Ben Russell
Biographic Data
| ID | 3622876 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ben Russell |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ben |
| FAMILY NAME | Russell |
| SIGNATURE | BEN RUSSELL |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Edinburgh |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4594-7586 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 17 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
‘The poor battered image’: Eagle Rock, the Roman relief and its setting
This contribution re-examines the well-known but little studied rock-cut relief at Eagle Rock, in the Dalmeny Estate just west of Cramond, Edinburgh (NRHE ID: 50390). Although described and discussed since the 18th century, this relief has never been analysed in detail and is routinely overlooked in archaeological studies of Roman Scotland. This paper reviews the history of scholarship on the relief, analyses it using new imaging techniques, prop…
Three Perspectives on Late Antique Aeclanum in Its Regional Context
Recent excavations and survey at the Roman and late antique city of Aeclanum provide important insights into developments across the fourth and fifth centuries CE at this site. Located in the inland region of Hirpinia, on the border of Apulia et Calabria and Campania, Aeclanum was insulated from some of the disasters that plagued the coastal regions in this period. It was, however, struck by two natural disasters: an earthquake in the mid-fourth …
A Bear Named Barbaros: A pierre errante from Apollonia
A grave altar from Pisidian Apollonia (Uluborlu), already published various times, is re-examined here. The authors provide a detailed study of the iconography of the altar, which is now on display in a park in Kızılcabölük, ca. 200 km to the west of Uluborlu. The altar is decorated with a dramatic scene, the death of a bestiarius, who is depicted being killed by a bear. The rocky, uneven terrain below the figures indicate that the bestiarius was…
Late antique coin circulation in a changing cityscape: The case of Aeclanum (Campania, Italy)
This article examines the excavations and coin discoveries at Aeclanum, a Roman city in Italy, between the 4th and 6th centuries CE. The excavations reveal a vibrant city despite the impact of a major earthquake and volcanic eruption. The coins found span from the 3rd century BCE to the early 6th century CE, with a decline in weight and size during the late 5th century. The distribution of coins suggests a bustling commercial area in the city. Ov…
The Julian Basilica: Architecture, Sculpture, Epigraphy
Another wall of turf’: Geoarchaeological analysis of the Antonine Wall at 72 Grahamsdyke Street, Laurieston, Falkirk
Excavation of a well-preserved stretch of the rampart of the Antonine Wall east of Watling Lodge, at Laurieston, allowed for the first micromorphological study of its earthen building materials. This revealed that the rampart core, as well as the cheeks, were constructed in well layered courses of turf blocks – but sourced from different grasslands. The evidence differs from macroscopic observations made at other sections in this area where the r…
Welcome from the new editors
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
On the Roman-Byzantine adoption of the stirrup once more: A new find from seventh-century Aphrodisias
Archaeological evidence and the text of the Strategikon show that it was only in the late sixth century AD that the Roman-Byzantine military adopted the stirrup. It is now widely argued that the Avars, who settled in the Carpathian basin in the sixth century, played a key role in introducing iron stirrups to the Roman-Byzantine world. However, the evidence to support this assertion is limited. Although hundreds of stirrups have been found in Avar…
Roman Sculptors at Work: Professional Practitioners?
This chapter concerns Roman sculptors and considers whether sculptors in the Roman empire fit the modern criteria for the term ‘professional’, as has been developed in the sociology of modern professions. While the lack of a regulatory system governing stone carving practitioners in the Roman world might make it hard to fit them into most modern definitions of professionals, it is argued that Roman sculptors saw their work as skilled and used the…
New Excavations in the Central and Southern Sectors of Aeclanum in 2019 (Comune Di Mirabella Eclano, Provincia Di Avellino, Regione Campania)
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Utica’s urban centre from Augustus to the Antonines
Since 2010, a team from the Tunisian Institut National du Patrimoine and the University of Oxford 1 has been investigating Utica’s monumental centre, located at the tip of the promontory on which the city is built (fig. 1). The range and scale of architectural elements littering this area were remarked upon by most antiquarian investigators of the site. Nathan Davis, working at the site in 1858, noted that, despite the fact that it “had been rans…
The late-antique eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 472 and its impact from the Bay of Naples to Aeclanum
The eruption of A.D. 79 has long dominated archaeological discourse on Vesuvius. Other eruptions, both earlier and later, have received less attention but are no less valuable from an archaeological point of view. 1 Those eruptions deposited distinctive volcanic materials often easily identifiable in the stratigraphic record, thereby providing dated termini ante quos , which can in turn offer a snapshot of life around the volcano in different per…
Excavation and Survey at Aeclanum in 2018 (Comune Di Mirabella Eclano, Provincia Di Avellino, Regione Campania)
Between 2017 and 2018, the University of Edinburgh and Apolline Project team at Aeclanum concentrated on three main activities: 1) the continuation of excavations in the area of the baths and the theatre; 2) new excavations across the line of the Via Appia and on the northern side of the forum (which was identified by GPR in 2017); 3) new GPR survey to the east of the forum. As in 2017, the project is a collaboration with the Soprintendenza per l…
New Work at Aeclanum (Comune Di Mirabella Eclano, Provincia Di Avellino, Regione Campania)
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Stone quarrying in Greece: Ten years of research
It has been ten years since the publication of Lorenzo Lazzarini's monumental volume on the quarrying, use and properties of the coloured marbles of Greece: Poikiloi Lithoi, Versiculores Maculae: I Marmi Colorati della Grecia Antica (Lazzarini 2007). The first study since Angelina Dworakowska's Quarries in Ancient Greece (Dworakowska 1975) to attempt a large-scale examination of quarrying across Greece, Lazzarini's approach is fundamentally an ar…
Roman Sculpture from London and the South-East
"Roman Sculpture from London and the South-East." Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 169(1), pp. 127–128
The Market for Stone
This chapter presents an overview of the demand for stone in the Roman world, the market that it created, and how this stimulated the wider stone trade. Demand for stone was both general and specific in the Roman world. Ordinary stone for building was required in enormous quantities all across the area encompassed by Roman rule but at the same time specific demand for high-quality stone, especially decorative marbles, increased dramatically in th…
Final Remarks
This concluding chapter sums up many of the conclusions drawn from the preceding chapters, concentrating on what the stone trade can add to our understanding of the wider Roman economy. To this end, it focuses on the role of the state, the evidence for local, regional, and inter-regional connectivity provided by the distribution of particular stone types, and what the carving of architectural elements, statuary, and sarcophagi reveal about produc…
Statue Production
This chapter follows on from the previous two to examine statue production. Beginning with a discussion of the buying process, the question of commissions versus stock products and how the customer and carver might have interacted, evidence from the quarries for the roughing out of statues is then considered. There is no evidence that these finds from the quarries indicate production-to-stock of statues but they do show that carving was often bro…
Quarrying
This chapter explores the evidence for the ownership and administration of quarrying sites in the Roman Empire. Most quarries were under private or municipal ownership in this period but many of the largest quarries of decorative stone were placed under imperial control. These sites were set up to supply prestigious materials to imperially funded projects but they also relied extensively on private personnel. The extent to which these individuals…
The Economics of the Roman Stone Trade
Russell provides an examination of the production, distribution and use of carved stone objects in the Roman world. Focusing on the market for stone and its supply, he offers an assessment of the practicalities of stone transport and how the relationship between producer and customer functioned even over considerable distances.
Roman and late-antique shipwrecks with stone cargoes: A new inventory
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Round table discussion: Documentary, ethnography and the avant-garde
Mons Porphyrites
The remote quarrying complex of Mons Porphyrites, the modern Gebel Dokhan, is located in the Eastern Desert of Egypt, 40 km west of the Red Sea and approximately 165 km northeast of the Nile at Qena.
Trac 2010: Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference
Roman and late-antique shipwrecks with stone cargoes: A new inventory
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
New Work at Aeclanum (Comune Di Mirabella Eclano, Provincia Di Avellino, Regione Campania)
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Stone quarrying in Greece: Ten years of research
It has been ten years since the publication of Lorenzo Lazzarini's monumental volume on the quarrying, use and properties of the coloured marbles of Greece: Poikiloi Lithoi, Versiculores Maculae: I Marmi Colorati della Grecia Antica (Lazzarini 2007). The first study since Angelina Dworakowska's Quarries in Ancient Greece (Dworakowska 1975) to attempt a large-scale examination of quarrying across Greece, Lazzarini's approach is fundamentally an ar…
Euesperides 2006: Preliminary Report on the Spring 2006 season
This paper is a preliminary report on the eighth and final fieldwork (Spring 2006) season of the excavations at Euesperides (Benghazi). Work continued in Areas P and Q on the Sidi Abeid mound, in Area R in the lower city and on the processing of finds from the 2006 and previous seasons. In Area P excavations continued below the primary floors of the antepenultimate phase in Room 5a where a series of inter-cutting pits beneath the primary floor pr…
Utica’s urban centre from Augustus to the Antonines
Since 2010, a team from the Tunisian Institut National du Patrimoine and the University of Oxford 1 has been investigating Utica’s monumental centre, located at the tip of the promontory on which the city is built (fig. 1). The range and scale of architectural elements littering this area were remarked upon by most antiquarian investigators of the site. Nathan Davis, working at the site in 1858, noted that, despite the fact that it “had been rans…
The late-antique eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 472 and its impact from the Bay of Naples to Aeclanum
The eruption of A.D. 79 has long dominated archaeological discourse on Vesuvius. Other eruptions, both earlier and later, have received less attention but are no less valuable from an archaeological point of view. 1 Those eruptions deposited distinctive volcanic materials often easily identifiable in the stratigraphic record, thereby providing dated termini ante quos , which can in turn offer a snapshot of life around the volcano in different per…
Excavation and Survey at Aeclanum in 2018 (Comune Di Mirabella Eclano, Provincia Di Avellino, Regione Campania)
Between 2017 and 2018, the University of Edinburgh and Apolline Project team at Aeclanum concentrated on three main activities: 1) the continuation of excavations in the area of the baths and the theatre; 2) new excavations across the line of the Via Appia and on the northern side of the forum (which was identified by GPR in 2017); 3) new GPR survey to the east of the forum. As in 2017, the project is a collaboration with the Soprintendenza per l…
Euesperides 2006: Preliminary Report on the Spring 2006 season
This paper is a preliminary report on the eighth and final fieldwork (Spring 2006) season of the excavations at Euesperides (Benghazi). Work continued in Areas P and Q on the Sidi Abeid mound, in Area R in the lower city and on the processing of finds from the 2006 and previous seasons. In Area P excavations continued below the primary floors of the antepenultimate phase in Room 5a where a series of inter-cutting pits beneath the primary floor pr…
Trac 2010: Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference
Preface and Editors’ Preface
Mons Porphyrites
The remote quarrying complex of Mons Porphyrites, the modern Gebel Dokhan, is located in the Eastern Desert of Egypt, 40 km west of the Red Sea and approximately 165 km northeast of the Nile at Qena.
The Market for Stone
This chapter presents an overview of the demand for stone in the Roman world, the market that it created, and how this stimulated the wider stone trade. Demand for stone was both general and specific in the Roman world. Ordinary stone for building was required in enormous quantities all across the area encompassed by Roman rule but at the same time specific demand for high-quality stone, especially decorative marbles, increased dramatically in th…
Final Remarks
This concluding chapter sums up many of the conclusions drawn from the preceding chapters, concentrating on what the stone trade can add to our understanding of the wider Roman economy. To this end, it focuses on the role of the state, the evidence for local, regional, and inter-regional connectivity provided by the distribution of particular stone types, and what the carving of architectural elements, statuary, and sarcophagi reveal about produc…
Statue Production
This chapter follows on from the previous two to examine statue production. Beginning with a discussion of the buying process, the question of commissions versus stock products and how the customer and carver might have interacted, evidence from the quarries for the roughing out of statues is then considered. There is no evidence that these finds from the quarries indicate production-to-stock of statues but they do show that carving was often bro…
Quarrying
This chapter explores the evidence for the ownership and administration of quarrying sites in the Roman Empire. Most quarries were under private or municipal ownership in this period but many of the largest quarries of decorative stone were placed under imperial control. These sites were set up to supply prestigious materials to imperially funded projects but they also relied extensively on private personnel. The extent to which these individuals…
The Economics of the Roman Stone Trade
Russell provides an examination of the production, distribution and use of carved stone objects in the Roman world. Focusing on the market for stone and its supply, he offers an assessment of the practicalities of stone transport and how the relationship between producer and customer functioned even over considerable distances.
Roman and late-antique shipwrecks with stone cargoes: A new inventory
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Round table discussion: Documentary, ethnography and the avant-garde
Roman Sculpture from London and the South-East
"Roman Sculpture from London and the South-East." Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 169(1), pp. 127–128
Stone quarrying in Greece: Ten years of research
It has been ten years since the publication of Lorenzo Lazzarini's monumental volume on the quarrying, use and properties of the coloured marbles of Greece: Poikiloi Lithoi, Versiculores Maculae: I Marmi Colorati della Grecia Antica (Lazzarini 2007). The first study since Angelina Dworakowska's Quarries in Ancient Greece (Dworakowska 1975) to attempt a large-scale examination of quarrying across Greece, Lazzarini's approach is fundamentally an ar…
New Work at Aeclanum (Comune Di Mirabella Eclano, Provincia Di Avellino, Regione Campania)
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Utica’s urban centre from Augustus to the Antonines
Since 2010, a team from the Tunisian Institut National du Patrimoine and the University of Oxford 1 has been investigating Utica’s monumental centre, located at the tip of the promontory on which the city is built (fig. 1). The range and scale of architectural elements littering this area were remarked upon by most antiquarian investigators of the site. Nathan Davis, working at the site in 1858, noted that, despite the fact that it “had been rans…
The late-antique eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 472 and its impact from the Bay of Naples to Aeclanum
The eruption of A.D. 79 has long dominated archaeological discourse on Vesuvius. Other eruptions, both earlier and later, have received less attention but are no less valuable from an archaeological point of view. 1 Those eruptions deposited distinctive volcanic materials often easily identifiable in the stratigraphic record, thereby providing dated termini ante quos , which can in turn offer a snapshot of life around the volcano in different per…
Excavation and Survey at Aeclanum in 2018 (Comune Di Mirabella Eclano, Provincia Di Avellino, Regione Campania)
Between 2017 and 2018, the University of Edinburgh and Apolline Project team at Aeclanum concentrated on three main activities: 1) the continuation of excavations in the area of the baths and the theatre; 2) new excavations across the line of the Via Appia and on the northern side of the forum (which was identified by GPR in 2017); 3) new GPR survey to the east of the forum. As in 2017, the project is a collaboration with the Soprintendenza per l…
Roman Sculptors at Work: Professional Practitioners?
This chapter concerns Roman sculptors and considers whether sculptors in the Roman empire fit the modern criteria for the term ‘professional’, as has been developed in the sociology of modern professions. While the lack of a regulatory system governing stone carving practitioners in the Roman world might make it hard to fit them into most modern definitions of professionals, it is argued that Roman sculptors saw their work as skilled and used the…
New Excavations in the Central and Southern Sectors of Aeclanum in 2019 (Comune Di Mirabella Eclano, Provincia Di Avellino, Regione Campania)
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Welcome from the new editors
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
On the Roman-Byzantine adoption of the stirrup once more: A new find from seventh-century Aphrodisias
Archaeological evidence and the text of the Strategikon show that it was only in the late sixth century AD that the Roman-Byzantine military adopted the stirrup. It is now widely argued that the Avars, who settled in the Carpathian basin in the sixth century, played a key role in introducing iron stirrups to the Roman-Byzantine world. However, the evidence to support this assertion is limited. Although hundreds of stirrups have been found in Avar…
Another wall of turf’: Geoarchaeological analysis of the Antonine Wall at 72 Grahamsdyke Street, Laurieston, Falkirk
Excavation of a well-preserved stretch of the rampart of the Antonine Wall east of Watling Lodge, at Laurieston, allowed for the first micromorphological study of its earthen building materials. This revealed that the rampart core, as well as the cheeks, were constructed in well layered courses of turf blocks – but sourced from different grasslands. The evidence differs from macroscopic observations made at other sections in this area where the r…
Late antique coin circulation in a changing cityscape: The case of Aeclanum (Campania, Italy)
This article examines the excavations and coin discoveries at Aeclanum, a Roman city in Italy, between the 4th and 6th centuries CE. The excavations reveal a vibrant city despite the impact of a major earthquake and volcanic eruption. The coins found span from the 3rd century BCE to the early 6th century CE, with a decline in weight and size during the late 5th century. The distribution of coins suggests a bustling commercial area in the city. Ov…
The Julian Basilica: Architecture, Sculpture, Epigraphy
Three Perspectives on Late Antique Aeclanum in Its Regional Context
Recent excavations and survey at the Roman and late antique city of Aeclanum provide important insights into developments across the fourth and fifth centuries CE at this site. Located in the inland region of Hirpinia, on the border of Apulia et Calabria and Campania, Aeclanum was insulated from some of the disasters that plagued the coastal regions in this period. It was, however, struck by two natural disasters: an earthquake in the mid-fourth …
Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History (17 works) · History (16 works) · Archaeology (15 works) · Geography (13 works) · Art (10 works) · Classical Antiquity Studies (9 works) · Ancient history (7 works) · Archaeological Research and Protection (6 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Visual arts (6 works)