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 - 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.

 

Does Ancient Ships and Wagons share methods of research?

The idea of this weblog is, as mentioned more than once, to learn more about roman transportation, especially wagons and transportation on land.

But ancient transportation also includes ships and seafaring, which is why posts on this material now will be introduced on this blog. The water-transportation material is parallel to the wagon material, and the different groups of archaeological evidence (original parts and iconography) are the same as in the case of the wagons (in my opinion, anyway). Therefore, I think, the ship-research, which, in many cases, is more discussed than the research on wagons, can be useful in the methodical part of research on roman transportation in general.

Any progress in this “new” topic will be noted on this page and categorized under “Water Transport”.