Ostia Antica

The backbone of this volume is a series of papers based on studies of individual buildings or insulae which throw valuable light on the evolution of the city from the 2nd c. BCE, addressing important issues including the process of raising the level of the city and pre-imperial phases of use, based on stratigraphic excavations both recent and historical. Kockel and Ortisi's paper on the so-called macellum (IV.vi.5; 207–15) is an excellent demonstration of the dynamics of urban change in contrast to the often-misleading static appearance of the site as we see it today. They outline the frequently changing levels, property boundaries and types of structures on the plot, with several major phases from the early 1st c. BCE to the second half of the 1st c. CE, and argue that none of these leave enough space for a traditional macellum, nor is there evidence for a domus of the type found nearby along the decumanus in the 1st c. BCE. Their warning about the dangers of taking the site as we see it at face value are reinforced by Rinaldi (229–35) in relation to historical conservation programs on the western side of city, especially of the 1940s, and the well-focused study by Morelli et al. (75–86) on insula V.xii.2.

The sense of the complexity of the urban development of Ostia, with individual events sometimes coalescing into broad periods of change, sometimes occurring piecemeal, is further demonstrated in a group of papers relating to a concentration of projects along the western decumanus maximus: the Temple of the Fabri Navales (III.ii.1–2) (De Ruyt and van Haeperen, 155–65); the Schola del Traiano (IV.v.15–16) on the opposite side of the decumanus (Morard, 167–90); and its next-door neighbor, the Caseggiato delle Taberne Finestrate (IV.v.18: Mainet, 191–200; Tomassini, 201–6), which in its later phases, at least, was connected with the Schola. The earliest phases of all three blocks belong to the late Republican period, by when the shape and orientation of the blocks towards the decumanus had already been established, with substantial structures interpreted as domus being erected sometime before the mid-1st c. BCE on its southern side. The idea that the building under the Caseggiato delle Taberne Finestrate was such an atrium house goes back to Becatti, although the “atrium” in the plan as restored by Tomassini (205, Fig. 5) looks far too narrow to have been roofed in the traditional way familiar from Pompeii and is more likely to have been an open court. In the Augustan to early Julio-Claudian period the level of the plots on both sides of the decumanus was raised, in conjunction with new or substantially rebuilt structures. The late 1st and early 2nd c. CE, which had such a massive impact on the whole of Ostia, led here to the complete replacement of the façade, with the installation of a large fullonica on the north side of the decumanus and the creation of the Caseggiato delle Taberne Finestrate on the south. Only in the Severan period were the two major buildings we see today – the Temple of the Fabri Navales and the Schola di Traiano – finally constructed. The Severan date for the latter is carefully and convincingly argued by Aubry (273–87) from the brickstamps, both epigraphic and in particular anepigraphic, while Bocherens (289–94) argues, if not entirely convincingly, that its function was to house the prefect of the annona rather than being the headquarters of any particular collegium.

Studies on a group of buildings to east of the Semita dei Cippi further demonstrate that frequent, complex, and dynamic urban change was not just a feature of the early 2nd c. CE or of Late Antiquity. The plot of the Casa dei Lottatori (V.iii; Marano, 45–51) is shown to go back to at least the later Republic, while Medri and Falzone have identified nine phases between the first sanctuary of the Bona Dea (V.x.2; 53–74), probably in the 2nd c. BCE, and its abandonment in the late 3rd to 4th c. CE. Pensabene and Gallocchio argue for an early street between the Sanctuary of the Bona Dea and the Caseggiato di Temistocle (V.ix.2; 65–74), now barely distinguishable in the tangle of mid-imperial structures and late alterations. One of the long walls framing the Caseggiato, however, visibly rests on an earlier wall in plain reticulate that clearly belongs to a pre-Hadrianic phase,Footnote ⁶ which reinforces their interpretation. A picture thus begins to emerge of substantial development in this relatively little-known region from the 2nd c. BCE through to the late 1st c. CE, including the large domus identified by geophysical prospection to the south of the Sanctuary of the Bona Dea,Footnote ⁷ built over structures of the Augustan to early Julio-Claudian period, and the Terme del Nuotatore, the boundary walls of which also belong to an earlier phase.Footnote ⁸

The development and functioning of Ostia through the imperial period is the focus of more general papers which concentrate on the western end of the city. Both Flohr (143–53) on the organization of the commercial structures, particularly the tabernae, along the western decumanus, and Poccardi (115–28) on the water supply to the baths of this area, highlight the great variety of solutions employed by the unknown property owners in developing their respective premises. This reinforces our growing understanding of Ostia as a vibrant city in its own right, the result of manifold independent actors rather than just an off-shoot of Rome dominated by imperial diktat. The changes to both water usage and commercial properties in this area in the Late Antique period are brought out by Danner (129–41) in his paper on the fountains and water displays of Late Antique houses, and by Pavolini (217–27) on the transformation of an insula with living spaces and work-yards behind the tabernae into the luxury Domus del Ninfeo (III.vi.1–3). Pavolini places this in the broader context of the known Late Antique domus in the area, and the particular attraction that the coastal region of the city and the important via Severiana (as he reconstructs it) seem to have had for the owners of these wealthy dwellings in this period. An alternative route for the via Severiana, running south of the Terme della Porta Marina, appears in David's short overview of the development of the area outside of the Porta Marina (31–44), which barely existed before the middle of the 1st c. CE. This area had to be protected from recurrent river floods and sea encroachments by a sequence of sea walls, the second of which David argues underpinned the via Severiana itself. Taken together, these papers begin to show both the similarities and the differences between various zones of the city, in terms of function and how they change through time, as well as different possible interpretations of the available evidence. By using Space Syntax analysis, Stöger and Brandimarte (11–22) take this to another level by examining how insulae IV.ii and IV.iv might have functioned as neighborhoods.

These studies share one or more of a common suite of traditional approaches: excavation, standing building survey, and historical and archival research. The archival material provides evidence, admittedly often only partial, from past excavations, not only those from the first 30 or so years of the existence of Ostia as a state-owned archaeological site, but also those carried out in the 1960s and 70s below the mid- to late imperial levels in the context of an extended program of lifting mosaic floors for restoration. Very little of this was ever published in detail, and it is one of the great strengths of many of the current research projects on Ostia that this material is finally being studied, to the benefit of our understanding of the long and complex life history of the site. Preliminary results from a project to study the wall-painting fragments from the excavations below the imperial levels (Falzone, 87–97), for example, give a view of the distribution and quality of the “Pompeian” Four Styles previously largely unknown at Ostia, while the study by Olcese (99–111) of Republican and very early imperial ceramics from the wider territory of Ostia shows a differentiation already between the material from the urban and peri-urban areas and that from the ager, the latter predominantly from Latium and Etruria or local, rather than from Campania or further afield.

Unstudied material is also the focus of Gering's paper (23–30) on the marble deposits around Ostia's forum, including fragments from the Temple of Roma and Augustus, leading to a discussion of the nature of marble recycling in Late Antiquity. Further light is thrown on the arguably systematic process of marble recycling from Ostia by Caldelli and Slavich (247–59), through the examination of a number of inscriptions from Ostia found at Trajan's other port at Centumcellae further north on the Tyrrhenian coast. The two remaining papers, on the other hand, tackle long-standing problems in the history and topography of Ostia by a re-examination of inscription(s) relating to the date of the restoration of the temple to Vulcan on the one hand (Zevi, 239–45), and the location of the Forum Vinarium (Pellegrino and Licordari, 261–72) on the other.

Ricerche su Ostia e il suo territorio

The “territory” which forms the main subject of Ricerche is organized into two discrete areas, the right (i.e., north) side of the Tiber and the south and east of the city outside the line of the late Republican walls; in both cases substantial overviews are supplemented by shorter studies focusing on specific sites and/or material from excavations. In both areas the same kind of pattern emerges: a dense concentration of port structures and commercial buildings closest to the Tiber, with funerary areas beyond.Footnote ⁹

The reports on the territory north of the Tiber start with a welcome new synthesis of evidence for increasing human activity in the zone around the Stagno di Maccarese between the Tiber and the River Arrone, from the middle–upper Palaeolithic to the archaic period, responding to environmental changes in the zone between fresh and salt water regimes (De Castro et al., 3–26); this is supported by a study of the finds from a series of Bronze Age sites representing seasonal occupation (Acconcia et al., 27–49). The second group of papers concern the well-known necropolis of Portus at Isola Sacra, focusing on the project carried out between 1973 and 1989 to re-evaluate the area excavated by Guido Calza in the 1920s and 30s from a modern, holistic standpoint by considering all types of evidence. The invaluable overview by Baldassarre et al. (53–66) outlines changes through time, confirms the relatively early (Trajanic) date of the first inhumation burials, and identifies the formal use and organization of the area between the monumental tombs, originally thought by Calza to be just for the poor (his “Campo dei Poveri”).Footnote ¹⁰ This is complemented by five shorter studies which give color and detail to the overview: Olivanti and Spanu on the “Campo dei Poveri” (67–77); two articles by Camilli and Taglietti, on the nature and interpretation of the coins found deposited in individual burials, where only a small percentage were found in the mouths of the dead (79–102), and on the stamped bricks from the simple graves as an indication of the supply of building materials (103–23); Borgia on a curse tablet deposited in an amphora marking an infant burial; and Bondioli et al. on an infant burial (ca. 6 years old) from a Muse's sarcophagus, where the poor health evident from the teeth contrasts with the relative richness of the burial itself (139–47). These papers relating to the funerary world are complemented by Turi's report on a rescue excavation near Sant'Ippolito, close to the marble deposits alongside the Fiumicino canal, where the inhumation burials bore close similarities with those from the “Campo dei Poveri” at the necropolis of Portus to the south.

It is, however, the remaining paper in this section which most radically changes our understanding of Isola Sacra. It summarizes the main results of the exceptionally important geophysical surveys carried out by the University of Southampton/University of Cambridge/British School at Rome Portus Project in the Isola Sacra (Germoni et al., 149–68).Footnote ¹¹ The discovery of a major canal running roughly parallel to and east of the via Flavia means we have to rethink the nature of connections between Ostia and the harbor at Portus, while a dense zone some 300 m deep of large warehouses/commercial structures extending along the north bank of the Tiber finally provides solid evidence for an Ostian transtiberim and gives context to the fragmentary indications from earlier excavations and aerial photography. It also identifies a section of defensive wall with towers, for which a Late Antique date is plausibly suggested.

The volume also provides a very useful and important survey of the southeastern suburbium (Pannuzi, 181–211), bringing together a wealth of archival material going back to the 1960s and the results of a series of rescue excavations since 2006. One focus is the zone of the ancient Tiber meander (the “Fiume Morto”) on both sides of the river, where the landscape of warehouses and riverine infrastructure continues that identified in the Isola Sacra survey, with a long chronology extending on the left bank of the Tiber from the later Republican period right through until the 4th to 6th c. CE. The discussion of the difficult question of the ancient course of the Tiber at the bend in the river should be read with recent geomorphological studies, which reveal a far more dynamic environment than has usually been assumed, both in the early years of the settlement and in the later periods.Footnote ¹² These still leave some pressing archaeological questions open, especially the course of the via Ostiense outside the Porta Romana, although recent scholarship is tending now towards a later date than suggested by Pannuzi (195).Footnote ¹³ To the east of the “Fiume Morto” the survey brings together the now extensive evidence for large-scale land drainage schemes of the early empire, perhaps around the same time as the south bank of the Tiber was stabilized through anthropogenic intervention.Footnote ¹⁴

The third focus of Pannuzi's paper is the large areas of cemeteries to the south of the city. He presents an interesting overview of skeletal differences between those from burials around Pianabella, south of the Porta Laurentina, and those south of the via Ostiense near the present Borgo of Ostia Antica, notable for the large group of males in the age range 20–40 showing signs of poor diet and heavy labor largely absent in the other group. This section is supplemented by three papers relating to rescue excavations to the east of Pianabella, where a cemetery occupied previously agricultural land from the later 1st c. CE until its abandonment in the 3rd to 4th c., with a period of more intensive use from the mid- to late 2nd c. (Germoni et al., 227–44, with Cébeillac-Gervasoni et al., 245–57 on the epigraphic material and Nava et al., 259–66 for an anthropological study of the cremation remains from the urn of a named individual). Although the cemetery included cremation enclosures in its early period, in the mid-imperial phases it produced a similar range of monuments and burials to those found at Isola Sacra. Our understanding of the context and use of these and other tombs from the area south of Ostia is enhanced by Laubry's examination of the evidence for the iura sepulcrorum (349–67), part of a wider project to record the funerary inscriptions from Ostia found from 1930 to 1976 (on which Zevi, 337–38).

The remaining papers in the volume concern the city rather than the periphery, and the living rather than the dead, mainly focusing on the public and religious life of the city. In the guise of an evaluation of the tools used to establish chronologies in Late Antiquity, Lavan (287–317) presents an important diachronic study of the palaestra of the Forum Baths, the largest and most prestigious baths of the city, originally the gift of Gavius Maximus, Antoninus Pius's Praetorian prefect, and restored in the 4th c. by Constantine. Like Gering's project on the Forum porticoes,Footnote ¹⁵ Lavan demonstrates how the static image we gain from the remains as preserved and restored today is the result of a complex evolution over a long period, starting with the presence (identified by remote sensing) of structures parallel with the southern portico which cut across the middle of the later open area. Major late changes involve the repaving of the palaestra in mosaic, the conversion of a free-standing fountain into a shrine, and the creation of a domus or schola in the tabernae of the south portico. While some of the dates he gives for the late phases could be challenged, especially given his reliance on the earthquake of 346 CE as a fixed point, the relative sequence is convincing, and most of the connections he makes with other events in the nearby forum and the Forum Baths themselves are at least feasible.

Several papers contribute to furthering our understanding of public life at Ostia, and its connections with Rome. Careful detective work among epigraphic fragments, both published and unpublished, allows Recchia to identify three dedicatory inscriptions to Agrippa, Divus Titus, and (most probably) Antoninus Pius, the latter by the corpus veteranorum Augusti, which, from the scattered findspots of the numerous fragments, may have once come from zone around the theatre (339–48). A more direct connection with imperial power at Rome is suggested by Geremia Nucci, who uses a newly discovered relief fragment of a Capricorn belonging to the Temple of Roma and Augustus to enlarge our understanding of its decoration and thus its possible patrons, Agrippa Postumus and Tiberius (319–35). Bruun's elegant paper throws light on the significance of the particular day on which such dedications, inaugurations, or other acts of celebration took place (369–84). He points out how the known dates from Ostia relate variously to religious festivals at Rome and Ostia, to important imperial dates such as birthdays, and to marker days (Kalends, Ides) in the Roman calendar. Pointing out that Ostia is unusual in the frequency with which precise dates are given, Bruun links this tentatively to the existence of the Fasti, which are themselves a rarity among similar municipal records in their noting both local and Roman events. Van Haeperen highlights this in her paper (385–92), in which she stresses the relation between the entries in the Fasti and religious calendars at Rome and Ostia, perhaps originating from lists of events provided by the pontiffs at Rome, including the pontifex Volcani, and including those tied to the imperial family. The intersection between these two papers is very tight, and it would have been useful to have had some dialogue, or at least some cross-referencing, between them.

Towards a new vision of Ostia

Overall, the papers in these two volumes showcase the enormous amount of recent activity at Ostia, providing a “snapshot” of the direction and nature of current research around the time that Carlo Pavolini was writing his critical overview of a decade of Ostian studies.Footnote ¹⁶ His desiderata for Ostian studies included the study of materials from earlier excavations, the publication of the geophysical studies of Ostia and on the Isola Sacra in order to understand the full extent of the harbor cities, and the extension of research on the suburban areas of Ostia and Portus.

The volumes under review here, together with several subsequent publications,Footnote ¹⁷ go at least some way to meeting Pavolini's desires, and more. Several of the papers use unpublished material from earlier excavations to throw new light on the shadowy pre-imperial history of the site, revealing a richer and earlier phase of high-status housing than previously imagined, and bringing little-considered areas further into the spotlight, like that around the Sanctuary of the Bona Dea in the east of the city. Others evidence a changing but managed delta landscape, where not only the coastline but also the River Tiber itself shifted and reformed over time. Examples of efforts to control, adapt, and manipulate this shifting landscape are numerous, from the Bronze Age shores of the Maccarese lagoon to the north of Portus, to the Augustan land drainage works along the lagoons to the south of Ostia, and from the canal crossing the Isola Sacra to the dykes running along the coast outside the Porta Marina to protect Ostia from the sea. In terms of the extent of the imperial city, Ostia no longer appears contained within its late Republican walls as we are used to thinking of it, but as a continentia aedificia, an area of continuous urban fabric identified by the jurists as indicating the city of Rome, despite the reservations of the Severan Paulus, who held that Rome was the exception and nearly all cities finished at their walls.Footnote ¹⁸ This included the borderlands where earlier necropoleis were incorporated into the world of the living, or, like the walls themselves, comprehensively built over where it suited.Footnote ¹⁹ While the area south of the walls discussed in the Ricerche volume presents it as an area dominated by cemeteries, already by 1957 Bradford had recognized it from aerial photographs as a zone of buried buildings,Footnote ²⁰ since confirmed by the DAI geophysical project showing the urban fabric continuing unbroken as far as Pianabella. Thus the 2nd-c. baths once thought to have been part of the rich “Villa of Perseus” now appear as urban as those within the city walls.Footnote ²¹ To the north of the Tiber also, Ostia has been shown to extend much further, giving extra meaning to the designation of Portus as portus Ostiensis. Altogether, we should be grateful to the kind of research presented in these volumes for a much better understanding of the full extent and complexity of Ostia and its harbor over time and space.