Developed out of two seminars held in the Department of History and Classical Studies at Aarhus University on 26 September 2008 and 25 March 2011 (some of the contributions were first presented in earlier versions or have been published in other formats), the book discusses the life histories of the individual statues that made up the Roman sculptural landscape. Through a systematic approach to the antique destruction and reuse of statuary across most regions of the Roman world, the volume seeks to provide a distinct overview of the diverse afterlives that Roman sculpture experienced during Late Antiquity (defined here as the third to sixth centuries a.d.).

Contributions from fourteen different authors are grouped in three parts: ‘Practices of Deposition and Reuse’, ‘Regional Perspectives’ and ‘Grand Narratives’. The volume opens with an introductory discussion of the complexity of the archaeological record and a preliminary chronology of the fate of statues across both the eastern and western imperial landscapes. Here, the editors fairly admit that ‘on a much more general and equally important level, it remains difficult to explain how, when, and why individual pieces were broken or mutilated in the first place’ (p. 3). Indeed, as they further argue, ‘the disparity between surviving fragment(s) and original whole(s) is rarely articulated or explored at any length in museum labels, handbooks, or even more specialized literature’ (p. 4). The tight introduction successfully attempts to offer a brief overview of those social practices and natural processes that may have been responsible for creating such a complex archaeological record. Thus, by addressing the different ways that statuary has come down to us through that record, figure 3, in particular, proposes a chronological sketch of a rough estimate of the frequency of different statuary practices in the third to sixth centuries (e.g. production, reuse, recarving, construction, limekiln, destruction, mutilation and ritual deposit), a useful tool for the reader in order to follow the authors’ narrative and understand the evidence. A short but comprehensive explanation of the above treatments within the overall practices of the era follows – an interesting read on its own.

Part 1 comprises three essays by B. Croxford, B. Munro and K. By addressing some of the most important late-antique practices that were responsible for the making of the archaeological record related to sculpture, the authors challenge many scholarly discourses in connection to the interpretation of sculpture as found in secondary, archaeological contexts. In doing so, they open up new and more critical ways of understanding their different fates. Croxford looks at different patterns of fragmentation and provides new insights into a category of finds that rarely plays a role in scholarship, where ‘notions such as “broken”, “incomplete”, “damaged”, and “rubbish” frequently unconsciously, or at least in an unchallenged manner, dominate the narratives’ (p. 27). It is this engaging – but rather complicated – issue of perception of damage of metal sculpture (which accounts for only four per cent of known examples of sculpture of all types from Roman Britain) that is also discussed here. Next, by focusing on the presence of limekilns at Roman villas in Italy and the western provinces, Munro suggests that large quantities of sculpture have been lost for reuse as kiln materials in late and post-antique contexts, highlighting also a practical afterlife of Roman statuary and noting that the latter's value was based on the physical properties of the material rather than on the style or the skilfulness of the artist. K. discusses the problems of the archaeological identification of earthquakes. By assessing the difficulties involved in determining the extent of seismic impact on statuary, K. seeks to explore the potential effects of earthquake damage on late-antique urban landscapes and their embellishment. Indeed, as K. concludes, there can be little doubt that these natural phenomena ‘contributed at a general level to the overall decline of Classical cityscapes over the course of Late Antiquity’ (p. 89). The study of some of the methodological tasks that archaeologists face, when trying to identify such damage to statuary in the archaeological record, is of great value here.

Through seven essays, the volume's second part examines local and regional trajectories in the afterlife of sculpture in different parts of the Classical world including Asia Minor, Greece, Sicily and Germany. I. Jacobs’ presentation of a newly excavated group of mythological statuettes from the ongoing Belgian work at Sagalassos is followed by two complementary views of the afterlife of sculpture in Athens and Corinth by N. Burkhardt and A. Brown respectively. Next, C. Murer draws our attention to the reuse of funerary statues in late-antique decorative contexts such as elite dwellings in Ostia, while P. Kiernan provides a concise overview of the different agents (Germans and Christians) that are often singled out as responsible for the treatment of sculpture in Late Antiquity. By employing both textual and published archaeological evidence, D. Sami discusses the fate of the statues of Sicilian cities when Christianity took hold as well as the entirety of Sicilian attitudes towards pagan images. In her illuminating chapter on the fate of sculpture on the Lower Danube, C.-G. Alexandrescu provides a valuable assessment of the extent to which surviving photographs show how reliefs from well-known monuments had been reused in later times.

Part 3 begins with a demonstration of the similarities and differences in both the contexts and sources for statuary in the sculptural assemblages from late-antique baths and villas of the Late Roman west, written by S. Next, by studying the decline in the production of imperial statues that had been such an integral part of urban and political life in cities across the Roman Empire, B. Anderson argues that growing social tension and rioting led to the increasing unsuitability of portraiture in the round for public display. P. Liverani weights the declining interest in sculpture in Late Antiquity against the emergence of two-dimensional media, such as panel portraits. Finally, M. Greenhalgh discusses the importance of travellers’ accounts over archaeology stressing their relevance for understanding how the sculptural record in North Africa and the Near East has been shaped and reshaped over the years.

The volume ends with a detailed list of contributors and a comprehensive bibliography that expands to more than 50 pages. The book is also supplied with decent illustrations and well-presented maps. Due to the nature of an edited volume of such length and scope, it would be unfair to discuss or criticise one essay over another. Besides, both the fragmentary nature of the evidence and the numerous forms of destruction that may occur to a statue force us to become more cautious as researchers in explaining and documenting, for instance, earthquake damage. Overall, this is a dense book that offers a wide range of views on the various reasons that may have been responsible for the gradual decay of Greek and Roman sculpture over time. Everyone interested in the reconstruction of a rich picture of the afterlife of these artefacts will find this collection worth reading, especially as it invites further synthesis about the broad trends of response to statuary through a wide range of topics and evidence that sum up current scholarly trends. In addition, although such studies have the necessary depth and rigour to stand alone in scholarship, they could nevertheless trigger a more comparative and cross-disciplinary approach to the treatment of statuary in other historical or modern contexts. In doing so, they could elicit the introduction of more comprehensive and complex chronological sketches, for instance, one that distinguishes the centuries under question (and beyond), and one that compares trends across the Roman Empire.

The range of issues and contexts related to the various ways in which Greek and Roman sculpture has been destroyed and re-used from the third century a.d. onwards cannot be exhausted within the limited space of a book, no matter how much inclusive this might be. It is the reviewer's belief in the need for a more reflective and multi-disciplinary approach to these matters. Subjects that deserve further investigation are the national or local contexts of the ancient destruction and reuse of statuary in a range of relevant practices related to the reconstruction of a complete picture of the afterlives of these objects during Late Antiquity and beyond. This would enable a thorough examination of the socio-cultural discourses surrounding these practices. The extent to which these practices intersect with and produce distinctive attitudes towards the late-antique language of aesthetics, and how the latter emerge from this absorption of ancient art with new perceptions and practices, could also provide an important topic for further work.