Visual communication in the streets of Pompeii1

This paper deals with aspects of visual communication in urban streets, referring to the example of Pompeii. In contrast to traditional research, the authors do not arrange the media (paintings, reliefs on house façades, fountain reliefs, honorific statues, dipinti, graffiti) in respect of genre but analyse it according to two main contexts of perception that specify meaning: the visual context of the object (the iconographic context, the decorative framing, the architectural setting) and the situational agency context of the perceiver. It is possible to distinguish five basic discoursive situations in Roman streets: (1) ritual and religious communication, (2) commercial communication, (3) political and administrative communication, (4) individual representation and (5) spontaneous informal communication. The discussion of these discoursive situations, and in addition the thick description of one street section as case example (6. IX 7.1–IX 11.4), allow to highlight the complexity of visual street communication. It is possible to reconstruct different modes, how objects and their meaning relate to each other, to different discoursive fields, to a diverse public and to performed actions

Art · Geography · Visual arts · Visual Communication · Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History · Classical Antiquity Studies