A roman carving is not only a marble-plate with a few cut-marks, it is a piece of art designed to play a part in a given context, which means the motive shown on a carving (most often) deliberately is put there to “tell a story”. In triumphal art scenes with triumphal processions and captured enemies and goods (trophies) is showed, and burial art can have carvings showing mythical scenes, often with dying or sleeping persons, or they can show scenes from the life of the buried person.
In most kinds of roman art, transportation-carvings (scenes with some kind of transportation) are represented, and they are therefor treated as one group here. The group has two parts, each concentrating on land-transport and water-transport, which will be treated separately. In the case of land-transportation more carvings from the roman empire, mostly from the burial art though, are taken into discussion, and the same goes more or less for the water-part.
In both parts more types of vehicles are shown, to prove that any picture given on a marble-plate not necessarily is some kind of “standard” carving.
