TAG Paper and Book Chapter

'Tis the season for the biannual Doors of Pompeii and Herculaneum Project blog update! Just a couple of developments worth quickly mentioning here:

1. I will be giving a paper addressing some of the DPHP's results in the session Space: The Final (Archaeological) Frontier? at TAG Bradford next week. The session is set for Monday, December 14 at 1 PM; the full TAG schedule can be found here.

2. I have written a chapter for the forthcoming BABESCH Supplement Housing and Habitat in the Ancient Mediterranean, which will be available from Peeters within the next few weeks. Entitled "Ter Limen Tetigi: exploring the role of thresholds in the houses of Pompeii and beyond," this piece presents some of the data from the DPHP's final phase, with particular emphasis on the aesthetic and functional characteristics of domestic thresholds.

That's all for now, although there are further interesting events on the horizon (this is, I believe, what's described as a "tease" in the entertainment industry)...

TL

Oxford Roman Discussion Forum

This is an (admittedly last-minute) entry regarding a talk that I will be giving at the Oxford Roman Discussion Forum tomorrow afternoon. The title is "A Foot in the Door: Laterality and Movement in Roman Houses," and the talk starts at 1 PM at the Institute of Archaeology. Full details as follows:

Taylor Lauritsen, Cardiff University

A Foot in the Door: Laterality and Movement in Roman Houses 

June 3, 2015, 1-2 PM

Lecture Room, Institute of Archaeology

36 Beaumont St

Oxford OX1 2PG

Greetings from Reading

At present, I am holed up in a hotel near the main campus of the University of Reading, the host institution for RAC/TRAC 2014. This year's conference looks to be the best attended in RAC history, and considering the slate of speakers that will be taking the stage over the next few days (plus there are three sessions dedicated to Pompeii!) it is easy to see why this is the case.

Given these circumstances, I thought that I might take the opportunity to plug a couple of DPHP-related goings-on. The first is of particular relevance to RAC: I have contributed a poster ("Doors and the Use of Space in Pompeian Cubicula") to the poster session Framing Interactions: Approaches to Coexistence in the Houses of Pompeii, organized by LMU Munich's Distant Worlds Graduate School. The session opens tomorrow afternoon (28/3) at 12:30 in the Palmer Building Foyer. For those not in attendance who might be interested in viewing my offering, I have made it available for download here.

I will also be giving a paper at the Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology Conference (commonly referred to as the CAA) in Paris at the end of next month. Entitled "Modeling Permeable Boundaries: Reconstructing Doors and Partitions in the Casa del Menandro at Pompeii," the paper is situated in the day-long session Virtual Reconstruction in Archaeology, which takes place on Thursday, April 24th in the Pantheon Amphitheatre 2A. The abstract can be viewed here.

University of Edinburgh Lunchtime Seminars

On November 19 at 1 PM, I will be giving a short lecture discussing the relationship between permeable boundaries and levels of access in Pompeian houses. The talk is part of the Roman and Late Antique Archaeology Seminar Series, a collection of monthly seminars intended to promote and enhance dialogue between University of Edinburgh scholars that have an interest in the archaeology of the Roman and Late Antique world. The 2013-2014 schedule is as follows:

15 October | Prof. Jim Crow

New cities in late antiquity: an antidote to decline and fall

19 November | Dr. Taylor Lauritsen

An "open door" policy? Reassessing access to the Pompeian house

21 January | Dr. Fraser Hunter

Late Roman silver and the barbarian world - ongoing work on the Traprain Treasure 

25 February | Dr. Candace Rice

Coastal Cilicia between Rome and Constantinople 

25 March | Dr. Ben Russell

The Roman art market from Republic to Empire: texts and shipwreck evidence

29 April | Dr. Ine Jacobs

A time for prayer and a time for pleasure: Christianity's struggle with the secular world 

All seminars are held at 1 PM in the Meadows Lecture Theatre, Doorway 4, Teviot Place. 

Upcoming Talks

Just a quick note for interested parties: I will be giving a pair of talks summarizing the results of the Doors of Pompeii and Herculaneum Project over the course of next month. The first, entitled "Crossing the Threshold: Patterns of Movement in Roman Houses," will be delivered at the Public and Private in the Roman House Conference, which is being held in Helsinki at the end of next week. Full conference details (including a schedule of papers) are available here. 

The second paper will be given on May 7th at the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne as part of the School of History, Classics and Archaeology's seminar series. It is called "Rebuilding Boundaries in the Pompeian House: Towards a Functional Interpretation of Domestic Space." Full details, including time and location will be forthcoming on the school website.

Panoramas and Publications

As it's been nearly 10 months since I last posted to the blog, a quick update seems a bit overdue. Most of the time since last March has been spent writing, an activity that is, as it turns out, not particularly conducive to producing exciting project-related events. I am approaching the end of this process, however, and there are a few developments that I would like to pass on to those who might be interested.

The first involves the production of Quicktime and Flash VR panorama images of a number of Pompeian houses. Virtual reality panoramas are an effective way of representing/describing space in classroom and lecture situations and I have often used them in my teaching. Though a number of houses and other structures at Herculaneum have been photographed in this manner by the University of Auckland (see Herculaneum Panoramas), Pompeian dwellings have received less attention. I have only completed a few panoramas so far (taken primarily in the houses that I am currently working on), but I hope to produce a more substantial catalogue when time allows. Below you will find two images from this preliminary set. These are produced in cylindrical format, so they distort towards the top and the bottom. To move the panorama, simply click anywhere on the image and drag the mouse; zoom in and out by rolling the trackball.

Casa di Fabio Amandio (I.7.3)


Casa di Ercole (VI.7.6)

There are also a couple of publication-related updates that I would like to pass along. The Privata Luxuria volume (ed. A. Anguissola), which includes my paper The Form and Function of Boundaries in the Campanian House, will be published at the beginning of February. It will be available for purchase here.

In addition, I have recently written a review of the excellent Pompeii: Art, Industry, and Infrastructure, edited by E. Poehler, M. Flohr and K. Cole. This was published in the European Journal of Archaeology in December (EJA 15.3, pp. 555-559) and will be made available on my Academia.edu page in the near future, pending copyright allowance.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention another boundary-related publication on the horizon, this being my friend Evan Proudfoot's study of entranceway doors in Pompeian houses, which is due to be published this spring in the proceedings volume for TRAC 2012.

Modeling Menander: Reconstructing Boundaries in the Casa del Menandro at Pompeii

Additional materials for the poster that I am presenting at RAC/TRAC 2012 can be found below, including a much improved video of the Casa del Menandro boundary model. Since the model was originally completed in October, I have added some important architectural features, most noticeably the second storey of the main dining room (this is the facade looming above the peristyle's eastern, or left, ambulatory). I have also increased the resolution significantly and included the boundaries in this version, creating a fly-through that more closely represents the appearance of the house in antiquity (albeit still missing a number of crucial elements). A PDF of the poster itself is available for download here; additional comparative images of the house are also included below.

Atrium and peristyle from fauces

 Atrium, northeast corner

 Peristyle, eastern range

New Year's News and Notes

After another work-filled few months, I think that I've got enough news to justify a blog update. Things that are happening at the moment: 

1. TRAC 2012 Poster: I'm putting together a poster summarizing my work on the Casa del Menandro model for TRAC 2012 in Frankfurt. The poster will focus on the techniques used to construct the model as well as the results of this process; particular attention will be given to role that boundaries played in negotiating the relationship between "public" and "private" space within the house.

 2. Classical Urbanism: I am, once again, teaching a course on ancient cities through the University of Edinburgh's Open Studies program. The course begins on January 16th, and registration is open through the 14th. More information is available here.

3. The Form and Function of Boundaries in the Campanian House: This paper, which synthesizes some of the data from the DOPAHP's second phase, will be included in the forthcoming book Privata Luxuria: Towards an Archaeology of Intimacy, edited by Anna Anguissola. The volume should be available in the spring/early summer. 

As work on the dissertation continues, I suspect that there will be less need to update the blog (unless readers show a strong desire to proof my chapters). However, I'll do my best to provide relevant information as it becomes available. And to my friends and colleagues heading to the AIA Conference this weekend – I'll see you in Philadelphia!

Casa del Menandro Model Complete

After 5 months of work, the model of the Casa del Menandro is finally complete. Who knew that attempting to recreate every minute architectural detail of an incredibly complex structure would be so time-consuming? Now that the thing is finished, however, I have to say that I’m pretty pleased with it. The model has been constructed in two different forms: one with boundaries and one without. A video of the unbounded model can be found below -- it contains a few moments in which the program had a difficult time rendering the shading correctly, but otherwise it turned out pretty well.

And here are some images of the bounded version:

One thing that I have definitely learned regarding SketchUp: it does not like irregular plans/structures. And because the plans of most Pompeiian houses are not orthogonal, the process of linking walls/floors/roofs together can prove to be very, very difficult. If someone out there happens to know how to model irregular/multi-planar shapes in SketchUp without using multiple triangles or polygons, I would certainly be interested in learning about the technique!

Classics PG Seminar

For folks in and around Edinburgh: I will be giving an expanded version of the EAA paper in the first meeting of this year's Classics Postgraduate Seminar Series on Thursday, October 13th. The talk will start at 5 PM in the Meadows Lecture Theatre, Old Medical Quad. A full schedule of this semester's seminars is available here. 

EAA 2011 Paper

Just a quick note to inform those who might be interested: I will be giving a paper at the European Association of Archaeologists annual meeting in Oslo this September. The tentative title is "Rethinking the Pompeian House: A Functional Model"; it's currently situated in the 2nd General Session (devoted solely to classical archaeology, I believe). This paper is essentially the culmination of some ideas that have been floating around my head for a while now. I've been troubled by the over-reliance on the architectural/textual models that have long provided the foundation for the study of houses at Pompeii for some time, and, utilizing my data in concordance with recent artefactual analyses, have been toying with some new techniques that may allow for a reconsideration of the use of domestic space from a functional (rather than aesthetic/architectural) perspective. 

Modeling Menander

At the moment, I’m in the middle of constructing a Sketchup model of the atrium and peristyle in the Casa del Menandro, and it’s proving to be a task far more daunting than I had anticipated. Because many of the 3D models built to represent houses at Pompeii have fallen into the trap of excluding doors and partitions from the doorways (this seems to be a universal oversight), I’m trying to put together a model that will more accurately represent the functionality of these features in domestic space. But, being a bit of a perfectionist, I’ve found myself attempting to recreate the architectural design of the house in ridiculous detail (one should only spend so many hours crafting dentils on the pediment of a lararium); it’s a bit hard to know where to stop. Nonetheless, even in this early phase, the model is starting to look pretty cool. And though I haven’t constructed any of the doors yet, it appears that this could prove to be a useful tool for reassessing the importance of boundaries in the “public” parts of the house. Here are some  screenshots of the model in progress:

Atrium

Peristyle

Fauces and beyond

A long-overdue update

Many exciting things have been happening in the world of the DPHP, so I thought that I would (finally) update the blog. It has been a rather busy spring, to be fair, so I will perhaps draw on the hectic schedule as an excuse for the delay. At any rate, here are the important recent developments:

1. The TRAC 2010 Proceedings volume will be released within the next couple of weeks, so if you are interested in learning about the results of the DPHP's first phase (and would like to read a variety of other  papers, as well), it's available for pre-order from Amazon and directly from Oxbow.

2. The Privata Luxuria workshop was very successful: the range of interesting talks coupled with energetic discussion raised many thought-provoking topics relating to privacy in the Roman house. I certainly came away from it with new perspectives on a variety of issues, many directly related to my own work. Many thanks to Anna Anguissola for organizing the panel and to all of the contributors for their compelling papers. Incidentally, a proceedings volume is scheduled for publication by the end of the year as part of the Münchener Studies zur Alten Welt series through Utz Verlag. More details on this as they become available. 

3. Finally, I spent the last month conducting architectural studies at a variety of sites around the Mediterranean, from Delos to Glanum, and obtained some exciting results. This was the unofficial "third phase" of the DPHP, which will provide comparanda for the data obtained at Pompeii and Herculaneum. 

So, that's a basic summary of project-related goings-on at the moment. Now that primary fieldwork is complete, and the data has been fully processed, it's time for the writing of the dissertation to begin. I may have a couple of papers in the works, as well; again, I'll update the blog (hopefully more regularly) as the details of these become available.

University of Munich workshop

I will be presenting a paper entitled The Form and Function of Boundaries in the Campanian House as part of a seminar focusing on the relationship between public and private space in Roman houses (Privata Luxuria. Towards an Archaeology of Intimacy). This paper will consider the ways in which boundaries influenced the construction of private space in the houses of Pompeii and Herculaneum, utilizing data collected from the 2010 DPHP field season. The workshop will be held on March 24th and 25th, 2011 at the University of Munich.

Classical urbanism course

Next semester, I will be teaching a course entitled Classical Urbanism: The Archaeology of the Ancient City through Open Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Classes will be held in the Basil Skinner Room, 15 Buccleuch Place on Tuesdays, 2:00-4:00 from January 18th, 2011. Full course details can be found here.

Fieldwork Complete

The 2010 field season drew to a close at the beginning of August, with the members of the project team returning to their native lands (generally without incident). Given the financial constraints under which we were operating, the project must be judged to have been a complete success. In 17 days, 28 houses and over 550 doorways were surveyed, new friends were made (ciao zio Vincenzo!), and many a strange field song was penned. Again, thanks to the team, who, though sunburned and full of tomatoes/cheese/bread/tuna, were always in good spirits and worked tirelessly to complete the project on time. I could not have hoped for a better group of students.Though fieldwork is now complete, the Doors of Pompeii and Herculaneum Project blog will continue to be updated as data analysis progresses. I intend to give papers summarizing the results of this season's work both in the United States and UK over the coming months; the details of these talks will be posted here as they become available. Stay tuned!

We don't need no stinkin' badges.

Actually, that's not exactly true. We did need stinkin' badges, so we purchased some, and now there are extras (see image below). If, dear reader, you are interested in picking up a Doors of Pompeii and Herculaneum Project badge (or pin, as we call them in good ole' U.S. of A.), please send me an email and I will dispatch one (or indeed two or three) to you free of charge, while supplies last.

Field Update

Jim entertains the tourists

Halfway through the 2010 field season, the Doors of Pompeii and Herculaneum Project is progressing on schedule. To date, the team has analyzed over 300 doorways in a wide variety of domestic settings, establishing a corpus of data that will, no doubt, take the director a great many weeks to sort through (though he is looking forward to the task with much enthusiasm). We will be moving to Herculaneum later this week to continue survey in a further six houses, with fieldwork concluding in the middle of next week. Many thanks to everyone who has made the project a success so far, including the Soprintendenza and Direzione at Pompeii, the staff at Camping Zeus, and, of course, the DPHP team itself - Catherine, Katie, Janet, and Jim.

Project Dates Finalized

The Doors of Pompeii and Herculaneum Project team will be in Campania from July 17th-August 3rd, 2010; specific dates at each site will be determined shortly. We look forward to meeting the other teams in the field this summer.

Postgraduate seminar date change

Due to a conflict with the Munro lecture series, the date of next week's postgraduate seminar has been moved to Friday, March 12th at 5 PM.