Search Results

This chapter turns to the question of distribution, looking at the factors that determined where particular stones were used, what they were used for and why. Stone is valued according to the use to which it is to be put and so different materials are sought out for different projects. Focusing on the use to which stones are put, discussion focuses on the distribution of stones used for building in five areas—Asia Minor, the Levant, Spain, Gaul, the Rhineland, and Britain—and in each considers the impact that geography or supply systems had on the employment of particular materials. Sarcophagi and statuary were used and bought differently from raw materials for building and their distribution patterns are consequently divergent. Finally, imperial redistribution of decorative stone operated on a quite different scale from ordinary, everyday stone use and the mechanisms underpinning this operation are the focus of the last section of this chapter, as is the relationship between the imperial and non-imperial stone trade.

The production of sarcophagi has received a lot of attention in scholarship. Enormous quantities of these objects were carved and traded long distances in the Roman Empire. This chapter provides a detailed overview of how this production was organized, focusing both on those major marble quarries that became recognized centres for the supply of raw materials and those smaller production centres all around the Roman world who supplied local markets with sarcophagi. As in the previous chapter, the work that went into producing sarcophagi is followed from quarry through to the final customer. Although sarcophagi often ended up being produced in a narrow range of standardized forms, the impact of consumer demand on this phenomenon should not be underplayed. Production-to-stock, while perhaps a reality in certain circumstances, was neither widespread nor typical for sarcophagi.

This concluding chapter sums up many of the conclusions drawn from the preceding chapters, concentrating on what the stone trade can add to our understanding of the wider Roman economy. To this end, it focuses on the role of the state, the evidence for local, regional, and inter-regional connectivity provided by the distribution of particular stone types, and what the carving of architectural elements, statuary, and sarcophagi reveal about production, in particular mass production, in the Roman world.

This chapter explores the figure of the ghost to offer a new understanding of the status of the image in Roman art and visual culture. It shows how ancient depictions of ghosts operate recursively by depicting the conditions of depiction and even the visual event of seeing itself, and that this recursive play in turn makes visible the systems of classification that shape this relay.

This chapter examines the origins of the iconography of Doubting Thomas around the turn of the fifth century. By taking up the famous incredulity of the apostle who was uncertain whether he was seeing a mere ghost or the actual, resurrected body of Christ in the flesh, it considers how the imagery keys into broader theological and philosophical arguments about sense-perception, materiality, and embodiment.