Cosa, a small Roman town, has been excavated since 1948 by the American Academy in Rome. This new volume presents the surviving sculpture and furniture in marble and other stones and examines their nature and uses. These artifacts provide an insight into not just life in a small Roman town but also its embellishment mainly from the late Republic and through the early Empire to the time of Hadrian. While public statuary is not well preserved, stone and marble material from the private sphere are well represented; domestic sculpture and furniture from the third century BCE to the first CE form by far the largest category of objects. The presence of these materials in both public and private spheres sheds light on the wealth of the town and individual families. The comparative briefness of Cosa’s life means that this material is more easily comprehensible as a whole for the entire town as excavated, compared for instance to the much larger cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
 

Jacquelyn Collins-Clinton is an art historian and a Visiting Scholar in Classics at Cornell University.
 

“Cosa is well-written in easily accessible, discursive style for academic use, undergraduate teaching, and nonacademic curators or collectors. This catalogue will be used for decades to come.”
​—Susan Walker, University of Oxford

"... the significance of Collins-Clinton’s contribution is indisputable. Readers will already know her as an accomplished scholar of Roman sculpture, but a singular achievement of the current volume is the expert manner in which she handles more strictly archaeological materials, such as the technical aspects of cisterns and wellheads. Much of the material she presents has never been published, and its inclusion allows her to paint a more vivid picture of Cosa’s visual character and fitful prosperity than has previously been possible... Such findings invite reexamination of Cosa’s position and wealth in the Late Republic, and are sure to open new avenues of research for years to come. " - Sophie Crawford-Brown, American Journal of Archaeology