The coins minted by the Carthaginians in silver, gold, electrum, billon and bronze comprise one of the largest coinages that circulated in the W Mediterranean before the Roman conquest. They provide essential information on both the history and economy of Carthage and on Carthaginian interactions with their neighbors, allies and adversaries. Carthaginian bronze coins, in particular, are frequently found throughout the Punic world, in each of its core regions (N Africa from Tripolitania to Algeria, Sicily, Sardinia, Ibiza and the southernmost Iberian peninsula), as well as in Italy. Yet few accounts of Carthage and the Punic Wars take Carthaginian coinage into consideration, and an emphasis on Greek and Latin literary sources continues to drive the narrative. Of course, in evaluating the political and economic implications of numismatic evidence one needs to distinguish from the start between the issues of the Carthage mint and those of other mints that struck coins under Carthaginian authority. Carthaginian coinage did not follow a linear path of development. As the Carthaginians began to produce coins in Sicily earlier than in N Africa, the start of minting at Carthage deserves careful scrutiny. This essay, based upon an ongoing study of Carthaginian bronze and billon coins, will review the history of modern scholarship and current research on Carthaginian coinage, focussing upon the formative period of the Carthage mint between c.350 and 300 B.C. in order to define the main aspects of its output, its relevance for the monetization of the Carthaginian homeland, and the sequence of the earliest issues.

The debate on the relationships between Rome, Italy, and the Mediterranean world in the Archaic and mid-Republican periods remains very lively. Complementing the most recent discoveries and interpretations, I present two unknown mid-Republican documents from the Arx, the N summit of the Capitoline hill (fig. 1). Excavations for the Monument to Victor Emmanuel II brought to light after 1887 many walls and artifacts, which have been studied almost exclusively to produce archaeological maps or catalogues of objects, but the structures sealed beneath the basilica of Santa Maria in Aracoeli toward the end of the 13th c., rediscovered in the 1980s and surveyed by the present author since 2001, shed new light on a number of religious, historical, topographical, architectural and art-historical issues.

The new archaeological evidence may be summarized as follows. In the 1st c. B.C., an aristocratic domus set on three levels occupied the NW sector of the Arx; it was remodeled in the Flavian and Severan periods (figs. 2-3). Apparently a location of the temple of Juno Moneta on the site of the Aracoeli must be ruled out. Among the structures still preserved beneath the basilica, which include an Imperial-era wall with huge curvilinear spurs that can be associated with the Iseum Capitolinum, we may mention an ashlar wall in blocks of Grotta Oscura tuff (a stone available after the defeat of Veii in 397 B.C.) that constituted the façade of a monument with a false arch dating from the 4th c. B.C. (fig. 2).

In the Greek world, the practice of decorating walls with painted stucco emerged in the 5th or 4th c. B.C. and was at first limited to public and religious monuments and the palaces of rulers, later spreading to the houses of the aristocracy. In the homes of the nobility, painted decoration enhanced the ornamentation of rooms used for receiving visitors, such as the dining room (andron), in which the floors were sometimes decorated with mosaics, most often with geometric motifs. In the wealthiest abodes, as seen at Pella in the 4th c. B.C., Alexandria, or on Delos in the 2nd c. B.C., a mosaic picture called an emblema sometimes lay at the centre of the mosaic. In the realm of domestic art, in the Hellenistic age images were restricted to the mosaic floors. The walls were ornamented with architectural elements that imitated, in stucco relief, the fashions that could be seen in the masonry and marble veneers of temples and palaces. This type of décor, established in the homes of Greek nobility throughout the Hellenistic era, is traditionally known as the masonry style or incrustation style.

The Ploutonion of Hierapolis (Phrygia) is mentioned in numerous Greek and Latin literary sources, which stress its distinctive natural features and the rites that were performed there. From the 19th c. onwards, this sanctuary was the object of investigations and hypotheses on the part of various scholars regarding its exact location, without however reaching a satisfactory solution to the problem. The famous place of worship was finally identified thanks to a large-scale topographic survey of the entire settlement and the surrounding area, undertaken by the Italian Archaeological Mission (hereafter MAIER) as part of the creation of the Atlas (Atlante) of Hierapolis. Specifically, in the area south of the Sanctuary of Apollo, as a result of these investigations various masonry structures belonging to monu-mental buildings were discovered. Also found in the area were sculpted marble capitals with lions attacking bulls and Ionic capitals with masks, which had clearly been brought from the Stoa-basilica, built in the Antonine period along the E side of the North Agora.

In a series of studies about settlement density in the Rhine area from protohistoric to modern times, K.-P. Wendt and A. Zimmermann try their hand at the difficult task of evaluating the palaeodemography of a region. Their task is all the more complex because these are times and spaces for which written sources are lacking, as a result of which reasoning relies very broadly on interpretation of the archaeological record. The two researchers also attempt to characterize the density of rural settlements and their spatial distribution. I shall not dally on the methods employed, which involve quite complex statistics and geomatics (anyway, they lie outside my area of scientific competence), and shall take the figures at face value, even if I might question some of them. I shall contemplate the economic impact of population growth on the countryside of Gaul in Imperial times. It is a subject that has often been addressed, but one which I intend to reconsider in the context of a European programme on this issue. The relationship between population numbers, agricultural yield, gross domestic product and taxation has certainly been one key to our understanding of the Roman economy ever since the model suggested by K. Hopkins. Here, however, I do not wish to proceed in terms of theory, but intend to review critically the archaeological sources, which, for want of written evidence, are our mainspring for evaluating the key components of economic development on the regional scale of NE Gaul.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the production and the use of “standardized” architectural elements by shifting the perspective from the economics of the interregional marble trade to the logistics of the marble construction industry during the 1st-3rd c. A.D. This chronological period coincides with the phenomenon of the “marmorization” of urban spaces in the Mediterranean; characterized by adorning public areas with marble architecture, it was responsible for an increasing demand for this material. The paper focuses on the interregional distribution of marble and coloured stones for construction. For methodological reasons, aspects related to the Roman “stone trade”, such as the supply of local construction material and the distribution of sarcophagi and statuary, will not be considered. The emphasis will be on voluminous and solid construction material, used predominantly for freestanding architectural components.

The Terme dell’Indirizzo (to give them their Italian name) stand near the centre of modern Catania (access today is from Piazza Currò) on Sicily's E coast (fig. 1). They are not a new discovery: the ancient structure remains as a standing building. It is not just the best-preserved Roman bath-building in Sicily; it is among the best-preserved examples of its type anywhere in the empire, the original roofs of nearly every surviving room being, remarkably, intact. Despite this, the structure is little known, mainly because it has been publicly accessible only on sporadic occasions. Our purpose is to make the baths better known by presenting a modern survey of the standing structure, with new information above all on the building's geometry and construction techniques, and by setting it in the context of bath-buildings in Sicily and the wider empire.

The relationship between Roman villas and their re-use as ecclesiastical buildings in late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages has been much investigated in recent years. This topic is now integrated into the debate about the end of the villas and of rural settlements more generally. Since the bibliography is extensive, I shall highlight only the main interpretative and more recent studies. As is argued in a series of studies focusing on the Italian peninsula, Roman villas underwent structural, functional and spatial changes from the end of the 4th c. despite their continued use. The most striking modification is the erection of churches on rural settlements. The chronology and nature of this Christianisation of the countryside are still subject to debate. I will examine the best-known villas in the territory corresponding to northern Tuscany, paying close attention to those of the late-antique period. I will then proceed to an analysis of those villas where the foundation of churches can be identified during the transition from late antiquity to the Early Middle Ages.

From 1981 to 2002, in various lectures and writings, I presented my suggestion about the “Roman” conception of the Ludovisi Suicidal Gaul, without eliciting positive responses. What has prompted me to re-open this issue after the passing of so many years? Perhaps the catalyst was a major exhibition — Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World — held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from April 18 to July 17, 2016, together with its impressive catalogue. There, an essay by M. Papini reviewed present knowledge about the victory dedications of the Attalids and the stone bases for them erected at Pergamon within the precinct of Athena Nikephoros. Although admitting that certainty was impossible and that serious difficulties existed about previously attempted reconstructions, he reproduced two drawings that showed the Ludovisi Gaul atop the large cylindrical monument as well as on the long rectangular pedestal “leaving aside [other] improbable attempts … and even more the interpretation of the marble pieces as Roman works evoking Pergamon ‘in the grand manner’.” The Ludovisi Gaul was not part of the New York exhibition. Its companion piece, the Dying Gaul collapsing on a broken trumpet, did receive a catalogue entry (by E. Polito) that reiterated the difficulty of visualizing the original placement. Yet these two Gauls (the “Trumpeter” and the Ludovisi Gaul) have joined the sculptures from the Pergamon Great Altar as virtual touchstones for our understanding of Pergamene style even though they may not be “Greek” at all, let alone Pergamene.

The Casa di Sallustio at Pompeii is one of the houses that belongs in every book and study on domestic life and architecture in the Roman era. The fact that it was excavated at the start of the 19th c., however, means that large parts of its decoration have long since been lost through weathering and neglect, a situation further compounded by the damage resulting from Allied bombing in 1943. In order to reconstruct, as accurately as possible, a picture of the house as it stood in antiquity, it is therefore particularly important to evaluate all the historical visual sources that document the house in a better condition. This task has already been extensively carried out in the monograph of A. Laidlaw and M. S. Stella (2014). With a similar goal, I propose to take a fresh look at a cork model dating from 1840 today housed in Aschaffenburg (Bavaria) in order to discuss its context and original function. Next, A. Laidlaw will compare the model's meticulously detailed copies of the structure and decoration, still in 1840 almost perfectly preserved, to the present battered state of the extant remains, thereby confirming the importance of the Aschaffenburg model as the primary archaeological source for the house.

V. Kockel has discussed the model as one of the few surviving examples of a form of three-dimensional archaeological recording that was developed by the Padiglione family and other model-makers for the King of the Two Sicilies. Here I provide comparisons with the extant remains of the house, to illustrate how much more we can learn from the model of specific details of the structure and decoration that have been lost since 1840, when the building was still in a remarkably better state of preservation. Aside from the inevitable gradual deterioration of wall-paintings and pavements, which remained almost completely open to the elements after the original excavation was completed in 1809, a direct hit by a bomb on September 23, 1943, left the SE corner a mound of overgrown ruins. In 1970-72, when the Soprintendenza completely roofed the main house block, cleared the bomb rubble, and added low modern walls along the lines of the destroyed rooms to give tourists some idea of the original plan, I directed 37 soundings below the level of A.D. 79. Then between 2005 and 2007, as part of the Progetto Regio VI under F. Coarelli and F. Pesando, M. Stella and I added 17 more soundings, mainly in the area of the peristyle and on the S side of the house. Our final study of the house provided a detailed analysis of its original excavation during the Napoleonic Wars, a full description of the extant rooms and building history, and reports on our excavations.

The only three surviving frescoes from the Roman world to depict a series of episodes from Homer's Iliad in continuous frieze format are all found on a single street in Pompeii. They were published in 1953 in V. Spinazzola's Pompei alla luce degli scavi nuovi di Via dell’Abbondanza (anni 1910-1923), vol. 2, under the editorship of S. Aurigemma, whose detailed descriptions and interpretation of the iconography and epigraphy have remained largely unchallenged. Relatively poorly preserved, they exhibit a puzzling interplay between their iconography, epigraphy and the Homeric text, and even the chronology of the epic itself. Each of the Iliad friezes, like the Odyssey frescoes in the Vatican Museums, in parts reflect close adherence to the text of their respective epics, yet each contains details which do not derive from the Homeric account: some alter it in subtle ways, noticeable only to those who know their Homer well, but there are also extra-Homeric figural scenes and painted epigraphy in the form of labels which, although traditionally considered to be errors made by an ill-educated artist or even evidence of the use of hypotheses of the Iliad and Odyssey, must derive from some external source. This paper seeks to show that in the Iliad frieze of the Casa di D. Octavius Quartio it may be possible to establish the source of the extra-Homeric insertions: the details appear to refer not only to the erudite realm of Homeric epic, but also to the thrill and violence of contemporary arenas.

A bronze portrait of a child (figs. 1-4) belonging to the category of “small format” portraits is preserved in the Archaeological Museum of Badajoz (inv. no. 4471). It was found in 1970 in excavations conducted by J. M. Peralta y Sosa on a farm in the Vega del Ortiga, an area east of Medellín in the territory between that town and Don Benito (Lusitania), some 35 km from Mérida (Augusta Emerita). In the excavated area of 40 m2 (fig. 5) were two cisterns and a rectangular well, at the bottom of which was the bronze portrait. The N cistern measured 3.8 x 1.25 m. Attached to its E side was a rectangular (80 x 60 cm) well. A channel in the centre of the S wall of the well was connected to a square (3.45 x 2.9 m) cistern. From its W wall a drain leads into a channel towards the Ortiga river, which flows by some 50 m away. On the E side of the excavation area were two identical column bases which could have belonged to a peristyle. One is a square (90 x 80 cm) block preserving traces of a column shaft 65 cm in diameter, while the other, 3 m to the north, retains the beginning of the shaft. From this point a wall (45 cm thick) faced with stucco starts to head north. The pottery found during the excavation included Arretine, South Gaulish and thin-walled wares belonging to the first quarter of the 1st c. A.D. The site appears to have been part of a Roman villa.

A monumental tomb has been discovered at Pompeii in the Stabian Gate area during renovation work on a public building, constructed in the early 19th c., that currently houses the offices of the Archaeological Park. The tomb is part of a necropolis that developed alongside an important gate in the S sector of the city walls. In this area, 19th-c. investigations brought to light the gate as well as a section of paved road and two schola tombs in grey tuff, set directly on the left side of those leaving the city, on public ground and therefore authorised by the ordo decurionum (fig, 1). The first of the tombs is that of Marcus Tullius, a prominent figure in Pompeian society known for the dedication of the Temple of Fortuna Augusta; the second belongs to the duumvir Marcus Alleius Minius. Research was first conducted here by A. Maiuri, then again in the period 2001-2 when an additional stretch of paved road and two tombs on its right side were brought to light. The new, ongoing excavation, launched in 2016 to consolidate the foundations of the 19th-c. building but complicated by that building's looming presence, led to the rediscovery of a monumental tomb which had actually been found, partially excavated and robbed at the moment of the construction of the 19th-c. building.

There can hardly be any doubt that goods moved in large quantities and over great distances under the Roman empire. This awareness is borne out of a long tradition of archaeological research attesting to the widespread distribution of specific categories of material culture across the full expanse of the Mediterranean and beyond. This phenomenon has been interpreted as a more or less direct result of Rome's military expansion and the fundamental political unification which came with it, bringing about unprecedented conditions which favoured trade and exchange. Scholarship has often stressed the rôle played in this by ‘institutions’: the spread and adoption of a common set of laws, currency and units of measure, fostered by a relatively long period of internal peace and political stability, would have boosted the economic performance of the empire to levels that had not been witnessed before and would not be seen again for many centuries. Indeed, the notion of ‘efflorescence’ has sometimes been employed to describe and explain the kind of economic growth to which this process might have contributed.

The dense maritime material record off SE Sicily offers a vibrant testimony to millennia of cultural interaction between west and east, south and north (fig. 1). Pioneering underwater work by G. Kapitän from the late 1950s onward brought this corner of the Mediterranean Sea to scholarly attention through a series of remarkable shipwreck finds, including several massive stone cargoes at Marzamemi and Isola delle Correnti. Even among these rich finds, one site proved particularly intriguing and would become central to Kapitän's efforts: the “church wreck”, named for its assemblage of partially prefabricated marble and other stone elements intended to decorate the interior of a Christian basilica. First spotted by fishermen and reported to the local authorities, the site was preliminarily surveyed in 1960 by Kapitän in collaboration with P. N. Gargallo. Kapitän's investigations here unfolded intermittently over the following two decades, revealing a striking material assemblage and constructing a broad narrative around the “church wreck”.

This paper presents the results of the geophysical prospection conducted at the site of Meninx (Jerba) in 2015. This was the first step in a Tunisian-German project (a cooperation between the Institut National du Patrimoine, Tunis, and the Institut für Klassische Archäologie der Ludwig-Maximilans-Universität München), the aim of which is to shed light on the urban history of the most important city on the island of Jerba in antiquity.

Meninx, situated on the SE shore of the island (fig. 1), was the largest city on Jerba during the Roman Empire and eponymous for the island's name in antiquity. The outstanding importance of this seaport derived from the fact that it was one of the main production centers of purple dye in the Mediterranean. With the earliest secure evidence dating to at least the Hellenistic period, Meninx saw a magnificent expansion in the 2nd and 3rd c. A.D. It was inhabited until the 7th c. when the city was finally abandoned.

While there have been a number of inquiries into agricultural production and amphora manufacture, discussion of the relationship between the two remains limited. A recent article by A. Bevan that examines the history of ‘containerization’ in the Mediterranean from the early Bronze Age to the 20th c. A.D. illustrates one side. It focuses on different manifestations of containers, emphasizing their cultural impact over the whole history of civilization in the region. While underscoring the importance of these transport vessels as packaging, particularly for liquid commodities, he provides limited consideration of the mechanisms behind the goods moving into these containers. Studies concerned with agricultural production are also on the rise, but scholars often limit the focus to amphorae. For instance, in analyzing capital investment in large-scale farms, A. Marzano commented:

Eastern Upper Galilee in the Roman period evidently housed two ethnic groups in an often hostile relationship (cf. Jos., BJ 3.35-40): in the north, a pagan population belonging to the chora of Tyre, which would have included Qedesh, and in the south a Jewish population. The two ethnic-based territories, which exhibit clear differences in their material culture, were separated by the deep ravine of Naḥal Dishon (wadi Hindaj). Other than urban temples, pagan temples, usually dated to the 2nd and 3rd c. A.D., are limited to the area north of Naḥal Dishon, while synagogues, which continued to be erected into the late-antique period, lie to its south. Qedesh lies 35 km southeast of the large metropolis of Tyre (fig. 1) across a rough mountainous area which made communication somewhat difficult.