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The Excavations of San Giovanni di Ruoti

The Excavations of San Giovanni di Ruoti: Volume II: The Small Finds

C.J. SIMPSON
R. Reece
J.J. Rossiter
O. Colacicchi Alessandri
V. Volterra
R. Aicher
C. Mundigler
ALASTAIR M. SMALL
ROBERT J. BUCK
Series: Phoenix Supplementary Volumes
Copyright Date: 1997
Published by: University of Toronto Press
Pages: 158
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/9781442681224
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  • Book Info
    The Excavations of San Giovanni di Ruoti
    Book Description:

    Between 1977 and 1984 the excavations of a Canadian archaeological team at San Giovanni di Ruoti in southern Italy uncovered a series of three Roman villas dating from the first to the sixth centuries AD. The multi-volume report on the excavation will provide the first comprehensive overview of the social and economic life of a Roman villa in southern Italy. Volume II constitutes a catalogue raisonTe of the small finds, covering all categories of non-ceramic personal, domestic, and industrial artifacts recovered from the site.

    C.J. Simpson has been a member of the Canadian excavation team since 1979. He provides detailed descriptions of the individual artifacts, their dates of manufacture, and their use, and discusses the evidence they yield for domestic and daily life. The artifacts range from hairpins and brooches to iron knives used for slicing and chopping. Coins and lamps found at the site are evaluated in separate contributions by R. Reece and J.J. Rossiter. The book includes several useful appendices, notably one by Vito Volterra on the analysis of millstones.The 400 items listed in the catalogue are illustrated by drawings or photographs.

    This volume presents one of very few accounts of the household artifacts found at an estate centre remote from urban Rome. It provides an important resource for specialists seeking to date similar objects, and adds much interesting detail to our picture of the rural economy of Italy in late antiquity.

    eISBN: 978-1-4426-8122-4
    Subjects: Archaeology

Table of Contents

  1. Front Matter
    (pp. i-vi)
  2. Table of Contents
    (pp. vii-ix)
  3. LIST OF TABLES
    (pp. x-x)
  4. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
    (pp. xi-xii)
  5. PREFACE
    (pp. xiii-xvi)
    A.M. Small and R.J. Buck
  6. ABBREVIATIONS
    (pp. xvii-2)
  7. Introduction
    (pp. 3-20)

    This is a catalogue ofinstrumenta domesticafrom the Canadian excavations at San Giovanni di Ruoti, Basilicata, Italy. The objects discussed here represent most of the non-ceramic artifacts of the occupants of a remote site in Lucania from approximately the beginning of the Principate of Augustus to that uncertain period of ‘continuity’ that marks the end of the Roman administration in the West and the beginnings of a new reality.

    In all, these articles represent rather a small collection. Of the first two phases of occupation, Period 1 is barely distinguishable through the associated small finds. Period 2 is similarly...

  8. Catalogue
    (pp. 21-59)

    Most of the objects in this class of material are clearly identifiable as ‘hairpins,’ even though none was found in a funerary context admitting absolute certainty of identification.

    Apart from being put to their more familiar function, hairpins (and sewing needles) had several other uses. Such pins and needles (when made of copper alloy) were used for minor surgical operations - for example, the lancing of boils and similar afflictions (Celsus 5.28.4; PlinyNH26.5), drainage of haemorrhoids (Celsus 6.18.9), treatment of sciatica (PlinyNH28.198), and for the removal of unwanted hair from eyebrows (PlinyNH32.75). (See also...

  9. BIBLIOGRAPHY
    (pp. 60-64)
  10. CONCORDANCES
    (pp. 65-69)
  11. APPENDIX 1 Conservation of the amulet, No. 369
    (pp. 70-72)
    Olimpia Colacicchi Alessandri
  12. APPENDIX 2 The inheritance of Stephen and the non-ceramic artifacts at San Giovanni di Ruoti
    (pp. 73-74)
  13. APPENDIX 3 Provenancing of ancient Roman millstones
    (pp. 75-82)
    V. Volterra
  14. Coins
    (pp. 83-88)
    R. Reece

    Comments on coin finds can sometimes have a length inversely proportional to the number of coins. Thus, two or three Greek or Celtic coins can provoke pages of commentary, while a hundred Roman coins may be dismissed in half a page. The absence of coinage from the period of highest activity on this site must clearly not determine the extent of my comments.

    It was not completely in jest that I suggested a thesis some years ago to be entitled ‘Coin loss on coin-less sites’ (Reece 1985), for virtually every discussion ever written is based on reasonably large numbers of...

  15. Lamps
    (pp. 89-102)
    J.J. Rossiter

    Excavation of the Roman villas at San Giovanni produced a small number of complete or nearly complete pottery lamps, together with several hundred identifiable lamp fragments. As might be expected, much of this material came from the series of Late Roman middens that built up at the site during the last century and a half of the villa’s life (Small and Freed 1986; Rossiter 1988a). The rest derives mainly from stratified contexts throughout the site, ranging in date from the late first century BC to the mid-sixth century AD.

    If one considers the long history of occupation of the villa,...

  16. ILLUSTRATIONS
    (pp. 103-158)
  17. Back Matter
    (pp. 159-160)