From Pompeii to Tharros: Finding new ways to excavate and understand the making of Roman urban neighborhoods

Steven Ellis (University of Cincinnati)

Drawing from the University of Cincinnati’s excavations at the Porta Stabia neighborhood in Pompeii, and the Punic-Roman city of Tharros in Sardinia, this presentation will aim to situate the development of Roman urbanism, and especially the shaping of sub-elite neighborhoods, within a broader urban, Mediterranean-wide context. What we will see are two very different cities, with both similar and dissimilar archaeological records.  Out of this, but also because one of these projects began as the other ended, we can also consider some of the developing methodologies for how we dig cities.

Steven Ellis (PhD Sydney, 2005) is a Roman archaeologist whose research activities and publications spring from his interests in ancient cities and urban life.  He has conducted fieldwork principally throughout Italy and Greece, but with other field activities in Spain, Portugal, France, Morocco, and Algeria.  Steven directs the University of Cincinnati's excavations at both Pompeii (the Pompeii Archaeological Research Project: Porta Stabia ) and Tharros, Sardinia (the Tharros Archaeological Research Project ); and co-directs (with Eric Poehler) the Pompeii Quadriporticus Project and (with Timothy Gregory) the East Isthmia Archaeological Project in Greece.

Save the dates for these upcoming lectures (unless specified, lectures take place @ 12:00 PM):

• Friday, January 26, 2024: Megan C. McNamee (University of Edinburgh), “Pergamenum diaphanum est”: Parchment as a Transparent Medium"
• Friday, April 12: Beth Saunders (University of Maryland, Baltimore County), "Enmeshed: Lace and Women's Labor in 19th-Century Photographs"