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Dura-Europos, on the Syrian Euphrates, is one of the best preserved and most extensively excavated sites of the Roman world. A Hellenistic foundation later held by the Parthians and then the Romans, Dura had a Roman military garrison installed within its city walls before it was taken by the Sasanians in the mid-third century.
The Inner Lives of Ancient Houses is the first study to consider the houses of the site as a whole.
The houses were excavated by a team from Yale and the French Academy of Inscriptions and Letters in the 1920s and 30s, and though a wealth of archaeological and textual material was recovered, most of that relating to housing was never published. Through a combination of archival information held at the Yale University Art Gallery and new fieldwork with the Mission Franco-Syrienne d'Europos-Doura, this study re-evaluates the houses of the site, integrating architecture, artefacts, and textual evidence, and examining ancient daily life and cultural interaction, as well as considering houses which were modified for use by the Roman military.
List of contents
- List of Figures
- Abbreviations
- 1: Excavating Dura-Europos, from Field to Archive
- 2: The Houses of Dura-Europos
- 3: The Roman Military Presence in the Houses of Dura-Europos
- 4: Everyday Life in Roman Dura-Europos: Household Activities
- 5: Assembling Identities at Dura-Europos
- 6: The Houses of Dura-Europos: A Biographical Approach
- Appendix
- Bibliography
About the author
J. A. Baird is Senior Lecturer in Archaeology in the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck, University of London. She previously held a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellowship at the University of Leicester. She was co-editor of Ancient Graffiti in Context (2011), and has recently published articles on archaeology and Roman Syria in the Journal of Roman Archaeology, American Journal of Archaeology, and Europos-Doura Varia.
Summary
Dura-Europos, on the Syrian Euphrates, is one of the best preserved and most extensively excavated sites of the Roman world. This is the first study to consider the houses of the site as a whole, integrating architecture, artefacts, and textual evidence, and examining ancient daily life and cultural interaction.
Additional text
This volume represents an outstanding scholarly achievement, addressing its key aims with balance and attention to detail ... a prescient and indispensable study indeed.
