In Ancient Italy, temples were adorned with full-figure architectural terra-cotta images such as acroteria, statuary groups and high reliefs. These terra-cottas mostly show complex scenes of gods and heroes, legendary battles and mythical animals, as well as large volutes and palmettes. The fourth edition of the Deliciae Fictiles conferences focused on this specific class of mostly handmade terra-cotta roof decoration from Etruria and Central Italy, Campania, Magna Graecia and Sicily. The volume contains sixty contributions, publishing new material, new findings and many new reconstructions of this highly rare material from all over Italy from the Archaic period into the Hellenistic times. A vast bibliography and over seven hundred illustrations, many of which in color, provide reference material for scholars and students of archaeology, ancient architecture and technique, art history and iconography.

The Regia was the house of the Pontifex Maximus, Rome's High Priest, who lived in the Forum. The men who held this office played an important role in the life of the Roman state for centuries: the earliest Regia dates to the seventh century B.C.E., and it was rebuilt frequently. Susan B. Downey has extensively studied the sixth-century phase of the building, and in this valuable work she lays out the scheme for the architectural terracottas. These fragments allow the reconstruction of almost the entire decorative system for the building. Art historians and archaeologists will welcome this book. It also contains much of interest for Roman social historians and for students and scholars of early Italy and its communities.

The new definitive text on Etruscan terra-cottas

Reconnects ancient buildings with the people who made them, with their surroundings, and with practices in other times and cultures.

Temples are the most prestigious buildings in the urban landscape of ancient Italy, emerging within a network of centres of the then-known Mediterranean world. Notwithstanding the fragmentary condition of the buildings’ remains, these monuments – and especially their richly decorated roofs – are crucial sources of information on the constitution of political, social and craft identities, acting as agents in displaying the meaning of images. The subject of this volume is thematic and includes material from the Eastern Mediterranean (including Greece and Turkey). Contributors discuss the network between patron elites and specialized craft communities that were responsible for the sophisticated terracotta decoration of temples in Italy between 600 and 100 BC, focusing on the mobility of craft people and craft traditions and techniques, asking how images, iconographies, practices and materials can be used to explain the organization of ancient production, distribution and consumption. Special attention has been given to relations with the Eastern Mediterranean (Greece and Anatolia). Investigating craft communities, workshop organizations and networks has never been thoroughly undertaken for this period and region, nor for this exceptionally rich category of materials, or for the craftspeople producing the architectural terracottas. Papers in this volume aim to improve our understanding of roof production and construction in this period, to reveal relationships between main production centres, and to study the possible influences of immigrant craftspeople.