In his recent study of religion and imperialism in the Achaemenid Persian Empire, Bruce Lincoln depicts the Achaemenids as savage and decadent in order to make a point about contemporary American foreign policy. This paper challenges Lincoln’s vision of the empire by examining the severe methodological flaws that underlie it, especially his…[Read more]

It has recently been argued that a group of five monuments at S. Omobono were part of a single building program, attributed to the Roman consul M. Fulvius Flaccus in 264 BCE, a program that also included a monument at Orvieto, loc. Campo della Fiera. The monuments in question include two altars, a circular ‘donarium’ and fragments of two bases car…[Read more]

This article addresses how current archaeological approaches to political boundaries potentially misconstrue evidence for mobile kingship.

Adjudicado a un momento histórico concreto, tras la conquista cristiana de Toledo (1085) y su incorporación a los reinos cristianos, el mudéjar se ha utilizado al mismo tiempo como sustento de la idea de convivencia entre musulmanes y cristianos y como definición de un «estilo nacional» dentro del arte español. Durante el redescubrimiento de al-…[Read more]

Abstract: El impacto del colonialismo y del recién descubierto Oriente provocó que el continente europeo proyectase en aquellas tierras lejanas, llenas de exotismo, leyendas y sensualidad, sus propias pasiones prohibidas y sus más oscuros deseos. El erotismo que las culturas indígenas despertaban en la sociedad victoriana llevó a la creación de so…[Read more]

The article deals with the tumba (or tomba) and with the diffusion of this building type in the medieval rural territory of Rimini. By tumba we normally mean a fortified settling of modest dimensions, built on high ground in order to protect cultivated areas: its characteristics are well described into the De Agricoltura, a treatise written by…[Read more]

Slow archaeology situates contemporary, digital archaeological practice both in the historical tradition of the modern discipline of archaeology and within a discourse informed by calls for Taylorist efficiency. Rather than rejecting the use of digital tools, slow archaeology calls for archaeology to embrace a spirit of critical engagement with…[Read more]

Excavation of archaic Morgantina (c.700–450 BC), Sicily, has brought to light a significant pattern in the distribution of imported Greek pottery. This pattern, which shows a preference for imports with features that referred to metal vessels, is echoed at sites around the western Mediterranean. We argue that the preference for certain types was c…[Read more]

For at least a decade, scholars examining colonial influences on the material culture of indigenous populations in the ancient Mediterranean have found recourse in the concept of hybridity. These investigators have recognized that in situations where different cultural groups meet and mix, artifactual and behavioral traits from both the dominant…[Read more]

Network analysis is both a method and a theory for exploring the relationships inherent in archaeological materials. In this paper, I direct attention to what may be the lowest-hanging fruit for archaeological network analysis: epigraphic materials. Epigraphic materials are replete with obvious and clearly visible social networks. In their…[Read more]

This paper presents a way of looking at Roman space from a Roman perspective, and suggests ways in which this point of view might open up new approaches in Roman archaeology. It turns on one conception of Roman space in particular, preserved for us in the Antonine Itineraries. Working from a position that considers the context of the itineraries…[Read more]

When we find an archaeological network, how can we explore the necessary versus contingent processes at play in the formation of that archaeological network? Given a set of circumstances or processes, what other possible network shapes could have emerged? This is the problem of equifinality, where many different means could potentially arrive at…[Read more]

In displaying archaeological information as points on a map, we lose elements of the social and economic geography of the region we are studying. This paper suggests a methodology for exploring the space between our ‘dots-on-the-map’, based on the rapidly developing ‘science of networks’. It takes as a case study the distribution of sites using s…[Read more]