Analyzes the use of water features in late antique homes across the Western Roman Empire, highlighting their aesthetic, social, and practical significance.
For ambitious late antique homeowners seeking to demonstrate their status and taste, water and its display offered almost infinite possibilities. Water Displays in Domestic Spaces across the Late Roman West: Cultivating Living Buildings presents the first synthesis of the archaeological evidence for late antique water features in both urban houses and extra-urban villas across the western Empire. Ginny Wheeler examines a wide and varied range of examples: from decorative basins and pools to fountains of all forms and water-equipped dining couches. Through careful analysis and evocative reconstruction of the water displays in their diverse contexts, this book explores how they were incorporated into late antique residences, the different ways that they enhanced domestic spaces, and the potential motives behind their insertion. To assess the great efforts to which homeowners, particularly in urban settings, went to ensure their installation and continued operation, one case study focuses on the best-preserved cityscape of Ostia. While the roles of water features ranged from practical to aesthetic, social and symbolic, this book highlights their previously under-considered contributions to thermal comfort and sensory experience through in-depth analyses of two Iberian villas. Wheeler identifies broad patterns and regional distinctions in form and decor before reflecting on the multifaceted significance of water in the domestic sphere, informed by literary, epigraphic, and iconographic sources. Beyond contributing to the ongoing debate over fountains’ utility versus aesthetics, this research offers new insights into the organization of life at household and neighborhood levels, the social relations between homeowners occasioned by water installations, and the understanding and application of environmental design in antiquity.
List of Figures
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
1.1 Definitions and Methodologies
1.2 Sources
2. Building on Tradition
2.1 Water and Roman Housing
2.2 Hadrian’s Villa as the Surviving Exemplar of Water Architecture and Climatic Manipulation
3. Navigating Urban Changes and Constraints
3.1 A City-Wide Overview of Water and Urban Change at Ostia
3.2 A Water-Rich Neighborhood in Late Antique Ostia
3.3 The Progressive Multiplication of Water Displays in Houses at Rome and Cuicul
3.4 Water Display amid Urban Constraints and Competition
4. Water Displays in Urban Houses across the West
4.1 Taking Stock of the Rich Collection at Ostia
4.2 Urban Comparisons: Rome, North Africa, and the Wider West
4.3 Local Norms versus Broader Patterns
5. Cooling Villa Environments
5.1 Roman Villas, Landscape, and Seasonality
5.2 Water Features as Passive Climate Control
5.3 Late Roman Villas in Hispania
5.4 Cooling Connected Spaces at El Ruedo
5.5 Mitigating the Sun’s Arc at Quinta das Longas
5.6 Thermal Benefits and Environmental Control
6. Water Displays in Villas across the West
6.1 Regional and Chronological Distribution
6.2 The Staging of Water
6.3 The Multiplication of Water Displays
6.4 Thermal Comfort and Sensory Experience
6.5 Rural Living, Comfort, and Display in the Late Roman West
7. Reconciling Desires with Practicality: The Ancient Decision-Making Process, Reconstructed
7.1 The Formative Influence of Location
7.2 Architectural Inheritance and Late Antique Adaptation: Form and Decor
7.3 Intangible Factors and Individual Experience
7.4 The Convenient Adaptability of Water Display
8. The Wider Social Context of Late Antique Water Displays
8.1 Water and Elite Representation
8.2 Mythological and Religious Significance
8.3 Late Antique Water Displays in Residences across the Empire
8.4 The Multi-faceted Roles of Domestic Water Displays and the Potential Motives behind their Installation
9. Conclusion: Water and Living Buildings
Appendix
List of Domus in the Catalog
List of Villas in the Catalog
Tables
Bibliography
Index
