Papers by Kathryn L Gleason
Bollettino di Archeologia online, 2010
Ars topiaria, not the craft of cultivating the simple Republican hortus but the art of bringing t... more Ars topiaria, not the craft of cultivating the simple Republican hortus but the art of bringing the Empire to Rome and displaying it lavishly in gardens, was a practice common to imperial cultures from ancient Egypt and Assyria to those our own time. The art form, initially understood literally as Cicero's gardener training ivy up a column, is being revealed by historians and archaeologists and historians to be, in fact, a complex and expensive undertaking. While the existence of grand Roman gardens is well-known from literature, it has been difficult to correlate terms used in the texts with images of gardens or with physical remains. Landgren has shown that the arrival of the term topiarius in the first centuries BC and AD coincides with that of viridia, often simply translated as greenery, but now understood to be collections or displays of plants
The 81st Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, 2017
This paper focuses on evidence for the pruning and dwarfing of plants represented in Roman garden... more This paper focuses on evidence for the pruning and dwarfing of plants represented in Roman garden paintings. In two particularly fine examples of this type, from the Villa of Livia at Prima Porta near Rome, and the House of the Golden Bracelet at Pompeii, the artists have carefully portrayed pruning marks and other horticultural practices that alter the size and natural habit of plants. This evidence complements archaeobotanical findings by showing the above-ground appearance of garden plants attested in the archaeological record. The remains of a garden that may be linked to garden paintings were found in 2007 in the Great Peristyle at the Villa Arianna at Stabiae, near Pompeii. Seeking evidence for the interpretation of this garden, paintings and texts have been critically examined. The results reveal a wealth of evidence for plant pruning management in the paintings linked to nemora tonsilia or silva tonsilia-the art of pruning groups of trees and shrubs for ornamental presentation, initiated by C. Matius during the reign of Augustus in the 1st century bc. This art of pruning woody plants may be a virtuoso display of the horticultural skills involved in the management of the broader cultivated landscape of Rome and Pompeii.
Design
Bloomsbury Academic eBooks, 2013
New Excavations at the Promontory Palace at Caesarea Maritima, Israel
Raised field agriculture is a pre-Hispanic intensive crop production system used in the Andean re... more Raised field agriculture is a pre-Hispanic intensive crop production system used in the Andean region of highland Peru and Bolivia around the Lake Titicaca Basin (Figure 6.1). The system combines the use of large raised earthen planting platforms with complex networks of intervening canals and ditches. These features are evidence of massive earthmoving and landscape modification covering an area of over 82,000 ha of seasonally waterlogged land surface. The methods for studying raised field agriculture discussed in this paper were employed by the Raised Field Agricultural Project, a long term (over 7 years) multidisciplinary study of ancient Andean agriculture. The research focused on the determination of original raised field morphology, origins and evolution of the system, carrying capacity and population dynamics, field functions, and crops cultivated. Key research problems included an assessment of the labor input necessary for construction and maintenance and a study of the field productivity and potential carrying capacity. This information was used to evaluate the efficiency of raised field farming in comparison to other past and present systems. The project also included an applied dimension, in that raised field technology was reintroduced to several communities and actively included the participation of local farmers in the agricultural experiments and fieldwork. Archaeological techniques including analysis of aerial photographs, trenching, chronology development based on stratigraphic, ceramic thermoluminescence and radiocarbon dating, flotation and pollen analysis, settlement analysis and experimental archaeology established a basic outline of the extinct agricultural system. Agricultural experimentation created new possibilities for understanding the pro-Philadelphia
A Cultural History of Gardens in Antiquity
The history of gardens in antiquity is characterized by a rich mix of cultures interacting throug... more The history of gardens in antiquity is characterized by a rich mix of cultures interacting throughout Europe, Africa and Asia. This period - from the sixth century BCE to the sixth century CE - was foundational to the later periods of garden history. The emergence of advanced horticultural techniques, sustained regional and international trade routes, and centralized power structures promoted the development of highly sophisticated garden culture in both private and public contexts. New evidence derived from archaeology and fresh analysis of literary and visual sources revises our perspective, reminding us that these garden cultures were varied and diverse, yet connected through ritual, trade, conquest, and cultural practices in ways we are only beginning to define.
The Landscape Palaces of Herod the Great
Near Eastern Archaeology, Jun 1, 2014
The palaces of Herod the Great are among the best preserved archaeological remains of royal resid... more The palaces of Herod the Great are among the best preserved archaeological remains of royal residences of the late Hellenistic-early Roman era. The late archaeologist and architect, Ehud Netzer, has demonstrated Herod's close attention to landscape settings, admired in the accounts of the ancient historian Flavius Josephus. Archaeological remains of the architectural settings and of the gardens, understood in tandem with those elsewhere in the Mediterranean, demonstrate how Herod participated in the cutting edge of design trends of the day. This essay examines peristyles and strolling gardens, viewing knolls and towers, pools and naumachiae, and other landscape architecture at Herod's palaces in the dramatic landscapes of Jericho, Masada, Herodium, and Caesarea.
Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, Apr 10, 2019
This paper focuses on evidence for the pruning and dwarfing of plants represented in Roman garden... more This paper focuses on evidence for the pruning and dwarfing of plants represented in Roman garden paintings. In two particularly fine examples of this type, from the Villa of Livia at Prima Porta near Rome, and the House of the Golden Bracelet at Pompeii, the artists have carefully portrayed pruning marks and other horticultural practices that alter the size and natural habit of plants. This evidence complements archaeobotanical findings by showing the above-ground appearance of garden plants attested in the archaeological record. The remains of a garden that may be linked to garden paintings were found in 2007 in the Great Peristyle at the Villa Arianna at Stabiae, near Pompeii. Seeking evidence for the interpretation of this garden, paintings and texts have been critically examined. The results reveal a wealth of evidence for plant pruning management in the paintings linked to nemora tonsilia or silva tonsilia-the art of pruning groups of trees and shrubs for ornamental presentation, initiated by C. Matius during the reign of Augustus in the 1st century bc. This art of pruning woody plants may be a virtuoso display of the horticultural skills involved in the management of the broader cultivated landscape of Rome and Pompeii.
Journal of Field Archaeology, 1995
Raised field agriculture is a pre-Hispanic intensive crop production system used in the Andean re... more Raised field agriculture is a pre-Hispanic intensive crop production system used in the Andean region of highland Peru and Bolivia around the Lake Titicaca Basin (Figure 6.1). The system combines the use of large raised earthen planting platforms with complex networks of intervening canals and ditches. These features are evidence of massive earthmoving and landscape modification covering an area of over 82,000 ha of seasonally waterlogged land surface. The methods for studying raised field agriculture discussed in this paper were employed by the Raised Field Agricultural Project, a long term (over 7 years) multidisciplinary study of ancient Andean agriculture. The research focused on the determination of original raised field morphology, origins and evolution of the system, carrying capacity and population dynamics, field functions, and crops cultivated. Key research problems included an assessment of the labor input necessary for construction and maintenance and a study of the field productivity and potential carrying capacity. This information was used to evaluate the efficiency of raised field farming in comparison to other past and present systems. The project also included an applied dimension, in that raised field technology was reintroduced to several communities and actively included the participation of local farmers in the agricultural experiments and fieldwork. Archaeological techniques including analysis of aerial photographs, trenching, chronology development based on stratigraphic, ceramic thermoluminescence and radiocarbon dating, flotation and pollen analysis, settlement analysis and experimental archaeology established a basic outline of the extinct agricultural system. Agricultural experimentation created new possibilities for understanding the pro-Philadelphia
The Garden Portico of Pompey the Great: an Ancient Public Park Preserved in the Layers of Rome
Expedition: The magazine of the University of Pennsylvania, 1990
Journal of garden history, Mar 1, 1994
Symposium on Mughal Gardens: Sources, Representations, Places and Prospects
Landscape Journal, 1993
pointed to Stuttgart’s decades-long practice of planting forested strips throughout the city to m... more pointed to Stuttgart’s decades-long practice of planting forested strips throughout the city to mitigate air pollution. And in Van Valkenburgh’s proposal for the redesign of the Tuileries, the designer suggested reviving Le Notre’s historic practice of incorporating aquaculture in garden ponds. For the new forms and roles of the park of the future, Balmori and others suggested striking the word park from discussions about public places. "Does the wordpark circumscribe, limit or determine certain kinds of activities in the public domain? Do we need a new template?" Phillips asks. As an example, Phillips pointed to the generous definition of parks used by the public art coordinator for New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority, who viewed the subway as a cultural park in which riders could learn about local history and community from the transit stops. Phillips also singled out the work of the artist-in-residence for the city’s sanitation department, who created a pedestrian walkway into a waste-transfer facility, along with a series of exhibitions and video installations dealing with garbage and recycling. Warner suggested breaking up the frozen tableau of picnic table, ball field, and turf with a work-in-progress park, where isolated, time-harried citizens could escape the passive entertainments of the energy-guzzling shopping mall and become more creatively engaged. The intense timesqueeze Americans are currently experiencing, he says, "has resulted in an extremely narrow and disciplined day for children and adults alike .... The glitzy mall, the show automobile, the electronic toy, the gated golf-club planned-unit development all strike me as instant fantasy supports for tired people who have insufficient time and energy to express their own imaginations." Warner’s plan calls for parks where children are encouraged to dig and build. Local special-interest groups could use the park as a laboratory for experimental plantings and designs; neighbors would provide maintenance. Schoolchildren would participate in designing and building the community’s green spaces, including their own schoolyards. To counteract the effects of another form of passive entertainment-Disneyesque theming and its "creeping nostalgia for a period that can no longer be lived" and its "yearning to evacuate the present"--Ball suggested "alternative theming" or parks that script a more "thoughtfu! intervention that can transform social relations" and change untenable societal conditions, such as collapsing infrastructure, homelessness, and the degraded state of public space. Instead of Colonial Williamsburg and its evocation of an idyllic American past, Ball suggests open-air dioramas that depict America before European settlement. He proposed themed environments of such discarded objects as cars and Nintendo games or parks devoted to the ruins of modern architecture or the country’s industrial past. And instead of demolishing old vernacular architecture, Ball advocates recycling it in an installation, "so instead of the seven-eighths scale of Disney commentary on turn-ofthe-century Main Street, we might have the full-scale reuse and manipulation and quotation of America’s every-changing middle class culture now held up as an object of contemplation." For those who charge that the challenge of the future park exceeds our will and means, Warner reminded us of the healing balm that parks dispensed to the desperate lives of 19thcentury urbanites: "Surely our urban chaos is no more intense and surely our ambition should not be less democratic than theirs." A monograph The Once andFuture Park, edited by Debra Karasov and Steve Waryan, will be published by Princeton Architectural Press this spring. It includes essays by each of the speakers and a photograph from each of the designs exhibited. Adelheid Fischer is a freelance writer, interested in landscape issues, who lives and works in Minneapolis-St. Paul. SYMPOSIUM ON MUGHAL GARDENS: SOURCES, REPRESENTATIONS, PLACES AND PROSPECTS, May 15-16, 1992, Dumbarton Oaks and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, D.C.
Constructing the Ancient Roman Garden
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Dec 20, 2017
A Garden Excavation in the Oasis Palace of Herod the Great at Jericho
Landscape Journal, 1993
Abstract: Herod the Great is reemerging in the history of Roman architecture as a brilliant ruler... more Abstract: Herod the Great is reemerging in the history of Roman architecture as a brilliant ruler-designer, inspired to build in the most dramatic and difficult landscapes of Judea. One of his more politically important residences lay in the oasis of Jericho, near the Dead Sea, a ...
Questo articolo presenta i risultati delle prime due campagne di scavo (2018-2019) condotte nel g... more Questo articolo presenta i risultati delle prime due campagne di scavo (2018-2019) condotte nel giardino della "Casa della Regina Carolina' a Pompei (VIII.3.14) nell'ambito di un progetto scientifico multidisciplinare che investiga la relazione tra cultura materiale, ruoli sociali e cambiamenti storici. La domus oggetto di studio fu scavata nel XIX secolo, ma il giardino, tra i più ampi giardini domestici di Pompei, non fu investigato e questo ha consentito di effettuare vari saggi stratigrafici mirati, da un lato, ad individuare la superficie coltivata in antico e dall'altro a chiarire come lo spazio fosse utilizzato e vissuto da parte dei vari 'utenti' dal diverso ceto sociale (ad es. il padrone di casa, lo schiavo-giardiniere, etc.). Lo scavo ha restituito non solo dati interessanti sulla natura del giardino distrutto nel 79 d.C., ma ha anche rivelato i resti monumentali di una domus a peristilio di età sannitica. Il diverso orientamento di questa domus che, date le dimensioni e vicinanza al foro probabilmente apparteneva ad un membro di spicco della Pompei repubblicana, indica che l'intera insula subì un drastico rimaneggiamento. I dati attualmente a nostra disposizione suggeriscono che tale rimaneggiamento risalga al periodo successivo al terremoto del 62 d.C. 1 Excavation, documentation, and export of selected samples for laboratory analysis was carried out with the kind permission of dr. Caterina Bon Valsassina, Direttore Generale per l'Archeologia, le Belle Arti e il Paesaggio del MiBACT (Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo), and of prof. Massimo Osanna, Direttore Generale del Parco Archeologico di Pompei. We would like to thank them as well as the Parco officials with whom we worked most closely at Pompeii, especially dr. Giuseppe Scarpati, dr. Francesco Muscolino and dr. Laura D'Esposito.
Gardens of the Roman Empire
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2017
In Gardens of the Roman Empire, the pioneering archaeologist Wilhelmina F. Jashemski sets out to ... more In Gardens of the Roman Empire, the pioneering archaeologist Wilhelmina F. Jashemski sets out to examine the role of ancient Roman gardens in daily life throughout the empire. This study, therefore, includes for the first time, archaeological, literary, and artistic evidence about ancient Roman gardens across the entire Roman Empire from Britain to Arabia. Through well-illustrated essays by leading scholars in the field, various types of gardens are examined, from how Romans actually created their gardens to the experience of gardens as revealed in literature and art. Demonstrating the central role and value of gardens in Roman civilization, Jashemski and a distinguished, international team of contributors have created a landmark reference work that will serve as the foundation for future scholarship on this topic. An accompanying digital catalogue will be made available at: www.gardensoftheromanempire.org.
A Preliminary Report on New Studies and Excavations at Horace's Villa: The Campaigns of 1997 and 1998
Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, 2000
Thanks to the generosity of the Vincenzo Romagnoli Group, and the institutional support of the Ar... more Thanks to the generosity of the Vincenzo Romagnoli Group, and the institutional support of the Archaeological Superintendency for Lazio (SAL) and the American Academy in Rome (AAR), we were able to undertake new studies in the tract known as the Vigne di San ...
Symposium on Mughal Gardens: Sources, Representations, Places and Prospects
Landscape Journal, 1993
pointed to Stuttgart’s decades-long practice of planting forested strips throughout the city to m... more pointed to Stuttgart’s decades-long practice of planting forested strips throughout the city to mitigate air pollution. And in Van Valkenburgh’s proposal for the redesign of the Tuileries, the designer suggested reviving Le Notre’s historic practice of incorporating aquaculture in garden ponds. For the new forms and roles of the park of the future, Balmori and others suggested striking the word park from discussions about public places. "Does the wordpark circumscribe, limit or determine certain kinds of activities in the public domain? Do we need a new template?" Phillips asks. As an example, Phillips pointed to the generous definition of parks used by the public art coordinator for New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority, who viewed the subway as a cultural park in which riders could learn about local history and community from the transit stops. Phillips also singled out the work of the artist-in-residence for the city’s sanitation department, who created a pedestrian walkway into a waste-transfer facility, along with a series of exhibitions and video installations dealing with garbage and recycling. Warner suggested breaking up the frozen tableau of picnic table, ball field, and turf with a work-in-progress park, where isolated, time-harried citizens could escape the passive entertainments of the energy-guzzling shopping mall and become more creatively engaged. The intense timesqueeze Americans are currently experiencing, he says, "has resulted in an extremely narrow and disciplined day for children and adults alike .... The glitzy mall, the show automobile, the electronic toy, the gated golf-club planned-unit development all strike me as instant fantasy supports for tired people who have insufficient time and energy to express their own imaginations." Warner’s plan calls for parks where children are encouraged to dig and build. Local special-interest groups could use the park as a laboratory for experimental plantings and designs; neighbors would provide maintenance. Schoolchildren would participate in designing and building the community’s green spaces, including their own schoolyards. To counteract the effects of another form of passive entertainment-Disneyesque theming and its "creeping nostalgia for a period that can no longer be lived" and its "yearning to evacuate the present"--Ball suggested "alternative theming" or parks that script a more "thoughtfu! intervention that can transform social relations" and change untenable societal conditions, such as collapsing infrastructure, homelessness, and the degraded state of public space. Instead of Colonial Williamsburg and its evocation of an idyllic American past, Ball suggests open-air dioramas that depict America before European settlement. He proposed themed environments of such discarded objects as cars and Nintendo games or parks devoted to the ruins of modern architecture or the country’s industrial past. And instead of demolishing old vernacular architecture, Ball advocates recycling it in an installation, "so instead of the seven-eighths scale of Disney commentary on turn-ofthe-century Main Street, we might have the full-scale reuse and manipulation and quotation of America’s every-changing middle class culture now held up as an object of contemplation." For those who charge that the challenge of the future park exceeds our will and means, Warner reminded us of the healing balm that parks dispensed to the desperate lives of 19thcentury urbanites: "Surely our urban chaos is no more intense and surely our ambition should not be less democratic than theirs." A monograph The Once andFuture Park, edited by Debra Karasov and Steve Waryan, will be published by Princeton Architectural Press this spring. It includes essays by each of the speakers and a photograph from each of the designs exhibited. Adelheid Fischer is a freelance writer, interested in landscape issues, who lives and works in Minneapolis-St. Paul. SYMPOSIUM ON MUGHAL GARDENS: SOURCES, REPRESENTATIONS, PLACES AND PROSPECTS, May 15-16, 1992, Dumbarton Oaks and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, D.C.
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Papers by Kathryn L Gleason