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  • Housing in Late Antiquity. From Palaces to Shops
  • Kim Bowes
Housing in Late Antiquity. From Palaces to Shops Luke LavanLale ÖzgenelAlexander Sarantis, eds. Late Antique Archaeology, vol. 3.2. Leiden: Brill Press, 2007. Pp. xv + 538 + plates, ISSN 1570–6893 (pb).

Like other volumes in its series, Housing in Late Antiquity owes its origins to two conferences, the Society for Architectural Historians and Late Antique Archaeology, Padua, both in 2003, as well as non-conference contributions. The result is a volume of seventeen chapters, translated into generally very good English, plus two lengthy bibliographic essays and an extensive, useful index. The three editors, aided by Simon Ellis and Yuri Murano, have produced a readable, one-stop-shop for anyone interested in late antique housing. The book’s organization, beginning with broader thematic pieces, continuing with regional surveys, and concluding with individual house studies, allows the reader to sink comfortably from overview into detail, while its methodologies and authorship accurately reflect the state of the field—both in its advances and shortcomings.

In this respect, Ellis’ introductory essay reflects the positive and negative qualities of the volume as a whole. He offers some general, rather too-brief thoughts on sources and their problems and an overall chronological and geographical evolution of late antique housing; draws particular attention to the development of episcopia and praetoria as new kinds of domestic spaces; and ends with a call for study of Turkish seventeenth-century architecture as a window on Byzantine housing. The introduction perhaps fails sufficiently to highlight the volume’s focus on urban housing: rural housing, with the exception of Jeremy Rossiter’s piece on Carthage and Veronica Kalas’ on Cappadocia, is considered only by incidental comparison. Conversely, several of the subjects Ellis discusses in detail as inherent to late antique domestic developments—praetoria, palaces, subdivision of single-family houses for multifamily/ industrial use—are not substantially addressed in any of the volume’s chapters.

After Inge Uytterhoeven’s two useful bibliographic essays, the book begins in earnest with a section on episcopia, or episcopal residences. Murano provides a careful discussion of the meager evidence for episcopal residences in northern Italy, concluding that the absence of evidence for major fourth- and early fifth-century episcopia sites reflects the limited power of bishops at that time, whereas their development in the sixth century demonstrates bishops’ growing power and influence. Likewise, Giuliano Volpe presents two recently excavated, sixth-century Puglian complexes, St. Peter in Canosa and the rural bishopric of San Giusto, as evidence of the power of bishops in both town and country in southern Italy. Burcu Ceylan has more to work with in her discussion of episcopia from Asia Minor, [End Page 383] considering the large but summarily excavated complexes from Side, Miletus, and Ephesus. In each case, she attributes specific functions to rooms by matching episcopal duties described in textual sources with room typology and location. All three authors admit that these complexes show no particular “episcopal” architecture, but, in their public and private aspects, simply echo the features of all elite houses. It is somewhat surprising, then, that none offers a set of criteria for identifying the complexes they study as episcopia, or a discussion of the heterogeneous terminology for such in the primary sources.

The next three essays address less tightly focused thematic problems. Isabella Baldini Lipolis surveys the legal sources on private buildings, rightly drawing attention to the jurists’ preoccupation with house spacing and height—the ingredients for fire hazard. Lale özgenel provides a detailed analysis of spatial patterning in houses of Asia Minor, what she calls “the archaeology of spatial control.” She analyzes the placement of various room types and circulation patterns in a dozen elite houses, finding further support for Ellis’ now widely accepted notion of separation of social classes within the house. Ellis himself draws attention to the neglected topic of domestic lighting, using computer reconstructions to suggest the effects light may have had on the appearance and function of space. The ideas he advances are exciting; the reconstructions are somewhat less successful, due not so much to the self-admitted problems of reconstructing light but to sloppy thinking about roof and ceiling heights...

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