Greek and Roman Architecture; Public Space & Private Houses. Light In Atrium Houses

The mosaic pavements in the House of Leukaktios in Ptolemais (Cyrenaica, Libya), newly discovered - by a Polish team from the University of Warsaw under the direction of T. Mikocki (1954-2007), have shed new light on the decoration of dining rooms in Ptolemais during the Roman period. It seems that in the principal triclinium of this house klinai were arranged in the Greek manner (according to E. Morvillez) and the second room, identified as an andron/triclinium, might have occasionally had klinai placed inside it. The authors propose to compare these
mosaics with pavement mosaics discovered in two others houses in Ptolemais: two in the Palazzo delle Colonne and three in the Roman Villa, both these structures having been excavated and published by Pesce and Kraeling in the 20th century.

Recent archaeological research has improved out knowledge of the surroundings -suburbium and hinterlandof the Roman city of Augusta Emerita (Merida, Spain). It is possible to define a model for its rural settlements, their strategic distribution in the landscape around the city and the several functions they had, which were directly related to the urban necessities in a new foundation. The aim of this paper is to show the results of the excavation of one of these rural settlements, dated to the moment of the Augustan foundation of Merida, which included in the same architectural complex both the domestic and the industrial spaces.

The public baths Liberalitas Iulia Ebora are an eloquent example of the re-adaptation of one magnificent roman
public facility into a defensive space, and later, in a palace, being those walls the living testimony of a dynamic
past that is still evolving. The perspective from which we analyse these ancient baths unites architecture with
archaeology by using the graphic and the planimetric register as a working base. Therefore we wish to
dismount and understand the options that in every epoch were whittling and reediting the building, until we get
a sharper image of what these baths could have been.

The city of Jerash in northern Jordan was badly damaged by an earthquake in AD 749. As a result of this, many parts of the city, including the Northwest Quarter, were abandoned and further construction ceased. Archaeological excavations in those parts of the city therefore reveal snapshots in time from the moment at which disaster hit. Of particular interest is the so-called ‘House of the Tesserae’, where archaeologists discovered a trough for the storage of pieces to be used in the construction of mosaics. The find, reported here for the first time, provides a unique insight into the practice of mosaic-laying during the Early Islamic Period.

luminatul în construcţiile publice şi private în epoca romană şi epoca romano-bizantină a jucat un rol esenţial în viaţa de zi cu zi. Concept fundamental în cultura umană, oferea posibilitatea oamenilor să lucreze în locuri întunecate sau semi-întunecate, ori să-şi extindă activităţile după apusul soarelui, odată cu lăsarea nopţii.