This is the second volume in the Anthropology of Roman Housing series. According to the editors of the first volume – Dardenay (also co-editor of the volume under review with Bricault) and N. Laubry – the study of ancient domestic space has long suffered from circular reasoning by combining textual analysis with archaeological remains without moving beyond that framework. The stated aim of the new series is to break with this methodology by applying an anthropological approach to ancient domestic life. Such a claim, however, already feels somewhat outdated. For at least three decades scholars working on Campanian sites have raised similar criticisms, and approaches inspired by the social sciences are by now deeply embedded in the study of ancient domestic space. The editors’ reasoning is understandable; yet such claims require substantial evidence.
The second book of the series sets out to investigate private cults in the domestic sphere, mainly through archaeological evidence from Campanian sites. The contribution of anthropology, however, is less clearly articulated. The introduction seems to equate the ‘anthropological’ perspective with the use of private cults and religious practices as sources for reconstructing family structures and relationships (p. 11). Beyond this point, the relevance of anthropology is not strongly developed in the introductory chapter. The question therefore remains: do the individual papers in the volume demonstrate such added value of anthropology to the research of ancient living that earlier scholarship has not provided?
H.F. Sharpe, ‘Domestic Aphrodite, Goddess of Desire and Seduction’, opens the first part of the book, ‘Gods of the House’, with a study of statuettes of Aphrodite in Hellenistic Greek households (Priene, Delos, Ephesos), as the sole essay in the volume using Greek material. She examines both ritual activities and decorative, or even erotic, elements that framed the goddess as suitable for male symposia in the andron. The evidence is fragmentary, but figurines of Aphrodite have been found not only in male quarters but also in other rooms, such as upper floors with no clear-cut function. Sharpe argues, rather convincingly, that these figurines were venerated not only as objects of desire and seduction, but that they found their way into the female domain as well. The goddess was closely linked with marriage, representing the new bride preparing for her wedding night and giving her protection. Statuettes of deities are also investigated in N. Amoroso’s ‘Dédoublements de divinités dans les laraires romains’, which explores the phenomenon of ‘doubling’ (dédoublement) of divinities, i.e. the presence of paired figurines of the same deity within a single household shrine. This practice, attested in Campania as well as in Gaul and Germania, appears not to be just a casual accumulation of cult objects but rather evidences systematic veneration of different aspects of a deity. Mercury emerges as the most common, though not the only, figure honoured in this way.
F. Van Haeperen’s paper, ‘Honorer Mithra en contexte résidentiel’, investigates evidence whether Mithra was worshipped in domestic contexts, comparing epigraphic and topographical evidence from Rome and Ostia. In Rome mithraea can be found within private houses (domus), whereas in Ostia they appear instead within insulae. She interprets this contrast as reflecting differences in construction practices rather than a simple scarcity of evidence. The last paper in the first part looks at which deities were honoured in the domestic sphere. C. Sfameni, in ‘Divine Guests: Religious Identities and Groups of Deities in Roman Domestic Shrines’, surveys the material evidence of domestic cults in Campania, Ostia and late antique Rome. Following previous research, she brings up differences between Pompeii and Herculaneum – for example, the Lares–Genius pairing is not typical of Herculaneum, unlike Pompeii. While the overview is useful, the paper largely remains descriptive and heavily dependent on previous scholarship. It might have functioned better as an opening of the first part, introducing the volume’s material.
E.M. Moormann’s ‘Sacraria ou “chapelles” religieuses à Pompéi’ opens the second part of the book, ‘Gods in the House’, shifting the focus from specific deities to the places of worship within the private sphere. Moormann examines the religious structures in Pompeian houses in relation to public cults, asking whether domestic shrines shared architectural and decorative, and thus conceptual, similarities with temples and other edifices of public religion. His analysis of spatial, decorative and conceptual features leads to a negative answer: no clear parallels exist between sacraria and public temples. This conclusion helps to sharpen the distinction between the domains of domestic and civic religion. M. Bassani’s input, ‘Morphologies of Sacra Privata in the Roman House’, advocates for a rigorous, ‘taxonomical’ classification of domestic cult evidence. She challenges the traditional use of the term lararium to describe domestic shrines, noting that Lares were only one among many deities worshipped at such altars. Her philological analysis shows that lararium is rarely used in ancient texts and never in reference to private sacred spaces. She therefore argues persuasively against its continued use in scholarship.
Yet Bassani’s rigour is not matched throughout the book. Terminological inconsistency is striking: French-language chapters repeatedly use the term chapelle (sometimes in quotation marks, as in Moormann’s paper), a word that has strong Christian connotations but was not used in the religious context in antiquity. At the same time lararium continues to be used in several other contributions. Greater editorial coordination would have strengthened the volume, ensuring conceptual coherence and avoiding precisely the kind of terminological confusion Bassani warns against. Or, in case the editors and other authors would not agree with Bassani’s suggestions, a thematic discussion could have benefited the academic contribution of the book. In the same vein, the articles could have benefited from greater interaction and discussion among themselves to identify novel insights. For instance, Van Haeperen’s paper might have been more appropriately placed in this second part of the volume, perhaps allowing a comparative analysis of the meaning(s) of places of worship within domestic space to our understanding of private religion.
Dardenay’s article, ‘Herculaneum’s Insula V Domestic Cult Places’, looks at the distribution of cult places in the private houses of Herculaneum, concluding rather soon that ‘the presence of multiple places of worship within the same house is difficult to demonstrate’ in Herculaneum (p. 213), whereas the situation differs from that of Pompeii, where two or more lararia (sic) in a single household can be attested. After a detailed classification of possible shrines, she applies viewshed analysis to assess whether shrine placement reflects the protective function of the Lares. While much of the evidence remains uncertain, where spatial analysis is possible it suggests that shrine locations were deliberately chosen to enhance protective qualities.
In Part 3, ‘Towards an Anthropological Analysis of Spaces and Rituals’, the protective qualities of domestic divinities are investigated in M. Mauger’s paper, ‘Domestic Religion and the Anthropology of Space in the Entrance to the Roman House’, too, focusing on the liminal space between exterior and interior of the Roman domus, the entrance, and how boundaries are perceived. Doors were considered as spaces for religious rites (for instance, Pliny the Elder describes the rituals connected to the house entrance) and might have witnessed the presence of divine Janus, guarding two sides of the door. However, this does not seem to be widespread in Campania (unless Janus is represented in the physical door, in the same vein as Vesta is embodied in the hearth). Spatial analysis reveals that in atrium houses the depth of the boundary served as a transitional space that took into account both the protective nature of the boundary and the social interactions within the houses. In ‘From Routines to Rituals in Pompeian Houses’ A.-K. Rieger develops a ‘lived religion’ approach, examining how image-objects and human agents interacted in domestic ritual. She emphasises not only the visual but also the sensory dimensions of religious practice: sound, smell and temporality contributed to the sacralisation of space. Her analysis shows how domestic religion was experienced as a dynamic process, in which routine actions could become ritualised and everyday spaces temporarily sacralised. This article shows more than the others the kind of theoretical approach I was expecting from the volume, and its place in the third part of the book is justified. E. Pui, in ‘Les pratiques cultuelles dans les villas gallo-romaines du Haut-Empire’, extends the discussion to Roman Gaul and Germania, asking whether domestic rituals differed between large villas and smaller rural houses. The evidence – mainly figurines from villa contexts – proves too heterogeneous to support a sharp opposition, and he concludes that significant differences cannot be demonstrated. In the last paper of the volume A. Durand, ‘Réflexion sur le devenir et la propriété des sacraria en contexte domestique’, revisits the definition of private sacraria and their possible dis/continuity when properties changed hands, whether through house sales as part of inheritance, using both – very limited – literary/legal evidence and material from Pompeii, as we return there from the provinces after Pui’s article. While the literature remains unhelpful, the material evidence of foundation rituals suggests that sacraria could not change owners without being properly reassigned in religious rites.
The Anthropology of Roman Housing series set out to inject anthropological perspectives into the study of ancient domestic religion, promising a more rigorous methodology than ‘traditional’ classical archaeology. Yet this volume does not fully deliver on that promise. The essays are of good quality and make interesting contributions – some more than others –, but none demonstrate the methodological breakthroughs suggested by the editors. In practice, the book reads more as a strong but conventional work of classical archaeology, by no means in a bad way, as this is an area already long informed by cross-disciplinary approaches. The limitations of applying modern anthropological methods to ancient evidence are apparent throughout. Social science approaches have certainly enriched the humanities, not least archaeology, but methods developed for contemporary societies do not always translate well into the fragmentary evidence of antiquity. More than once the contributions run into the same difficulties as earlier scholarship: a promising theoretical lens proves difficult to apply when the material evidence is scarce. Perhaps some recent anthropological theories together with a more coherent editorial process and an overarching discussion among the authors could have given the project a boost.
