ROMAN FACE BEAKERS IN CENTRAL ITALY AND IN CAMPANIA

Gillian Braithwright

Roman face pots in Italy are almost all small face beakers around 8-12 cm. tall, made in Thin-walled wares. The earliest known examples, a few tiny fragments from Cosa and Rome, date from the second century BC. In the later Republican and Augustan periods, they appear in northern Italy, and a few are exported eastwards to sites on the Sava and Drava rivers and westwards to sites around the Mediterranean coast. In the first century AD, if not before, they appear in Campania - at Pompeii and Herculaneum. In the north, where they are most numerous, they normally have no handles, but in central and southern Italy they mostly have one or two handles. The central Italian face beakers are the least well known, and the most scattered, several being known to the author only as unprovenienced examples in museums outside Italy.

It seems possible that the central Italian face beakers of the Republican period may represent a continuation of the Etruscan face beakers of similar shape and size found in southwest Etruria and in Rome. The author hopes that this poster may bring attention to the little known Roman face beakers of central Italy, and lead to the identification of further examples.

Main Page

Photos from the Conference

Program Schedule

Abstracts Index