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A Roman macellum was a place of daily interaction for many people of varied economic status, citizenship, age, gender, and social role. Defined architecturally by an enclosure with shops on some or all sides, a central open court, and often a tholos, it is conventionally characterized as a luxury meat and fish market. While at least thirty-seven macella operated in Roman Italy—and perhaps as many as three at once in Rome—scholars have generally assessed macella as a type or as single buildings isolated from their surroundings, though each structure played a distinct role in its local and regional economy and social, religious, and political cultures. My study focuses on thirteen macella in the modern state of Italy dating from the third century BCE to the third century CE. I select case studies for which there are sufficient literary and architectural remains to reconstruct building plans and occupational history, and my narrow geographical focus allows for micro- and regional-scale analysis. Investigating the built spaces in which the daily economic activity of Roman cities took place, I examine the macellum themselves and also broader questions about how commerce shaped and was shaped by the environment in which it was enacted.

Built spaces, and the materials they are comprised of, manipulate movement and evoke responses amongst people engaging with them. During the second and first centuries BCE in Rome, the relationship between the ancients and the city’s architecture grew more complex as new building materials, as well as new uses for familiar materials, were introduced. In this context, society began to heavily rely on the meanings and associations with which materials were imbued to infuse architectural projects with distinct messages. While the concept of materiality in ancient Rome has been prominent in discussions of concrete and stone, timber, a ubiquitous building material, has yet to receive such analysis. This thesis will consider the agency of timber throughout the Republic and its potential to change near the Republic’s end. Due to the scant evidence for timber in the archaeological record, my research is conducted through investigations of ancient sources, most notably Pliny and Cicero among others, and applications of materiality studies and sensory theory. The use of timber in the second and first centuries varied from everyday activities to industrial necessities. Although timber was arguably the most critical material for the creation of Roman architecture, its visibility was, in most cases, short-lived. However, between the second and first centuries, an increased desire for spectacles among the Roman populace increased the use of timber and led to innovations in temporary structures built for ludi. In contrast with the newly-introduced Greek marble and Roman concrete, a previously understated quality of timber – its pliability – came to the forefront and began to be overtly exploited in the forms of entertainment structures. In this thesis, I propose that the use of timber was challenged by new materials and the increased presence of ludi in Rome and gained traction in public projects through enticing momentary spectacles. This fascination, in turn, sparked a change in people’s perceptions of a material they had long considered mundane. With architectural and political changes in Rome providing a novel approach to timber construction, people began to create associations between the material and sensationalism.

In the waning years of the Roman Republic, amidst an atmosphere of distrust and unease, Roman dictator L. Cornelius Sulla enacted a series of proscriptions that infamously left the streets of Rome running with blood, executing those who threatened his plans to re-concentrate power within an elite Roman class. While violence set a certain tone for his dictatorship, Sulla also conveyed his intentions to the public through subtler means, including a program of architectural restorations. This thesis will consider one such act of restoration—the expansion of the pomerium, or the boundary that marked a change in military and religious privileges within the city. While attested to by ancient authors, no physical remains of Sulla’s pomerium have been identified, meaning that the border was likely invisible and therefore largely unknowable to the uninitiated passerby. Over the course of his political career, Sulla would take advantage of the pomerium’s sacred and legal import by violating its ordinances on two occasions and subsequently reestablishing its bounds through an expansion of the border, effectively destabilizing the relationship of the city of Rome and its inhabitants by reasserting his control over space. It is my contention that Sulla capitalized on the boundary’s intangible qualities in order to unsettle what had previously been a stable, if benign, concept in the Roman imagination. This thesis aims to examine how architecture can communicate power in the absence of a physical structure, focusing on how the pomerium’s invisibility under Sulla’s dictatorship functioned as a malleable political tool for the state to exert control over its population. How the Romans related to the built environment and border spaces is of critical importance to this discussion, as the city and its architecture—visible or otherwise—conveyed important messages about political dynamics. I argue that the pomerium’s expansion under Sulla spoke volumes, as Roman spatial memory extended beyond that which was immediately visible to recall the past. As the city streets may have conjured memories of Sullan-spilt blood and its accompanying fear, so too may fragmentary knowledge of the pomerium have elicited a similar response, resulting in submission to the state’s authority.

This dissertation presents the results of an analysis of the middle Republican (ca. 4th–3rd c. BCE) architectural remains of the Roman temples of Fortuna and Mater Matuta at the Sant’Omobono site in Rome’s Forum Boarium. The analysis relies on a total station survey of nearly the entire site coupled with photogrammetric documentation, hand drawing, and archival research. It fills a gap in archaeological knowledge by describing in detail the structures of an important religious site in the center of ancient Rome. The results of the analysis allow new questions to be posed of the Classical texts that describe the temples and the rites performed therein. As part of the contextual material for the mid-Republican architecture, a new overview of the use of volcanic tuff in Roman construction has been prepared. The study identifies three principal phases that can be dated with certainty or a high degree of probability to the middle Republic: a pavement in blocks of Anio tuff that occupies the forecourt of the temples, possibly of the 4th c. BCE; a rebuilding of the temples represented by a pavement in slabs of Anio tuff along with two altars, between the late 4th and mid 3rd c. BCE; and a massive rebuilding of the entire precinct with Tufo Giallo, Lapis Albanus, and Anio tuff foundations and a pavement in thin slabs of Anio tuff, dated to 212 BCE.

This dissertation explores the issue of architectural design in the ancient Roman port city of Ostia Antica. Working within a poststructuralist framework drawn from geography, sociology, architecture and urbanism, I propose the concept of the design- marker—an aspect of the built environment that reflects a designer’s expectations for the way his building would be used. Ostia is particularly well-suited to this study because of its complexity. As the complexity of the surrounding architectural environment increases, there are more types of social space—more potential environments and user groups—which the designer must take into account in his plans. It therefore becomes increasingly likely that discernible patterns of design-markers will emerge. Ostia boasts acres of ancient architecture, and its blocks are both taller and more structurally complicated than those at Pompeii. I identify two design-markers at Ostia: staircases and windows. When the relationship of all the staircases within a block are considered as a group, patterns in their deployment emerge. Designers at Ostia manipulate stairs’ placement and their visual status (in view/out of view) according to the social value of the spaces they lead to. They also distinguish their entrances visually from other doorways. Although staircases have traditionally been classified as internal and external, my analysis proves that staircases exist along a much wider spectrum of possibilities. Windows have not received much attention in scholarship. Windows affect interior experience by making a room susceptible to light, smell, and sound penetration from the exterior. Sometimes, as in the case of the well-decorated rooms of the House of the Muses, a window might be deployed specifically to put the interior on display. As that example shows, windows also exerted some influence on the experience of the building exterior. Similarly, loophole windows sacrifice interior lighting for the sake of the fortress- like connotations such windows project to the world outside. Ostian bars also oriented their windows in the most likely direction of traffic in order to entice new customers with the sounds and scents that escaped the tavern’s interior.

In the early 4th century C.E., the interior hall of the Basilica of Maxentius was adorned with eight giant marble monoliths. To reach the building site, the 15-meter, 100-ton columns were shipped 2400 kilometers across the Mediterranean, dragged up the Tiber River, unloaded in the overflowing marble yards, paraded down several kilometers of Roman streets, and erected in an area the size of a football field. In Imperial Rome, the ability to transport massive stone monoliths down narrow cobbled streets or mobilize an entire brick-making industry within a matter of weeks were paramount to the success of large-scale building projects. The construction process required a cooperation between the entire city and its infrastructural material and labor networks. The Roman construction site must have been absolutely symbiotic with its urban environment, especially within the context of the Late Empire. The area immediately surrounding the Forum Romanum was a dense residential and commercial zone characterized by a complicated topography and a stratified array of architectural monuments. In order to construct any project within the confines of this region, the builders had to balance a poly-modal understanding of technical engineering knowledge with an exceedingly efficient organizing framework. In addition to the organization of the site, the builders had to coordinate with the many disparate types of materials that were constantly arriving from far-flung sources. The scene created by the shouting workmen, the screeching pulleys, and the rumbling streets was undoubtedly among Rome’s most interesting spectacles. This dissertation will combine an understanding of the spatial implications of the Roman building site with an awareness of the socio-cultural milieu and the symbiotic relationship between the construction process and its contextual environment.

Dentro del marco del estudio de la arquitectura pública romana, este trabajo pretende presentar una revisión del papel que juega el cromatismo como símbolo y medio transmisor de ideas, ya sea a través del empleo de marmora de color o bien con la aplicación de la pintura en la edilicia oficial, destacando algunos edificios religiosos béticos en los que, recientes investigaciones, han documentado complejos programas decorativos en los que la policromía estaba siempre presente jugando un papel principal a través de estos dos canales. Desde la Antigüedad, el color ha sido un factor fundamental en los códigos sociales de todas las culturas y civilizaciones. Repleto de significado dentro de la memoria colectiva, podemos considerarlo como un eficaz instrumento de expresión del pensamiento dentro del discurso visual (Sánchez, 2013: 192). Su alto grado representativo ligado de forma ineludible a la arquitectura oficial romana, hace necesaria una inmersión más profunda y directa en el estudio de sus usos y significación, ya que de ese modo, podremos tener una visión más clara y amplia del ideario de este periodo.

We analyse here the presence of criptoportica in the Hispano‐Roman forum architecture, considering the different sites where it is possible to see these structures. Through these cases, we are going to try to establish if they fit the typological models proposed by E. M. Luschin. We are also going to study how the topography has an impact on the construction of these ensembles, and to establish if it was a necessary architecture for the development of the Hispano‐Roman fora. In addition, we are going to analyse which sort of buildings were situated in the upper stage of the substructure, in order to establish parallelisms between the different ensembles.

This dissertation explores the intersection of ancient Roman art, architecture, and literature. In particular, it examines the convergence of art and nature in Roman wall painting and garden design in three domestic, and historically significant, sites in Italy. Chapter 2 examines the painted garden room from Livia’s Villa at Prima Porta; Chapter 3 investigates the garden imagery of the Auditorium of Maecenas; Chapters 4 and 5 encourage a new approach to interpreting the garden design of the Villa of the Poppaei at Oplontis. In each instance we see a Roman approach to nature that always involves both labor and ars, in the creation of what I call “green architecture.” Because villa architecture puts into implicit question the ambiguous relationship between nature and artifice, its critical study allows us a more nuanced understanding of gardens within the broader Roman imagination. Pushing critical scholarship into new and fertile territory, my dissertation attempts to think of the Roman garden as posing a series questions that exceed our current archaeological emphasis on typologies or the social historian’s focus on status and self-representation in the Roman garden. Toward this end, my analysis tacks between close readings of these sites and contemporary Latin literature in order to situate what is at work and at stake in Roman gardens—artistically, culturally, and historically—at the level of both “text” and “context.” Finally, because my dissertation bears upon, and engages with, broader, more abiding debates within the discipline about “the Natural,” mimesis, picturesque and pastoral landscapes, and gardens as liminal spaces or where boundaries between interior and exterior worlds collapse, I also consider what difference Roman gardens make for art historical scholarship today.

Ciudad romana, desarrollada principalmente desde el siglo I aC al III dC, en la zona denominada "Los Bañales", está situada al sur de la actual localidad de Uncastillo (Zaragoza, España) en la Comarca de las Cinco Villas. Desde 2008 el yacimiento arqueológico es objeto de estudio en un proyecto de investigación interdisciplinar liderado por la Fundación Uncastillo con la autorización del Gobierno de Aragón. Las últimas temporadas de excavación se han centrado en el foro, la antigua plaza pública de la ciudad romana, todavía en proceso de investigación. Era una plaza bastante pequeña pero que cumplía con todos los requisitos de ese tipo de edificios de la arquitectura romana. Utilizando el software Blender se está realizando una maqueta de recreación del foro. El siguiente artículo presenta un breve resumen del dossier de decisiones sobre esta recreación fruto, sin embargo, de la cooperación interdisciplinar entre historiadores, arqueólogos y arquitectos.

In the arid Mediterranean world the careful management of water was essential for survival. Control of this resource was akin to political power. Rome and its environs were no different: water was an important status symbol and granting public access to it was considered a particularly generous gesture. During the principate a successful emperor was expected to demonstrate concern for the needs of the populace and one of the most effective ways for him to do this was by providing abundant quantities of water. As a political tool, water proved to be invaluable in its versatility. Imperial gifts could manifest in the form of access to drinking water, leisure spaces such as public gardens and baths, or even spectacular games and shows given on purpose-built artificial lakes. Additionally, massive engineering works such as aqueducts, harbors, and drainage projects, aimed at improving the water and food supply, were carefully designed to showcase the resources and generosity of the imperial patron. This study traces the origins of these forms of largesse, following their development from the Republican period to the end of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. By examining the water-related monuments and spectacles of each individual Julio-Claudian emperor in the context of their time, this dissertation aims to reconstruct the structures themselves, their intended audiences, and the water policies and patterns of influence created by each Julio-Claudian emperor. The first principes of Rome were still shaping their role and exploring ways in which they could balance their exercise of power with their expected responsibilities to the different strata of Roman society. The early principes began to experiment with water related munificence, and created many new forms of buildings and displays for the public that would eventually become canonical components of Imperial largesse and legitimization.

El presente trabajo estudia los foros hispanorromanos del conuentus Caesaraugustanus desde una doble perspectiva cronológica y estructural. Se trata de establecer patrones constructivos homogéneos entre los diversos fora y vinculaciones de estos en cuanto a planta y estructura con modelos de otros foros del Imperio. Asimismo se estudian diferentes elementos de los foros como plazas, pórticos, basílicas, curias o templos de forma comparativa respecto a otros paralelos hispanos y del resto del Imperio.

This study provides an in depth analysis of three temples dedicated to emperors in Roman Asia (western Asia Minor): the Temple of Divine Rulers at Aphrodisias, the Temple of Divine Rulers at Ephesus and the Temple of Zeus Philios and Trajan at Pergamon. Focusing on each case study in a separate chapter, the project provides a brief introduction to each city's history and a detailed discussion of each temple's name, dating, patronage structure, architectural form, sculptural program, and the application techniques of sculptural and architectural details. The study proposes an understanding of these temples as key monuments of constantly changing dynamic urban landscapes rather than simple symbolic gestures towards the Roman emperors. Utilizing Kevin Lynch's terminology, the project suggests close links between each monument and the already existing urban elements of each individual city, further strengthening its overall urban image. These structures were essential to their urban contexts, and their meanings and functions were directly linked to the culture and history of each city. Finally, the project demonstrates that through their architectural designs and sculptural programs, each temple emphasized the perspectives of the local elite. The methodology of the project involves a careful study of the city plans, an analysis of context-specific local features and finally a consideration of multiple-viewer perceptions. This dissertation aims to provide an alternative model for later studies in Roman provincial art and architecture.

Fortifications often represent the largest and most extensive remains present on archaeological sites. Their massive scale is the primary reason for their survival and reflects the considerable resources that communities invested in their construction. Yet, until recently, they have largely remained underrepresented as monuments in studies on the ancient city. Beyond their defensive function city walls constituted an essential psychological boundary protecting communities from unpredictable elements including war, brigandage, and more elusive natural forces. These factors have led scholars to identify fortifications as playing a distinct role in the definition of a civic identity. Nevertheless, beyond the recognition of some general trends, a definitive diachronic study of their performance within a single urban matrix is still lacking. This dissertation examines the city walls of Pompeii as an active monument rather than a static defensive enclosure. The city preserves one of the most intact set of defenses surviving since antiquity which, in various shapes and forms, served as one its defining elements for over 600 years. Pompeii’s fortifications, through construction techniques, materials, and embellishments, engaged in an explicit architectural dialogue with the city, its urban development, and material culture. Their basic framework changed in response to military developments, but their appearance is also the result of specific political and ideological choices. As a result, the city walls carried aesthetic and ideological associations reflecting the social and political organization of the community. This study is the first of its kind. It provides a diachronic examination of the Pompeian fortifications by assessing their role in the social and architectural definition of the city. The walls were subject to appropriation and change in unison with the ambitions of the citizens of Pompeii. From their original construction through subsequent modifications, the fortifications expressed multivalent political, religious, and social meanings, particular to specific time periods in Pompeii. This analysis reveals a monument in continuous flux that changed its ideological meaning and relationship to civic identity, in response to the major historical and social developments affecting the city.

Most studies of Roman architecture cover the third century BCE to the fourth century CE, a period of luxurious building projects like the Colosseum and Pantheon that remain relatively well documented in the archaeological and literary record. Yet Rome did not spring fully formed from the ground in the third century, its architecture relying entirely on precursors and precedents in buildings from far away times and places. In this study I fit remains of architecture from early Rome (ca. 650 to 450 BCE) into the cultural framework of the contemporaneous Mediterranean and try to assess how the changing cityscape effected both archaic Romans and later Roman architecture and topography. Because many studies of archaic Rome have attempted to fit archaeological remains with the literary record, and because this has created much controversy, I put the literary record to one side and focus on material remains in an attempt to see what they can reveal on their own.

This dissertation investigates one subset of the many "signs and symbols" representative of traditional Roman religion at Ostia -- its temples and sanctuaries. It uses this body of evidence to foreground a discussion of social and cultural transformation from the 3rd through 6th c. C.E. This period witnessed the decline of traditional religious practices and the rise of a more prominent Judaism and Christianity. Earlier treatments of this topic, however, have often approached the material by assembling a catalogue of buildings, documenting limited incidences of new construction or repair evidenced throughout the Late Roman town. This project, by contrast, instead of beginning with material dated to the "twilight years" of Roman Ostia, starts with the first records of excavation at Ostia Antica. It is these archaeological reports, some comprehensive, others more impressionistic, which document the eclectic nature of objects, sculpture, and architecture that were frequently found preserved throughout the town. These reports represent a new starting point for reconstructing the appearance of the Late Antique city. Drawing upon this material, each of my four chapters takes one element of the traditional landscape (the Capitolium, the so-called Temple of Hercules, the Sanctuary of Magna Mater, or the cult of Vulcan) and then interweaves one or more facets of Christianity or Judaism in order to reveal, dialectically, the dynamism of urban change. Socially and economically, Ostia itself witnessed significant changes during this time. This dissertation provides new answers to when, why, and how those changes took place. It reveals how ambitious architectural projects of the Late Roman Empire continued to achieve stature by visually engaging with both the presence and prestige of earlier monuments. Uncovering new evidence with which to challenge the concept of a late 4th c. "pagan revival," my research, in particular, suggests that accommodation of the past, not urban conflict, was a dominant social model. Finally, I suggest that a broad view of traditional and Christian festivals, from the 4th c. through 6th, shows how new cults, like those of Aurea or Monica, mother of Augustine, simultaneously preserved and transformed the city's traditions into the Early Middle Ages.

The Forum was the center of Roman life. It witnessed a barrage of building, destruction and reuse from the seventh century BCE onwards. By around 80 BCE, patrons chose to renovate the Senate House and Comitium with a fresh paving of tufa blocks. Masons leveled many ruined altars and memorials beneath the flooring. Yet paving also provided a means of saving some of Rome’s past. They isolated the Lapis Niger with black blocks, to keep the city’s sinking history in their present. Paving therefore became a technology of memory for recording past events and people. Yet how effective was the Lapis Niger as a memorial? Many modern scholars have romanced the site’s cultural continuity. However, in fifty years and after two Lapis Nigers, the Comitium had borne a disparity of monuments and functions. Rome’s historians could not agree on what lay beneath. Verrius Flaccus reports that the Lapis Niger ‘according to others’ might mark the site of Romulus’s apotheosis, his burial, the burial of his foster father Faustulus, or even his soldier, Hostius Hostilius (50.177). Nevertheless, modern archaeologists have found no tombs. Instead of trying to comprehend these legends, most scholars use them selectively to isolate a dictator, deity or date. We must instead understand why so many views of the Lapis Niger emerged in antiquity. Otherwise, like ancient antiquarians, we will re- identify sites without end. Recreating how these material and mental landscapes interacted and spawned new pasts tells us more about the Lapis Niger than any new attribution.

The Roman province of Lusitania stretched across large portions of modern Portugal and Spain. Historically, the political division between these countries has prevented a holistic approach to the study of Roman Lusitania. Moreover, many recent publications relating to Lusitania are collections of smaller studies that focus on specific areas of Lusitania, or geographically limited aspects of the culture and history of the province. In the last three decades of the 20th century, the archaeological picture of the area of ancient Lusitania improved significantly. This is due in part to increased activity in the Roman province among Portuguese and Spanish scholars, as well as a growing interest in Lusitania as a western province among the international community. As a result, many of the small villages of Portugal and Spain have seen increased archaeological activity, and the publication of unprecedented numbers of Roman sites has substantially improved the overall picture of Lusitania. This project represents a synthesis of the available archaeological, historical, and epigraphic evidence from Lusitanian cities during the first century of the Roman Empire.