Domesticating Spectacle in the Roman Empire. Representations of Public Entertainment in Private Houses of the Roman Provinces.

Gladiatorial combats, animal fights, and public executions of criminals were parts of the munus – public spectacles that took place over the course of multiple days and were an integral component of the social and political life of many communities across the Roman Empire. In this dissertation I reevaluate a corpus of 79 known images of spectacle dating from the 1st century BCE to the late 5th century CE, focusing on images of gladiatorial fights and animal hunts found on floor mosaics and wall paintings in areas once part of the Roman Empire. Rather than regard the images as illustrations of specific historical spectacles sponsored by a given patron, I argue that depictions are visual constructs that condense perceptions of the events into abstracted, abbreviated images. The images do not function as ‘eye-witness’ snapshots but instead are commentaries on a multivalent event. Taking into account the historical background of the munus, features of the visual representations themselves, the archaeological contexts in which the representations occur, and the greater geographical setting in which the sites are found, I identify both commonalities and regional variations among images. The formal analysis of the images reveals that the images conform to types and that they were often consciously adapted to fit specific architectural contexts. My reassessment of the archaeological contexts indicates that the great majority of images of spectacle originally appeared in publicly accessible spaces in private houses, including hallways, reception rooms, and bedroom, in addition to dining rooms. The distribution of these images throughout the Roman Empire is surprisingly uneven, with the largest clusters found at three sites: Cos (Greek Islands), Leptis Magna (Libya), and Trier (Germany). These clusters are shown to be the result of local fashions, historical associations, and the presence of prolific workshops. In contrast to earlier scholars, I understand the images of spectacle as celebrations of victory that drew upon established conventions for representing the munus. My study shows that the images fulfilled a variety of functions that reflected the social setting, wealth, and identity of a patron, all of which were often heavily influenced by the regional context.PhDClassical Art and ArchaeologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/120698/1/nicohigh_1.pd

The genetic history of the Southern Arc: a bridge between West Asia and Europe

By sequencing 727 ancient individuals from the Southern Arc (Anatolia and its neighbors in Southeastern Europe and West Asia) over 10,000 years, we contextualize its Chalcolithic period and Bronze Age (about 5000 to 1000 BCE), when extensive gene flow entangled it with the Eurasian steppe. Two streams of migration transmitted Caucasus and Anatolian/Levantine ancestry northward, and the Yamnaya pastoralists, formed on the steppe, then spread southward into the Balkans and across the Caucasus into Armenia, where they left numerous patrilineal descendants. Anatolia was transformed by intra–West Asian gene flow, with negligible impact of the later Yamnaya migrations. This contrasts with all other regions where Indo-European languages were spoken, suggesting that the homeland of the Indo-Anatolian language family was in West Asia, with only secondary dispersals of non-Anatolian Indo-Europeans from the steppe

A bioavailable baseline strontium isotope map of southwestern Turkey for mobility studies

We present here a map of bioavailable strontium for Southwestern Turkey derived from measurements of modern plants and mollusk (land snail) shells from various geological areas. Samples were collected from 87 locations and strontium isotope measurements were made on 283 plant and mollusk samples. The plants consisted of deep-rooted, medium-rooted and shallow-rooted species each sampling strontium from different water sources. The data was interpolated to produce a predictive strontium isotope map (‘Sr-isoscape’) of the region. Despite the complex underlying geology of this region the bioavailable Sr values broadly grouped into two separate areas, related to the age of the underlying bedrock. These results provide a baseline for interpretation of strontium isotope values of archaeological samples to help understand past animal and human mobility, and can also be used by researchers in a range of other disciplines that incorporate strontium analysis for mobility, including animal ecology and forensics.<br

Ancient DNA from Mesopotamia suggests distinct Pre-Pottery and Pottery Neolithic migrations into Anatolia

We present the first ancient DNA data from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of Mesopotamia (Southeastern Turkey and Northern Iraq), Cyprus, and the Northwestern Zagros, along with the first data from Neolithic Armenia. We show that these and neighboring populations were formed through admixture of pre-Neolithic sources related to Anatolian, Caucasus, and Levantine hunter-gatherers, forming a Neolithic continuum of ancestry mirroring the geography of West Asia. By analyzing Pre-Pottery and Pottery Neolithic populations of Anatolia, we show that the former were derived from admixture between Mesopotamian-related and local Epipaleolithic-related sources, but the latter experienced additional Levantine-related gene flow, thus documenting at least two pulses of migration from the Fertile Crescent heartland to the early farmers of Anatolia

The genetic history of the Southern Arc. A bridge between West Asia and Europe

By sequencing 727 ancient individuals from the Southern Arc (Anatolia and its neighbors in Southeastern Europe and West Asia) over 10,000 years, we contextualize its Chalcolithic period and Bronze Age (about 5000 to 1000 BCE), when extensive gene flow entangled it with the Eurasian steppe. Two streams of migration transmitted Caucasus and Anatolian/Levantine ancestry northward, and the Yamnaya pastoralists, formed on the steppe, then spread southward into the Balkans and across the Caucasus into Armenia, where they left numerous patrilineal descendants. Anatolia was transformed by intra-West Asian gene flow, with negligible impact of the later Yamnaya migrations. This contrasts with all other regions where Indo-European languages were spoken, suggesting that the homeland of the IndoAnatolian language family was in West Asia, with only secondary dispersals of non-Anatolian IndoEuropeans from the steppe