My research centres on Roman private art of the second to fourth centuries AD, with particular interest in how its subject-matter and iconography relate to the social context in which art was produced and used. This has led me to concentrate mainly on the decoration of sarcophagi, especially where this offers a (largely) untapped source of evidence for social groups who are not well represented in contemporary writing, for instance. So far I have looked at children’s sarcophagi, and at the representation of women in a range of scenes, and I am now working on strigillated sarcophagi which were hugely popular across a wide range of social groups in the third and early fourth centuries, including the emerging Christian community. I am also interested in mosaic and have recently written on some pavements from Antioch, looking at the cultural background of various images. I was the leader of the OU research group on ‘Arts and Society in the Later Roman empire’.
I retired from my full-time post in September 2008 and now hold a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship to complete a book on Roman strigillated sarcophagi.
Email: j.a.r.huskinson@open.ac.uk
‘Representing women on Roman sarcophagi’ in ed. A.McClanan and K.R. Encarnacion, Personal Objects, Social Subjects: The material culture of sex, procreation and marriage in pre-modern Europe (St. Martin’s Press, New York 2002).
‘Culture and social relations in the Roman province’ in ed. P.Salway, The Roman Period. Oxford History of the British Isles (Oxford, 2002).
Ed. I. Sandwell and J.Huskinson, Culture and Society in Later Roman Antioch (Oxbow, 2003).
‘Theatre, performance and theatricality in some mosaic pavements from Antioch’ in Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies vol 46 2002-2003, pp. 131-165.
‘Arts and Architecture AD 197-337’ in Cambridge Ancient History vol XII.
‘Disappearing children? Children on Roman funerary monuments of the second to fourth century AD’ Acta Instituti Romani Finlandiae 2006 pp. 101 -114.
‘Rivers of Roman Antioch’ in edd. E. Stafford and J.Herrin, Personifications in the Greek World: From Antiquity to Byzantium (Ashgate Press, 2005) pp. 247-264.
‘Growing up in Ravenna: evidence from the decoration of children’s sarcophagi’. In: Age and aging in the Roman empire. Journal of Roman Archaeology, Supplement 65 2007 pp. 55-79.
‘Degrees of Differentiation’ in edd. S.Bell and I. Hansen, Role Models in Ancient Rome (Supplement to Memoirs of the American Academy at Rome: University of Michigan Press, 2008/9)
‘Constructing childhood on Roman funerary monuments’ in edd. A.Cohen and J.Rutter, Constructions of Childhood in the ancient Mediterranean (Supplement to Hesperia, Princeton University Press, 2007).
‘Pantomime performance and figured scenes on Roman sarcophagi’ in edd E.Hall and M.R.Wyles New Directions in Ancient Pantomime (Oxford University Press), 2008
Life, Death and Representation: new work on Roman sarcophagi. Co- edited with Jas Elsner Millenium Studies (Berlin), 2009
On the art of the Roman Empire in the third century AD and on Roman sarcophagi of the strigillated type and their social context.
See also Open Research Online for further details of Janet Huskinson’s research publications.
