Maureen Carroll – författare

Spirits of the Dead examines the importance attached to preserving the memory of the dead in the Roman world, and explores the ways in which funerary inscriptions can be used to reconstruct Roman lives, however fragmentarily and imperfectly. It is the only study to examine epigraphic, historical, and archaeological evidence in order to gain insight into the way Romans used funerary texts to establish a dialogue with their own society. Maureen Carroll brings together a large body of material from many geographical areas, shedding light on provincial and regional variation in funerary commemoration and even on the differences between funerary traditions of neighbouring towns.

Spirits of the Dead examines the importance attached to preserving the memory of the dead in the Roman world, and explores the ways in which funerary inscriptions can be used to reconstruct Roman lives, however fragmentarily and imperfectly. It is the only study to examine epigraphic, historical, and archaeological evidence in order to gain insight into the way Romans used funerary texts to establish a dialogue with their own society. Maureen Carroll brings together a large body of material from many geographical areas, shedding light on provincial and regional variation in funerary commemoration and even on the differences between funerary traditions of neighbouring towns.

Despite the developing emphasis in current scholarship on children in Roman culture, there has been relatively little research to date on the role and significance of the youngest children within the family and in society. This volume singles out this youngest age group, the under one-year-olds, in the first comprehensive study of infancy and earliest childhood to encompass the Roman Empire as a whole: integrating social and cultural history with archaeological evidence, funerary remains, material culture, and the iconography of infancy, it explores how the very particular historical circumstances into which Roman children were born affected their lives as well as prevailing attitudes towards them. Examination of these varied strands of evidence, drawn from throughout the Roman world from the fourth century BC to the third century AD, allows the rhetoric about earliest childhood in Roman texts to be more broadly contextualized and reveals the socio-cultural developments that took place in parent-child relationships over this period. Presenting a fresh perspective on archaeological and historical debates, the volume refutes the notion that high infant mortality conditioned Roman parents not to engage in the early life of their children or to view them, or their deaths, with indifference, and concludes that even within the first weeks and months of life Roman children were invested with social and gendered identities and were perceived as having both personhood and value within society.

Naked we come into the world, but we are extraordinarily unlucky if naked we leave it. It is a human reaction to cover the dead with textiles. This volume presents the results of new and ground-breaking research in the UK and abroad on clothing and textiles in the context of death and burial in Classical Antiquity, from the fifth century BC to the fifth century AD. The geographical scope encompasses the Mediterranean, as well as the European, Asian, Egyptian and North African lands that were part of the Graeco-Roman world or that interacted with it in a variety of ways.Investigations of funerary rituals thus far have focused on grave markers, burial ritual, grave goods, and skeletal material, while the roles of clothing and textiles in these rituals are less well understood. The topic is explored by studying a variety of different types of evidence: textiles in graves, such as shrouds and coverlets or the clothing in which the dead were dressed; clothing and textiles associated with death rituals, such as mourning dress; funerary portraits in sculpture and painting that depict the deceased dressed to convey messages about identities; and jewellery and dress accessories worn in death and included in the grave. The papers presented here offer tantalising glimpses of the role of clothing, textiles and bodily adornment as social markers, ostentatious displays, and expressions of identities in Classical Antiquity