Reception in Roman Archaeology

Reception is a term (often) used in classics when discussing literature, but it is not common in archaeology, at least not in Denmark. As archaeologists we are familiar with the term “experimental archaeology”, but I do believe a small part of this particular field can be categorized as “reception” because we are trying to reconstruct a past out of whatever material we can find in the present and hereby, e.g. relive the world of the Romans.

In Germany, and elsewhere, a tradition for living as Romans and having “roman festivals” is widespread in areas with roman remains and reconstructed fortresses. Here focus is on  communicating ideas to and entertaining visitors in a “historical way”. For these purposes reception or “use” of historical and archaeological material is valuable, but when it comes to research and knowledge of the roman world the experimental archaeology is exceptionally useful in questions of technology.

One area of interest in this field of research is the question of wagon-technology. Here researchers have the opportunities to reconstruct a piece of technology and to test the capabilities and different types of minor-technologies (the individual wagon parts) and thereby get an idea of the quality and durability of an area in roman technology. Unfortunately, in my opinion, this almost never happens. The reconstructions are often to expensive for the museums or research-institutions to “destroy” (use until some of the parts have to be renewed) and therefor the full-scale reconstructions is not much better, for a research purpose, than the much cheaper small-scale models. The reconstructions are valuable material in museum-communication, and therefor useful in the reception-part, but the full use of these wagons will not be determined until we start building wagons and use them as they where originally meant to. Then the experimental archaeology will help us answer the question of the usage and possibilities of wagon in the roman age. 

Most wagon-reconstructions that I know of in Denmark and Europe, have never or in a small degree been driven as they where originally meant to, and therefor, I think, they are a part of the field here called “reception” in Roman Archaeology. 

 

Reconstructing Roman Wagons

In more museums around Europe reconstructions of different types of roman wagons has been made. These wagons are often made in small-scale-models to give an idea of a certain wagon-type, but in some museums reconstructions has been made - full-scale!

Not all wagons are made due to archaeological finds of wagon-material, but the full-scale reconstructions has some original parts, most often iron-fittings or decorative bronze-items. Since the larger part of the wagon, the wooden part is normally missing in the archaeological finds, the roman wagons are reconstructed as the wagons found in the roman world of pictures (see my introducing post on the subject), and here especially the carvings are important evidence to the looks and constructions of the original wagons.

In the museum in Arlon, Belgium, they have, as mentioned in several posts a large collection of carvings with wagon-scenes and as an extra service they have made small-scale wooden models of most wagon-types to give the visitor an idea of what the carved wagons would have looked like in 3D. An other example of small-scale models of roman wagons are seen in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Bonn, Germany. One of the the wagons exhibited are a model of the well-known carving from Maria-Saal, Austria, showing what is known as a Roman travel-wagon, a wagon for long-distance travelling (see photo right). These models are all useful in giving an impression of the types of wagon they represent, but they are less useful when discussing details in wagon-construction. Here the full-scale reconstructions are important.

Large-scale reconstructions are also known from more museums, especially popular in areas containing carved stones decorated with wagon-scenes, meaning the northern Roman provinces. In Hungary and Germany more carved wagon-scenes on tombstones are known and these countries happen to have some of the best known reconstructions of Roman wagons, and luckily for the wagon-researchers the (most) wagons are different in type. In the Hungarian National Museum a reconstructed roman cart (see photo right) is exhibited. This wagon is a two-wheeler and a type best known from the roman carvingsin this area, but there is archaeological evidence for the used metal-parts and wagon-decoration. In Germany more reconstructions of roman wagons has been made during the last 25 years; in Bonn a two-wheeled transportation cart is exhibited, but the most famous reconstruction is the often mentioned travel-wagon in the Roman-Germanic Museum in Cologne. These wagons are also reconstructed in accordance the roman carvings, but some technological details still has to be documented in the archaeological material.

The wagon in Cologne is pictured on more websites and blogs and it will be treated separately in a later post on reconstructions.

 

The Volterran Dead-wagon

One wagon-type seen in Volterra might be interesting to the research of roman travel-wagons.

As mentioned in the latest post some Etruscan ash-urns in Volterra has a certain type of wagon in their “front-scene”, a scene showing transportation into death.

The type of wagon on these urns is a covered wagon, Carpentum, (see photo right) in which the dead person is lying down, and it is most often shown with a cross on the wagon-side (only in one case is the wagon-side covered with what looks like a fish-scale-decoration). The fact that this wagon has something to do with the death-cult or ritual, is guarantied in the use of the wagon as decoration on ash-urns and since the wagon-type is (to my knowledge) only to be found in and around the Etruscan city of Volterra, we might deal with some kind of local ritual or at least wagon-type in the carvings found here.

The wagon-type, as it is seen on the Volterran ash-urns, is nowhere-else to be found in the Etruscan or Centraleuropean area on carvings, but in the “Kunsthistorisches Museum” in Vienna, Austria, an interesting ceramic-wagon is exhibited (see photo right). This wagon has the same characteristics as the Volterran carvings, but the cross on wagon-side is not to be seen in this model, which is why it might be difficult to conclude anything on the meaning and spread of this cross-ornament, if we only look at wagons of the exact same type as the ones in Volterra. Other wagons must be taken into discussion.

Here an interesting carving showing a type of cross-ornament on the wagon-side is one of the most famous carvings dealing with roman wagon-transportation; the carving from Maria-Saal, Austria, showing a roman travel-wagon (see photo left). This carving is used as an example of the roman travel-wagon and it is used in reconstructing models of this wagon-type, e.g. the heavy wagon on display in Cologne.

Whether the cross on this last wagon has anything to do with the ones from Volterra is not likely, but I do find it interesting that this particular ornament is deliberately showed on wagon-carvings from the later Etruscan period and the roman imperial times, and both representing some kind of death-transportation.

 

Transportation-Carvings - Etruscan Wagon Types

Not only roman sarcophagi has carvings on their front-side showing wagons.. this tradition is much older.

In the post on “ships and carvings” i launched some photos from the archaeological museum in Volterra, Tuscany, showing some ash-urns with ship-scenes on the side. Some of these scenes are made in the “same” mythical tradition as later the roman sarcophagi are, and therefore this kind of transportation-scenes might be of the kind showing the dead persons transport into afterlife.

Transportation-scenes on the Etruscan sarcophagi is not only represented in carvings concerned  with ships and sailing, but also in scenes showing the dead-transport in a wagon. In the Etruscan carvings, especially two types of wagon are seen; a two-wheeled triumphant-like wagon (see photo above) and a covered wagon, looking a bit like a house-wagon (see photo right). 

Of the first kind more examples are known since it is a standard motive in Etruscan and later in Roman art. The main person is transported on the wagon in a procession-like scene. Two sarcophagi, one from Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen (above) and one from the Vatican museum (see photo below) are here set to represent this theme.

The second type of wagon is, as mentioned above, more like a house-wagon, where the travellers are (often) seen lying in the wagon. This particular wagon was put on the ash-urns in Volterra, Tuscany, and so far I haven’t found it anywhere else in Etruria. In my next post I will try to deal some more with this; the Volterran Dead-Wagon.

 

Roads, Tracks and driving in Pompeii

An ongoing discussion concerning roman transportation is on the tracks in the narrow streets of Pompeii. What type of vehicle(s) is able to drive around inside the ancient city? When walking around in Pompeii looking at the roads and crossroads (see photo below) the question about wagon-transportation, not least about 4-wheelers, pops into mind, and there-next another much discussed term: the pivoting front-axle!

The discussion of the pivoting front-axle is an old discussion on roman wagon technology, where the “ancient” argument is concentrating on a four-wheeled wagon which failed the ability to take a turn and therefore only moved because of the suppleness in the wooden construction. As a contrast to this view the idea of the pivoting front-axle was introduced with the finds of some roman-age wooden parts, which gave the wagon-construction the ability to turn on a single bolt, which again meant the wagon top was no longer placed directly on the front axle. A possible reconstruction of the pivoting front-axle is seen in the wagon in Cologne, mentioned in previous posts, but it is still to be found in the roman iconographic material.

The question is, though: Is it actually possible to drive a four-wheeled wagon round in a city like Pompeii, pivoting front-axle or not?

This is not an easy question to answer and therefore, instead of trying to do so, I will now turn the attention towards the roman legal question of having vehicles inside the ancient city: what kinds of vehicles were actually allowed in the city and when? Maybe only two-wheeled carts where allowed in the city, and preferably after sunset, as in the case of some medieval cities, and the four-wheeled wagon was more of a country-side vehicle concerned with long-distance cargo.

But where does this bring us in our search for wagon-transport inside ancient Pompeii? The tracks in the paving are clearly visible today, but not all roads bear marks of wagon-usage. Therefore it could be reasonable to assume that the transporting of goods around an ancient city like Pompeii could have been done by small two-wheeled carts concentrating their routes on the bigger more centrally placed in and outgoing roads, and therefor they did not have to make a turn inside the city.

All I know is the fact that I haven’t come across a road-cross inside Pompeii or any other ancient city with a “safe-to-say” mark of wagons taking some kind of turn - almost all marks I have seen are running straight ahead. This uncertainty is due to a photo of mine showing what just might happen to be a “turn-track” (see photo right), but it is unfortunately not safe to conclude anything from this photo alone.

 

Ships and Carvings - combined methods?

Working with roman wagons, especially as they are seen in carvings, it is necessary to get an idea of how far this material works. Therefore I have chosen two different angles in which to work with roman carvings; one concentrating on ships and how they are seen in the iconographic material, and one concentrating on everyday-life-scenes in provincial roman carvings from the Rhine-Danube borders of the roman empire. The first one is treated here.

Much literature on ancient ships is available in most countries, but what about the iconographic material on ships? I know of only one article dealing with this problem of research (see “Höckmann” in bibliography).

Höckmann is looking at carvings and paintings of ships in an Etruscan and pre-Etruscan context and comparing them to what little is known of real ship-parts most often found around the Tyrrhenian Sea. Where focus in his early chapters are on vase-paintings and small-scale models of Etruscan ships, it moves, for the 4th century BC, to concentrate on carvings and especially on the ones found on the ash-urns from Volterra, Tuscany (see photo right). After a discussion of the iconographic material, where he propose the Etruscans as being the inventors of the ship-Ram (la. Rostra) he ends up concluding that the pictures shown in the early periods are good evidence of Etruscan ship-construction, whereas the carvings on the Volterra Urns, which again often show scenes with mythical themes (see photo below), not are to be taken as evidence for the Etruscan fleet of the 4th or 3rd centuries BC.

This leads to the questions: For what use are articles on the iconography of ships, then? .. and is it actually possible to transfer these working methods into wagon-research?

So far, I am (unfortunately) no longer sure! Höckmann proved in the article that the ancient painter and stone-mason actually was interested in the details of ships in their work, even though they did “misplace” some details in the later carvings. Therefor I do think it is worth working with an idea giving the ancient artist some credit for (and interest in) the details reproduced in the carvings found in Rome as well as in the more provincial areas. 

 

Transportation-Carvings - Desert edition

So far, the series of transportation-carvings has concentrated on wagon and water transport, with a small view to transportation in mountainous areas, but an other field of interest also regarding the Roman period, has so far not been mentioned; the Desert. Large areas of the southern and eastern parts of the Roman Empire was desert-land, which required extraordinary skills to survive and even more to deal with transportation.

The old Egyptians used wagon-transportation, but since the sandy ground is not well fit for heavy wagons, it is difficult to believe that their use of wheeled transportation went beyond the chariots used in war. In stead of wagons, camels were (are) used for transporting goods in this dry climate, and more roman carvings actually show pictures of this peculiar kind of transportation.

One carving in the Capitoline museum (see photo right) show the camel with a saddle and in front of it the owner pulling a rope. This carving has no inscription or modern sign saying what it is or where it come from, but the idea that it might stem from a monument dealing with trade or a tradesman in the desert-region is supported by another carving, this time in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen. This carving also show the camel and the owner, but here the camel is showed in the background and focus is on the man.

This latter carving (see photo right) is more easily recognised in type, since it is carved in a style known from the Roman province of Syria, which again, especially, is widespread in the area around Palmyra. Roman Palmyra was for many years one of the most important cities in the Roman east and it got rich due to its location as desert trade-station on the silk-road. Therefor a lot of tradesmen lived here and took care of the difficult and dangerous transport of goods through the desert, and when they died, they where buried in different types of tombs/monuments. The type of carving shown here is often seen as a portrait of the buried person in the tomb of which the carving stem, and carvings of this type are exhibited in more museums around Europe. In this example we have a representation of a man and his work, which can be compared to the carvings from the northern provinces showing the “daily-life”-scenes, and therefor this, along with the carving from the Capitoline Museum, can be categorized as Transportation-Carvings.

Nowadays researchers has successfully tried to find some of the old/Roman Caravan-routes in north Africa, and one of these field-projects is based at the University of Bergen, Norway. For more info please check: www.hist.uib.no/ and click “Antikksider” under the “links”-menu.

 

The Etruscan Wagon in the Vatican

Even though some media often concern with italic prehistoric-culture outside Italy, the Italians still have some culture left “at home”.

In the Vatican Museum an Etruscan bronze chariot is exhibited in the “Museo Etrusco Gregoriano”-gallery.

This chariot is made in the same style as the one in the NY Met, mentioned earlier, but the bronze parts is not well preserved in this one (see photo right). Compared to the Met-chariot, the Vatican wagon is much reconstructed, but this only make it more clear how the people in the museum believe this wagon was constructed; wooden parts with bronze-plates as decoration.

This wagon is in a museum, where one could say it might not belong, since the Vatican State has an exclusive status in the Italian Republic, but I have not heard of any Italian authorities demanding this one back to some local museum in the old Etruscan area.. and why not? This wagon is not a part of the Hecht-Medici-case, but it could be argued that the Vatican-chariot belong somewhere else.

This said, the research on Etruscan chariots has a ”missing link”: An over-view! I think it is a “need to be done”-work to gather all information on Etruscan chariots in and outside Italy, and hereby try to establish, if possible, some kind of typology in this material. Almost all wagons exhibited, that I know of, are dated between 550-500 BC, but I do not think it possible to be the only period of Etruscan bronze-chariots. Maybe the purpose of these wagons has nothing to do with war..

 

Transportation-Carvings - the 20th century

The tradition of letting pictures “tell the story” has been practised ever since ancient times. e.g. in churches. An interesting, to the subject here, ”modern” picture is seen on the Vittorio Emanuele Monument in Rome, the big white monument on the northern slope of the Capitoline Hill.

About halfway up, the monument has a platform with a statue and on the statue-base a large carving with “instruments of war” is placed. On one side of the base the carving shows a very detailed four-wheeled wagon for transporting goods. This wagon show details of the traction system and many construction-details, which is very interesting, since here we have an evidence showing how the wagon was constructed in the beginning of the 20th century.

The details are pretty clear on the carving on this monument build in 1911, and since the workmen here were able to make details in their carving, then why not the Romans, too? It is not possible for us to know what the ancient stone masons used as measurement in their carvings, but once in a while we do find details, perhaps not as clear as the ones on the Vittorio Emanuele Monument, but still clear enough to conclude that these carvings where not all made as “free-hand-carvings”.

 

Transportation-Carvings - Water Transportation

As in the case with the wagons, carvings on water transport are found in various kinds of roman art and spread all over the roman empire. In the “Land Transportation II”-post I ended up showing a scene from the Column of Marcus Aurelius in Rome, where land and water transportation is joined together, here in a pontoon-bridge. Therefor this post starts with the same type of “joined scene”, also from the Column of M. Aurelius, but this time a boat is transported on a wagon over land (see photo right). The scene is some kind of victory-scene, where trophies are gathered and carried in a boat, and therefor it is not really a scene showing water-transportation.

Scenes of real water-transport are visible in the roman art and carvings, though. In Rome some sarcophagi show scenes of ships, both on full sail and in harbour-areas, and some of these even show some nice details in ship-construction. Here, a good example on that type is a sarcophagus in Copenhagen (see photo right) showing three different ships on the front.

In the provinces ships are also seen in the burial-art, e.g. in the Trier-Moselle-region. The large monument in Igel, show scenes which refer to river-transport (see drawing right), since they clearly show small ships without mast or sail and some men pulling the ships up-stream. The Igel-monument is close to the river Moselle, and the carvings are therefor likely to show scenes from the roman transport on the rivers in Gaul. From another burial-monument by Trier are some sculptures of ships with wine-barrels (see photo left). These are reconstructed as having been some kind of top-figures on the monument, but now the ships are on display individually in the Trier Landesmuseum. These ships are made as sculpture in the round, but I think they are relevant to put in this context as yet another type of Transportation-Carvings.