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AP®︎/College Art History
Course: AP®︎/College Art History > Unit 4
Lesson 5: Ancient Rome- Visualizing Imperial Rome
- Digging through time
- Pompeii: House of the Vettii
- Veristic Male Portrait
- Head of a Roman Patrician
- Augustus of Primaporta
- Augustus of Primaporta
- Colosseum (Flavian Amphitheater)
- Imperial fora
- Forum and Markets of Trajan
- The Forum of Trajan
- Markets of Trajan
- Column of Trajan
- The Pantheon
- The Pantheon
- Ludovisi Battle Sarcophagus
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Digging through time
A conversation with Dr. Darius Arya and Dr. Beth Harris. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
a while ago when i started from ancient art, they used A.D, anno domini, and B.C, before Christ, do why did they go to B.C.E (before common era) and C.E (common era)? did they switch so that they would not offend non-Christians?(4 votes)
Acually, its because recently, scientists didn't want to acknowledge the presence of God in their work, so instead of using B.C. (Before Christ as in Jesus the Messiah) and A.D. (Anno Donimi, the Latin for After Christ) they use B.C.E (Before Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era), which makes no sense. The Spartans might have called the time when they ruled Athens, their largest rival Common Era, or vice versa. Hope this helps White Wolf!(3 votes)
If Romans built their new houses on top of rubble, didn't new houses sink in the long term?(2 votes)
What do A.C.E, B.C.E., and C.E. stand for?(2 votes)
A.C.E. = A fter C ommon E ra
B.C.E. = B efore C ommon E ra
C.E. = C ommon E ra(1 vote)
lovely buildings great video?(1 vote)
is there a link to the rome model?(1 vote)- On the rational assumption that a new excavations campaign, beneath already uncovered interesting archaelogical remains, only can be carried out if it is possible to preserve the consistency of the previous level, we can guess that scholars and archaeologists have to face to delicate issues for taking their decision about complementary excavations ? Are there in the past some examples of relatively useless excavations, and even of unfortunate damages to archaelogical remains, due to those complementary excavations ? As architect, I think that the higher level is supposed to have a much better consistency than the deeper ones, if we logically consider than roman architects had to prepare the ground before a new edification to replace an ancient one, by leveling and above all, eliminating of most of ancient material. Thus, apart of substruction plus paving and some stones disconnected from their architectural structure, or alleged crypt for instance, what more interesting things can be found out at a level beneath, which could justify a new campaign ?(1 vote)
How many people where needed to clean and levels out the buildings after a disaster?(1 vote)- How did Rome express their civilization's culture, beliefs and values through art(1 vote)
Video transcript
A conversation with Dr. Darius Arya & Dr. Beth Harris We know that when the archologists look
for traces of ancient cultures, they dig down and we often read about
how the ancient ground level was much lower. So how did this happen? What gets layered on top of ancient cultures? People back then are like us today. Every action that we take,
everything that we do, everything that we purchase, we're gonna leave something behind,
there's gonna be a trace. The Romans were ultimately very efficient so they said often times
if there is destruction from a fire: "Let's level off those buildings,
make the ground floor into the basement or simply level off the building
and put all that rubble around, smooth it and we now have the foundations
for the later structures." So, Romans didn't necesserily look
at their cities after disasters: fires, floods, earthquakes, the way that we do. So after Katrina in United States, we digged it out. But for the Romans, that's too much effort. Why you're gonna haul that material away? Just level off and jack your city up to a higher level. So, standing here in the Forum, we notice we go down into the Forum and we look up at the streets around us. So, are we at an ancient ground level now? Yes, and even beneath this
are several other layers of ancient Rome. So, we'd go down another 20 feet
to get to the archaic layers and every monument that you see has a precedent. Like this is Basilica Julia.
This was built after fire in 283 A.D. It replaces the one that's burnt down that was built
by Julius Ceasar and completed by Augustus. It in turn replaced a second century B.C. Basilica It in turn replaced earlier republican houses. So you've got layer upon layer upon layer. So how do archeologists
make the decision when to stop digging? Feels like you could dig
and just go further back in history. So, when you're looking
for opportunities to go down further such as someone's put a cut in the floor that allows you then to go down to an earlier level and what they end up mostly satisfying
themselves with for the Forum Piazza today. What you see is largely on the Augustan
to second century A.D. levels. But there are many opportunities
throughtout the area in the Roman Forum where they can go down to earlier and earlier levels. So finding places to do that where you don't destroy what is existing now, that you could say? Exactly. Thanks. Thank you.