For centuries, statuary décor was a main characteristic of any city, sanctuary, or villa in the Roman world. However, from the third century CE onward, the prevalence of statues across the Roman Empire declined dramatically. By the end of the sixth century, statues were no longer a defining characteristic of the imperial landscape. Further, changing religious practices cast pagan sculpture in a threatening light. Statuary production ceased, and extant statuary was either harvested for use in construction or abandoned in place.

The Afterlife of Greek and Roman Sculpture is the first volume to approach systematically the antique destruction and reuse of statuary, investigating key responses to statuary across most regions of the Roman world. The volume opens with a discussion of the complexity of the archaeological record and a preliminary chronology of the fate of statues across both the eastern and western imperial landscape. Contributors to the volume address questions of definition, identification, and interpretation for particular treatments of statuary, including metal statuary and the systematic reuse of villa materials. They consider factors such as earthquake damage, late antique views on civic versus “private” uses of art, urban construction, and deeper causes underlying the end of the statuary habit, including a new explanation for the decline of imperial portraiture. The themes explored resonate with contemporary concerns related to urban decline, as evident in post-industrial cities, and the destruction of cultural heritage, such as in the Middle East.

The foundation of the American Academy in Rome dates back more than one hundred years to the early decades of the last century. Over the years, the Academy has acquired a study collection of material goods from antiquity, including coins, statues and figurines, lamps, stucco and other architectural fragments, jewelry, and inscriptions. While most are Roman in origin, some pieces are Greek or Etruscan. Some were gifts, others come from long-ago excavations, a few were bought. The Collection of Antiquities of the American Academy in Rome, the latest addition to the Supplements to the Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome series, focuses on highlights of the collection. Sections of the work are written by area specialists, with introductory material contributed by volume editors Larissa Bonfante and Helen Nagy, both of whom have published widely in archaeology and art history.

What are we doing when we walk into an archaeological museum or onto an archaeological site? What do the objects and features we encounter in these unique places mean and, more specifically, how do they convey to us something about the beliefs and activities of formerly living humans? In short, how do visible remains and ruins in the present give meaning to the human past? Karen Bassi addresses these questions through detailed close readings of canonical works spanning the archaic to the classical periods of ancient Greek culture, showing how the past is constituted in descriptions of what narrators and characters see in their present context. She introduces the term protoarchaeological to refer to narratives that navigate the gap between linguistic representation and empirical observation—between words and things—in accessing and giving meaning to the past. Such narratives invite readers to view the past as a receding visual field and, in the process, to cross the disciplinary boundaries that divide literature, history, and archaeology.

Aimed at classicists, literary scholars, ancient historians, cultural historians, and archaeological theorists, the book combines three areas of research: time as a feature of narrative structure in literary theory; the concept of “the past itself” in the philosophy of history; and the ontological status of material objects in archaeological theory. Each of five central chapters explores how specific protoarchaeological narratives—from the fate of Zeus’ stone in Hesiod’s Theogony to the contest between words and objects in Aristophanes’ Frogs—both expose and attempt to bridge this gap. Throughout, the book serves as a response to Herodotus’ task in writing the Histories, namely, to ensure that “the past deeds of men do not fade with time.”