Sessions Archive - Page 2 of 10 - Archaeological Institute of America

Between the Gods and the City: Portrait Statues as Votives

The language scholars use to talk about portrait statues set up outside official civic processes betrays the difficult time we have had in coming to terms with their function. Are […]

Votive Deposits or Sacred Rubbish? Reassessing the Evidence from the Acropolis of Syracuse

This paper investigates the Archaic Greek sanctuary of Ortygia, on the uppermost part of the island acropolis of Syracuse, focusing on the ritual and votive deposits. The excavations, carried out […]

Honorific Statuary in the Temples of Ptolemaic Egypt

The ancient Egyptians regularly displayed portrait statues in temple contexts. Such portraits could depict rulers, or they could be a type conventionally referred to as ‘private portraits,’ meaning that their […]

Blending Multiple Identities of the Gods in Hellenistic Literary and Inscribed Epigrams

‘Text World Theory’ codifies the way in which we make sense of any kind of discourse, by constructing ‘mental images’ of the situation described. Every discourse operates on many conceptual […]

Non-native and Migrant Birds in Etruria: the Rooster, the Swallow, and Others

Many studies today focus on interactions between animals and human beings. Because of its periodic presence, and integration into, the ecosystem it inhabits, avifauna constitutes a particularly interesting case-study. Some […]

Dining and Deposition. Distinguishing Human and Divine Use of Space in Sanctuaries by Deposits

This paper addresses the use of sanctuary space by gods and humans in connection with dining after animal sacrifice. The starting point is the ancient Greek notion of a sanctuary […]

Divine Portrait or Devotional Image? Gods among Mortals on Greek Vases

Greek vases present no shortage of images of the gods, but the nature of these divine figures is not always clearly understood. Using a combination of performance theory, the archaeology […]

An Ashy Fig a Day: Divine Prescriptions and Space in the iamata of Lebena

From the Asklepion of Lebena, Crete has come an intriguing collection of iamata, inscriptions which commemorate and record divine interventions in the healings of sanctuary visitors (Inscriptiones Creticae 1.17.12A-19; second […]

Extirpations in Etruria: Missing Lynxes and the Missing Link between Material Cultural and Ecological Knowledge

The epistemological background of Etruscan archaeology has historically downplayed the importance of environmental archaeology, in particular human relationships to plants and human-animal relationships beyond animal husbandry and agricultural pursuits. When […]

Coins Mirroring Sculptures: New Evidence for the Understanding of the Images of Antinous

If the numerous sculptures depicting Antinous are fairly well known, the numismatic sources, equally copious, have played a quite marginal role in the studies dedicated to the representations of this […]

The Portraits of the Roman Empresses on Coins found at Colonia Flavia Scupinorum

The coinage of the Roman empresses as vivid evidence for the imperial women, i.e., the imperial authority, is reflecting their role in the imperial cult but also the public image […]

Vessels as Portraits of Divine Queens

In the Hellenistic world, both royal courts and non-royal subjects deified their queens as a way to elevate and reaffirm the legitimacy of a ruling dynasty. While some women were […]

The Neo-Orientalizing Beasts of Late Archaic Caere

The terracotta roof decoration of Temple B in Pyrgi is evidence of a short-lived neo-Orientalizing phase in the élite’s imagery at Caere in the last decade of the sixth century […]

The Masks of Orthia and Ritual Ontology

What are the masks of Orthia? One answer is easy – they are a collection of archaic terracottas more or less in the shape of a human face, found in […]

Building Apollo in a Multicultural Peraia: Theorizing the Floor Deposit of the Temple of Apollo at Mesemvria-Zoni

The Sanctuary of Apollo of Mesemvria-Zoni (ancient Zonē), Samothrace’s most successful peraia holding, is overlooked in discussions of Greek sanctuaries of the Classical period; this oversight is due to the […]

The Spatiality of Epigraphy in Cult Caves, Ritual and Social Identities

Where did ancient visitors decide to inscribe within cult caves? What practical and symbolic considerations went into inscribing in particular locations, and how did these add meaning to the ritual […]

Creatures of the Sea on Architectural Terracottas of Caere

There is a vast body of scholarship on sea creatures in Etruscan funerary contexts, where they act as liminal entities marking the separation between the world of the living and […]

The Fantastic and the Real Deer of Etruria

The centrality of deer in Etruria has long been understood primarily through élite hunting scenes in art, with recent attention being paid to deer bone and antler in faunal assemblages […]

The Bonham Amphora at the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin TX: Sketching the Biography of a Contested Object in a University Collection

This paper delineates the biography of an Attic Late Geometric neck amphora, now in the collections of the Blanton Museum, University of Texas at Austin. Various archival resources in Greece […]

Geographies of Jupiter: An Analysis of the Distribution of Jovian Epithets in Italy

The overarching aims of my broader project are to examine conceptions of the ancient Romans’ highest deity, Jupiter, in Italy during the Imperial period. This will be accomplished by tracing […]

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