie, H, (2005). The Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum: Life and Afterlife of a Sculpture Collection. Los Angeles: Getty Publications.Google Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962 [1945]). Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Smith, C.. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mongelluzzo, R. (2013). Maya palaces as experiences: ancient Maya royal architecture and its influence on sensory perception. In Day, J., Making Senses of the Past: Toward a Sensory Archaeology. Carbondale: Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University Carbondale and Southern Illinois University Press, 90–112.Google Scholar
Neudecker, R. (1988). Die Skulpturenausstattung Römischer Villen in Italien, Mainz am Rhein: Zabern.Google Scholar
Nevett, L. C. (2010). Domestic Space in Classical Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Platts, H. (2011). ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’: competitive display within the Roman villa landscape. In Fisher, N. and Van Wees, H., eds., Competition in the Ancient World. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 239–79.Google Scholar
Platts, H. (2016). Approaching a lived experience of ancient domestic space. In Griffiths, S. and von Lünen, A., eds., Spatial Cultures: Towards a New Social Morphology of Cities. Abingdon: Routledge, 43–53.Google Scholar
Platts, H. (2019). Multisensory Experience in Ancient Rome: Power and Space in Roman Houses. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Porteous, J. D. (2006). Smellscape. In Drobnik, J., ed., The Smell Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg, 89–106.Google Scholar
Potter, D. (2014). The scent of Roman dining. In Bradley, M., ed., Smell and the Ancient Senses. New York: Routledge, 120–32.Google Scholar
Purcell, N. (1987). Town in country and country in town. In Macdougall, E. B., ed., Ancient Roman Villa Gardens. Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History of Landscape Architecture 10. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 185–203.Google Scholar
Ricouer, P. (1970). The model of the text: meaningful action considered as a text. Social Research 38, 529–62.Google Scholar
Robertson, E. C., Seiber, J. D., Fernandez, D. C. and Zender, M. U. (2006). Space and Spatial Analysis in Archaeology. Calgary: University of Calgary Press.Google Scholar
Sauer, E., ed. (2004). Archaeology and Ancient History: Breaking down the Boundaries. London and New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmeling, G. (2011). A Commentary on the Satyrica of Petronius. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Semper, G. (1984). Structural elements of Assyrian–Chaldean architecture. In Gottfried Semper: In Search of Architecture, trans. Herrmann, W.. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Serres, M. with Latour, B. (1995 [1990]). Conversations on Science, Culture and Time, trans. Lapidus, R.. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sherwin-White, A. N. (1966). The Letters of Pliny. A Historical and Social Commentary. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Skeates, R. (2010). An Archaeology of the Senses: Prehistoric Malta. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, M. (2007). Sensing the Past: Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Tasting, and Touching in History. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Stöger, H. (2011). The spatial organization of the movement economy: the analysis of Ostia’s Scholae. In Laurence, R. and Newsome, D., eds., Rome, Ostia and Pompeii: Movement and Space. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 215–42.Google Scholar
Storey, G. R. (1999). Archaeological and Roman society: integrating textual and archaeological data. Journal of Archaeological Research 7(3), 203–48.Google Scholar
Synnott, A. (1991). Puzzling over the senses: from Plato to Marx. In Howes, D., ed., The Varieties of Sensory Experience: A Sourcebook in the Anthropology of the Senses. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 61–76.Google Scholar
Talbert, R. (1984). The Senate of Imperial Rome. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Veitch, J. (2017). Soundscape of the street: architectural acoustics in Ostia. In Betts, E., ed., Senses of the Empire. Abingdon: Routledge, 54–70.Google Scholar
Vout, C. (2007). Sizing up Rome, or theorizing the overview. In Larmour, D. H. J. and Spencer, D., eds., The Cites of Rome: Time, Space, Memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 295–322.Google Scholar
Wallace-Hadrill, A. (1988). The social structure of the Roman house. Papers of the British School at Rome 56, 43–97.Google Scholar
Wallace-Hadrill, A. (1994). Housing and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Watson, A. and Keating, D. (1999). Architecture and sound: an acoustic analysis of megalithic monuments in Prehistoric Britain. Antiquity 73, 325–36.Google Scholar
Weddle, C. (2017). Blood, fire and feasting: the role of touch and taste in Graeco-Roman animal sacrifice. In Betts, E., ed., Senses of the Empire. Abingdon: Routledge, 104–19.Google Scholar
Williams, J. (2012). Musical space and quiet space in medieval monastic Canterbury. In Day, J., ed., Making Senses of the Past: Towards a Sensory Archaeology. Carbondale: Illinois University Press, 196–221.Google Scholar
Wolf, E. R. (1990). Facing power – old insights, new questions. American Anthropologist 82, 586–96.Google Scholar
Zarmakoupi, M. (2014). Designing for Luxury on the Bay of Naples: Villas and Landscapes (c.100 BCE–79 CE). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×