“Locating the Individual in Roman Funerary Culture:
Patronage, Consumption, and Agency”
10-11 May 2012
Organizers: Stine Birk & Niels Bargfeldt
Venues: Aarhus University & Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen

“Mapping Movement and Sacred Topography:
Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Perspectives on Ancient Pilgrimage”
9 June 2012
Organizers: Troels Myrup Kristensen & Wiebke Friese
Venue: Universität Hamburg

The Classical Studies seminar will also enter its inaugural season with the following dates:
Thursday 9 February 3 pm / Jacob Isager (Odense) on Vitruvius.
Thursday 8 March 3 pm / Jan Stubbe Østergaard (Copenhagen) on polychromy.
Thursday 22 March 3 pm / Antony Spawforth (Newcastle) on Augustan Greece.
Thursday 12 April 3 pm / David Bloch (Copenhagen) on Aristoles and the Aristotelian tradition.
Wednesday 2 May 3 pm / Ida Östenberg (Gothenburg) on Roman defeat.

This summer, participants of the late antique research programme at Aarhus University co-organised a summer school “Constantinople: Space and Representation in the Late Antique Metropolis” on location in Istanbul. The energetic cohort of students came from Finland, England and Denmark. Among many interesting sites visited were the Hagia Eirene (above), the harbour excavations at Yenikapi, the so-called Palace of Antiochos, the Hippodrome, Hagia Sophia and the Golden Gate (all below the fold). Many thanks to our hosts at the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul who made our stay so pleasant and rewarding as well as Simon Malmberg, Sarah Bassett, Arja Karivieri, and local Turkish colleagues who tirelessly led the group through the streets of Istanbul in search of late antique monuments!

On 25 March, a group of international scholars came to Aarhus to participate in the seminar “The Afterlife of Roman Sculpture II: Late Antique Response and Reception“. The organizers would like to thank everybody for their contributions to what was a very fruitful meeting! The seminar was generously funded by the Danish Research Council. Additional funding was provided by the Institute of Anthropology, Archaeology, and Linguistics, AU, and the Canada Research Chair in Roman Archaeology. More photos from the seminar are available here.

“This book explores the relationship between the city of Rome and the Aurelian Wall during the six centuries following its construction in the 270s AD, a period when the city changed and contracted almost beyond recognition, as it evolved from imperial capital into the spiritual center of Western Christendom. The Wall became the single most prominent feature in the urban landscape, a dominating presence which came bodily to incarnate the political, legal, administrative and religious boundaries of urbs Roma, even as it reshaped both the physical contours of the city as a whole and the mental geographies of ‘Rome’ that prevailed at home and throughout the known world. With the passage of time, the circuit took on a life of its own as the embodiment of Rome’s past greatness, a cultural and architectural legacy that dwarfed the quotidian realities of the post-imperial city as much as it shaped them.”

Constantinople – Space and Representation in the late antique Metropolis

Study during the summer and meet international lecturers and fellow students in the cosmopolitan city of Istanbul!

Constantinople – Space and Representation in the late antique Metropolis is an intensive two week Summer School organized by the Section for Classical Archaeology, Aarhus University in collaboration with the Swedish Research Institutes in Istanbul (SRII) and Rome. It is held at the SRII and can therefore take advantage of its setting in Istanbul to explore the city of Constantinople and give the students a unique firsthand experience of the late antique monuments. The Summer School will also present new and exciting discoveries from the ongoing excavations in the city and its vicinity.

Teaching takes place from 26 June-10 July 2011 at the SRII with daily excursions to famous sites and new excavations in the heart of modern day Istanbul. More information here.

The Afterlife of Roman Sculpture II:
Late Antique Response and Reception
Friday 25 March 2011

Preben Hornung Room, Aarhus University Conference Centre
Organized by Troels Myrup Kristensen

10.00 Introduction / Troels Myrup Kristensen, Aarhus University

10.15 Keynote: “Late Antique Statues and Their Literary Afterlife” / Professor Franz Alto Bauer, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

11.15 Coffee break

11.30 Keynote:”The Archaeology of Destruction: Christians, Images of Classical Antiquity, and Some Problems of Interpretation” / Professor John Pollini, University of Southern California, Los Angeles

12.30 Lunch for speakers

Session I: Patterns of Deposition and Re-Use – Chair: Ortwin Dally
13.20 ”Walled-Up Statues: An Unintended Extension in the Lifespan of Sculpture” / Donald White, University of Pennsylvania

14.00 “Exploring the Relationship between Lime Kilns and Sculptural Findspots in the Abandonment Phases at Roman Villas” / Beth Munro, University of Manitoba

14.40 Coffee break

Session II: Regional Perspectives – Chair: John Pollini
15.00 ”The Afterlife of Roman Sculpture in Gaul and the Rhineland” / Philip Kiernan, State University of New York at Buffalo

15.40 ”Sculpture in the Urban Space of Late Antique Athens” / Nadin Burkhardt, Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main

16.20 “Old habits die hard. The statuary record of Asia Minor between the 4th and the 7th century AD” / Ine Jacobs, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

17.00 Coffee break

Session III: The Final Act – Chair: Franz Alto Bauer
17.15 “The Disappearing Imperial Statue: Towards a Social Interpretation” / Benjamin Anderson, Bryn Mawr College

17.55 ”The Sunset of 3D” / Paolo Liverani, University of Florence

18.35 Concluding remarks / Lea Stirling, University of Manitoba

The seminar is generously funded by the Danish Research Council (FKK), the Canada Research Chair in Roman Archaeology, and the Institute of Anthropology, Archaeology, and Linguistics, Aarhus University.

Attendance to the seminar is free and open to the public. If you wish to attend, please register with the conference assistant, Niels Bargfeldt: klanb@hum.au.dk

CALL FOR PAPERS
International Seminar
Department of Classical Archaeology, Aarhus University
Friday 25 March 2011

In 2008, Aarhus University hosted a seminar on “The Afterlife of Roman Sculpture: Late Antique Perceptions and Practices” that aimed to look at the variety of late antique perceptions of statuary, focusing on a few select regional case studies – from Alexandria in the east to Britain in the north – , and such diverse phenomena as collecting, deposition and destruction. This follow-up seminar is envisaged as providing an opportunity for both senior and junior scholars to arrive at a broader understanding of the fate of Graeco-Roman statuary during the period between the fourth and the seventh centuries AD. It is hoped that by integrating both textual and archaeological approaches, as well as empirical and theoretical methodologies, it is possible to provide a rich and multifaceted picture of the changes in the sculptural landscape of the Classical world.

The seminar will consist of three keynote papers by Prof. John Pollini (USC, Los Angeles), Prof. Franz Alto Bauer (LMU, Munich) and Prof. Ortwin Dally (DAI, Berlin), and five 30-minute papers. Abstracts for papers and short CVs are therefore invited for submission by 8 September 2010. Accepted speakers will be provided with full funding including travel costs and accommodation at Aarhus, thanks to the generous support of the Danish Research Council.

Please send proposals to Troels Myrup Kristensen (klatmk@hum.au.dk), Assistant Professor, PhD, Department of Classical Archaeology, Aarhus University

Hendrik Dey, “Art, Ceremony, and City Walls: The Aesthetics of Imperial Resurgence in the Late Roman West”, Journal of Late Antiquity 3.1 (2010): 3-37.

Troels Myrup Kristensen, “Embodied Images: Christian Destruction and Response in Late Antique Egypt”, Journal of Late Antiquity 2.2 (2009): 224-250.

Official opening of the Centre for the Study of Antiquity and Christianity and the Velux project The transformation of religious identity in the Hellenistic-Roman world, 100-600 AD. The significance of conversion and initiation to the formation of religious identity:

15.15: The Dean
15.30: Lecture by Prof. Inge Nielsen, Universität Hamburg: Religious associations in antiquity.
16.30: Reception

Friday 5 March, 15.15-17.30 – Auditorium 2, Building 1441 (Reception in room 110)
Downloadable pdf poster.