Archaeology Odyssey, January/February 2000

It’s 102 degrees under the hot Mediterranean sun. Your neck aches and your back feels like it’s breaking as you squat, knee deep in dirt, in a narrow rocky ditch. For the hundredth time, you find yourself wondering why you decided against a vacation in the south of France. Then, suddenly, your hand brushes up against a buried fragment of pottery. For an instant, the pain recedes and your heart races: You are holding a piece of ancient history in the palm of your hand…

When we confront the strange allure, or even at times the banality, of violence, the road often leads back to Rome. For centuries, blood sports and other deadly spectacles were central to the social life and public space of the Roman world.1 Rome’s violent public entertainments included gladiatorial combats (spectacula gladiatorum), animal hunts […]

I have spent the better part of my professional life studying the lowly Roman amphora—a two-handled clay jar used by the Canaanites, Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans to ship goods. What would Harvard professor Charles Eliot Norton, who founded the Archaeological Institute of America in 1879, have thought about my archaeological tastes? Norton wanted […]

Look at this crucifix,” said Gary Vikan, the director of the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore. He pushed a book across the table and pointed to a photograph of a silver sculpture of Jesus nailed to the cross. The statuette was made in tenth-century A.D. Georgia, on the east coast of the Black […]