Culti dell’antica Capua in età imperiale attraverso due casi di studio: il Mitreo e il tempio di via de Gasperi a Santa Maria Capua Vetere

The paper examined two religious buildings in central areas of the ancient Capua: the so-called shrine of the “via de Gasperi” (discovered in 1980) and the Mithraeum (1922) linked by the chronology (full imperial age) and by spaces underground and darken with limited access and installations to attend the rites. The layout of either of two examples gave to the involved people the opportunity to follow a path, to stay in, to interact with structures and consacrated fornitures. In both cases the wall paintings were not a sheer decorum, but was specially designed to create a appropriated atmosphere for the rites. In both cases they provide two different register of representation: one formal and most noble, the second most popular was focused on the partecipation and the self identification of the audience (the faithfuls in the “Sacello di via A. de Gasperi”; the initiates at the Mithraeum). In the first case it appear to be female rites, or however rites where the female element played a prominent role; in the second it is instead the masculine element that is set in evidence whereas the rare female images belong to the divine sphere or to symbolic personifications. Thus it seems to me that they was spaces designed to respond to specifics cultual end ritual needs of the big urban community of ancient Capua between the I and III century A.D

A hypothesis of sudden body fluid vaporization in the 79 AD victims of Vesuvius.

In AD 79 the town of Herculaneum was suddenly hit and overwhelmed by volcanic ash-avalanches that killed all its remaining residents, as also occurred in Pompeii and other settlements as far as 20 kilometers from Vesuvius. New investigations on the victims' skeletons unearthed from the ash deposit filling 12 waterfront chambers have now revealed widespread preservation of atypical red and black mineral residues encrusting the bones, which also impregnate the ash filling the intracranial cavity and the ash-bed encasing the skeletons. Here we show the unique detection of large amounts of iron and iron oxides from such residues, as revealed by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry and Raman microspectroscopy, thought to be the final products of heme iron upon thermal decomposition. The extraordinarily rare preservation of significant putative evidence of hemoprotein thermal degradation from the eruption victims strongly suggests the rapid vaporization of body fluids and soft tissues of people at death due to exposure to extreme heat

High-resolution dietary reconstruction of victims of the 79 CE Vesuvius eruption at Herculaneum by compound-specific isotope analysis.

The remains of those who perished at Herculaneum in 79 CE offer a unique opportunity to examine lifeways across an ancient community who lived and died together. Historical sources often allude to differential access to foodstuffs across Roman society but provide no direct or quantitative information. By determining the stable isotope values of amino acids from bone collagen and deploying Bayesian models that incorporate knowledge of protein synthesis, we were able to reconstruct the diets of 17 adults from Herculaneum with unprecedented resolution. Significant differences in the proportions of marine and terrestrial foods consumed were observed between males and females, implying that access to food was differentiated according to gender. The approach also provided dietary data of sufficient precision for comparison with assessments of food supply to modern populations, opening up the possibility of benchmarking ancient diets against contemporary settings where the consequences for health are better understood

Immagini di divinità da contesto domestico a Cos. La documentazione dagli scavi italiani

Si esaminano le sculture provenienti da tre contesti domestici del III secolo d. C. scavati durante il periodo di occupazione italiana dell’isola di Cos, nel Dodecanneso, e si pongono successivamente a confronto con la documentazione epigrafica relativa a dediche di statue di divinità tra età tardo ellenistica e proto imperiale. Nonostante la parzialità dei dati, la presenza di immagini di divinità rivela come le élites dell’isola in età medio imperiale avessero attitudini e gusti culturali fortemente tradizionalisti e improntati a conoscenze filosofiche e scelte estetiche riconducibili alla Seconda Sofistica. Emerge, altresì, una chiara divergenza tra gli indirizzi figurativi documentati in ambito domestico e quelli relativi a contesti pubblici.Sirano Francesco. Immagini di divinità da contesto domestico a Cos. La documentazione dagli scavi italiani. In: Mélanges de l'École française de Rome. Antiquité, tome 116, n°2. 2004. Antiquité. pp. 953-981

Introduction

En consacrant une section du colloque final à l’image dans la stratégie du rituel, nous avons souhaité poursuivre un questionnement qui n’a cessé d’accompagner les quatre années du séminaire Image et religion. Une part importante de ses travaux a été dédiée à l’étude des diverses manipulations dont les images sont susceptibles d’être l’objet lors de l’accomplissement d’un rite et à l’esquisse d’un cadre conceptuel dans lequel appréhender, dans leur complexité et leur variété, les fonctions de..

Pareti dipinte. Dallo scavo alla valorizzazione

Proceedings of the 14th AIPMA's International Conference, helf in Naples and Herculaneum in 2019 (September 9-13

Pietravairano (CE): il santuario del Monte San Nicola

Breve presentazione dei risultati delle campagne di scavo archeologico condotte nel monumentale santuario tardo-repubblicano del Monte San Nicola presso Pietravairano (CE). Il santuario è incentrato su un complesso teatro-tempio

Molecular signatures written in bone proteins of 79 AD victims from Herculaneum and Pompeii

An extensive proteomic analysis was performed on a set of 12 bones of human victims of the eruption that in AD 79 rapidly buried Pompeii and Herculaneum, allowing the detection of molecular signatures imprinted in the surviving protein components. Bone collagen survived the heat of the eruption, bearing a piece of individual biological history encoded in chemical modifications. Here we show that the human bone proteomes from Pompeii are more degraded than those from the inhabitants of Herculaneum, despite the latter were exposed to temperatures much higher than those experienced in Pompeii. The analysis of the specimens from Pompeii shows lower content of non-collagenous proteins, higher deamidation level and higher extent of collagen modification. In Pompeii, the slow decomposition of victims' soft tissues in the natural dry-wet hydrogeological soil cycles damaged their bone proteome more than what was experienced at Herculaneum by the rapid vanishing of body tissues from intense heat, under the environmental condition of a permanent waterlogged burial context. Results herein presented are the first proteomic analyses of bones exposed to eruptive conditions, but also delivered encouraging results for potential biomarkers that might also impact future development of forensic bone proteomics