Jahreshefte des Österreichischen Archäologischen Instituts in Wien, Band 83/2014

This article presents the pottery, glass and coin finds deposited in a drain in the bath-gymnasium complex at Metropolis. The context, which includes table ware and coarse ware, suggests that eating and drinking took place within the establishment. This observation supports the proposal that bath-gymnasium complexes in antiquity were sites of social interaction, in addition to their functions of exercise and bathing. A catalogue of the finds, which date primarily to the 3rd–4th centuries A.D., completes the article.

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In November 2013, the department of Central European Archaeology of the Austrian Archaeological Institute carried out a survey and geophysical magnetic prospection at the site of a villa rustica in the region of San Canzian d’Isonzo, in the territory of La Bregadina dei Cagnussi. The scale and form of the villa site of San Canzian d’Isonzo, the organisation of the rooms and the quality of the room furnishings allow a plausible interpretation as a mid-sized agricultural establishment. With reference to studies concerning rural settlements in Italy and in the provinces of Gallia Lugdunensis and Tarraconensis, a model for the settlement of the surrounding area of Aquileia with country estates of differing sizes and functions is discussed.

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This contribution deals with grave altars from the southern area of the province of Noricum, i. e. monuments from the territories of the municipia of Virunum, Flavia Solva, Celeia, Teurnia, and Aguntum. The first section of the publication is a catalogue of the grave altars with inscriptions recording the civic status of the dedicator and of the dedicatee of the altars. The analysis of the epigraphic results indicates that the most important group of dedicators of grave altars were male and female Roman citizens; not many, however, held an important military or civic rank, while freedmen comprise a smaller group. The second part of the contribution evaluates the representations, most of which appear on the sides of the grave altars. The most popular representations are the so-called Norican girls, most of whom have a representative function as do their counterpart, the librarii. The second important groups are Dionysiac representations of maenads and satyrs which can be quite closely dated; these lead to the conclusion that the grave altars in no way ended around the middle of the 2nd century but lasted at least till the first half of the 3rd century A.D. Also the figures of the so-called mourning genii or grave-erotes can be divided into representations until and after the early Severan times.

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Three documents prove the existence of a cult of Rome and Caesar from 40/39 or 39/38 B.C. in Ephesos: a fragmentary Greek traduction of a Latin plebiscitum which had a connection to Caesar’s deification, a group of local coins with the triumviri and the mention of an archiereus (40 – 37), and the eponymous list of agonothetai and prytaneis, which underwent modification in the year 40/39 or 39/38. This new cult was probably held in the Artemision sanctuary. Marc Antony, flamen of the new god divus Iulius, was perhaps responsible for the creation of this new cult, on individual initiative or by permission. Octavian’s measures of 29 B.C, with an Ephesian cult of Rome and divus Iulius for Roman citizens, were not a new foundation, but an alteration of an older cult, at a time in which the Artemision was probably refounded with a Roman ritual. The archaeological record of imperial cult within the Artemision is based mostly on the excavations of John Turtle Wood, documentation which is reevalutated in this study with surprising new results.

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Two months of Greek-Austrian cooperation fieldwork yielded new results concerning the fortification, sanctuaries and prehistoric settlement of Pheneos. A stratified bronze coin of Sikyon gives a terminus post quem of 345 B.C. for the city wall, which suggests a correlation with the Macedonian campaign under Antipater. In the east close to the plain, the wall reaches an end; on the steep northern slope of the acropolis, an inner enlargement indicates a staircase. Further west, the continuation of the wall remains unclear. A gate is still missing. On the eastern slope of the city hill, the wall cuts across a small Archaic to Classical sanctuary. So far, parts of the enclosing walls, a hearth, a base for a statue or stele and a bothros rich with finds were uncovered. On the plateau around a modern chapel, a second temenos is proved by votive offerings. The documentation of the LN to SH settlement remains on the plateau has been concluded. Covering the whole range of the Middle Bronze Age (21st to 16th centuries), MH features with 156Konstantin K issas – Manfred L ehner – Peter Scherrer three building phases are best represented. Colluvial layers from the acropolis produced first Geometric pottery; stratified Hellenistic finds along the eastern part of the city wall are new as well. Roman material remains absent. Field research will continue in July 2014.

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The archaeological fieldwork of 2012 and 2013 carried out by the University of Innsbruck as part of an Austrian Science Fund Project (P 22642-G19) at the indigenous hilltop site on the Monte Iato in the west Sicilian hinterland concentrated on an area of the so-called Westquartier surrounding the Temple of Aphrodite and the Late Archaic house. In addition to questions concerning the building history, the fieldwork was aimed at recovering a significant material archive, which would be able to provide conclusions concerning consumption and identity policies in the immediate vicinity of the Temple of Aphrodite in the late 6th and early 5th century B.C. Alongside the questions asked by the Austrian Science Fund Project, the newly unearthed medieval structures and findings are presented more thoroughly. Contrary to medieval sources and scientific consensus, they clearly date after the siege and destruction of the settlement through Frederic II in the year 1246 A.D. Therefore they offer the unique possibility to examine this still unknown phase of reuse on the Monte Iato and may shed light on the circumstances of political isolation and economic regression after the fall of the West Sicilian Caliphate and the deportation of the Sicilian-Muslim élites.

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The so-called Hermes Ingenui in the Vatican Museums has been understood for a long time as a work of imperial eclecticism which combines a ›Polycleitan‹ body with a ›Myronian‹ head. In light of a probable copy of its head, the question re-arises concerning its prototype. This ›head replica‹ of the Hermes Ingenui, once belonging to the Ortiz Collection in Geneva, at first appears to be a Late Antique work; nevertheless it turns out to be a late Antonine or early Severan work. The features common to both heads now exclude the previously proposed dating of the type of the head to the early Classical period, and instead much rather indicate a date in the Late Hellenistic or even Late Classical period. Considering the scant ›fidelity to the replica‹ of the ex-Ortiz head and of a head of Herakles in Berlin, which has always been connected with the head type of the Hermes Ingenui, the question arises how the phenomenon of what links these heads ought to be described: for example as ›concept‹, ›image formula‹ or ›fundamental type‹ – terms which have recently been used in this connection.

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The cenotaph in Limyra was built for Gaius Caesar, the grandson and designated successor of Augustus, who died here in 4 A.D. while returning from a mission in Armenia. The remains of the monument today consist basically of the solid core of the building (made of opus caementicium) and a few elements of the marble frieze and other parts of decorative architecture. During the campaign in 2013 four samples of this marble could be acquired. All parts are of white, medium grained, high-quality marble. Under the microscope no impurities of silicate minerals could be detected. In general the petrographic characteristics very much resemble those of the marbles from the quarries in Aphrodisias. The chemical and isotopic composition of the four marble samples clearly shows that the marbles originate from the Aphrodisias quarries. One sample from the Sebasteion (SEB) of Aphrodisias was also investigated for comparison. Exhibiting western iconography and eastern style, the cenotaph in Limyra is a convincing example of how an iconographic master plan dictated from Rome and the emerging empire was executed by craftsmen from Asia Minor – not necessarily Aphrodisian – who used their familiar material. No contemporary similar architecture is known in this region, so we can assume that travelling masters from Asia Minor (Aphrodisias [?], Ephesos [?]) executed this monument, transporting the marble from Aphrodisias to Limyra either by land across a difficult route or across the usual route to the west (Ephesos) and then further via sea route.

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The votive deposit east of the temple of Artemis at Lousoi included a group of pottery fragments with impressed decoration. This ware is known from Aigion, Ano Mazaraki (Rakita), Trapeza, Nikoleika and other findspots in Achaea; it is attributed to the production of an Achaean pottery and terracotta workshop active in the late 8th and early 7th centuries. Recent study of the fragments with impressed decoration from Lousoi resulted in the reconstruction of a Late Geometric open-work kalathos, either with one or with two zones of cut-out triangles. The shape is related to older open-work kalathoi from Lefkandi and Attica and to fragments from Perachora. A close parallel from the Achaean workshop can be identified among the finds from Ano Mazaraki. Also noteworthy is the presence in Lousoi of a cylindrical pyxis of a type known from Aigion and Trapeza and of two pyxis covers. Some of the small stamped fragments add new – though yet undefined – types to the workshop’s documented repertoire.

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This paper presents 17, mostly fragmentary ancient inscriptions (one Latin, the rest Greek) which were found during the excavations in and around a 14th-century Turkish bath in Selçuk, the so-called İsa Bey Hamam. The pieces from the 1st to the 5th century A.D. were re-used and built into the walls and the floor of the later building. Some of them belonged to seats of the theatre and name the person who used to sit on it (nos. 1. 2). Others were probably parts of honorary decrees (nos. 3 – 5). According to the formulae used, the majority were funerary texts.

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According to written historical sources as well as illustrations on reliefs and coins, it is obvious that urban Roman temples were decorated with architectural sculpture. However, only a very small number of pediment sculptures and acroteria from temples is known in Rome. Based on the monumental gable block with acroterion base in the Giardino Colonna, which belongs to the huge, still anonymous temple on the Quirinal hill and which is to be dated to the Antonine period, it is proposed that the colossal group of horse-taming Dioscuri were the pediment figures of this temple. In addition, the relationship of additional large-scale sculptures, also originating from the Quirinal, to the building complex is discussed.

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The Austrian archaeologist and numismatist Alphons Barb (1901 – 1979) was the first director of the regional museum in Eisenstadt (Burgenland) which was founded in 1926. Barb organized many excavations which he carried out with a team of cooperators. He succeeded in the installation of a rich archaeological collection in spite of times of economic recession and he published many articles about archaeology and local history in journals and newspapers. In March 1938 he was dismissed from his directorship under the national-socialist racial laws and he had to leave Austria. He moved to England with his family in 1939, where – after internment as an enemy alien in 1940/41 – he worked in a factory. In 1949 Barb joined the Warburg Institute in the University of London as assistant librarian. In his free time he began to publish his excavations of the interwar period in Burgenland. But it was only in 1957 that he was granted Austrian citizenship again and in 1958, after years of bureaucratic delays, his financial claims from the period before his displacement were accepted by the Austrian government.

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