Housing in the Ancient Mediterranean World

One of the greatest benefits of studying the ancient Greek and Roman past is the ability to utilise different forms of evidence, in particular both written and archaeological sources. The contributors to this volume employ this evidence to examine ancient housing, and what might be learned of identities, families, and societies, but they also use it as a methodological locus from which to interrogate the complex relationship between different types of sources. Chapters range from the recreation of the house as it was conceived in Homeric poetry, to the decipherment of a painted Greek lekythos to build up a picture of household activities, to the conjuring of the sensorial experience of a house in Pompeii. Together, they present a rich tapestry which demonstrates what can be gained for our understanding of ancient housing from examining the interplay between the words of ancient texts and the walls of archaeological evidence.

J. A. Baird is Professor of Archaeology at Birkbeck College. She is also the author of The Inner Lives of Ancient Houses (2014) and Dura-Europos (2018), and co-editor of Ancient Graffiti in Context (2011). April Pudsey is Reader in Roman history at Manchester Metropolitan University. She has published widely on ancient childhood, family, and demography including Demography and the Graeco-Roman World (with C. Holleran, 2011) and A Social Archaeology of Roman and Late Antique Egypt (with E. Swift and J. Stoner, 2021).