ESTRUCTURA ORGANIZACIONAL

To counter a priori assumptions of a standardized elite villa dominus, and either the villa or sculpture displays as the vessels of this pan-elite type, a multi-scalar analytical

approach underpins this dissertation. The statuary assemblage of each villa is first

examined in situ, that is, in the villa in which it was displayed. First, individual pieces are appraised in art historical terms of style, iconographies, and type. Though program is

seldom discernable, attempts are made to illuminate themes or programmatic intents

within each assemblage, based on the prevalence of particular iconographies or types of

statuary. Then, to fully reconstruct the physical and cultural environment of statuary

displays, this thesis examines sculpture as one element within the larger domestic

décor, small finds and ceramics. This evidence is used to construct an artifact profile for

each site when possible, thus re-contextualizing sculptures in a larger domestic context.

Each statuary villa is then examined in the larger landscape it inhabited, that is, in

a larger habitation cluster alongside other neighboring villas. Comparative analysis

highlights similarities and variations across the domestic assemblages of a particular

region. With sculpture, focus is given to shared iconographies, genres, provenances and

chronologies, but the profile of each estate – architectural plan, décor, small finds and

chronologies – is also considered in analytical discussion. Ceramic profiles are brought

into this discussion when possible to suggest import networks, inter-regional vs. trans-

regional engagement, and local vs. regional systems of economy. 29

With this data, the project asks how analogous dates of occupation and

similarities across the material assemblages of neighboring villas illuminate group

behaviors, and speak to peer polity networks in which domini participated.30 In this way sculpture is but one of several functional tools for exploration of social practices in

various localities of the late-Roman West. Regional analysis in this fashion is designed

to bring attention to interactions among neighboring villas, and to the networks in which

domini participated.31 This method does not bar an estate’s domini from belonging to a

29 _{See Whittow 2013 for local economics in the late antique world. Further discussion will follow passim,}

particularly in chapters 3 and 4.

30 _{For the seminal edited volume on peer polity theory in applied archaeology see Renfrew and Cherry}

1986.

31 _{For correspondence analysis as a theoretical tool in late antique archaeology and large finds assemblages,}

see Cool and Baxter 2002; Williams 2010. For assemblage analysis technique and utility see also Allison 1999.

transregional elite class, or sculpture from being a tool of this class, but it does privilege

the regional environments inhabited by these sculptures and late Roman domini, and the conversations in those environments.

IV.1 Art Historical Approaches to the Sculptural Assemblages

Since the chronological age of statuary finds in this study varies, a brief synthesis of current approaches to contemporary and “antique” sculptures in late antique domestic

settings follows.32 Contemporary finds are somewhat rare in the late Roman villa,

perhaps in part because of declining production in the West. Indeed, recent scholarship

suggests that all known contemporary pieces in the aforementioned villas – primarily

mythological statue/ettes but also several portraits and large scale reliefs at the villa of

Chiragan – were made in Eastern workshops and imported to the West.33 One genre of

late antique statuary, the late-mythological statuette, has been given a full treatment in

domestic contexts by Lea Stirling, who argues that these small statuettes appealed to elite

collectors as visual manifestations of paideia.34Paideia, or the classical education system, is now regarded as an important anchoring mechanism in the 4th century amidst

32 _{A fuller treatment follows in the next chapter.}

33 _{Though few petrographic analyses have been carried out. For Valdetorres de Jarama’s late-mythological}

sculptures see Puerta, Elvira and Artigas 1994; Bergmann 1999, 21; for the late antique statuettes of Quinta das Longas see Nogales Basarrate, Carvalho, and Almeida 2004; Nogales Basarrate 2014. See also chapter 2 for both sites. For the late-mythological statuettes of Gallic villas see Stirling 2005. Most scholars cite the workshops of Aphrodisias as possible manufacturers (cf. Bergmann 1999), but Stirling is more cautious and suggests other Eastern workshops in Asia Minor may have participated in production of this genre, citing evidence for such finds in Constantinople, Ephesus, and Dokimion and Side (Filges 1999). For fuller treatment of Chiragan’s late antique sculptures, arguments for their Aphrodisian origin, and recent

petrographic analyses, see chapter 6.

great social and religious changes, and has been instrumental to the development of Late

Antique studies. It is increasingly accepted that paideia made the display of mythological imagery socially acceptable among the elite class, including Christians.35 The importance

of a classical education in late antiquity cannot be undermined, but when we accept the

display of late mythological statuettes as an expression of paideia, we tacitly link the persons who owned these sculptures to a generic elite type documented in literary

sources, and obfuscate both the choice of a three-dimensional medium as opposed to

mosaics, and the curious clustering of such objects in southern Aquitaine, versus the

sporadic finds in Iberia. This dissertation therefore aims to develop and press claims for

paideia further, exploring a greater range of values attributed to mythological sculptures in the late antique period.

For example, at other late villas archaeology documents the private conservation

and curation of antique mythological and genre statues broadly classified in the German

idealplastik genre. The value of such pieces, this thesis argues, lay not only in their iconographies and the concurrent status they held as visual emblems of paideia, but in certain additional value(s) these pieces had accrued as historical relics or cultural

heirlooms. Study of antique mythological sculptures as cultural heirlooms, as opposed to

familial, suggests itself because it is difficult to trace ownership of these objects and the

villas in which they stood. Nor does the domestic context bar examination of the

historical, social and cultural values which were deeply ingrained in such objects by late

antiquity, and which had only accrued with passing generations. This dissertation takes a

similar approach to other antique statuary finds like 1st or 2nd century portraiture, whether

dynastic or private. Private portraits in particular may have stood in the late Roman villa

as familial heirlooms, but it is possible to embrace the anonymity inherent to these pieces

through analysis of the social aspects inherent to Roman portraiture.36 Study in this

fashion, it might be said, eschews the private aspect of domestic settings, but then again,

the social function played by the villa into late antiquity is well attested.37

A word on statuary collections is necessary here, because this project does

examine sets of sculpture objects and in doing so aims to contribute to the growing

corpus of research on private collecting in the Roman era.38 Most of the excellent

literature on collecting in the ancient world is, however, somewhat dependent on literary

testimony. Thus this dissertation does not avoid “collection”, but it aims to use the term

carefully in archaeological contexts, and to identify instances of curation within any set

of objects marked as a collection. It also does not settle on collection as a conclusion of

sorts.

The collector, morever, is rarely given voice here, because such discussions

privilege an individual who is inherently anonymous in the vast majority of domestic

contexts. So too does the collector approach tend to downplay the social functions of

36 _{See chapter 1, section III.1 for additional explication of “antique” and “heirloom”.}

37 _{The correspondence of late antique authors like Ausonius and Sidonius suggests that a strong component}

of rural estate life was a visiting culture, organized by traditional virtues of xenia and amicitia: poems and gifts were exchanged, and social visits and dinner parties were frequent among rural landowners. For this visiting culture see Sivan 1993, 66-73; Brown 2012, 185-207.

statuary display, which this thesis aims to reconstruct, or to circumvent the lives of

objects and their complicated, often irrecoverable acquisition histories. This dissertation

favors multi-scalar and regional analysis to bring attention the variety of ways that

different sculptures were employed in different villas, and a series of principles which

may have organized the possession of statuary. These methodologies complement the

increasingly social historical approach of art history and archaeology, and reception

studies, highlighting ways that different people and groups interacted with and responded

to domestic sculptures, whether or not the objects stood as consciously curated

collections. We will look more closely at the parameters of “collection” and “collection studies” in the following chapter.