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"This collection begins from a methodological problem familiar to all who have worked on the housing of the ancient world. That problem centres on the relationship between the diverse texts that have come down to us from antiquity, documentary and literary, and the archaeology of Classical settlements. In relation to housing, the problem is a special instance of the sometimes fraught disciplinary relationship between Classical archaeology and Classical history, which goes back to the formation of the modern academic disciplines, and the more particular issue of a perceived gap between the material world and the textual world. Texts and archaeology rarely tell the same story. From the eighteenth century onwards, there was an increased availability and understanding of material remains. Classical archaeology brought together aesthetic interests, focused on art and architecture, but 'early' archaeology also aimed itself at resolving questions derived from the literary material (see the historiographical elements in the studies of Varto, Morgan, and Allison in the volume). From Schliemann's discoveries of Troy and Mycenae to the investigations at Pompeii, texts often determined patterns of excavation and how that material evidence was interpreted"--
List of contents
Introduction: Between Words and Walls: Material and Textual Approaches to Housing in the Graeco-Roman World Richard Alston, J. A. Baird, and April Pudsey; 1. Kinship 'In the Halls': Poetry and the Archaeology of Early Greek Housing Emily Varto; 2. Domesticating the Ancient House: The Archaeology of a False Analogy Caspar Meyer; 3. Mind the Gap: Re-uniting Words and Walls in the study of the Classical Greek House Janett Morgan; 4. A Family Affair: The Household use of Attic lekythoi Katerina Volioti; 5. Textiles in Alkestis' Thalamos Amy C. Smith; 6. Architectural Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of Architecture: Athens and Macedon in the mid-fourth century BCE Lisa Nevett; 7. The Reconstruction of an Agricultural Landscape: Seeking the Farmstead Maeve McHugh; 8. Mudbricks and Papyri from the Desert Sand: Housing in the Ptolemaic and Roman Fayum Inge Uytterhoeven; 9. Housing and Community: Structures in Houses and Kinship in Roman Tebtynis April Pudsey; 10. The Elusive Vestibulum Simon Speksnijder; 11. Living in the Liminal: Lares Compitales Shrines, Freedmen and Identity in Delos Crysta Kaczmarek; 12. Experiencing Sense, Place and Space in the Roman Villa Hannah Platts; 13. Houses and Time: Material Memory at Dura-Europos J. A. Baird; 14. Spaces of Desire: Houses, Households, and Social Reproduction in the Roman World Richard Alston; 15. A Response: 'Using the Material and Written Sources' Revisited Penelope Allison.
About the author
J. A. Baird is Professor of Archaeology at Birkbeck College. She is also the author of The Inner Lives of Ancient Houses (2014) and Dura-Europos (2018), and co-editor of Ancient Graffiti in Context (2011).April Pudsey is Reader in Roman history at Manchester Metropolitan University. She has published widely on ancient childhood, family, and demography including Demography and the Graeco-Roman World (with C. Holleran, 2011) and A Social Archaeology of Roman and Late Antique Egypt (with E. Swift and J. Stoner, 2021).
