Material Culture | American Journal of Archaeology

Karaağaç Tumulus: An Iron Age Elite Burial from Rural Western Phrygia

website — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 22:12:32 +0000

This article presents the first comprehensive study of the Karaağaç Tumulus, a Middle Phrygian (ca. 800–540 BCE) monumental tomb located at the northwestern edge of the Central Anatolian Plateau, modern Türkiye. Stratigraphic and material evidence indicate a multiphase use, including an Early Bronze Age cemetery, a Middle Iron Age tumulus with elite burial, and Late Antique graves. The architectural form and contents parallel those of Gordion and Ankara, suggesting a high-status interment, possibly linked to regional governance during Midas’ reign. Its remote location—far from known urban centers—challenges traditional models of centralized Phrygian authority and supports recent interpretations of a multipolar political structure of Iron Age Phrygia. The discovery of diverse goods, a Phrygian name inscribed on a jar, and the presence of bronze situlas further attest to elite cultural practices. Despite modern looting, salvage excavations have yielded valuable archaeological and archaeometric data, which places the tumulus between Gordion Tumuli MM and S-1 (740–690 BCE). It also emerges as a key site for understanding the diversity of Phrygian funerary traditions, political organization, and regional interaction in central Anatolia during the late eighth century BCE.

Content warning: Readers are advised that this article contains a photograph of human remains.

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Marble Distribution Patterns in the Early Byzantine Southwestern Levant: Quantitative and Spatial Approaches

website — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 20:27:15 +0000

This study applies a quantitative and spatial approach to Early Byzantine marble finds from the southwestern Levant, integrating data into a theoretical model of overland transport costs. While the largest proportion of marble finds is concentrated along the Mediterranean coast near seaports, where transport costs were lower, the most significant variation in different categories of finds occurs farther inland. This unexpected variation suggests that factors beyond transport costs, such as the cultural and religious significance of sites, also influenced the distribution of marble objects. Sites with religious importance, for example, appear to have played a key role in this pattern, highlighting the complex interplay between economic and cultural forces in the Early Byzantine period. This study is the first comprehensive quantitative and spatial analysis of marble finds from the Early Byzantine period, the results of which show the patterns of distribution of imported marbles and reveal factors impacting this trade.

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“Probably Alexandria”: Gold-Glass Portraiture and the Allure of Egypt

website — Mon, 01 Apr 2024 04:00:00 +0000

Spectacular and rare gold-glass portraits from the third century CE have long been associated with Alexandria as the place of production on the basis of inscriptions on two examples, one in Brescia and one in New York. This article reconsiders the archaeological, literary, and especially epigraphic evidence for such a connection and ultimately concludes that the grounds on which the connection rests need to be reconsidered. The inscriptions were identified almost 100 years ago as Alexandrian Greek given the terminations of words in iota, but I demonstrate the absence of such a dialect and offer an alternative onomastic reading to resolve the problem of the iota endings. I propose that the designations on the gold-glass roundels instead represent a specific kind of nickname that flourished in the later Roman Imperial period and that popularly ended in -i in Latin or -ι in Greek inscriptions. Evaluating the dissemination of the Alexandrian hypothesis over decades of scholarship, this article proposes that the desire to attribute the gold-glass portraits to Alexandria is part of a larger impulse in art history of the classical period to assign especially remarkable and luxurious works of art without provenience to ancient metropolises.

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The Extramural Settlement at Vindolanda in the Early Second Century CE: Defining a Glocalized Environment on the Romano-British Frontier

website — Mon, 01 Jan 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Examining the Roman military settlement at Vindolanda, this article explores the archaeology of the northern frontier of the Roman empire in a glocalization framework, investigating the site during a specific occupation period to understand how the material culture found there operated within its particular local context. The soldiers and the extended military communities of auxiliary settlements that dominated the imperial frontiers make a complicated and intriguing case study because of their origins as subaltern and conquered subjects of imperial rule, followed by incorporation into the Roman army. A close examination of the extramural settlement outside the fort at Vindolanda in the site’s Period 4 (ca. 105–120 CE) allows the opportunity to apply a glocal lens to the architecture, foodways, literacy, and dress preserved in the material record. We are presented with a picture of adoption, adaptation, and retention that ultimately can be understood only as the result of ongoing change and creation in a multilayered imperial context. These spaces and their material culture are fully analyzed here, with careful consideration of the community present at Vindolanda, in order to tease out the unique and novel outcomes that this population created in their local context.

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Figural Imagery and Society in the Postpalatial Aegean: Mycenaean Pictorial Pottery from Perati in Its Chronological and Regional Context

website — Mon, 01 Jan 2024 05:00:00 +0000

The assemblage of artifacts from the Late Helladic IIIC Mycenaean cemetery at Perati includes a considerable quantity of figure-decorated pottery and figural representations in other media, including figurines and seals. Advances in scholarship since these artifacts were discovered and published encourage a reconsideration of their meaning and significance. This study reviews the corpus of figural art from Perati and considers its potential significance for interpreting several aspects of Bronze Age society following the palatial collapse in the central and eastern Aegean regions. Discussion begins with a brief background on the site of Perati and a review of relevant scholarship regarding art and society in the Postpalatial period. It then turns to description of the figural art from Perati and places this material in its contemporary regional and cultural context, emphasizing comparisons and connections with the nearby sites of Lefkandi (Euboea) and Grotta (Naxos). Finally, the article reflects on these discussions to generate new conclusions about the likely mixed nature of all three communities, the logic underpinning their iconographical choices, and the origin of ideas driving some social change in the postpalatial Aegean.

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Two Roman Glass Furnaces Discovered at Reșca-Romula (Romania)

website — Sun, 01 Oct 2023 04:00:00 +0000

Romula (today Reșca, Dobrosloveni Village, Romania) was the largest urban and economic center of Dacia Inferior (Malvensis), a Roman province located in the north of the Lower Danube region. In this context, the city market included workshops for the production of ceramic, metal, stone, bone, and glass objects. In 2013, 2015, and 2018, during excavations of the former Roman city, two rectangular glass furnaces were discovered. One has only one chamber, the other has two chambers. A melted glass layer was found on the walls of furnace no. 1, as well as in one room of furnace no. 2. Broken fragments of glass were also found in both. The furnaces are located in the central area of the Roman city. The evidence suggests that the furnaces belong to secondary glass workshops. The glass may have arrived in raw form, where it was remelted and processed. The discovery of these furnaces contributes to the growing body of evidence for Roman glass production around the empire.

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Multifunctionality and Roman Oven-to-Table Wares: Internal Red-Slip Vessels

website — Sat, 01 Jul 2023 04:00:00 +0000

Examining several hundred samples of internal red-slip vessels from the Roman sites of Musarna, Populonia, Cetamura del Chianti, Gabii, and Pompeii, this article presents a study using morphology, use-wear, and ceramic petrography to consider why this ware was produced for such a long period of time (third century BCE until at least the first century CE) and why it was so widespread in the empire. The article looks at this ware in the context of the other pottery types that were popular at the same time and that were visually similar. Considering the aesthetics of glossy red Roman cooking pans engages with the idea of the ceramic service of matching vessels and allows us to fruitfully explore the possibilities for multifunctionality in object use, bringing us closer to the ancient consumer’s experience in the kitchen and at the table. The study includes more than 50 thin sections and presents the first petrographic examination of any pottery from Musarna or Populonia.

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Bone Objects as Offerings of Animal Bodies in Archaic Greek Sanctuaries

website — Sat, 01 Jul 2023 04:00:00 +0000

During the late eighth and the seventh centuries BCE, objects worked from animal materials became a common form of offering at sanctuaries across the Greek world. Contemporary dedication practices of modified bone shafts at the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta and at two sanctuaries on Rhodes (Athena Kameiras and Athena Lindia) indicate that during this period there was an emphasis on creating and offering conspicuously organic objects made from the remains of animals. This article argues that perceptions of corporeality in the early Greek world permitted an understanding of the human body as a collection of separate parts. Examining the dedication of the modified bone shafts along with other ritualized acts (e.g., sacrifice and meat consumption) reveals that animal bodies could also be divided into distinct parts with separate functions. By repeatedly disassembling and transforming animal bodies, individuals in the Greek world offered bone objects that functioned as extensions of once-living animals, structuring and maintaining the relationships among humans, animals, and the divine.

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The Late Roman Unfinished Chaîne opératoire: A New Approach to Inscribed Glass Openwork

website — Sun, 01 Jan 2023 05:00:00 +0000

Fragments of incomplete material objects, too often relegated to storage, have the potential to help uncover production processes that had been believed lost or thought permanently obscured. Traditionally, study of the chaîne opératoire (operational sequence) has been limited to completed pieces, excluding in-process and discarded items. This omission creates a misleading narrative. Rather than a linear process, the manufacture of sculpted objects is a multistep, protracted endeavor. Through an examination of unfinished carving among Late Roman glass openwork vessels (also known as diatreta or “cage cups”), highlighting in particular inscribed glass openwork vessels that were in process, this discussion offers a new approach building on previous scholarship. Unfinished carving is a rich and varied category of material culture that can, and should, be regarded as a valuable and even crucial complement to completed pieces. This freshly conceived archaeology of Roman experiments, mistakes, and fragments helps shed new light on—and even resolve—long-standing debates concerning these renowned works. This article demonstrates that expanding the chaîne opératoire to include the unfinished can enrich our understanding of craft production in the Late Roman world.

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Refuse and the Roman City: Determining the Formation Processes of Refuse Assemblages Using Statistical Measures of Heterogeneity

website — Sat, 01 Oct 2022 04:00:00 +0000

The movement of refuse through an ancient city remains poorly understood despite an increasing body of excavated and published evidence. Urban refuse deposits are commonly attributed to simple discard behaviors: residents casually threw away their refuse, unintentionally forming much of today’s archaeological record. This study reevaluates the formation processes of such deposits with quantitative data. Using an Ostian dumpsite and refuse deposits within Pompeian domestic spaces as case studies, I calculate the values of heterogeneity (richness and evenness) of the artifact assemblages. These values complement the qualitative methods archaeologists use to describe the heterogeneity of artifact assemblages. Crucially, the values are readily comparable and reveal patterns not previously recognized. These patterns indicate that none of the examined Pompeian refuse deposits derived from casual disposal. Instead, the data show that the refuse comprising them was reclaimed from the peri-urban dump and transported to where fill materials were needed during construction projects. Such behaviors reveal an intricate relationship between the residents and their refuse, where systematic reuse applications often followed disposal. The data derived from this study compel us to rethink how refuse deposits were formed, from where the refuse originated, and for what purpose it was deposited.

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