This focus of research documents and interprets the material culture of the classical world. However, research goes beyond identifying and describing artefacts from the past; instead the things – artefacts and objects – that make up the material culture of the classical world are situated in their cultural and archaeological contexts and studied as active elements crucial for the shaping of the societies, economies, identities and cultures of ancient Europe and the Mediterranean.
Investigations have covered a wide range of topics including mosaic pavements from Antioch, children on Roman funerary monuments, the display of status and identity on Roman funerary monuments, Etruscan bucchero ceramics in the British Museum, distribution of African Red Slip Ware, Etruscan coarse wares, amphorae and settlement patterns in the Albegna Valley.
Current work includes the study of the material culture of northern Etruria (700-500BC), strigillated sarcophagi of the 3rd-4th centuries AD, Roman funerary practices and mourning rituals, sensory experiences of space and place, dress and identity in the Roman provinces, religion and votive cult, urbanism, and ancient childhood. Much of the research conducted by members of this cluster is united by a common interest in the representation, experience and treatment of the human body, as well as a concern with the use of material culture in the construction and presentation of individual and collective forms of identity.
Eleanor Betts’ research focuses on Roman urbanism and religion in Roman and Iron Age Italy (primarily Picenum, modern Marche), with an emphasis on material culture and architecture, a focus on questions of individual and group identities and concepts and use of space, and a theoretical focus on the development and application of phenomenological approaches to archaeological landscapes. She has recently contributed to Laurence and Newsome's Rome, Ostia, Pompeii: Movement and Space, introducing the concept of using all the senses to create multisensory maps of the city of Rome: going beyond the visual to consider how areas are marked out by sounds, smells, movement and touch. Her aim in is to encourage new questions to be considered regarding the use of space and meaning of place. Eleanor is currently seeking contributors to a volume, Recreating Rome, which examines recreations of Roman urban space from its nineteenth and early twentieth reception to digital and phenomenological models. Her research into Picene religion considers the interrelationships of the body, votives and topographical features of the landscape, and she has a particular interest in the representation and function of the ‘warrior ideal’ in relation to individual and group identity.
Emma-Jayne Graham’s research concerns the archaeology of Roman Italy and its relevance for understanding the construction of ancient identities and experiences. The themes of status, identity, memory and personhood run through her work on burial practices, commemoration, cremation and the treatment of the corpse. She is also interested in sensory bodies and the connections between bodily identity and experiences of multisensory landscapes, including the cemetery, and is currently developing an interdisciplinary approach to the study of divergent bodily experiences throughout the ancient life-course. Recent work has also focused on the material representation of infant and adult bodies as votive offerings in the sanctuaries of pre- and early-Roman Italy.
Tombs 54-55 in the Imperial-period necropolis
at Isola Sacra, Portus
Valerie Hope’s research is centred on Roman funerary monuments and funerary rituals. She has examined the display of status and construction of identity in the Roman cemetery, focusing in particular on the funerary monuments of Roman soldiers and gladiators. She has recently published two books on Roman death, a sourcebook and a monograph, which both encompass material and literary evidence, and explore the death process from the deathbed to the afterlife. Currently she is employing an interdisciplinary approach to researching Roman mourning rituals.
Arch of Constantine, Rome
Jessica Hughes works on Greek and Roman material culture and its reception in later periods. She is particularly interested in the themes of the body, memory and tradition; recent and current projects include a book about anatomical votives (models in the shape of body parts that were dedicated in ancient sanctuaries), an article about the re-use of sculptures ('spolia') on the Arch of Constantine in Rome, and a book chapter on the representation of classical ruins in modern Neapolitan nativity scenes. Her wider research agenda aims to explore how objects and monuments acquire different meanings over time, drawing on the insights provided by work on memory (including cognitive science approaches), material culture studies, reception studies and the Viewer. Jessica’s research therefore overlaps with the classical reception cluster.
Strigillated sarcophagus with portrait of married couple,
Vatican Museums
Janet Huskinson’s interests lie in the private art of the mid and later Roman Empire, and in particular in its relationship to its social and cultural context. She has published on imagery related to childhood and the family, on cultural identity and the decoration of houses in Antioch on the Orontes, but above all on sarcophagi from the city of Rome. She is currently writing a book on the decoration of strigillated sarcophagi (for publication by Oxford University Press). These were made from the mid second to the early fifth century AD and survive in large numbers, but have not as yet been studied as a group. Janet's research also overlaps with the classical reception cluster. She retired from her full-time post in September 2008.
Together, Valerie Hope and Janet Huskinson have organised several seminars on Roman death, commemoration and mourning, the most recent of which have been published as an edited volume entitled Memory and Mourning: Studies on Roman Death.
Phil Perkins’ research is centred on Classical Italy. He has worked for many years on the Etruscans. Publications have included: the rediscovery of a lost Etruscan city at Doganella; the only Etruscan farm to be fully excavated, and the detailed study of the material culture and settlement of the Albegna Valley in Tuscany. In December 2007 he published the results of five years of research into Etruscan Bucchero ceramics in the British Museum. The book provides a history of the study of bucchero and the formation of the Museum's collection. The largest part contains detailed discussion of over 300 illustrated ceramic objects that are contextualized within the past 75 years of scholarship and study of bucchero. Some of this research was supported Arts and Humanities Research Board, and the book presents a complete catalogue of this distinctive type of pottery in the Greek and Roman Department of the British Museum. Phil also researches Roman Sicily and Roman pottery, especially African Red Slip ware. In a departure from home territory he has also excavated a Baroque villa in Rome designed by Pietro da Cortona.
Ursula Rothe’s research focuses on dress in the Roman provinces and the role it played in the assertion of individual and family identities. Her book on dress in gravestone portraits in northern Gaul and the Rhineland was published in 2009, and she has since been working on the dress of the Roman Danube provinces, again based mainly on funerary art. She is particularly keen on developing an interdisciplinary approach to the study of dress in the human past, and in the context of empires in particular.
Colin Andrews, ‘Roman seal boxes’ (completed 2011)
‘Memory and mourning: death in ancient Rome’: two one day conferences held in November 2007 and February 2008
Etruscans Now Conference, 2002, a major international conference held at the British Museum, and attended by 143 scholars from 13 countries.