7. ESTUDIO TÉCNICO
7.10 FICHAS TECNICA DE RECETAS
Over the last century, excavation and survey broadly throughout the Roman West has
countered previous suggestions of late antique decline, and documents a resurgence of
rural construction and estate renovation in the 4th and 5th centuries CE in Hispania and
Gaul, and in southern Britain, the Italian Peninsula, and along the Danube (fig. 4).17 Few
of the estates of late antiquity were built ex novo, and evidence for earlier iterations of occupation has been obliterated at most sites. Thus, though we know the Roman villa to
be an institution of the late Republic or early Empire in Hispania and Gaul, evidence for
villas in this era has been all but wiped out by the late antique villa boom.18
Indeed, the flurry of rural building in the late Roman West has been called a “villa boom” in scholarly circles, which acknowledges a phenomenon even if it somewhat
obscures the individuality of each project, and the distinct patterns and features which
appear only among certain clusters of villas, like sculpture. In Britain and along the
Danube, for example, statuary finds are extremely rare, contra southwestern Gaul and
Hispania.19 Thus it cannot be said that statuary was a habit of all villa owners (domini) or
17 For villas in Gaul see Balmelle 2001; in Iberia see Chavarría Arnau 2005; 2007; in Britain see Scott
2004; along the Danube see Mulvin 2002; for the Italian Peninsula see Neudecker 1988; Sfameni 2006; Baldini Lippolis 2001. See also Chavarría Arnau and Lewitt 2004, Bowes 2010 for an excellent synthesis of sites and historiography of villa studies.
18 With little evidence for archaeological villas of the late Republic or early Empire, this evidence is under
synthesized and under published. The landmark study in the provinces is Carette, Keay and Millet 1990 in the Ager Tarraconensis. For recent interdisciplinary work on villas in the late Republic and early Empire in the Italian Peninsula see the recent 2011 volume edited by Becker and Terrenato.
19 Only two villas in Britain are known to have had sculpture in late antiquity. Several late mythological
statuettes are known at the villa of Woodchester (Gloucestershire) (Clarke 1982), and two portraits were founded in a subterranean cellar of the villa of Lullingstone (Kent), beneath a 4th century house church
all elite persons. Synthesis of the regional concentration of finds in the southwestern
provinces and their particular attachment to the villa is therefore warranted.20
At present, however, our understanding of statuary possession as a habit honed by
select individuals or regional groups in this period is largely superficial, because of the
way that late-Roman villas are commonly studied in archaeological scholarship.21
Distinctions across sites and their assemblages are often swept aside in favor of a basic
understanding of the elite type who inhabited the villa. The composition of this elite
group is seldom questioned, and frequently forced into service as a heuristic tool in
(Meates 1979). Portraits are known at both sites, but their display is difficult to reconstruct. However, these sites are the only two documented with statuary in England, and are located in the South Cotswalds. Both have evidence for impressive figural mythological mosaics. Regional study of domini habits here may thus be warranted. The situation in the Italian Peninsula is less clear because most extant sites were excavated before the development of modern archaeological methods and before Late Antiquity itself was deemed worthy of study. Richard Neudecker’s study (1988) of the statuary found in Italy’s villas is lar2gely restricted to the Imperial era; the occupation of most sites into late antiquity in no longer traceable. The statuary habit among the villas of the Italian Peninsula is, however, distinct from that of the southwestern Empire, because of the proximity of sites to major urban centers and Rome herself. For Roman housing in the later Empire see Baldini Lippolis 2005; see also Ellis 2000; for Ostia see also Muntasser 2011; Boin 2013. See Sfameni 2006 for a more recent catalogue of late-Roman villas in Italy, though statuary does not figure into this discussion. For continuity and villa occupation in the later Empire in the Italian Peninsula, the best example is undoubtedly Hadrian’s villa. New work has shown that its impressive assemblage of more than 500 statues was acquired over time and not in one fell swoop as its association with Hadrian might lead one to assume. Current excavations headed by Francesco de Angelis and Marco Maiuri of Columbia University, with the goal of bringing to light post-Hadrianic occupation histories and stories of later inhabitants (forthcoming). In any case, I mark the Italian Peninsula as unique from the southwestern provinces by virtue of sites’ proximity to Rome, and ease of access to culture and economics associated with a cosmopolitan center such as the Empire’s capital. Urban domus in late-Rome and the Eastern Empire do occasionally furnish evidence for statuary decoration, but the context of these sites is decidedly the urban domus, cf. Ephesus (Aurenhammer 1983); Aphrodisias (Smith 1990; Berenfield 2009).
20 Villa settlement is a particular phenomenon of the West, and can be documented in the Italian Peninsula
and provinces as earlier as the Republican era. This may be due in part to the nature of urban settlement in the Eastern Empire, and the antiquity and longevity of its cities. While late-Roman houses of great importance have been identified throughout this region, these domus belong to an urban or suburban landscape, and do not reflect the same mode of rural estate life evident in the villas of the West.
21 For fuller treatment of the historiography of domestic archaeology and the villa in late antiquity see
archaeology, used to make sense of everything from villa architecture to opulent
decoration to silverware. Thus, villas and statues, as the archaeological vestiges of the
elite, are glossed over as analogous to each other. One villa or statuary collection is
presented as much like any other with only minor variations.22
Yet a certain dependence on a pan-elite type within studies of the late Roman villa
can hardly be faulted, for the villa ranissance documented throughout the West is as-yet-
unexplained. Earlier generations of scholarship were content to attach large estates to
Imperial owners based on their size or lavish décor, as the corpus of excavated late-
Roman villas grew in the 20th century, these estates came to be regarded as evidence for
decline in late antiquity.23 It was assumed that large rural villa estates were symptomatic
of the urban flight of the elite class, built by wealthy Romans who sought to escape their
curial obligations amidst the weakening of urbanism and Empire in the West.24
Since the 1990s, however, scholarship has largely moved away from this
undocumented flight, and attaches the chronological coincidence of the West’s villa
boom with the administrative reforms of the late 3rd and early 4th century, which
purportedly led to an increasingly large bureaucratic elite. History ascribes the success of
the Tetrarchs in the later 3rd century to reforms enacted (or solidified) by Diocletian to
22 This derives in part from an overwhelming tendency to study villas as entries in a larger catalogue, see
nt. 17 for relevant bibliography.
23 For an excellent bibliographic summary of the 4th century villa “boom” see Chavarría Arnau and Lewitt
2004. The assumption that large villas belong to the imperial persons, however, persists, cf. analysis of Piazza Armerina as the imperial villa of Diocletian or a Tetrarch (Angeli 1982, refuted by many, cf. Wilson 1983); analysis of Cercadilla as the imperial palace of Maximan (Hidalgo Prieto 1996, refute by Arce 1997); Chiragan as the imperial villa of Maximian (Balty-Cazes 2008, refute in chapter 6, section IV.1).
cope with anxieties and invasions.25 In the Diocletianic era large swaths of borderlands
were divided into smaller administrative units in a massive restructuring of the Empire.
The creation of new provinces led naturally to many new official positions, which
increased the number of the office-holding elite around the Empire. Under Constantine
and his successors in the 4th century, a variety of new titles, honors, and ranks led to
further augmentation of the late antique elite. Recent scholarship has suggested a record
number of up to 4,000 office-holders and senators were present in each half of the Empire
by the end of the 4th century.26 Archaeology has therefore posited that the growth of the
elite class in the 4th century parallels the extraordinary number of late-Roman villas
documented across the Western provinces, loosely dated to this century. Indeed, region-
based studies of villas now regularly attach large villa estates to senatorial or bureaucratic
25 In the late-Roman West, Aquitania was divided into three provinces: Aquitainia I, Aquitainia II, and
Novempopulania. In Iberia, the massive province of Tarraconensis was divided in two: Hispania
Tarraconensis and Hispania Carthagenenisis. Diocletian’s division of the Empire into smaller provinces in 293 CE was part of a larger program, it has been argued, that created 12 dioceses, or administrative units, to assist with tax collection and control at the frontiers. These changes, plus the addition of two Caesars for the formation of a Tetrarchic government which is also dated to 293 CE, probably did not occur at a single moment in time but belong to a broader series of reforms and administrative evolutions which took some time to implement. Recent scholarship debates whether Diocletian carried out these reforms with a plan in mind or on a needs basis; most scholars suggest the latter (Bowman 2005; Cameron 2005; contra Kolb 1987).
26 It has been suggested that the size of the senatorial class by the end of the 5th century was nearly seven
times that of the earlier Empire, with 3-4,000 senators scattered all over the Roman world. See Heather’s landmark 1997 study of institutional changes vis-à-vis the senatorial class from Constantine – Valens, the senatorial career paths and the particular role of the bureaucracy. As motivations behind the expansion of the senatorial class, Heather highlights the wealth in private, non-senatorial classes, which emperors from Constantine on needed to shape their new Empire. For the 4th century – 6th in Gaul among “Romans” and
provincials, who presumably enjoyed elevated social status and monetary principle
necessary to orchestrate a villa renaissance.27
This argument remains attractive, but I note that focus on the pan-imperial values
or identities of villa domini writ broad does have possible shortcomings. In the first place, it forces connections between material assemblages – villas – and a sociological elite type
that is well documented in literary testimony – the senatorial bureaucrats of Late
Antiquity. This makes material culture somewhat of an accessory to a standardized elite
identity, and archaeology an accessory to literary or historical scholarship. What is more,
the analyses of villa domini as late antique bureaucrats are largely based on assumption or intuition; rarely does scholarship identify evidence within the material assemblage of a
villa that securely speaks to the social profile of a particular dominus.
And in fact, recent work in the field of late-antique history now suggests more
variability among senatorial groups and imperial bureaucracy than has previously been
assumed, and the hierarchies within and across this social class are now receiving
attention. 28 It may be that the diversity of material culture associated with late antique
27 Local senatorial elite groups are commonly cited as likely candidates for late antique domini in Spanish
villa scholarship, cf. Arce 1997; Chavarría Arnau 2007. Prosopography on the Gallic aristocracy also plays in important role in Balmelle 2001 (discussion pages 37-53).
28 cf. Heather 1994; 1997; Dossey 2010; Fernández 2010; 2013; Weisweiler 2012; 2014; 2015; Kulikowski
2015. Weisweiler’s 2015 Domesticating the Senatorial Elite stresses the trans-regional nature of the late antique elite and the “globalism” of the senatorial class, who by the 4th century were no longer based in
Rome. Weisweiler suggests that by the later 4th century, appointed bureaucrats may also have been included
in the senatorial elite class; he cites Ausonius as an example of a novus homo. Weisweiler’s arguments are
valid, but as archaeologists we must be cautious about mapping historical evidence onto material structures. That is, we should not assume that every late Gallic villa was occupied by a senatorial or bureaucratic elites; other elite groups, and local curiales (who are unfortunately harder to trace with the demise of the epigraphic habit) should be considered as candidates.
villas in fact parallels the diversity of the late Roman upper class: some individuals
claimed membership in historically aristocratic families; and others rapidly gained
senatorial status in the rise of Constantinian reforms; still others existed and thrived
outside of these two groups, whether as local curiales, landlords, merchants or military officials. It is the place of archaeology to highlight the diversity of this group, and the
regional faces of the late Roman elite, that is, the local identities that are not preserved in
literature or historical records but in the material record. Such are the narratives that
archaeology is perhaps best equipped to recount, however diverse and regionally centric
those narratives may be.