Tree Inscriptions: restoring a lost facet of the Graeco-Roman epigraphic habit

This article for the first time considers all extant ancient evidence for the habit of carving inscriptions on tree trunks. It emerges a picture that bears remarkable resemblances to what is known from the habit of graffiti writing (with important addition to that latter field to be derived from the findings), for individual and technical texts.

Interpreting at Vindolanda: commercial and linguistic mediation in the Roman army.

A fragmentary tablet from Vindolanda (Tab. Vindol. II, 213) contains an occurrence of the verb interpretari (‘interpret’, ‘explain’, ‘mediate’) in an apparently commercial context, relating to the grain supply for the Roman fort. This usage is paralleled in a text on a wooden stilus tablet from Frisia in the Netherlands. ‘Interpreters’ and their activities make rather infrequent appearances in the Latin epigraphic and documentary records. In the Danubian provinces, interpreters (interpretes) are attested as army officers and officials in the office of the provincial governor. ‘Interpreters’, in both Latin and Greek inscriptions and papyri, often, however, play more ambiguous roles, not always connected with language-mediation, but also, or instead, with mediation in commercial transactions

Roman barrows and their landscape context: a GIS case study at Bartlow, Cambridgeshire

This paper examines the landscape context of the Bartlow Hills, a group of large Romano-British barrows that were excavated in the 1840s but have been largely neglected since. GIS is employed to test whether it was possible to view the mounds from nearby roads, barrows and villas. Existing research on provincial barrows, and especially their landscape context, and some recent relevant applications of GIS are reviewed. We argue that barrows are active and symbolically charged statements about power and identity. The most striking pattern to emerge from the GIS analysis is a focus on display to a local rather than a transient audience.

Migration and diversity in Roman Britain: a multidisciplinary approach to immigrants in Roman York, England

Previous anthropological investigations at Trentholme Drive, in Roman York identified an unusual amount of cranial variation amongst the inhabitants, with some individuals suggested as having originated from the Middle East or North Africa. The current study investigates the validity of this assessment using modern anthropological methods to assess cranial variation in two groups: The Railway and Trentholme Drive. Strontium and oxygen isotope evidence derived from the dentition of 43 of these individuals was combined with the craniometric data to provide information on possible levels of migration and the range of homelands that may be represented. The results of the craniometric analysis indicated that the majority of the York population had European origins, but that 11% of the Trentholme Drive and 12% of The Railway study samples were likely of African decent. Oxygen analysis identified four incomers, three from areas warmer than the UK and one from a cooler or more continental climate. Although based on a relatively small sample of the overall population at York, this multidisciplinary approach made it possible to identify incomers, both men and women, from across the Empire. Evidence for possible second generation migrants was also suggested. The results confirm the presence of a heterogeneous population resident in York and highlight the diversity, rather than the uniformity, of the population in Roman Britain. Am J Phys Anthropol 140:546-561, 2009. (C) 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc

Patterns of text layout in Pompeian verse inscriptions

This article explores patterns of formal text layout of the metrical graffiti of Pompeii. After a brief discussion of the importance of formal text layout for linguistic research in general (and its relevance for poetic texts), a representative sample of poetic graffiti is discussed and analysed in detail. It is argued, then, that nature of the surface and sentence structure in particular can take precedence over the ‘default solution’ (coincidence of verse and line structures).