It is perhaps rather prescient, given the state of current affairs in Iraq and Syria, and the horrendous images and reports of the destruction of cultural heritage in both countries, that an academic work taking as its focus a site at the heart of this area has been published. B.'s superlative work on Dura-Europos, based on her doctoral thesis and on a number of years of research, including fieldwork at the site up until the civil unrest in Syria from 2011, is a detailed and exacting account of the city. The volume shows a profound understanding of the site, its archaeology and socio-historical context, working together historical descriptions of the lost city of Dura with the story of its rediscovery, its excavation in the early part of the twentieth century and the archives relating to the site. The stated aims of the work are twofold: to address the hiatus in published descriptions and analysis of the houses at Dura-Europos, and to use the evidence to illustrate the daily lives of the inhabitants (p. 2). In addressing these points, B. reveals a mysterious site lost to the modern world which, after its rediscovery, became such a central model for our understanding of Near Eastern urban centres.
The first chapter provides a summary for the volume, and gives an excellent history of the site both in terms of its ancient use and its more recent discovery by an Indian regiment of the British army in 1920. B. gives a real sense of immediacy with the site's discovery, emphasised by the rapid withdrawal of British troops after the Sykes–Picot agreement and the establishment of Syria under a French mandate (p. 4). The chapter also provides a detailed account of the archaeological excavations carried out at Dura, from the first publication of wall paintings at the site and the work of Cumont between 1923 and 1926, to Rostovtzeff's campaigns between 1928 and 1936. B. does not just use this introductory section to lay out the timeline of excavation, but analyses the varying methodologies and epistemologies that underlie the archaeological interpretation of Dura, the limitations of the strategies and approaches utilised in the first part of the twentieth century, and the constraints this places on our ability to interpret the site. B. is particularly adept at addressing the ‘circular’ nature of some of the evidence used to date and interpret events in the city, including Bellinger's interpretation of the coin sequence of hoard XVII (p. 26; n. 107). The approach is refreshing, and provides excellent context for the reader.
Chapter 2 serves to illustrate in detail the development of structures at Dura from its Hellenistic foundation through to the city's decline in the third and fourth centuries c.e., and to provide a description and rationale for the architectural elements found in Dura's houses, from the form and nature of rooms and courtyards to the fixtures and fittings of the different structures. Once more B. highlights the lacunae in our knowledge of the architecture and finds at the site, derived from the approach and specific interests of the excavators in the interwar years. The fragility of some of the architectural components is also underlined, including the djuss columns that formed colonnades in some streets, but rarely survive (p. 61) and the tantalising glimpses of architectural components where their function or meaning is uncertain (p. 63). Once more in this chapter the circularity of argument for the archaeology at Dura reappears, in this instance with architectural components demonstrating possible Greek or Roman influence (such as triclinia) that were themselves influenced by Near Eastern architecture in the eighth and seventh centuries b.c. (p. 79). All aspects of the living and storage spaces of the houses are considered here, including doors, wall niches and the ‘coolers’ found in almost all houses at Dura, and in houses of other cities along the Euphrates. The different interpretations of these vessels are explored, including notions of their multi-functionality as water coolers and containers for preparing plaster (pp. 92–4). The chapter, as elsewhere in the book, is replete with superb black-and-white photographs, many from the Yale archive, illustrating architectural materials, and including glimpses of plaster and wooden components (for instance p. 75, fig. 2.10; p. 88, fig. 2.14; p. 98, fig. 2.21), with local excavators and workmen in the frame for scale, providing an added human element to proceedings.
It is the period of Roman presence at Dura, however, that provides the focus of the work, and the meat of the next two chapters. Chapter 3 provides an introduction to the early (c. 116 c.e. under Trajan) and later (165 c.e. to c. 256 c.e.) Roman presence at the site, while Chapter 4 seeks to recreate the urban activities and people of Roman Dura. The account provides exceedingly detailed analysis of individual houses and material culture (p. 134), with a brilliant section on the notion of the billeting of soldiers on houses outside of the military camp (p. 142). In spite of the superb analysis in this section, two shortcomings are tangible, neither of them the fault of the author. First, there are distinct biases in the detail of coverage of certain types of house or structure, particularly the example of the barrack buildings of Block E8 (pp. 116–26). Second, while architectural remains and material culture are heavily represented, the nature of stratigraphic context is lacking (for instance p. 113). These issues are ultimately a by-product of the approaches to excavation in the early part of the twentieth century, which B. covers in Chapter 1. Thus B.'s fleshing out of the people and activities of the city relies on the site assemblages (p. 157), with their inherent gaps and limitations, again a by-product of the methodologies of the day. The lacunae in our knowledge based on the assemblages is significant, and tends towards a lack of representation of the commonplace: the common household ceramics that might otherwise give greater representation of the households (p. 166) – mundane items related to mundane, everyday tasks. B. does cover the temporal qualities and inconsistencies of the different forms of evidence, from the specifics of documents and types of calendar in use at Dura, to the broader temporal implications of the archaeological evidence (p. 159).
Chapter 5 brings together the additional aspects of the site with the material culture held in the site archive to construct identities for the population at Dura. The approach is laudable, but the complexity and relative issues espoused are, I feel, difficult to gauge, not least due to the lack of stratigraphic evidence from many of the excavations (p. 210). B.'s construction of identities based on the material culture and depictions of scenes in wall paintings works brilliantly, with the salient example being the painting of Conon and his family from the Temple of Bel (p. 217) and associated objects found at the site.
The final chapter elucidates the biography of the houses using the examples of blocks C7 and D5 to represent the social relationships enacted in dwelling spaces. This provides representation of the elite social class at Dura through Block D7 (p. 285). In spite of the gaps in our knowledge, as previously mentioned, the biographical representation of the houses works well, augmented by painstaking cross-referencing, and again stunning black-and-white images from the Yale archive.
This volume represents an outstanding scholarly achievement, addressing its key aims with balance and attention to detail. The few shortcomings are very much due to the nature of the evidence, perhaps an occupational hazard when analysing excavation archives of the period, and more than compensated for by the outstanding reimagining of this frontier city. B. brings the work full circle with a poignant but unsentimental epilogue on the current civil war in Syria, recognising the relevance of Dura to Syria's history, and the toll placed on the site and Syria's cultural heritage in general. The result is a prescient and indispensable study indeed.
