Baird J.A., Pudsey April (eds.) Housing in the Ancient Mediterranean World

Cambridge University Press, 2022. — 400 p.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.- Employs textual and archaeological sources in tandem to explore ancient houses and households
- Draws on a broad range of archaeological sites and types of textual evidence
- Adopts a range of methodological approaches and critiques these in a historiographical contextContributors: Richard Alston, J. A. Baird, April Pudsey, Emily Varto, Caspar Meyer, Janett Morgan, Katerina Volioti, Amy C. Smith, Lisa Nevett, Maeve McHugh, Inge Uytterhoeven, Simon Speksnijder, Crysta Kaczmarek, Hannah Platts, Penelope Allison.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).