The excellent blog carnival Carnivalesque is coming to Iconoclasm on 25 March. This will be an ancient/medieval edition and I believe that it’ll be the first time that Carnivalesque will come live and direct from the centre of the Classical world, i.e. Athens. Please forward nominations for contributions to troelsmyrup AT gmail.com or use the […]
Category archives: Late Antiquity
Bowersock and Late Antique Mosaics
The Princeton historian Glen Bowersock has recently published a book on late antique mosaics: “Mosaics as History. The Near East from Late Antiquity to Islam” (Cambridge, MA 2006). It consists of a series of lectures given in Paris in 1997. As the title makes perfectly clear, he focuses on the historical rather than art historical […]
Ortwin Dally on Late Antique Sculpture
The Peristyle garden of the Getty Villa, Malibu. Photo: TMK, January 2007. On Thursday night, I was lucky enough to attend a talk by Ortwin Dally of the DAI at the Getty Villa. It was a great experience to see the villa at night as it’s actually quite rare to consider how buildings and monuments […]
Late Antique Art and Archaeology in Aarhus
I have neglected to announce the wonderful news that the Danish Research Council recently offered a generous grant to the establishment of a collective research project based in the Department of Classical Archaeology at the University of Aarhus – “Art and Social Identities in Late Antiquity” of which I am a member. Our project’s website […]
Contemporary Conceptions of Early Christianity
Interesting post from Mary Beard on a recent BBC Radio 4 programme, “Humphrys in Search of God“. Here’s what Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, had to say about early Christianity: It’s what happened at the very beginning of the church’s life. The church didn’t simply blaze out into the Greco-Roman world saying “Here’s the truth. […]
Mutilated and Re-Used Inscriptions in Gerasa
I have previously mentioned a couple of inscriptions that were desecrated by early Christians. A recent article in Journal of Early Christian Studies by Jason Moralee now presents some further examples from Gerasa (modern Jerash in Jordan – where a Danish-Jordanian project has been excavating an early mosque for a couple of years), especifically the […]
Seminar on Roman Egypt
If you’re in Denmark, then this seminar may be of interest. I’ll be talking about the destruction of images in late antique Egypt.
Achaemenid and Late Antique Sardis
Sardis is a fantastic site in western Turkey, beautifully situated and with a magnificent acropolis. I have recently uploaded my photos from there to the Stoa gallery. My trip there inspired me to read Elspeth Dusinberre’s book on the city’s time as a Persian satrapal capital (559-330 BC). She asks all the right questions, but […]
Late Antiquity on Flickr
A great place to find photos of late antique art, especially ivories such as the one below, is Antiquité Tardive on Flickr. The photos are licensed through Creative Commons. Photo: Antiquité Tardive. This is a detail from an ivory diptych in the Musée National du Moyen-Âge (Cluny). It shows the consul Areobindus presiding over the […]
Civic Continuity at Rome: An Example from the Colosseum
Most people visiting the Colosseum are rightly preoccupied with the magnificent building itself, and the gruesome stories that have made it so famous. Some of the arena’s other sights are easily overlooked, but just as interesting, however. Contemporary exhibits from the vast collections of the Italian archaeological superintendencies are housed on the upper levels (the […]