Search Abstracts from Past Meetings
Abstracts appear in the order of presentation and represent papers accepted by the Program Committee during its review process. Final changes made prior to the annual meeting may not be reflected.
The House of the Vestals 100 Years After Van Deman
WORKSHOP
Thursday, January 10, 11:15 AM - 1:15 PM
MODERATORS
Russell T. Scott, Bryn Mawr College and Celia Schultz, Yale University,
Despite its impressive dimensions and central location, the so-called “House of the Vestal Virgins” in the Roman Forum has long failed to attract the attention it merits since the excavations of Rodolfo Lanciani and Giacomo Boni in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was left to the American archaeologist Esther Van Deman, who followed Boni at work, to provide a brief interpretation in English of his excavations in 1909. Her account received the imprimatur of Platner-Ashby in 1929 and is still regularly cited in the literature on the monuments of the ancient city. 2009 marks the centenary of Van Deman’s publication and in this workshop panelists will preview the results of new excavations and research carried out by the American Academy in Rome and Bryn Mawr College, in collaboration with the Archaeological Superintendency for Rome, from 1987-1992 and, again, from 2004-2008. Presentations will address the ceremonial, religious, and secular uses of the building and document the principal phases in its history from beginning to end, for which the results of the later campaigns have been particularly important.
PANELIST(S)
Catherine Person, Bryn Mawr College, Katherine Boller, University of Virginia, and Charlotte Steffensen and Christina Trier, University of Copenhagen
