Recycling - Medieval Style

[endlessrarities]

 It was a rewarding day at work. Another paper was edited (that's five in all - almost a third of the entire book...) and I also made my first attempt at stitching together all the site plans, tables, photos and artefact illustrations in another.   This gave me some idea of what the finished product would look like.  At this point, the paper in question stopped looking like an essay with a bunch of scrappy illos. clipped to the back page, and started looking like a finished publication. 

The aim was to create a draft version, but it proved to be of a sufficiently high standard to be retained as the base for the final product.  Okay, so it's not perfect.  The page numbers aren't formatted properly, there's some problems with the justification, and I need to get the artefact illustrations reproduced at a consistent scale. But overall it looks pretty good.  Better than my previous attempt at a British Archaeological Report, but since I had to prepare that particular publication when I was the archaeological equivalent of an artist starving in a garret, I'm really not that surprised.  All the earlier practice I obtained while knocking my thesis into the standard BAR format has certainly paid dividends. 

Back to Amalfi now, where I'm sure the sun will be shining (needless to say, it's not here...)

I'm returning to the Chiostro del Paradiso , andI think I mentioned yesterday that this part of the church was used as a cemetery in the medieval cemetery.  However, the burial monuments which abound here aren't medieval in date, but Roman.  The information I have available on this part of the church is lacking, but I'm sure that what we're seeing here is a trend amongst the wealthy medieval citizenry of Amalfi to appropriate Roman sarcophogi for their own burials.  I've seen this practice before, further to the north in Pisa, and I really can't blame the well-heeled medieval inhabitants of Amalfi for wanting to make use of these magnificent objects.

 

 

And tomorrow I'll venture deeper into the cathedral church itself...

Comments

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

You find this use of Roman 'spolia' pretty much throughout Italy snd beyond- sarcophogi, pillars, statuary and what not.

There were even mediaeval forgeries done when the Roman ones became scarcer over time! :o)

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

Now that'd be an interesting field of study - trying to identify the medieval forgeries.

Was it Michaelangelo who forged a Roman statue in his early years?

Oh, and instances of forgery are not unknown in the Roman Iron Age in Britain - but on that occasion it was coins.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I believe he did too!

Near the Roman town of Wroxeter in Shropshire (well worth a visit) there's a pretty wee mediaeval church in which the pillars are robbed out Roman spolia from the old town.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I think you could do a good story about a medieval forgery of Roman elements in a church...

And wasn't there also a tradition just of *copying* Roman works? Old statues and things?

It might be hard, from our vantage point, to tell the difference between something that was a copy and something that was a forgery.

[faunhaert.livejournal.com]

that's a great paper f or your conference
you probably will have 4x's the stuff to put in it after it though.

grin

i loved the red mosaics

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

Sadly, I shall have to confine the paper to a topic I genuinely know something about. I'm just muddling through the Italian stuff relying on popular tourist books - not quite the same as wading through endless papers on Bronze Age this and Bronze Age that and Bronze Age something else.

Knowledge is power, they say. And pssst! Wanna know a secret??? I didn't even visit the Bronze Age galleries in Naples Museum. Though I understand that the good Bronze Age people of Naples Bay got wiped out by Yet Another Eruption from Vesuvius.

[aulus-poliutos.livejournal.com]

Those are very pretty sarcophagos. Can't blame the Medieavals for reusing them

Better than using Roman buildings a quarries which so often happened in Germany and Britain, where you can play Spot the Roman Stones a lot. ;)

(BTW This week's blogpost is not Roman, since you wanted something different, lol. But the next one will be.)

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

Oh, you certainly can. We spent a happy half hour in the depths of Lannercost Priory trying to play 'Spot The Roman Stone'. It's a great game.

I look forward to checking out your blogpost!!

[aulus-poliutos.livejournal.com]

The crypt in Hexham Abbey is another good place. :)

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

Hexham's the place with the Roman tombstone, isn't it? The mounted soldier riding over the vanquished native...

Went there in our third year field trip to Northumberland, accompanied by the august excavator of Elginhaugh, Bill Hanson.

[aulus-poliutos.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the place with the Roman tombtone and several other Roman stones (from Corbrdige) tucked away in the AngloSaxon crypt.

[red-trillium.livejournal.com]

So let me get this right, the medieval rich inhabitants turfed the Romans out of their graves and used them??

I'd like to say we've come a long way but the Auckland City Council turfed a lot of bodies out of Symonds Street cemetery and built a freeway over them so I guess nothing really changes in respect to the dead hey?

[aulus-poliutos.livejournal.com]

Sometimes they fight back, though.

The trail for the underground in Cologne goes through a Roman cemetary, and during the work suddenly a big hole gaped in the street above and took some houses with it. That two people died and the town archive was among the destroye4d houses was sad, but else I had a bit of a schadenfreude reaction becasue Cologne has treated its Roman remains with much disrespect when it comes to new building projects (fe. the planted a shopping mall over the forum).