Gardens of the Roman Empire

Description

In Gardens of the Roman Empire, the pioneering archaeologist Wilhelmina F. Jashemski sets out to examine the role of ancient Roman gardens in daily life throughout the empire. This study, therefore, includes for the first time, archaeological, literary, and artistic evidence about ancient Roman gardens across the entire Roman Empire from Britain to Arabia. Through well-illustrated essays by leading scholars in the field, various types of gardens are examined, from how Romans actually created their gardens to the experience of gardens as revealed in literature and art. Demonstrating the central role and value of gardens in Roman civilization, Jashemski and a distinguished, international team of contributors have created a landmark reference work that will serve as the foundation for future scholarship on this topic. An accompanying digital catalogue will be made available at: www.gardensoftheromanempire.org.

Wilhelmina F. Jashemski (1910-2007) was the pre-eminent pioneer of garden archaeology. As Professor of Ancient History at the University of Maryland, she conducted over 25 years of fieldwork on the gardens buried by the eruption of Mt Vesuvius, as well as gardens at Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli and at Thuburbo Majus, Tunisia. Author of numerous books and articles, notably the Gardens of Pompeii (2 volumes; 1979 and 1992) and A Natural History of Pompeii (Cambridge, 2002) she received the Gold Medal in Archaeology from the Archaeological Institute of America. Kathryn L. Gleason is Professor of Landscape Architecture and Archaeology at Cornell University, and has developed systematic methods for excavating Roman gardens throughout the Roman Empire. She has conducted archaeological excavations of gardens at Herod the Great's palaces, the villa of Horace at Licenza, the Villa Arianna at Stabiae, and the Petra Garden and Pool Project. She is editor of The Archaeology of Garden and Field (1994) and The Cultural History of Gardens in Antiquity (2015). Kim J. Hartswick writes primarily on ancient Greek and Roman sculpture. He was an Associate Professor of Art History and Archaeology at George Washington University for 22 years and is presently the Academic Director of the City University of New York's Baccalaureate for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies. He is co-editor of Stephanos: Studies in Honor of Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway (1998) and the author of The Gardens of Sallust: A Changing Landscape (2004). Amina-Aicha Malek is a researcher at the CNRS laboratory Archeologie et Philologie d'Orient et d'Occident (AOrOc) of the Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS) and Paris Sciences Lettres Research University (PSL). As an expert on Roman garden archaeology and the reception of landscape mosaics in their architectural setting, she was Special Garden Archaeology Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks from 1999 to 2002, and has collaborated on international garden excavations. She is editor of The Sourcebook for Garden Archaeology (2013), co-founder and Vice-Chair of the Society of Garden Archaeology, and Project Director of the Programme de recherche archeologique de Lambese-Tazoult, Algeria.