This volume presents a collection of papers that emerged from a two-day symposium held in Istanbul in 2013 (its editors note that much of the preparation for publication took place during the Covid pandemic). It is a difficult book to procure. The US publisher was only able to provide a PDF to this reviewer; JRA eventually provided a hard copy from another source. It seems likely that most readers in the United States will encounter the essays in this volume digitally, and therefore individually, or obtain the hard copy of the book through short-term (interlibrary) loan. These circumstances will affect the volume’s potential impact as a collection and as a reference for scholars interested in ancient housing. On the one hand, the essays stand alone as individual studies and each is accompanied by its own bibliography and footnotes, which will be convenient to those reading them this way. On the other hand, while all of the essays in some way deal with domestic space and most deal at least cursorily with multiple chronological phases of those spaces, they do not engage with each other or a theory of the palimpsest as fully as one might hope. An index is helpfully provided for the whole volume. The print version is a paperback, but with sturdy pages and color illustrations that for the most part show up clearly on the matte paper.

The volume begins with an introduction by the editors, presented in three parts; each editor is the sole author of one of the first two sections, while the third section is jointly authored. The first section, by Inge Uytterhoeven, begins by describing the impetus for the symposium – an interest in houses as resources for understanding past societies – and the aim of taking a “diachronic and transcultural approach” (3) to the chronological periods named in the volume title. The author expresses the admirable goals of examining houses in their varied contexts and as potential sources of information about private life in the ancient Mediterranean. She introduces the term “palimpsest” as a framework for the volume and suggests that houses were “microcosms where different activities took place” (8); this reviewer would have liked to know more about how authors conceived of and used this idea of “microcosm” as it did not seem to be a prominent theme in the rest of the volume. Uytterhoeven, in these introductory remarks, also makes an important point about how the priorities and conclusions of prior scholarship influence current work and therefore require our critical attention and evaluation. Alessandra Ricci’s solo contribution to the introduction focuses on the “Great Palace” (author’s quotation marks) in Constantinople as a potential example of a palimpsest and discusses the challenges of finding information about non-elite dwellings in the city. The final, joint-authored section presents a more traditional introduction to the volume and its contents, noting an emphasis on upper-class dwellings, the aim to consider especially “transitional periods” (16), and the impacts of larger historical circumstances on houses. The introduction is followed by nine essays in English, with an emphasis on material from the eastern Mediterranean; much of it is concerned with a “long” Late Antiquity. Five of the essays are what might be termed thematic – they consider types of, or elements within, houses across multiple locations – while the other four are focused on particular sites. This review considers the thematic essays first, then moves on to those concerned with individual sites.

Among the essays that consider types of houses or elements of them from multiple locations, the first is centered on Italy and villas. In it, Hannah Platts explores how we might identify and understand the concept of the “productive” villa and how villas may relate to questions of identity in the Roman world. Platts presents an overview of the ancient evidence for and scholarship about the variation and connections between villas with agricultural elements. She engages with Uytterhoeven’s call to consider how earlier scholarship shapes our understanding of ancient material, including previous scholars’ tendency to draw heavily on literary evidence for villas. Platts argues for a “polythetic” (author’s quotation marks) approach to interpreting villa residences, which highlights the varied and variable backgrounds of villa owners and the potential for experimentation and fluidity in ancient understanding of their meanings.

Veronika Scheibelreiter-Gail offers an examination of domestic entrance spaces and the function of inscriptions and symbols in the doorways and entry rooms of houses in Greece, the Balkans, and Turkey (although the essay begins with the famous cave canem mosaics from Pompeii). The author notes that her intervention is meant to be a “stimulus” (99) rather than a comprehensive study, suggesting that entrances should be viewed as not only opportunities for presentation, but also points of vulnerability. Her consideration of the latter focuses on the apotropaic function of inscriptions and symbols in domestic entrances, including examples from Delos to Syria. The idea that mythological scenes and inscriptions could function as apotropaic devices is an interesting and persuasive addition to more common narratives about elite status and display. Of particular interest was a discussion of Late Antique Christian inscriptions that included the phrase “and you,” indicating a hope for exchange of sentiments – ideally good ones (we bless you, you will bless us) but also potentially serving as cautions (cross me, I’ll cross you).

Uytterhoeven’s essay considers luxury and display in elite houses in Asia Minor, a rich and well-studied topic about which she has significant expertise. She explores the notion that elite houses in Asia Minor were “Greco-Roman” settings, mixing elements of “Western” (129) decoration and what might be considered typically Hellenistic, or eastern, aspects like courtyards. She offers several examples to illustrate these concepts, discussing baths, spatial hierarchies, and controlled access, and the idea that in Late Antiquity these evolved into palatial visual language. The author also presents an overview of the evidence for increased investment of elites in houses.

In her essay on the “Courtyard House” (the author puts “courtyard” in quotation marks throughout) in Asia Minor, Lale Özgenel builds on her previous work on the spatial organization of Late Antique houses to consider the social role of the courtyard in Late Antique domestic settings. The essay provides an overview and a catalogue describing architectural and decorative features of courtyards in individual houses at several sites in Asia Minor. The catalogue entries are drawn from published scholarship, including descriptions and measurements, and are tied to what is referred to in the text as a “plate” (it is not labeled as such, but does contain a key). The compilation of examples into one figure, all to the same scale, is helpful. This catalogue will be useful to someone looking for a compilation of houses in Late Antique Asia Minor, but fuller integration of these descriptions into the discussion that follows would have been welcome. The author makes an interesting point about interior colonnades functioning as façades within the domestic environment, something that this reader would be interested to hear more about.

Elisabeth Rathmayr discusses the “Terrace Houses” (aka slope houses, Hanghäuser) from Ephesos, a famous-to-archaeologists conglomeration of upper-class domestic architecture that is perhaps less familiar to non-specialist and anglophone readers, so this account is welcome. The Terrace Houses have been the object of intensive investigation (and conservation) for some years now. Rathmayr presents the buildings and their chronology, with an emphasis on a structure potentially belonging to one Varius. She considers how luxurious elements and location in the city may have been employed to emphasize and present Varius’s status in the city. This is particularly interesting and a rare study of domestic architecture that considers how houses looked from the outside and participated in the urban environment. The color illustrations accompanying this essay are useful but would have benefitted from some adjustment or redrawing. The plan of Terrace House 2 (fig. 6) in particular, is frequently reproduced; it would be a kindness to readers to adjust it to suit different publications in which it appears (add room labels in the language of the publication, tie them to references in the essay, etc.). One can only hope that Rathmayr and her colleagues’ work on these houses will help these important buildings take their proper places in textbooks and undergraduate courses on Roman art and architecture.

Pauline Piraud-Fournet offers an updated account of the Late Antique so-called Palace of Trajan at Bostra (Bosra) in modern Syria, which has long been considered a possible residence for the Roman governor of the province of Arabia, of which Bostra was the capital. The author notes that the city was also the seat of a bishop from the 4th to the 7th c. CE and so this site offers an opportunity to consider the fuller timeline that is a stated aim of the book. The update on the “Palace of Trajan” includes information derived from analyses in 1997 and more recent excavations (2007–2009) and suggests a construction date at the end of the 5th c. CE. This large house is described as being made up of four multi-story buildings with a peristyle courtyard and two large halls. Baths were added in the 6th c. CE. Included in the discussion is a useful clarification of the form of the house’s long so-called triconch room, which seems in fact to have had a rectangular central niche rather than an apsidal one. The author also notes that the house was still occupied by Christians during the Umayyad period. A helpful summary of prior studies of housing in the Hawran region (in southern Syria and northern Jordan) and the archaeological situation of Bostra, including discussion of materials and architectural techniques, precedes the detailed discussion of the “Palace of Trajan” (an explanation of the house’s misleading moniker is on page 202). The essay examines the building’s multiple Late Antique phases, although it offers less information about its transition from Nabataean and earlier Roman periods (the author notes that it was part of a sanctuary in those eras, 205). One wonders if the palimpsest concept could have been applied more effectively to the earlier phases of this building, which the author says is not clearly domestic until the 4th c. For later phases, however, the author presents an interesting analysis of structures being inhabited until very recently but largely preserving their ancient forms. Throughout the essay, a series of detailed drawings (and one photograph) complement the narrative.

P. M. Michèle Daviau examines a structure known as Building 600 (B600) at Tall Jawa in Jordan, built from the remains of an Iron Age structure that was reused much later as an Early Islamic house. The essay provides an overview of the nature and formation of Tall (Tell) sites of the sort found around Jordan (and elsewhere), focusing on the history of Tall Jawa (its ancient name is unknown, 220), a 2-ha mound site in central Jordan that was occupied in the Iron Age but abandoned for nearly a millennium. A new settlement was established there in what the author terms the Late Byzantine period and continued into the Early Islamic period. After providing a brief history of the site and an overview of its topography, Daviau discusses the Early Islamic house (B600, also referred to as House 600) in detail, noting its substantial reuse of Iron Age building fabric alongside much later additions, and small finds that date the building to the Late Byzantine and Early Islamic era. This is a detailed archaeological report on the fabric and finds of an Islamic-era house in which an upper story was built on top of and used the ground floor of an Iron Age house as its foundations. The author presents a complicated sequence of remodeling that included reused material brought from elsewhere at the site, but she mainly focuses on the fascinating phenomenon of incorporating a thousand-year-old abandoned predecessor into a new building. This reader would have been interested to hear more about how typical or unusual this building was in its time or place and how the decision to reoccupy this millennium-old building fit into the larger historical context of the site and its region (the author notes that no other contemporary structures were excavated).

Ricci draws upon the contributions of Swiss archaeologist and geometry teacher(!) at the Galatasaray Lycée, Ernest Mamboury, to illuminate a lesser known, but large and important Late Antique residential complex at Rhegion that was excavated in the late 1930s and 1940s. Located in an area west of the Theodosian landwalls along the shores of the Küçükçekmece lagoon and the ancient Via Egnatia, ancient Rhegion was identified by Mamboury, who also documented (in French) the excavations, which were led by Aziz Ogan, then director of the Museum of Antiquities. The material they produced was never fully published. The residential complex of the essay title is dated to the 5th to 6th c. Ricci estimates that the property encompassed some 5 ha, making it the largest domestic complex outside of the Great Palace in Constantinople from this period. She discusses Mamboury’s career and his engagement with the site of Rhegion, including an interesting account of 17th-c. and later explorations of its rural area and the identification of the site as Rhegion. Ricci considers Mamboury’s 1938 diary at length and the archaeological information it provides. A section called “After Mamboury” includes a modern plan by Slobodan Ćurčić, descriptions of architecture and decor, and the suggestion of a main construction phase for the complex in the second half of the 5th c. with a mid-6th-c. refurbishing.

Rahmi Asal concludes the volume with an interim report on recent Istanbul Archaeological Museum excavations in the Asian hinterland of the city. The Kartal Dragos excavations began in December 2010 in the Orhantepe neighborhood of Kartal on the Asian side of Istanbul; the area was previously excavated in the 1970s. It is identified as the “palace complex of Bryas.” The essay includes a plan and photos of new excavations of three areas within the site – a bath building, a “basilical-in-plan church” and a likely residential building – and discusses each in turn. Excavations in the Sancaktepe municipality of Istanbul (begun in 2013) focused on a structure known as the Damtrys Palace, which was identified by literary sources. It is understood to have been constructed under late 6th-c. emperors but remained in use until late 13th c. Asal explains that the excavations stopped at floor level (which was quite deeply buried) and that the project aims to preserve and restore the site, which includes Byzantine and Ottoman era remains.

As is often the case with edited volumes, this is a somewhat loosely tied collection of essays. Many of them describe recent or relatively recent archaeological investigations and their main conclusions, and they are therefore useful guides to the sites in question. All of them consider domestic spaces in the periods of the volume’s title. The framework of the palimpsest – at least as imagined by this reader, in which multiple layers and chronological phases coexist in relationships not necessarily intended (or perhaps even perceived) by ancient occupants as distinct – is not as fully developed as one might have hoped. That said, all of these essays present well-researched considerations of interesting and important sites. They will be welcome and useful resources for anglophone readers seeking to understand material that may be unfamiliar to them, especially those readers not steeped in the scholarship of Late Antique houses. The volume as a whole explores material that is not often examined together and therefore itself may be considered a manifestation of the palimpsest the editors aimed to illuminate at its inception.