The Cultural Lives of Domestic Objects in Late Antiquity by Jo Stoner (review)

As the study of late antiquity has become more mainstream, the range of approaches to its evidence—literary, documentary, visual, and archaeological—has grown more nuanced and inventive. Late antique objects have been the particular focus of study for Luke Lavan and Ellen Swift at the University of Kent. While Lavan and Swift have pursued novel approaches to material culture, they are perhaps best known for their 2008 book Objects in Contexts, Objects in Use: Material Spatiality in Late Antiquity, which they co-edited with Toon Putzeys. This volume took an experiential approach to the late antique material world by examining objects and spaces from a number of sites across the Mediterranean. The volume under review, by Jo Stoner, builds upon these comparative and experiential approaches to object worlds by examining emotional and personal connections to objects. The relationship between these two books is not surprising since Stoner's doctoral disseration was supervised by Lavan and Swift and the present volume belongs to a supplementary series edited by Lavan.

Stoner's book is a slim volume that comprises just over 100 pages of text, bibliography, and indices. It is a niche work inasmuch as it explores the "cultural lives" of domestic objects from late antiquity through the lenses of heirlooms, gifts, and souvenirs. While Stoner does not provide a concise definition of "cultural lives," she discusses at length her interest in "object biography," that is, an object's life-history and social interactions (1). Like Lavan and Swift in their own studies, Stoner selected her evidence from a wide range of sites, including western ones. Even though the geographical breadth of her study is compelling, this approach also serves to unmoor her interpretations from individual localities and temporalities. As such, an unstated implication of her study is that late antique material culture transcended location and time. I am not certain if this argument was her intention and am less certain that I agree with it.

A second issue arises with Stoner's approach to the evidence, that is, her stated focus on domestic objects (4). Although she certainly discusses domestic objects and concludes with an imaginative brief fiction focused on object worlds within a late antique home, a surprising proportion of her evidence derives from religious contexts, unprovenanced material, and imperial court sources. For example, her extended case study of basketry in Chapter 4 dwells primarily on monastic contexts. While late antique religious and domestic spheres have been unnaturally severed from each other for far too long in the scholarship, Stoner fails to explore the connectivity between the two at any length. This is a shame, for the humble basket is an excellent choice of an object that might persuasively have joined these two spheres together. Stoner's primary focus for her case study, however, remains the life-history of the basket within the monastic community rather than the significance of a household acquiring a basket from a monastic setting and using it within the home.

I also could not help but wonder why Stoner did not develop a case study firmly grounded in archaeological and contextual evidence, such as the polychrome gladiator jug (31/420-D6-1/D/7/0/4) from Kellis (Ismant el-Kharab) in Egypt. Whereas the archaeological findspot of this jug was neither domestic nor secure, it does reveal what appears to be the casual discard of what was surely a souvenir and potentially an heirloom; the jug was an imported luxury piece that likely dates to a significantly earlier time (late first to early second century ce) than its findcontext in a mixed-use enclosure (second half of the fourth century ce). We cannot say with certitude that the gladiator jug was used in a domestic context, but it would be surprising if it was not and the Kellis gladiator jug fits nicely with the unprovenanced objects with gladiatorial scenes that Stoner discusses at length as examples...