Project Publications 2018

– Gering, Axel. 2018. Ostias vergessene Spätantike. Eine urbanistische Deutung zur Bewältigung von Verfall. Ortwin Dally – Nobert Zimmermann (eds.) Palilia vol. 31.
(Three reviews have been made. One by Prof. Dr. L. Bouke van der Meer. To read it, click here. Another one by Prof. Dr. Massimiliano David. To read it, click here. The last one from Ass. Prof. Birte Poulsen and Ass. Prof. Dr. Jane Hjarl Pedersen)

– Gering, Axel. 2018. ‘Marble recycling-workshops nearby the Temple of Roma and Augustus: An interim report of the Ostia-Forum-Project’s working campaigns in 2013 and 2014‘. In C. de Ruyt – T. Morard – F. van Haeperen (editors). Ostia Antica. Nouvelles études et recherches sur les quartiers occidentaux de la cité. Actes du colloque international. Roma-Ostia Antica 22-24 settembre 2014. Pp. 23-30.

– Damgaard, Daniel. 2018. ‘Ostian Marble Roof Tiles – Aspects of Chronology, Typology and Function’. In Römische Mitteilungen
vol. 124. Pp. 177-203.

– Gering, Axel, L. Pecchioli, M. Dehner & B. Takàts. 2018. ‘3D archaeological field recording in OstiaIn L. Pecchioli – A. Galeazzi (eds.), Kermes. Restauro, Conservazione e Tutela del Patrimonio Culturale Anno XXX, Luglio – Settembre 2017, vol. 107. Pp. 26-32.

– Damgaard, Daniel. 2018. Analysis of Skylight Illumination Using 3D: An Experimental Case of the Roma and Augustus Temple in Ostia‘. In L. Pecchioli – A. Galeazzi (eds.), Kermes. Restauro, Conservazione e Tutela del Patrimonio Culturale Anno XXX, Luglio – Settembre 2017, vol. 107. Pp. 55-59.

Prof. dr. Axel Gering

Project- and field-directorSAMSUNG DIGITAL CAMERA

Axel is director of the project. He was born in Munich, Germany, which is also where he undertook his academic studies. He currently teaches at the Humboldt University in Berlin (HU), a post he took up around 12 years ago. Since 2007 he is Privat Dozent at the HU. His main interest regards the study of urbanism from the ancient Near East to the Roman West. This initially focused on the early imperial Roman period, but he has now moved on to specialise in the late antique period. His favourite archaeological find was the discovery of the street blockings at Ostia, and more recently the discovery of the previously untouched late antique Forum pavement.

Ph.d. project: Unknown Forum Structures: The Synthesis of Stratigraphy and Geophysical Excavation Data regarding the Development of the Forum’s Area in Ostia from the Republic to the early 2nd Century CE

Ostia was founded at the mouth of the river Tiber as a walled military fort, a castrum, in the 4th century BC. The castrum area is now the city centre of Ostia, in which the forum is located. From here, the city and street-grid emanated through the centuries. However, one street already existed in the area before the foundation of the castrum, and that is the street running from the south-east to the north-west towards the Tiber mouth. This street was divided in two by the south-west corner of the castrum walls, and the two streets are  today known as the southern Cardo (the south-east street) and the Via della Foce (the north-west street).

The main area of this study is the city centre with a focal point on the forum’s area. Until now, it has not been possible to study the forum as a coherent unit put in a diachronic perspective. Recent research conducted by the Berlin-Kent-Ostia Excavations, Humboldt-Ostia-Forum Project and Ostia-Forum-Project in the period between 2008 and 2016 have provided evidence of the development of the forum. The research has been conducted through excavations, photogrammetry and geophysical analyses. Before these comprehensive analyses, excavations have never been conducted in the forum’s area since the rigorous excavations in the first half of the 20th century. It is therefore, for the first time, possible to analyse, contextualise and trace several different orientation and planning symmetries of different building layouts in the attempt to interpret the genesis of the different forum-layouts. The Roman city was not achieved overnight, but is a result of earlier accumulation and production. It is therefore even more important to analyse the hitherto unknown forum phases, due to the fact that they can provide evidence of the development of Ostia from late Republican times until Late Antiquity. Urban space and layout often reflect the society, which thus inform us about social structure, monumental access, urban economy, traffic-flow and -intensity etc.

In this project, I propose the idea of tracing more than seven centuries of urban evolution from Republican to late antique times in Ostia’s city centre by analysing the orientation and planning symmetries of different building-layouts based on the newest 3D-measuring techniques and geophysics applied to Ostia by the Ostia-Forum-Project (OFP) and its predecessors in 2010-2022.  The aim of this project is to interpret the genesis of the layouts and visualize their function and sequence as a “Harris Matrix”. The results will be used to analyse the urban space and urban society using the latest theories from Roman urbanism. By studying the urban space of the forum, we come to understand the social structure of the forum – also in a period previously thought to be a shortfall compared to Pompeii. The forum was the centre of activity, and all the major through-routes led to this area.

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A focus on individual building histories has hindered a more complete picture of the forum and its surroundings. In the second half of the 20th century, the focal point has been on the remaining city with topics such as burials, art and architecture. This is not an isolated Ostian phenomenon. Archaeologists and historians have for decades focused on building activities as evidence for an interpretation of certain political and economic trends, rather than focusing on its built environment. However, in recent times, a shift in perception of the urban space has been inaugurated – also in Ostia. The approach of this study is to perceive the forum as an inhabited space rather than a collection of different individual buildings.

The ph.d. project is conducted by Daniel Damgaard.

A website has been dedicated to the Ostia Graduiertenkolleg within which, this project is being conducted. Click here.

2016 Chapter 2. Temple votives and kitchen equipment – an inventory of the Capitolium-Cult (and its predecessors)?

The beginning of the third week on excavation was dedicated to our Egyptian find (compare chapter 1). First step was to document our little greenish-black stone-fragment with hieroglyphs, an offering plate for sacrifices by hand-drawing and digital 3-D-modelling (see picture below).

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The back-side showed an interesting detail for the interpretation: our sacrificial plate could have been part of a statue, which is proved by a partly broken fingertip from the statue-hand holding the plate (see picture below: located in the same position as our fotographer’s fingers).

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The complete sacrificial tablet could have looked like one of the comparisons Gunnar showed us (see picture below left). The whole statue may have been similar to the typus of an offering person, well-fitting to a sacral context – at least in Egypt itself (see picture below right). Its find-spot in a cleared-up material-dump from a temple in Ostia (most probably the Capitolium because of its equally fragmented architectural decoration nearby the find spot) remained however open to suggestions – maybe it had been a gift from one of the rich Egyptian merchants or some kind of ambassador to the main gods of the city?

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In the old excavations of 1861-72 – under the aegis of Pope Pius IX – the fundament of the Capitolium was freed from earth (Paschetto 1912). After the excavation back home in Berlin, Axel read the report of Paschetto regarding these previous finds from the Capitolium and suddenly realized a convenient coincidence, which of course still has to be verified or falsified based on detailed study of the early finds themselves. Does the fragment really fit to the find in 1864 of “una figura in basalto verde con geroglifici egiziani” or other Egyptian sculptures of the same find-context? In this case, we would have a safe dating-clue for the depositing-process of the complete upper part of our marble-deposit TFR 2: It could have originated latest at the same time as the deposit in the podium of the Capitolium nearby (see picture below: temple in background). This would be a terminus ante quem for both surely before 1861, the time of these excavations.

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In the upper part of TFR 2, consisting only of marble-pieces, no earth or stratigraphy with dating-evidence was preserved in situ (see pictures below), so any hint can help us further to track it down in history. The first hint was already Daniel’s observation that the only complete marble roof-tiles were found on top of the marble-deposit, but none inside or underneath the pile (if at all, they were only small fragments). This suggests that the first excavators of 1801-1805, which were reported to have found big and complete parts of the Capitolium’s marble-roof, had found those and deposited them on top of an already existing marble-pile. In contrast to that, our pile itself consists of already cut fragments, which underwent deliberate fragmentation with the purpose of fitting the pieces into a lime-kiln. A simple rule was verified by that: If we find (almost) complete pieces of architectural decoration, they either come from areas, which were already covered in Late Antiquity or these pieces were re-used in late antique building-contexts (where they were needed and therefore not removed with the purpose of burning them to lime). If we find smaller fragments (mostly with clear chisel marks of destruction-processes), they come from the marble-deposits of lime-kilns, either late antique examples or medieval ones (mostly 5th to 7th centuries AD, with a smaller peak of distribution in the 10th-12th centuries AD).
Detective-work now seems to connect our new evidence with the old excavations directly. On one hand we can work up old finds scientifically even after more than 150 years, write the former excavation-history in detail and thus understand the old excavations better. On the other hand, the old diaries allow us to re-locate and understand our new finds in their original depositing-context: the temples and marble-buildings of the Forum!

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Surprises form a nice part of field-archaeological business. This can be stated as a title for the ongoing excavations in early September 2016. What we were prepared for, was to analyse a marble deposit (see pictures below top: measuring, drawing & fotographing all single fragments in 2-D and 3-D, which was done by Lydia, Johannes, Laura, Marco, Felix, Christin, Rocco, Fabian, Iannis, Helge and many others. See picture below bottom: Next step is to group the fragments according to stylistic, typological and functional categories, a job well-done by Daniel of course and to create a catalogue via QR-codes used on smartphones, a new system initiated by Laura into our excavation-workflow).

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What we did not expect were the massive amounts of non-marble finds in the context of an originally late antique/medieval and/or 19th century-marble-deposit. It started with “Andi’s corner” (see picture below with Andi standing to the right in ‘his’ corner).

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First we have documented the room by a 3-D-model which was georeferenciated by our Hungarian colleagues (see pictures below).

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In the southwest corner of the room we found an exceptional concentration of travertine blocks, well sorted as a fundament – but underneath without an own fundament (see picture below top: lower left corner, see picture below bottom: detail turned 90 degrees left).

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A large fragment of a “patera”, a Graeco-Roman sacrificial plate of a specific type often depicted on altars (see picture below top), was found there (see following pictures below bottom).

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It was situated at a level where stratigraphy started to be significant, that means: not being disturbed top-soil consisting of differently designed Coca-Cola-bottles or computer advertisements from the past 30 years (see picture below top). Later it became clear that an original depositing-level was reached, when the stones laid in the room were stored on plane ground at the same level as a ceramic floor of antique origin, which filled a corridor-like space between the stone-piles (see pictures below bottom). Some objects could be dated immediately, even without being removed. The majority consisted of fragments of cooking pots, plates, lits and kitchen equipment. Therefore, our deposit, originally believed to be modern, had become older and older – obviously even as old as a still-antique period after the end of the kitchen-use. The kitchen obviously underwent a complete functional change, which had occurred maybe in the later 5th and 6th centuries AD!

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Notwithstanding, the history of the room did by far not end with that! The random-ceramic-floor underneath the marble-deposit presented several further surprises. Today, we see the ‘Hadrianic’ walls (of the 2nd century AD: see pictures below).

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What remains completely missing however is the Hadrianic floor, probably of opus spiccatum as in the adjoining rooms to the south and to the east where probably once was the lime-kiln (until its complete excavation in 1913). What we had found instead, is on the one hand the infrastructure of a kitchen with a half-buried type of dolium (oil or wine container, see picture below), which respected the room-layout of the 2nd century AD, characterized by the fundament visible left in the picture.

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On the other hand, several layers of a similar type of random-ceramic floor or filling went further back into history (Augustean times and earlier) and did not respect the layout of the Hadrianic room. So far, – without further excavation – we have documented a destruction-layer immediately before the building of the Hadrianic room (fire 117 AD?) at the same level of the room’s late antique re-use as a temple’s marble deposit (later 5th/ 6th century AD onwards).

It could be a coincidence again – but the kitchen’s last use seems to have taken place when the old Forum’s temples of Ostia were demolished and cleared up after a fire in 117 AD (?). When the temple ruins were removed and cleaned away, the oldest material from these temples could have entered our deposit. This destruction-event had sealed a well, which by construction technique can be dated to late Republican times (1st century BC). The oldest cultic deposits, which we found inside this well go back to the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC.

We developed the working-hypothesis that we had found a cultic kitchen connected with the Capitolium’s pagan practices, public feasts on the Forum. One clear evidence seems to be the large amounts of lits (see pictures below top), which we documented on the surface in their original context by 3-D-models (see picture below bottom).

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As frequently found in temple-contexts of the whole Graeco-Roman world, these lits once covered little ceramic bowls in which the meat of the sacrificed animals was served to the spectators. So, it is hardly another coincidence that we have found in one room-corner a surface of a bone-deposit, which seems to have consisted of several big bones of bulls, maybe even with cutting-marks on the bones themselves (see pictures below, which show a 3-D-model of this corner. Due to reasons of conservation after fotographing we left the bones covered in their original context waiting for further specialized analysis).

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The area of our room thus may have served for the preparation and cooking of the meat (an ancient ceramic-grill once fired with charcoal was found too, see the following chapters). The hot meat probably was served in ceramic-bowls to the Forum, where the guests would have been seated. These bowls are now completely missing in contrary to their lits, which obviously had been thrown away to the corner with the bones before serving and which were later found by us there in situ.

 

So, this kitchen was found in a state of preservation almost as in Pompeii: this exceptional fact is due to the circumstance that it was covered immediately after the fire of 117AD(?) with the 70cm higher fundament of the Hadrianic room. Later in Antiquity – after the removal of the Hadrianic floor – it again was sealed by heavy stones, which had been an equally appropriate cover for almost two millennia!

This kitchen originally had predecessors directly connected to the historical setting of Ostia’s early (and maybe even earliest) temples of the 3rd to 1st centuries BC, buried underneath the Capitolium and its surrounding porticoes. The team (see picture below) is ready for new tasks!

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However, step per step: all these observations were based on the archaeological fine-cleaning of the ground-floor immediately underneath a marble-deposit once thought to have been entirely modern. Only excavation can bring further light into the complex, but most interesting building-history, which, on more or less the same walking-level, seems to represent all periods of Ostia in its most important focal point of cultic development…

Our next chapters follow soon!

 

2016 Chapter 1. Structural news and the first working weeks in August

 

A short introduction-preview: Structural news since 1st of July 2016

Thanks to the Stiftung Humboldt-Universität (SHU) and based on a very substantial private donation in 2015/16, the Ostia-Forum-Project has been given the chance to develop a 6-year-plan of excavation-, documentation- and publication-efforts until 2022 (see section 2015 “Perspectives”. For actual details, visit the webpage of the Stiftung, see picture below). Two new stipendia, one for a PhD-, another for a habilitation-project, and a new ‘Stiftungs-professorship’ as far as a budget for material, equipment and short-term-jobs (‘Werkverträge’) set a framework for the continuous and extended efforts on several aspects of the project’s evolution.

spitzenforschung-2-ausschnittAt the same time, the project’s main office has moved from Ziegelstraße 13c to the centre of the Winckelmann-Institute for Classical Archaeology, the former office of Prof. Rößler inside the library of the Winckelmann-Institute (that is in the main HU-University-building at Unter den Linden 6).

Based on an upgraded infrastructure, new perspectives and many new supporters, the summer-campaign of 2016 could begin!

 

The first two weeks in August: the preparation of the campaign

As in former years, the annual summer-excavation campaign remains the integral part of the project.

In late July 2016, after receiving all necessary project-funding, the first car of the excavation-team left Berlin and moved immediately towards Rome. The tasks of the first two weeks were to renew the technological equipment, install new programs, mainly 3-D-tools on our laptops, and to prepare a database for systematic documentation methods on finds and their contexts. All this had to be prepared before the middle of August (straight after the famous “Ferragosto”-holidays in Italy, where almost everything remains closed), when the main team consisting of 28 students and researchers from Berlin, Denmark, Italy and Hungary were scheduled to start the work of a huge amount of finds . There was indeed a lot of work expected: Several hundreds of high-quality decorated marble fragments from deposits consisting of several thousands, mainly non-diagnostic, stones were to be selected, measured, drawn and digitally documented based on the survey-activities of 2015.

The first half of the team arrived at Ostia at the 16th of August for the official opening of the excavation (see picture below).

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On the first day after Ferragosto, a survey of previously neglected marble-deposits, often hidden under decades of modern vegetation, was begun (see picture below). Since 2012, the first non-documented marble-fragments of the Forum, remains of old excavations or even older lime-kilns, became a centre of interest for the Humboldt-team’s activities. In 2014, the first deposits with a non-disturbed late- and post-antique stratigraphy were documented (see section Campaign 2014, chapter 1-5). The campaign of 2015 continued with this same task, where mainly recent marble-deposits were scientifically documented and processed for the first time. Nevertheless, there were many more stone-deposits, either just overgrown (see picture below) or completely hidden underneath the earth, to be analysed (see plan below bottom).

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Besides that, we looked very much forward to the visit of Roberta Geremia-Nucci, who already had started the documentation of the marbles connected to the temple of Roma and Augustus (TRA) in 2005 (Geremia-Nucci 2013). Again, we want to express our deepest gratitude to Roberta and of course also to the Superintendence of Rome and the directors of the Scavi di Ostia, namely Paola Germoni and Cinzia Morelli, who again allowed us to work on and work up the rich material of previous excavations (including our newer excavations since 2010) of the Forum.

Actually, we took up the work from where Roberta had stopped in 2005, and where we already had begun in 2015: In and around the fundament-area of the temple of Roma and Augustus (TRA, see pictures below).

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By simply cleaning the marble pile and removing the pine needles or earth around some of the fragments (see picture below), we found some important architectural marble-elements, which seemed lost. On the excavation’s first day they were actually ‘re-found’ exactly in a position to which they had fallen from a place, where Axel last had recorded them on photos in 2007.

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These elements of the temple TRA had to be recorded with several hundreds of photos from all sides in order to create proper high-resolution-3-D point clouds (a method now widely used based on a simplified workflow thanks to professional software. In earlier campaigns, our cooperation-partners and we had to do the more fundamental research on the methods on our own). By looking at all sides, working traces and dowel-holes of these fragments (for an example, see pictures below: the top picture is a cleaned point cloud and the remaining are the meshed model), it is now possible to reconstruct the exact position of the complete cornice and framing of the temple-door and the thickness of the front cella-wall in a different way than we expected in 2015 (see picture below bottom).

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The first excavation week after Ferragosto ended with the complete sorting of all marbles in the temple-fundament TRA. However, sorting stones with and without decoration alone is just the beginning: After careful cleaning with water (see picture below, left), Marco and Laura had to continue the work for some weeks to record all architectural elements in detail (see picture below, right). Marco was quite enthusiastic from the beginning, because Ostia’s marble-piles offer a high density of diagnostic fragments in a very limited and dense space, especially compared to the huge stone desert of Petra, where he normally works on his PhD-thesis about architectural decoration.

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It is important to clean the marble fragments, and water helps, but sometimes, with the additional help of a little dust, details become clearer (see picture below)…

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In the last week of August, the centre of our activities extended to a quite recent stone-deposit located underneath a staircase in the Forumbaths (see 3-D-reconstruction below). The deposit can be dated to the 1930’ies (see the plan above: PFB 1; see pictures below).

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Even though the deposit is modern and quite ‘recent’, we still found lots of extremely interesting material regarding our planned reconstruction of the main marble-buildings of Ostia’s city-centre! Roughly 75% of the diagnostic architectural decoration and marble-furniture originate from the surrounding Forumbath’s area including its ‘Palaestra’ (compare the unusual gameboard with animal-graffiti, see picture above), but the remaining 25% can be attributed to the Augustan temple TRA (by simple stylistic, typological and measurement-comparisons), the Flavian Forumsbasilica, the Hadrianic Capitolium (Ostia’s main temple) and the Severan ‘Tempio Rotondo’, a round temple dedicated to the Imperial cult. Ostia’s marble-deposits show that all marble-buildings of the centre were dismantled intentionally at a certain time, but the sequence of these destruction-processes was never before analysed in detail or based on a statistically representative number of fragments.

At first, we collected all marble-fragments with a clear decoration-system which can be dated in Augustan times or later periods (see pictures below). Due to the dimensions, most of these marbles belonged to smaller architectural ensembles like altars or aediculae (small niches with little pediments), which were frequent inside the cella of a temple or inside porticoes. Based on statistics, it became clear that Augustan buildings, as the temple of Roma and Augustus (TRA), were the biggest source of material for reuse and the earliest monuments, which were dismantled intentionally for this purpose.

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A systematic workflow was developed, where all fragments were registered by numbers and QR-codes, before they were photographed and documented in 3-D. The name of the deposit is characterized by three letters, followed by a room number (if the area consisted of several rooms) and the individual find’s number (see pictures below. Attention: the scale is in inches, not centimetres…). Once our catalogue will be online, you can have direct access to the fragments and their measurements via a simple smartphone, but this step will take us some more time to process!

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Since 2014, we have known that the majority of marbles from the temple TRA was recycled already in Late Antiquity. This is especially evident along the southern part of the Forum and along the southern Cardo, where pediment-reliefs and statues or decoration-elements from inside the temple-cella were found in shops. They were mostly placed there by the excavators of the early 20th century after they had been found on top of the southern Cardo between 1921 and 1924. However, limited excavations in 2012 and 2014 had already showed that in similar shops in the south part of the Forum and along the Cardo (as TDV) there obviously was a late 5th and 6th century AD marble-business concentrated. As for example at Sagalassos in Turkey, sorted piles of building-material were stored in shops around the Forum (around the Agora in the case of Sagalassos) for local recycling, production or simple selling as spolia. During the old and widely undocumented excavations, these marbles were obviously not moved too far from their find-spot, which therefore – based on a representative number of finds – is statistically significant to reconstruct the last phase of Ostia’s urban development from a monumental Forum to a marble-warehouse or builders’ merchant.

Thus, it is necessary to cross-check possible resembling fragments in all marble-deposits of the city-centre. One example: A newly discovered over-life-size statue-fragment from the temple TRA (see picture below, top) could be paralleled with other fragments. These consist of a marble arm (see picture below, middle) from the Forumbaths-deposit (PFB 1, see plan above) and a neck-fragment, which was originally inserted (‘Einsatzkopf’) into a statue, found by Roberta in 2005 (It is now stored in the Piccolo Mercato, see picture below, bottom). The final evidence will emerge, when we have all three fragments processed as 3-D-models, which can show if they actually fit to each other.

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By the end of August, we had finished deposit PFB 1, the so-called “smelly-snake deposit” (it owes its unofficial nickname to the fact that we had a stratigraphy of 50 cm of rat-leftovers and below that, a comfortable home of snakes…). Beside the usually high amount of wall-veneers and pavement-slabs, also statue-fragments came to light (see picture below left). Another interesting group of finds were elements of architectural decoration, which still show traces of lines for cut-out. This shows that they were left in a condition not finally polished (see picture below right). It is interesting to note that there is a high number of such obviously unfinished architectural decoration, thus obviously a usual factor – or even a characteristic feature – of Roman construction.

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After sufficient smelly business, we started to work at Ostia’s biggest marble-deposit hitherto detected. It is situated north of the Decumanus (see plan above and Forum-plan below: TFR 2; see the following four pictures below). Daniel had already worked superficially in this deposit in 2013, where he had sorted out some coppi (roof tiles) for the research of his master thesis. However, it soon became clear that this deposit had not been touched by other archaeologists since its origin in late antique/ medieval times and/or in the 19th or early 20th centuries. Initially we did not have a proper dating-evidence for the depositing-process. Photos from 1910 documented the existence of the marble-deposit in the room TFR 2. So we knew at least that it had already existed when a nearby lime-kiln was excavated in 1913. This lime-kiln is recorded only by old excavation-photos and was found next to the excavators’ carriage-track either east of the room TFR 2 or in the south part of the portico located just west of the room TFR 1 (see Forum-plan below).

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One of the first finds in the room TFR 2 really surprised us a lot: A fragment of an unusual black stone appeared from a pile consisting of white marbles. Its surface was covered with hieroglyphs (see pictures below top)! What we definitely did not expect in this moment: It was an Egyptian original being much older than Ostia itself! Later this find turned out to be an important hint for the interpretation of the material coming from room TFR 2 as part of a temple-deposit – you can read more about this in chapter 2. Even though it is a fairly small fragment, due to the typology, we can reconstruct its type completely. It turned out to be an offering plate, which was widespread in Egypt in almost all the dynasties, but in our case of an unusual high quality in execution. Fortunately, Lena took part in the excavations again, and after a rough hand-drawing (see picture below bottom) and a short telephone-call in the evening, we had the first expertise by Gunnar, who is specialised on this subject due to his PhD.

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More about this find and the following weeks of excavation, see chapter 2.

2015 Chapter 2: Plans for the future & new cooperations

1000 years of „Forum-history“: A programme for OFP’s future research
(in chronological order of the historic periods: 3rd/1st century BC – 7th century AD)

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What we plan to do the next years is basically the subsequent work-up and interpretation:
– of all our excavation-/survey-data of the Forum from the campaigns 2010-2013,
– of our supplementing survey-data & digital records until 2014 and
– of our finds (coins, ceramics, small finds, all sorts of marbles, inscriptions and large finds).

We hope to be able to continue our successful cooperation with the Superintendency in the future with the aim to:
a.) work up all 2012/2014 material in the modern finds-deposits and the new marble-deposits
b.) conduct supplementing research on site at the Forum and its surroundings with non-invasive methods (see section „Aims and Methodology) as for example geophysics and archaeological surface-documentation with laserscanning, which we have practised successfully, also in 2014
c.) assist in working up a certain part (the undocumented Forum-pavements and marble-deposits) of the world’s largest-scale excavations of Guido Calza until 1941, which are still not completely scientifically analysed.
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A few superlatives and advantages characterize the project so far:
1.) most cooperation partners involved, most high-tech cooperations for fundamental research on the improved workflow of digital documentation-methods
2.) low-hierarchy concept and maximum student-participation/-responsibility
3.) long-perspective planning, due to institutional independence and autonomous support-structure
4.) maximum efficiency due to minimized administration-structures
5.) more than 20 years of working-experience in Ostia and in Rome’s archaeological networks
6.) fastest online campaign-publication based on open-access-software, our and other webpages and selected social media (Facebook-Groups a. s. o.)
7.) flexible concept of including autonomous teams of changing international cooperation partners, adapted to every working campaign‘s changing needs.

To be able to continue our research in the centre of the world’s largest excavation-site, all further cooperations with universities and institutions are most welcome!

——

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Our working-programme for the next years can contain at least 7 major project-areas, based on our excavation-data, finds-material and research-interests.

Each of these areas is subdivided into several autonomous subprojects (compare chapter “Subprojects) and supplementing research-projects, also for BA-, Master- and PhD-thesis.

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Project-area 1.) The complete reconstruction of the front pediment of the Roma and Augustus temple (and other public monuments)

All marble-piles and -fragments found in MFD/TDV in 2012/2014 are waiting to be fully documented. This systematic documentation started in 2014 – its continuation is planned in a cooperation with Kiel University, Germany (Kiel-University, see 2014 Chapter 2).
Approximately 40% of the finds of 2012 from TDV were already processed in 2014 (see pictures below). A major part of these fragments clearly came from the Roma and Augustus temple – mostly from the pediment, but also from architectural decoration elsewhere (for example the door or the inside decoration). The work-up of the remaining 60% from TDV and the material from three other marble-deposits in its ‘backrooms’ and immediate surroundings, all found in 2012 and documented by laserscan in 2014, need at least two more working-campaigns (2015/2016) to be completed. Every fragment has to be drawn by hand, measured and photographed, before we can pass it on to the 3-D-documentation-process (compare 2014 Chapter 1 and 2014 Chapter 2).
The complete virtual reconstruction based on our 3-D-data of the marble-finds from 2012/2014 (see pictures below, compare 2014 Chapter 3 and 2014 Chapter 4) is planned for 2015/16, as part of the scientific work-up of Calza’s old Forum-excavations 1921-1923. A systematic documentation and virtual photografic- and 3-D-catalogue of all not previously recorded marble-fragments from the Forum could benefit our knowledge of the Forum’s topography on one hand, and the working-conditions in the (already quite full) finds-deposits on the other hand.
With these fragments, it will be possible to reconstruct the original architectural and sculptural decoration of the Forum’s plaza and the surrounding public buildings of the Forum, primarily for scientific purposes, and secondly as a digital vizualisation for broader access (which could be web-based, also for smartphones used on site).
Furthermore, a possible side-effect could benefit local tourism in Ostia by preparing a public presentation on site, or an international exhibition on recent research in Ostia, maybe partly based on small-scale reconstruction-models made with 3-D-printing-technology.

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Project-area 2.) From single-finds to urbanism – The concept and building-history of the Augustan Forum: Continuity, changes and ‘interactions’ with its Republican predecessors
The digital data of a first geophysical-survey in 2011 in cooperation with Eastern Atlas (see picture below) should be verified by a planned geophysical survey in 2015 in cooperation with the Catholic University of Hungary. Both surveys have one of the main objectives to reconstruct Ostia’s first Forum concepts based on all previous excavation-trenches (which were unearthed by former excavators, but recleaned and firstly documented by OFP, see pictures below).

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Project-area 3.) Ostia re-founded in 51 AD? An advanced Claudian/Flavian Forum-concept with two shopping-halls und a new sacred centre

All previous excavation-data should be used to reconstruct the original planning-concepts of diverse predecessors of the partly Hadrianic/Antonine and partly late antique shape of the Forum, which is visible today. A main factor of the research is based on exact measuring, supported by the virtual 3-D-Forum-model, which will be completed by external cooperation-partners as for example the German Aerospace Centre. In 2012, we found very characteristic axis-symmetries of buildings, which once belonged to the same building-phases. They partly corresponded to the ‘ideological’ centre of Rome’s first colony, the so-called mundus, which we studied in detail by building-analysis and further geophysics (compare pictures below). Analogies between several axis-symmetries have to be analysed in the whole city-centre, based on our previous and actual surveys.

Additional fine-measuring with tolerances under 1 cm can in future campaigns supplement our digital archive of 3-D-data with the aim of a complete reconstruction of the Forum’s complexe building-history and building-sequences by analysing all planning-axis-deviations and -symmetries.

This project can be subdivided into several subprojects, on one hand for technical PhD-thesis, on the other hand for archaeological PhD-thesis.

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Project-area 4.) The Forum’s building-history from the Trajanic level to the latest Forum-repairs in the 5th/6th century AD

Subproject 4a.) The Forum as a three-dimensional space-model: Looking for practical ways of visualizing diachronically by sections

This subproject will be completed with the digital material provided in cooperation with the German Aerospace Centre / Zentrum für Deutsche Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), Bernhard Strackenbrock & Birgit Tsuchyia.

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Subproject 4b.) All excavation-data combined in one “2,5-D”web-GIS (Geografical Information System)

This subproject is planned in cooperation with DLR and H. P. Thamm (Geo-sciences, Freie Universität Berlin).

 

Subproject 4c.) Monuments, statues and inscriptions for the Imperial Cult: Reconstructing the original „furniture“ of the Forum (1st-4th century AD)

This subproject is planned in cooperation with Astrid Fendt and Lena Kaumanns (Epigraphy, Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften BBAW).

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Subproject 4d.) The (altered?) public functions of the late antique Forum – conversions and temporary installations for markets, festivals and spectacles (4th-6th century AD)
This subproject is based on new research (PhD-thesis) on wooden seating facilites, which were temporarily installed in front – or inside – the Forum’s porticoes, when important spectacles, games or festivals of the city-culture were held. The Forum, until the 5th century surely the most important public space, was an ideal finish for processions. Processions along the Decumanus are well documented, also in Late Antiquity. The arrival (adventus) of Roman city-magistrates in Ostia happened frequently – they could have had political or religious reasons. Even pagan processions were recorded until the 6th century AD in Ostia. The theatre was fully restored in the 5th century for aquatic shows: Additional or similar theatre-games or -events might be assumed in the Forum too, Ostia’s biggest open air-plaza.

The main aim of this subproject is to document and measure all postholes and similar traces of ancient use systematically. Did regular ‘modules’ for wooden-constructions exist here in Ostia too, as we know them from for example in Fregene, Paestum or other cities in middle and south Italy? Based on more than 26 postholes in the marble slabs and/or their mortar-bedding discovered in MFP alone, it should be possible to reconstruct the dimensions and the construction-technique of wooden seats, tables or market-stalls inserted temporarily into our portico-pavements of the whole Forum (see pictures below).

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Subproject 4e.) The reuse, re-erecting and collecting of statues in Late Antiquitiy – continuity and changes in the „statue-habit“ (4th-6th century AD)

The Forum’s late pavements show imprints of quite irregularly shaped spolia-bases (see pictures below). They were renovated or newly built inside the porticoes of the late 4th or 5th century AD to protect statues, which obviously had been transfered from somewhere else before. Here we have a clear evidence of one of the latest collective ‚revivals‘ of pagan statues in Antiquity. The statues were obviously covered in situ in the collapsed porticoes (later 5th or 6th century AD?) and mostly found in the early 19th century. They can be traced in several museums worldwide. The question is, whether pagan statues were „saved“ randomly as simple decoration or whether there still was a certain „programme“ regarding their collocation in the 5th century AD. The variety and completeness of the preserved statues are surprising: This seems to confirm the concept of the „dei consentes“, a concept with the aim to present (even in an advanced ‚Christianized‘ atmosphere) a ‚didactically‘ representative selection of the mythological past of the Graeco-Roman city-culture.
The finds-catalogues of 1801-1805 were published in 1912, but the information is not sufficient. The main aim of this subproject is therefore to conduct archival studies on supplementing catalogues and finds-books in the Vatican and other museums in the attempt to collect all statues from the first Forum-excavations. Additionally, the spolia-bases and -imprints found in 2010-12 have to be reconstructed fully in comparison to similar late antique statue collocations as for example at Sagalassos. Furthermore, new material (statues and bases) was found in the late 19th century-excavations and until 1924. This applies mostly to material, which is stored in the deposits at Ostia. The archives, deposits and OFP’s new finds provide enough material for several PhD-projects regarding statue contexts, partly in possible cooperation with the Freie Universität Berlin.
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Subproject 4f.) The last marble-pavement of the Forum: Fine-dating of the latest repairs and re-levelling of the porticoes in the 5th-6th century AD

This subproject is planned for 2015 in cooperation with Silvia Polla (Archaeology & Archaeometry, Freie Universität Berlin). In Berlin’s laboratories, microscopic samples of the amphorae can be used for a content analysis in the attempt to answer the main question of their former use (basically: wine or oil). Based on a large quantity of material, this can be a very important source to reconstruct trade and the late antique economy of the whole Mediterranean. A side-effect of Polla‘s study for the OFP is that our ceramic-material will not only be dated and classified, but we will also get all possible archaeometric laboratory-data regarding the ceramic’s chemistry and provenance – for free. What we offer to Polla’s much more representative study in exchange is an exceptionally „sealed“ context of ceramics found underneath the last pavements of Ostia’s Forum in 2011. This context is equally important for Polla’s study (Ostia’s market is representative for Rome) and for us (MFW trench 2 is one of the most important sources for dating our mortar-stratigraphy of the latest pavements). Therefore, back in 2011 we used the maximum care to document the micro-stratigraphy of this context (including all single finds-positions in a 3-D-model). Contexting was done manually by us and digitally by Undine Lieberwirth’s subproject to OFP and Bernhard Fritsch (both Excellence-cluster TOPOI Berlin: see pictures below). For Polla’s subsequent analysis in 2015 and 2016, the involved laboratories will use tested methods of gaschromatography and mass-spectrometry. Her study is already based on a wide framework of archaeological sites, mainly in North Africa, where also the main part of our ceramics (which was found in late Forum’s contexts) comes from.

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Project area 5.) The organisation of recycling, spolia production and spolia trade: workshops, „claims“ and the selective dismantling of monuments (3rd-6th century AD)

Subproject 5a.) Late antique marble reuse in the context of OFP’s new deposit finds around the Forum: How was reworking for the spolia trade organized?

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Capitals (see pictures above), which had been converted into wells or fountains, were quite often found in late antique cities. Similar pieces were found at MFD/TDV in 1923.
Also, OFP’s new 2012/2014 finds, like thresholds from TDV and CAW or ‘random finds’ from the older excavations (see pictures below), had been reused from architectural elements (see pictures below).

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Dating evidence for similar recycling processes is provided by a terminus post quem (TPQ) for the recycling of the collapsed Roma and Augustustemple (see pictures below). Recycling from architectural elements to more basic functions seems to have been practized on large scale – maybe mainly for some decades between 450 AD and our latest stratigraphy from 500-550 AD. What were the reasons to give it up? Why did so many fragments survive half finished? When exactly and how was Ostia’s Forum deserted? And why did ‘drawings’ from architectural elements survive (see picture further below)?

The aim of the subproject would be to conduct comparative spolia research of all marble accumulations around the Forum. The finds contexts of reworked material range from late antique, medieval to modern times and from workshop deposits to lime kilns to excavator’s stone collections. First step will be the analysis of excavation history to be able to date the marble deposits. Next step is the local building analysis of all individual marble deposits as a case study. Third step is, based on the undisturbed marble deposits, the reconstruction of the material‘s original provenance. With the material from the 2012/14 marble piles of TDV, we start with the working hypothesis that several late antique workshops around the Forum obviously could have „bought“ regularly divided „claims“ in order to get the material for their production. This is verified by a few case studies, but has to be analyzed on the full representative quantity of material available. The complete working up of marble deposits and their „claims“ will provide most important evidence for spolia „business“ from the 4th to the 7th century AD, a subject of a widespread recent reserach interest. It will provide furthermore insights into the undocumented excavation history until the late 19th century and last, but not least: „claims“ may demonstrate a previously unknown evidence for strong communal controle, still in the late 5th and 6th centuries AD.

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Subproject 5b.) Flooding catastrophy or fire collapse? The evidence of coin hoards in late antique charcoal- and chalk-layers
The aim of this subproject would be the dating of the last building- and destruction-phases by the complete work up of all coins hitherto found by OFP in the latest preserved contexts underneath or above spolia pavements in MFP, MFR, MFW and MFD/TDV (approximately 200 datable coins, mostly nummi). Based on a high quantity of material evidence – in comparison with other excavation areas – it will be possible to write the destruction history of Ostias city centre more precisely. The main question would be how to define Ostia’s city-center in comparison to the areas outside, for example along the coastline. Was the center left to destruction earlier than the last luxury-seaside villas? Or can we verify the opposite hypothesis regarding the latest main restoration-phase in the center versus processes of abandonment in the suburbs?

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Subproject 5c.): Fine dating of spolia buildings by coin evidence: Was public infrastructure of the „consumer city“ maintained after the middle of the 5th century AD?
Our evidence from several building analysis until 2014 regarding porticoes, late antique fountains, toilets and „fountain houses“ or other social ‚meeting points‘ (Schmölder-Veith 2010, see Project Related Bibliography) in the context of the Forum should be center of several comparative case studies (PhD projects).
The latest newly built porticoes in Ostia are documented by finds only – in Portus at least one building inscription has survived, which documents building activities and the decoration of a „porticus of Placidia“ in the middle of the 5th century AD (see picture below).
One specific building in direct context of the entrance repair (third phase, after the middle of the 5th century AD) of the so-called Terme Bizantine (TBZ, see picture below) was cleaned in 2012 but not yet documented: 3-D-documentation of the remains and the interpretation of the 2012 finds is one of the aims for the 2015 campaign.

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Subproject 5d.) „Crisis-management“: Reuse of material from suburban pagan cemeteries inside the city for repair and public decoration
In the marble piles of the southern half of the Forum, which were archeologically cleaned in 2012 and analyzed in detail in 2014, we have found a surprising amount of material from pagan cemeteries. These cemeteries had been usually situated outside the city-walls, so the questions remains: Why did we find this material connected with specific builing-rubble from the south Forum’s area? A first interpretation of the reuse of these marbles, mostly sarcophags and “loculus-” inscriptions as late antique building-material, can be based on the systematic spolia-survey regarding the reuse of marbles from cemeteries inside the late-antique city (see bibliography: Axel Gering’s Habilitation thesis). Further discussions of statues beeing reused inside the city were based on the fundamental research of C. Murer regarding the late decoration of private houses and baths (this detailled study of C. Murer will be published soon). A closer interpretation of all material found by OFP until 2014 (sarcophags, statue fragments and decoration elements from cemeteries) is planned in cooperation with the University of Kiel (see above). Another aspect would be the study and interpretation of the previous finds until 1924 regarding material and sculptures from pagan cemeteries.

The characteristic “mixture” of marble elements in TDV (see above) shows clearly that this material was not brought from the cemeteries  inside the city to be burned to chalk here. Much more likely it had come from the secondary context of its reuse, that means: from the Forum itself. Especially the significance of late statue re-erection after catastrophic events (the earthquake of 442/ 443 AD) in the Forum will be analyzed to gain a new understanding, if former ‚funeral‘ sculpture in mythological contexts (compare Wrede 1981, see Project Related Bibliography) could have replaced the original imperial public statues (which maybe were partly demolished or robbed) in a framework of an ongoing demand for public aesthetic (ornamentum urbis) in the 5th century AD.

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Project area 6.) The end of an ancient city culture: archaeological and social patterns of the abandoning processes at the Forum of Ostia and the reasons for „des-urbanization“ (6th-8th century AD)

In 2011 and 2012 we have found and recorded many organic finds and bones too (which are stored in plastic bags in the deposit at Ostia). A cooperation with laboratories specialized in analizing organic material, animal bones & the DNA analysis of human bones is planned for the next years before the material looses its information. Wood and plants were preserved extremely well in certain mortar-layers. These mortar-layers belong to the last building-activities of the city. Because of their importance for interpretation a few microscopic wood-samples were already taken to Berlin in 2012 to be analyzed in TOPOI-laboratories under the initiative of Undine Lieberwirth (compare picture below). The extended research-project would include all our 2011-2012-finds aiming to get a broader understanding of the organic finds from previously undated mortar-stratigraphy and embedded objects. The analysis focusses on the last preserved surface-layers of street- and plaza-pavements which are every year massively reduced by erosion and mass-tourism.  The research should include all signs of a possible latest market reuse (animal-bones) or even „inofficial“ intra-urban burial contexts in these latest street- or plaza-levels too. By dating these activities more precisely even the “end” of Ostias “classical” urbanziation-patterns in the “dark” early-middle ages, the largely unknown 6th and 7th cenutries, could become historical fact beyond speculation.

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Project area 7.) The early medieval/post antique marble deposits and lime kilns around the Forum: the history of transformation, destruction and excavation (7th-20th century AD)

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Subproject 7a.) The building-, demolition- and excavation history of the Forum’s Basilica with a focus on its architectural decoration (planned PhD-thesis C. Schneider)

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Therefore: for all these projects to successfully happen, support the OFP for future research in the center of the world’s largest excavation-site!

 

 

2014 Chapter 5: A new supporting pillar for the OFP – the ‘Society for the Promotion of Research in Ostia’

 

About theOstia-Forumprojekt. Förderverein zur archäologischen Erforschung Ostias / Society for the Promotion of Research in Ostia” 

The following section is primarily specified for our German supporters: Due to German cooperative laws, the association mentioned above can only include persons as active members with a permanent or temporary residence in Germany. However, in any other case, don’t worry: If you are interested in supporting us, just contact us! (contact@ostiaforumproject.com)
See the new section “2015 Campaign: A view back & plans for the future for a summary of our program for the following years, and why it is worth supporting us – and how YOU CAN support us with knowledge, manpower and /or money!

 

Der Verein „Ostia-Forumprojekt. Förderverein zur archäologischen Erforschung Ostias“ wurde am 11. Februar 2015 gegründet. Er hat seinen Sitz in Berlin und soll in das Vereinsregister mit dem Zusatz “e.V.” eingetragen werden.

Vereinszweck
Der Verein dient der Förderung der Forschung und Wissenschaft, insbesondere auf dem Gebiet der Archäologie.
Der Verein verfolgt ausschließlich und unmittelbar gemeinnützige Zwecke im Sinne des Abschnitts “Steuerbegünstigte Zwecke” der Abgabenordnung.
Der Satzungszweck wird verwirklicht insbesondere durch folgende Maßnahmen:
– finanzielle und materielle Unterstützung von Bauaufnahme-, Survey- und Ausgrabungsprojekten im Bereich der antiken Hafenmetropole Ostia Antica (Kost, Logis, Reisekosten für Grabungsmitarbeitende, Materialkosten für Ausgrabungen vor Ort),
– Unterstützung von Nachwuchswissenschaftlern durch das Ermöglichen der Teilnahme an Lehrgrabungen,
– Förderung wissenschaftlicher Publikationen zum Thema (Abbildungsbestellungen, Druckkostenzuschüsse etc.)
– Förderung von Nachbearbeitung und Vorbereitungen der Ausgrabungskampagnen, u. a. auch mit Reisekostenübernahme für Aufarbeitungskampagnen einzelner Forscher
– Anschaffung von neuester Fachliteratur soweit nicht anderweitig zugänglich
– Vermittlung neuester archäologischer Feldforschungen für die breitere Öffentlichkeit
– Förderung der visuellen Aufbereitung und multimedialen Aufarbeitung der Grabungsergebnisse
– Vorbereitung und Durchführung von Ausstellungen (in Verbindung zu universitären Lehrveranstaltungen)
– Organisation von Tagungen, Gastvorträgen und ggf. auch Gastprofessuraufenthalten zum Thema Ostia in ergänzung zum universitären Lehrbetrieb
– Förderung von Werbemaßnahmen zur Verbreitung und Bekanntmachung des Projekts
Erwerb der Mitgliedschaft
Mitglied des Vereins kann jede volljährige Person werden. Der Antrag auf Mitgliedschaft erfolgt schriftlich, über ihn entscheidet der Vorstand.
Es existieren zwei Optionen, die aktive und die „Fördermitgliedschaft“. Fördermitglieder können den Verein durch Zuwendungen unterstützen und erhalten die Möglichkeit, an Vorträgen etc., aber auch an den Ausgrabungen selbst, soweit eine ausreichende Qualifikation vorliegt, teilzunehmen.
Spenden
Spenden sind selbstverständlich auch ohne Erwerb der Mitgliedschaft gerne gesehen und, sobald die Gemeinnützigkeit anerkannt ist, sogar von der Steuer absetzbar.

Bei Interesse an einer Mitgliedschaft oder einmaligen Spende – oder weiteren Fragen zum Thema – schicken Sie eine mail an:
contact@ostiaforumproject.com
Gerne beantworten wir Ihre Fragen und benachrichtigen Sie, wann unser Förderverein startbereit ist, auch Spendenquittungen auszustellen!

Our continous presence at Ostia guarantees scientific progress on one hand, future possibilities, also for young archaeologists working in one of the most important Roman cities, on the other hand!
Therefore: support the OFP for future research in the centre of the world’s largest excavation site!

2014 Chapter 4. A “fish-tail” and the Augustan Imperial narrative

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By sytematically checking the marble-deposits around the Forum, we accidently found a block of Carrara-marble with a half-polished back-side, a characteristic diametre of 15 cm and a low-relief ornamentation on its front (see pictures above and picture below). This marble-deposit at the Cardo was named CAW. The surface-find had been stored on top of an already cleaned surface of a shop. It could have been part of Calza‘s Cardo-excavations until 1941: Maybe – due to the historical circumstances – it was „forgotten“ in this area. It may have been excavated already in 1801-1805, because the shop could have been part of Petrini‘s old excavations, documented already by the sketch-plan of Holl in 1805 (published in the first volume of the ‚Scavi di Ostia‘, see Calza et al. 1953). Unfortunately, there is no documentation in the old diaries about this find, not even in the actual finds-books.

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Therefore, we called it our ‚fish‘.
After the usual surface-finds documentation (the easiest we ever had), several theories were discussed: Was it a late antique sculpture, in the context of the legend of Jonas? Or a monumentally sculptured ‚advertisement‘ for a fish-market?
Once it was cleaned, photographed, measured, drawn and 3-D documented (see pictures below), we were able to exclude a late antique origin by stylistic dating.

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Soon we discovered the strange amount of at least three fins (see picture below).

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„Normal“ fish, which do not live in the hardly known areas of the ocean bottom, have hardly more than two fins: They could be excluded. Obviously, we had found a fragment of an originally longer fish-like tail, which could have belonged to mythological figures like Tritons, Nereids a. s. o.

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The material-quality, the surface-treatment and last but not least, the diametre of the marble-block seemed familiar: With 15,5 cm, it reminded us of direct parallels, mainly our wreath fragment (see Chapter 3). By closer examining its back-side, we also found some characteristic working-traces and dowel-holes, which had similarities to other supposed pediment-fragments from the Roma and Augustus temple!
But what was it exactly?

At first, we thought of a close similarity to the pediment of the temple at Baths, which was „transformed“ proportionally to our pediment with the angle of 22° (see picture below, compare the previous Chapter 3).

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Tritons were ideal to fill the odd angle in pediments of all sizes (see picture above and below).

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Triton-tails had the advantage that they could incorporate lots of fins. Therefore, our fragment could surely have been part of a Triton’s tail!
But soon some doubts came up again. The Victory holding the wreath (see previous Chapter 3) was too big to fit in the „proportional“ reconstruction showed above. Hence, there was no sufficient space for a real Triton.
Again, a look onto coins from Augustan times gave some inspiration (see pictures below).

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The so-called capricorn (see pictures above: A straight fish-tail at the back, a goat in front) fitted perfectly to the proportions of our fragment on one hand and of the proportions of the remaining space of the pediment on the other.
Our fish-tail was only rounded a bit in its front part. Its rear end was rather straight. So our fragment may have come from the part of the capricorn’s body, where fish and goat met (see the coins above).
But direct analogies, that means „life-size“-images of capricorns would have been a better comparison. Were there other capricorns in pediments?

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A pediment from Cologne resembles a comparable low relief with two capricorns in heraldic composition (see picture above: Cologne, Römisch-Germanisches Museum. Picture below: Ostia TDV).

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This stylistic feature seems characteristic for ‚provincial‘ sculpture, even in Augustan times, where art historians normally expect the maximum of quality in official art. But one must remember that our Ostian temple of Roma and Augustus had been a private donation, certainly of members of the local elite, but maybe still with certain economic restrictions (compare the discussion about the dedicatory inscription in Geremia-Nucci 2013).
By inserting our „fish“ into the Cologne-pediment, we received a possible reconstruction, which more or less even fitted our three fins (see picture below).

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Roberta Geremia-Nucci has published another fragment, which was already found in 2005. This fragment turned out to be the proof for our hypothesis: It had exactly the same measures, low relief, chisel-marks and stylistic characteristics as our fish! And it showed the front of a goat, two feet, on the globe as seen with the pediment from Cologne!
Again, also the fragment of Matthia Pultrone and Roberta Geremia-Nucci could be easily inserted into the Cologne-pediment (see picture below)!

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After inserting 23 further fragments, which we have hitherto identified from our marble pile, TDV, as parts of the pediment, we can fill Gismondi’s and Calza’s reconstruction of the Roma and Augustus temple from 1923 for the first time with the „missing links“, the pediment sculptures (see pictures below: The actual reconstruction of 2015 inserted into Calza’s pediment from 1923 and into the 3-D model of Ostia, published back in 2001). As this is still work in progress, our aim is to reconstruct the complete pediment with further proofs for all minor details soon in our new 3-D-model!

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To be continued in Chapter 5!

2014 Chapter 3. From late antique reuse to early Imperial pediment sculptures

If you walk around the Forum, you can find characteristic traces of Ostia’s latest business: The marble recycling industry (you can easily turn this search into a fascinating detective game for the whole family, if they are bored from their traditional guide-books…).
Characteristic marks of destruction can be seen at some columns (see pictures below), which were all re-erected by the former excavator Guido Calza and his successors in the attempt to raise the attractivity of the site for tourism. Guido Calza himself did not understand the scientific necessity of documenting the original find-positions of the columns, but thanks to the written comments of his assistant, Raffaele Finelli, regarding the involved construction companies and the old excavation-photos, it is partly possible to reconstruct lost information about find-spots, find-circumstances and – also an integral part of archaeology „inside“ archaeology – the modern reuse history of ancient objects.

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The carefully cut holes with almost parallel chisel marks in the columns are characteristic for a certain work-process. Several of these holes set in a straight line allow the break of a column in two regular shaped half-columns, more or less exactly along the line. Rows of similar holes can be observed on monuments from the Forum Romanum in Rome as well (at the so-called Stilicho-base and other monuments around the curia). The columns and monuments mentioned above have in common that they were cut into regularely shaped marble blocks, ready for reuse.

The „products“ of this quite regular breaking-process could be found on our marble pile, TDV (see pictures below).

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Number 157b of the pile (see pictures above) is half a column, which was cut into more manageable fragments (compare the column’s surface details). A similar surface-treatment can also be observed at a half-cut statue (see picture below. For the statue, see chapter 2). In both cases, the re-working process seems to have been interrupted by unknown circumstances. But again, thanks to this interruption, the fragments are at least preserved!

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One fragment from the 1923 excavations provides a hint for the dating of these recycling activities. A rectangular stone was cut out of an architrave (see picture below). You can see the same cutting-marks („chisel-lines“) inside the holes of the column, which was ready to be broken up.
The cutting work on the architrave was executed very carefully. One could therefore doubt that the purpose only would have been to get random fragments for lime kilns. The rectangular cut-out fragment does not seem to have been preserved, but some characteristics of the profile seem to provide further hints.

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By comparison, two facts became clear:
1.) The architrave belongs to another architrave (see picture below), which was – due to its inscription – dedicated by Vincentius Ragonius Celsus, Prefect of the grain supply (annona) as late as 385-389 AD: Thus, we have a clear terminus post quem (TPQ) of its demolition for intended reuse.
2.) The architrave wouldn’t have been reused immediately after its building. The monument had obviously already collapsed before recycling was intended. That means, it was not demolished intentionally, but it is much more probable that the recycling was a side-effect of collapse due to external factors. Regarding its original function as an architrave of a „fountain room“ close to its modern find-spot (see NDF), we expect the major earthquake of the middle of the 5th century AD to have been a „catalysator“ for the reuse, as it is verified for many other nearby buildings and monuments of the Forum by stratigraphic evidence (see former campaigns regarding the porticoes MFW, MFP, and the MFR).
The fountain room was not rebuilt after ist collapse in 442/443 AD, so its architectural decoration was free to be reused (maybe recycling workshops could buy licenses regarding certain areas to take the material. This idea is due to the fact that „our“ workshop MFD/TDV is located not far from the fountain room NDF).

We think there were two aims to reuse the former architrave (see picture below):

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1.) In the attempt to get marble blocks, especially marble slabs, which were needed in Late Antiquity for the maintenance of public buildings, baths, fountains, toilets a. s. o. as necessary as for the new building-sites for luxurious private houses and villas. Marble slabs for pavements or walls were almost constantly needed for new building-activities or repairs after every collapse catastrophy (due to fires a. s. o.), when collapsed ceilings had destroyed the former floors and wall decorations.
2.) In the attempt to get specific elements for late marble decorations as for example the profiles we have found in numerous examples in our pile (see picture below).

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The same cutting-marks, as seen on the columns or the architrave of Ragonius, can also be found on the cella blocks from the Roma and Augustus temple (see picture below). They had obviously been ideal for being reused and reworked either to late antique „spolia“-slabs or for different shaped architectural elements. To gain marble-profiles, mostly for the luxurious decoration of late antique houses or fountains, a large number of late antique statue-bases were obviously also cut into pieces (one of the few preserved examples can be seen on the picture below to the right). This theory is verified by the rather late stylistic dating of many fragments with architectural decoration, which had been re-cut in our proposed workshop and were found in our piles in TDV and MFD (compare example above). This could be a good explanation for the fact that hardly any statue-bases of the Forum had survived.

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With a closer look to the surfaces of the stone, many of the intended cutting-lines can still be seen. In some cases, the cutting-process to produce pavement slabs was interrupted or abandoned due to unknown circumstances: Maybe the blocks broke irregularely during the reworking process (for a good example, found by us in 2011, see pictures below).

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After some statistical research in our post-excavation work, we have the impression that the dimensions of the cut-out blocks resemble „standard sizes“ for reuse (half a Roman foot or one Roman foot a. s. o.). Blocks with these dimensions can easily be divided for late antique pavement slabs, which are usually 6-8 cm thick (see picture below to the left: Big pavement slab with marks of a stone saw. Picture to the right: Chisel-marks indicating, where to cut the stone into roughly 6-8 cm thick slabs).

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Similar block-sizes of 15 or 30 cm thickness, as the ones from Ragonius‘ inscription-architrave, were cut out of other marble-objects as the statue-base, which can be found in front of MFD (see picture below to the left. The find-position resembles probably their last reuse in the nearby workshop).
An exact parallel for intended or half-finished cutting-processes can be found at another statue-base – the back-side of the famous equestrian monument of Man(i)lius Rusticianus (see picture below to the right), a praetorian Prefect from Maxentian times, who had the problem that many of his monuments were almost instantly reused after his career had ended under Constantine (compare the base we found in the stylobate of one of the porticoes of the Foro della Statua Eroica, FSE: See Inscriptions).

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The tertiary cutting-processes of blocks from ‚standardized‘ half foot, one or two feet blocks, which were already „spolia“, into slabs with more specific dimensions, can be observed at the back-side of many pavement slabs, which were obviously reused and reworked a second time (see pictures below: The last pavement of the later 5th century AD at MFW shows, at the hidden back-side of these slabs, dowel-holes of their original function and lines of intended cutting).

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Our hypothesis regarding real „workshops“ in the area of MFD or TDV seems to be justified by the necessity of a certain infrastructure for „stone-saws“. The process of „sawing“ is doubtlessly verified by the traces on the surface of many pavement slabs. As the famous Byzantine workshop found at the Embolos of Ephesos, we expect a fluent water supply, several water basins and enough space for the huge wooden-framework of a saw.
However, the adaption of the „mass-produced“ slabs in specific dimensions with odd angles (see for example picture below: Yellow and red line) was not done in regular workshops, but rather directly at the building site itself as simple chisel-work. This can for example be verified at the latest pavement repairs in MFP, dated to the second half of the 5th century AD (see picture below), where the remaining cut-outs were used in the filling of the mortar bedding underneath.

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The obvious leftover from an „ad hoc“ cutting remained on site in situ next to its origin until we found this evidence back in 2010 (see picture below, compare older campaigns). The triangular cut-out itself seems a rather unimportant find, but it helps to fit in further puzzle-pieces in the overall picture of late antique reuse practise and everyday life in the last times of the antique city culture.

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A leftover fragment with surprises
One of the surprising finds in the fourth week of the campaign 2014 was a marble fragment with a quite specific decoration. The fragment’s front-side consists of a rounded wreath decorated with oak leaves (see picture below: right bottom angle).

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The fragment’s back-side shows a quite regularely cut shape for further reworking processes (see picture below to the left). The dimensions of roughly 40 cm x 30 cm x 15 cm seem an average size for „big“ marble-blocks in our pile TDV (compare the half finished Corinthian capital in the picture above). The back-side is partially polished like other fragments from the pile (see picture below to the right).

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Could the fragment have been part of a frieze with a continuos row of half round garlands? The depth of the relief and especially the constant diametre of the wreath itself, which was neither increasing nor decreasing towards one of the sides, was rather unusual for this interpretation (compare pictures below).

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Soon we decided to measure the angle and reconstruct it as part of a full circle (see picture below). A wreath of oak leaves in form of a full circle was not unusual in Roman art, especially in Augustan times.

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Reconstructing the circle‘s exact diametre by Auto-CAD offered a real surprise!

With just a few centimetres of tolerance our oak-leaf wreath had a diametre of 160 cm (see picture above). This fitted exactly the dimensions of a tondo, which was reconstructed already in the 1960’ies inside the pediment of the Ostian Roma and Augustus temple or – regarding the proportions and postition – a similar example at Pula (see picture below)!

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The evidence of the old finds is broadly discussed in the wonderful 2013 book of Roberta Geremia-Nucci (see Geremia-Nucci 2013).
The oak wreath is a central element of Augustus‘ Imperial narrative (compare pictures below).

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Hence, it would fit quite well into the proportions of the pediment of the Roma and Augustus temple (see picture below, based on the drawing of Italo Gismondi).

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However, another question remained: What was inside the circle? Could we reconstruct our oak wreath with an additional element, which Augustan coins frequently show (compare picture below)?

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Help comes from the well known shield from Arles in France resembling the famous original of the clipeus virtutis in Rome (see picture below).

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A shield alone can be attached to a wooden beam as the original probably did. The image of this shield from Arles still shows these construction-details (see picture above). However, in a pediment, the shield must be held by something different or somebody more attractive. Again, we can find some additional hints in Augustan coinage (see picture below).

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The motive of a Victoria holding the shield (see picture above) is also well known from a statue-fragment found during the old excavations of the Roma and Augustus temple at Ostia back in 1923 (see picture below: The 1923-Victoria to the right with additional 2014-fragments of their clothes to the left of the reconstructed tondo, compare again Roberta Geremia-Nucci 2013).

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By further analysing the fragments from the marble pile TDV in the post-excavation work, another fragment, a reused repair-piece, seemed to fit in the shield itself (see picture below). Therefore, based on our finds of 2014 from the marble pile found back in 2012, we can reconstruct the middle of the pediment of the Roma and Augustus temple as proposed here (see picture below). Surely, this is still work-in-progress, so it is highly likely that many more fragments will enrich the evidence soon!

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Our new addition from the marble pile TDV, both are the coloured fragments in the shield reconstruction of 2015 (see picture above), seems fragmentary, but sufficient for the reconstruction. Unfortunately, nothing has yet been identified from a possible inscription inside the shield, as the Arles‘ marble-copy or Augustan coins show frequently. However, by their stylistic dating, our new wreath fits very well into the dating of the temple in Augustan times, contrary to the shield fragments found back in the 1960’ies, which hitherto have been used for the interpretation (compare Geremia-Nucci 2013 to the earlier research).
Our contribution to this well-dicussed evidence seems limited, but it has surprising consequences for the interpretation of the whole Forum, which culminates in the reconstruction of the complete pediment of the Roma and Augustus temple (see next chapter), and thus also a discovery of a previously unknown temple: The second shield of similar proportions from the old excavations in the 1960’ies needs to be reconstructed in a pediment too, quite obvioulsy in the context of a huge temple of similar proportions as the Roma and Augustus temple itself!

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The image of the Victories holding the oak wreath with or without an included shield and inscription became obviously very popular in the first centuries AD. From the „high class“ Imperial art as our temple pediment (see pictures above) or its immediate predecessor in Rome itself (see picture below: The Palatine temple pediment with a tondo held by flanking Victoria-figures is visible in the background), this picture entered also the world of everyday decorations and „popular art“ (see second picture below).

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Sarcophags and loculus reliefs show, especially in Ostia, a broad reception of „official“ art into the self-representation of the so-called new „middle classes“ of (former) freedmen (liberti), which were the main clientel for the mass production of sarcophags and local funeral sculpture.

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Maybe the diffusion of the images can be observed not only „socially“ into the hierarchic Roman society, but also topografically from the centre (Rome and Ostia) to the margins of the Roman Empire. For example, other temples in the provinces seem to have been more or less directly influenced by the central motive with oak wreath held by two flanking Victories as well (see pictures below: Temple pediment of main temple in Baths, Great Britain, and its colour reconstruction. Pictures from the local museum). It seems worth noting that the dimensions and the proportions of the wreath at the Claudian temple in Baths are almost identical with our Ostian wreath fragment! Maybe popular images as we have found in Ostia (as the closest parallel to the Capital itself) were transmitted as detailed drawings to new temples dedicated to the „Imperial cult“, which were erected and decorated in many cities of the Roman empire.

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All our discoveries will be published in detail in the article: A. Gering, Brüche in der Stadtwahrnehmung: Bauten und Bildausstattung des Forums von Ostia im Wandel, in the book: A. Haug – P. Kreuz (editors), Stadtwahrnehmung in der römischen Kaiserzeit, which soon will be available. A more detailled analysis will follow in the forthcoming Römische Mitteilungen.

 

To be continued in Chapter 4