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Over fifteen years, the concept of virtual unwrapping as only a possibility has moved to a demonstrated process that has produced text from a scroll that cannot be physically opened (Seales et al. 2016). The intact Herculaneum scrolls, of which there are almost 300, however, continue to elude successful analysis and, as of this writing, remain unread. There are three primary challenges which, as the presentation will explain, will imminently be overcome, clearing the way for complete texts to be extracted from intact Herculaneum scrolls.

The lost-wax technique offered ancient bronze-workers opportunities for both replication and variation. Evidence for the process has frequently been documented, but the careful and nuanced planning that occurred when working with a wax model deserves closer scrutiny. Through a close collaboration with the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, we have examined three bronze sculptures from the Bay of Naples - the Apollo and Diana from Pompeii (MANN Inv. 5629 and 4895), and the Tiberius from Herculaneum (MANN Inv. 5615).

This paper investigates the possible activities and cultural experience of the domestic room known as the tablinum in the atrium houses of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Directly visible from the street, the tablinum was a pivotal room within the house acting as visual shorthand for the dominus in presenting himself as bonus vir (that is, as a good citizen).

This paper focuses on the landscape paintings, which were integrated in the decorative schemes featuring on walls of early Imperial houses and villas, to address the ways in which these representations related to contemporary architecture and landscape architecture design. Whereas the early surviving representations of landscape show inland pastoral scenes in their majority, from the beginning of the first century CE the bulk of landscape paintings portray littoral scenes featuring porticoes and villas hovering over bays and harbours.

The “material turn” in histories of technology and the emphasis away from invention in favor of “innovation-in-use” (Edgerton 1999; 2006; cf. Latour 1986) have had a salutary effect on scholarship on ancient science and technology. Recent work in the field now more readily explores epigraphical and archaeological evidence along with literary texts and focuses on the interactions between science and technology, increasingly recognizing that specialized knowledge was not exclusively transmitted in textual form of by (Cuomo 2007; 2008; Greene 2008a; 2008b).

What sort of technical education did ancient Greek and Roman medical practitioners have with respect to the instruments, apparatuses, and machines that they seemingly frequently needed to design, manufacture, and use in the treatment of congenital or acquired bone conditions such as clubfoot, dislocation, fracture, amputation, and avulsion? Ancient medical treatises do not tend to explicate the process of designing and manufacturing such items, and even the instructions given regarding using them are hardly comprehensive step by step guides (e.g. Drachmann 1963).

Recent literature in the field of ancient medicine has focused on patients’ experiences of health and disease (Holmes 2010, Thumiger and Petridou 2016), on the characterization of many types of healer in the “medical market place” (Israelowich 2015), on patients’ choices regarding health and disease (ibid.), and on the relationship between the healer and the patient (Mattern 2013). This paper offers a different approach to studies of the physician-patient relationship by asking two related questions: First, how did physicians decide on a particular diagnosis and treatment for a patient?

The art of grafting, that of cloning trees, played a crucial role in the propagation of staple fruits trees, such as the apple, the pear, the cherry, the fig, and the olive, in the ancient Mediterranean world. It also led to the development of ornamental trees that bore several varieties of fruits. Greek and Roman authors interested in botany and agriculture, and most prominently Theophrastus, Varro, Vergil, Columella and Palladius, wrote extensively on the various techniques of grafting.

The Homer Multitext project aims to make the full complexity of the textual transmission of the Iliad and Odyssey accessible to scholars and undergraduates by means of high-resolution images of the historical manuscripts that transmit the poems, together with digital diplomatic editions of their contents.

ORBIS is a web-based tool that makes it possible for the first time to simulate the time cost and financial expense incurred by travel and transportation around the Roman Empire. In this workshop, you will learn to use ORBIS to (e.g.) find the fastest route between Londinium and Constantinopolis, calculate the cost of shipping wheat from Alexandria to Rome, and make your own distance cartogram to represent travel times from Antioch to more than 600 other locations throughout the Roman Empire.