January 2006 started with exceptional energy even for the British School with the opening of the ‘Responding to Rome’ Exhibition at the Estorick Gallery in Islington, curated by Jacopo Benci. A wide variety of work by 36 BSR artists from the past 10 years was shown, and the packed opening night served also as a re-union for past and current scholars and staff. Also back in London the British School was honoured in early May by the presence of its President HRH Princess Alexandra at a fund-raising concert held at the Foreign Office in London. This splendid evening was organised by Di Bresciani, to whom we are already indebted for last year’s Australian music scholarship, with Lady Caroline Egerton and Diana Baring and consisted of an evening of piano music and songs, played and sung by Piers Lane and Yvonne Kenny. It was a highly successful event and raised the huge sum of £24,000 which we hope to put towards further scholarships.
Back in Rome, it has been a great pleasure to welcome Simon Keay from Southampton University as the inaugural holder of our new Research Professorship in Archaeology, to launch his new project on ‘Portus and the Ports of the Roman Mediterranean’ and in early May we were able to celebrate the recent appearance of his new BSR publication on Portus (see over). Two new scholarships are also currently held at the School, one by Peter Keegan, himself a one-time City of Rome course participant, who is the first Gale Macquarie Scholar and by the artist Eamon O’Kane, who is the first Derek Hill Foundation Scholar.
During the spring, a full programme of lectures and excursions continued as usual, including a talk by Estelle Lazer (Sydney University), who filled the lecture theatre speaking on ‘Pompeii AD 79: the human victims’, a fascinating study, amongst other things, of her own pioneering work on the skeletal remains at the site. Simon Martin (Leverhulme Study Abroad Scholar) spoke on ‘Football, fights, fast cars and fast women’, a highly instructive and entertaining lecture on sport in Mussolini’s Italy. Joseph Connors (Villa I Tatti) gave us a magisterial synthesis of the history of Piazza Navona while Ian Wood (Balsdon Fellow) stretched the technical limits of the Sainsbury Lecture Theatre to entertain us with an aria from Verdi’s ‘Attila’ when he spoke on the ‘Use and Abuse of the early Middle Ages in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’.
An innovation this year has been the launch of our Architecture Lecture Programme, a series of lectures on the theme ‘Spaces for Art’ by architects John Miller and Tony Fretton. Something out of the ordinary was also provided by Carol Brown, a contemporary dance choreographer whose lecture, ‘Dancing in the Mediascape’ hosted by the BSR, formed part of a symposium on performance design held by our neighbours at the Danish Institute. JWH\SR |
Award-holders at BSR this summer
Humanities
Ian Wood (Balsdon Fellow), Robert Coates-Stephens (Cary Fellow), James Clackson (Hugh Last Fellow), John Wilton-Ely (Paul Mellon Centre Rome Fellow), Emma-Jayne Graham (Rome Fellow), Adam Gutteridge (Rome Fellow), Lucy Sackville (Rome Fellow), Keith Swift (Ralegh Radford Rome Scholar), Carlos Machado (Rome Scholar), Matthew Elliot (Rome Awardee), Natalia Nowakowska (Rome Awardee), William Wootton (Rome Awardee), Peter Keegan (Macquarie University Gale Scholar).
Fine Arts
Lauren Lavitt (Abbey Scholar in Painting), John Wilkins (Abbey Fellow in Painting), Ian Charlesworth (Arts Council of Northern Ireland Fellow), William Cobbing (ACE Helen Chadwick Fellow), Sarah Stead (Rome Scholar in Architecture), Sharon Thomas (Sainsbury Scholar in Painting and Sculpture), Steven MacIver (Sainsbury Scholar in Painting and Sculpture), Juan Ford (Australia Council Resident Artist), Andrew Hazewinkel (Australia Council Resident Artist), Eamon O’Kane (Derek Hill Foundation Scholar). |
Current Archaeological projects at the BSR
In the transitional year between the winding down of the Tiber Valley Project and the start of work associated with the Portus project, life in the Camerone continues to be busy. Members of the Camerone and Southampton University Geophysics unit (APSS) have been busy undertaking some preparatory work at Portus, as well as surveying of Roman town sites in Campania. Helen Patterson has been writing about the Tiber Valley Project, while Roberta Cascino and Cinzia Filippone are completing work on the ceramics from the project. Members of the Camerone are also expected to be taking part in the Falacrinae excavations in July and August, while Simon Keay, Martin Millett and Sophie Hay will be doing some geophysics at Teano in September. SK |
Portus. An Archaeological Survey of the Port of Imperial Rome, by Simon Keay, Martin Millett, Lidia Paroli and Kristian Strutt
with contributions from Antonia Arnoldus-Huyzendveld, Alessandra Bousquet, Will Clarke, Letizia Ceccarelli, Franca Del Vecchio, Fabrizio Felici, Sergio Fontana, Shawn Graham, Paul Johnson, Stephen Kay, Anna Lucia Lionetti, Mauro Maiorano, Cristiana Mele, Cinzia Morelli, Helen Patterson, Julia Robinson, Isabel Rodà, Timothy Sly, Claudia Valeri, Patrizia A. Verduchi, Christopher Whitton, Sabrina Zampini and Fausto Zevi
In ad 42 the Emperor Claudius initiated work on the construction of a new artificial harbour a short distance to the north of the mouth of the river Tiber. The harbour facilities were enlarged at the instigation of the Emperor Trajan at the beginning of the second century ad, and Portus remained the principal port for the City of Rome into the Byzantine period. The surviving archaeological remains and comments by ancient sources make it clear that Portus lay at the heart of Rome’s maritime façade. As well as being a key Mediterranean centre for passengers and for the loading, unloading, transshipment and storage of products from across the Empire, it was also designed to make an ideological statement about the supremacy of Rome in the world. The project that forms the main subject of this book was designed to use non-destructive techniques of topographic and geophysical survey (including magnetometry and resistivity) in combination with systematic surface collection and analysis of aerial photographs and the geomorphology of the coastline to provide a new understanding of the plan of Portus. The results challenge some of the accepted interpretations and put forward new readings of the evidence, thus deepening knowledge of this key site and opening up new perspectives and avenues for research on the functional, economic and political relations between Rome and its port within the context of the imperial organization of the Mediterranean.
Archaeological Monographs of the British School at Rome 15
Published in collaboration with the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, Sopritnedenza per i Beni Archeologici di Ostia
ISBN 0 904152 47 2; xviii, 360 pages, including 233 black and white illustrations and a double-sided fold-out; paperback; 21 × 28 cm
Price to Subscribers: £25.00 + £6.00 p&p (full retail price £49.50)
For further information or to order, contact: The Publications Manager, The British School at Rome at The British Academy, 10 Carlton House Terrace, London, SW1Y 5AH; E bsr@britac.ac.uk |
