This volume examines the arrival and development of a distinctively Roman building type in an area of southwest Turkey where the numerous cities, who were highly competitive in their public building, left a remarkable wealth of ancient remains. Many new plans and photographs represent the full range of Lycian bath buildings. The building techniques employed and how Roman bathing habits fitted into the sporting life of Asia Minor under the Empire are also explored.

An uninhibited glance into the extensive baths of Rome

A provocative account of Jewish encounters with the public baths of ancient Rome Public bathhouses embodied the Roman way of life, from food and fashion to sculpture and sports. The most popular institution of the ancient Mediterranean world, the baths drew people of all backgrounds. They were places suffused with nudity, sex, and magic. A Jew in the Roman Bathhouse reveals how Jews navigated this space with ease and confidence, engaging with Roman bath culture rather than avoiding it. In this landmark interdisciplinary work of cultural history, Yaron Eliav uses the Roman bathhouse as a social laboratory to reexamine how Jews interacted with Graeco-Roman culture. He reconstructs their thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about the baths and the activities that took place there, documenting their pleasures as well as their anxieties and concerns. Archaeologists have excavated hundreds of bathhouse facilities across the Mediterranean. Graeco-Roman writers mention the bathhouse frequently, and rabbinic literature contains hundreds of references to the baths. Eliav draws on the archaeological and literary record to offer fresh perspectives on the Jews of antiquity, developing a new model for the ways smaller and often weaker groups interact with large, dominant cultures. A compelling and richly evocative work of scholarship, A Jew in the Roman Bathhouse challenges us to rethink the relationship between Judaism and Graeco-Roman society, shedding new light on how cross-cultural engagement shaped Western civilization.

A one-of-a-kind exploration of archaeological evidence from the Roman Empire between 44 BCE and 337 CE In A Companion to the Archaeology of the Roman Empire, distinguished scholar and archaeologist Professor Barbara Burrell delivers an illuminating and wide-ranging discussion of peoples, institutions, and their material remains across the Roman Empire. Divided into two parts, the book begins by focusing on the “unifying factors,” institutions and processes that affected the entire empire. This ends with a chapter by Professor Greg Woolf, Ronald J. Mellor Professor of Ancient History at UCLA, which summarizes and enlarges upon the themes and contributions of the volume. Meanwhile, the second part brings out local patterns and peculiarities within the archaeological remains of the City of Rome as well as almost every province of its empire. Each chapter is written by a noted scholar whose career has focused on the subject. Chronological coverage for each chapter is formally 44 BCE to 337 CE, but since material remains are not always so closely datable, most chapters center on the first three centuries of the Common Era, plus or minus 50 years. In addition, the book is amply illustrated and includes new and little-known finds from oft-ignored provinces. Readers will also find: A thorough introduction to the peoples and operations of the Roman Empire, including not just how the center affected the periphery ("Romanization") but how peripheral provinces operated on their own and among their neighbors Comprehensive explorations of local patterns within individual provinces Contributions from a diverse panel of leading scholars in the field A unique form of organization that brings out systems across the empire, such as transport across sea, rivers and roads; monetary systems; pottery and foodways; the military; construction and technology Perfect for graduate and advanced undergraduate students of archaeology and the history of the Roman Empire, A Companion to the Archaeology of the Roman Empire will also earn a place in the libraries of professional archaeologists in other fields, including Mayanists, medievalists, and Far Eastern scholars seeking comparanda and bibliography on other imperial structures.

This volume investigates how urban growth and prosperity transformed the cities of the Roman Mediterranean in the last centuries BCE and the fi rst centuries CE, integrating debates about Roman urban space with discourse on Roman urban history. The contributions explore how these cities developed landscapes full of civic memory and ritual, saw commercial priorities transforming the urban environment, and began to expand signifi cantly beyond their wall circuits. These interrelated developments not only changed how cities looked and could be experienced, but they also affected the functioning of the urban community and together contributed to keeping increasingly complex urban communities socially cohesive. By focusing on the transformation of urban landscapes in the Late Republican and Imperial periods, the volume adds a new, explicitly historical angle to current debates about urban space in Roman studies. Confronting archaeological and historical approaches, the volume presents developments in Italy, Africa, Greece, and Asia Minor, thus significantly broadening the geographical scope of the discussion and offering novel theoretical perspectives alongside well- documented, thematic case studies. Urban Space and Urban History in the Roman World will be of interest to anyone working on Roman urbanism or Roman history in the Late Republic and early Empire.

Bathing culture was one of the pillars of Roman society and bathhouses are one of the largest categories of a particular type of construction excavated in the Roman world. The large number of surviving remains and their regional variety make bathhouses vital for the study of the local societies in the Roman-Byzantine period. This book presents the archaeological evidence of close to 200 Roman-style bathhouses from the region of Iudaea/Syria-Palaestina and Provincia Arabia, part of the provinces of the Roman East, constructed from the reign of Herod the Great (second half of the 1st century BCE) to the end of the Umayyad rule (mid-8th century CE). The bathing complexes of the Roman, Byzantine, and the Early Islamic periods, ranging from large public thermae to small bathing suites, are for the first time analyzed as unified data with an unprecedented amount of detail, considering a variety of parameters – from dating and setting, through building techniques and materials, to plans and decorations. Typologies of the bathhouses and their components are supplemented by exploration of the socio-cultural insight provided by this particular type of construction. The historical narrative of the regional bathing facilities is updated in the light of new information. The full raw data used for the study is provided in the expandable open-access online database.

Examination of Greek athletics in the Roman Empire and how they were represented in the literature of the period.