Life and Art in the Roman Empire

Since my arrival at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Fall 2015, I have regularly offered a Classics Honors First Year Seminar entitled “Life in Ancient Pompeii” (CLAS 73H). Students in this course explore the history and archaeology of this ancient city with the goal of better understanding daily life in the early Roman empire. How did ancient Pompeiians spend their days? What were their houses like? Who ran the city and how were they elected? How did Pompeiians cope with the various challenges of city life, such as sanitation and traffic jams? The course proceeds topically, moving from an exploration of the city’s public spaces to an analysis of more private areas such as houses, gardens, and tombs. Although the city’s material remains are the primary focus of our study, we also consider evidence from literary and epigraphic sources.

In Fall 2018, our seminar culminated in a student group project focusing on objects of daily life dated to the Roman imperial period, which are currently housed at the Ackland Art Museum and the Louis Round Wilson Library Special Collections. As a part of this exercise, students were asked to investigate a variety of objects, ranging from funerary inscriptions and coins to glass vessels and a bronze figurine. Given how little is known about the archaeological context of these objects, the biggest challenge for my students was to understand how they would have functioned in antiquity: how were these objects made and for whom? How and where were they displayed? And what do they tell us about the individuals who experienced them as part of daily life? In order to answer these questions, students were asked to research each of these artifacts, drawing from what they had learned about Pompeii to re-contextualize them more fully.

The eight essays that resulted from this project have been collected on this website both as a record of these young scholars’ efforts and as an invitation to continued collaboration and discussion about life and art in the Roman world.

This project would not have been possible without the generous support and invaluable guidance of several individuals at UNC. My students and I would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to Matthew Belskie, Lucia Binotti, Kelly Chandrapal, Lynn Eades, Emily Kader, Richa Kanwar, Elizabeth Manekin, Brian Moynihan, Rachel Murray, Tommy Nixon, and Josh Smith. I would also like to thank B. Booth Quimby and the Office for Undergraduate Research for their support of this course and other undergraduate research initiatives in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Hérica Valladares
Chapel Hill, December 5, 2018