My main interest is in the archaeology of pre-Roman, Roman, and immediately post-Roman Italy, and especially South Italy . Most of my research has been in the forms of settlement and land use, and in the timing and causes of change.
I use such literary sources as there are (not many), and inscriptions (very unevenly distributed, and mostly from cities), but I depend mainly on archaeological evidence, especially the data from several sites where I have excavated. These include Monte Irsi and Botromagno (near Gravina in Puglia, close to the border between Apulia and Lucania) where pre-Roman sites were abandoned during the time of Roman conquest, and replaced by new forms of settlement in the last two centuries BC, and San Giovanni di Ruoti where my team uncovered a late-antique villa (5 th -7 th centuries AD) with a number of unusual features which show the transition to the Middle Ages. Currently I am directing an international program of excavation in a Roman village at Vagnari (also in the territory of Gravina in Puglia ) which was the centre of a large imperial estate. The program involves exploration of both the buildings and the cemetery. In conjunction with the excavation my wife, Carola Small, and I jointly directed an intensive field survey for eight years in the surrounding countryside (the Basentello valley), which we are preparing for publication. It provides a wealth of evidence for settlement in this area in all periods from palaeolithic to very recent. From 2006-2008 Carola Small and I carried out an intesnsive surface collection at an Iron Age and medieval site called San Felice, located within the survey area.
I have numerous other related interests, and have published – of have in press – articles on the Apulian Iron Age culture, Roman portrait iconography, religion in Pompeii and Herculaneum , and the use of classical motifs in English landscape gardens. I have on my agenda questions of the archaeology of banditry in South Italy in the 18th/19th century, and (with Carola Small) of a prisoner of war camp near Gravina, both topics which arise from the field survey. You will find more on this project on the Vagnari project website.
After reading Classics at Oxford , I emigrated to Canada , and taught Classics at the University of Alberta for nearly 30 years, being made Full Professor in 1980. Much of my research in Italy was carried out from there. I took early retirement at the end of 1997 and returned to Edinburgh , and am currently a Professor Emeritus of the University of Alberta , and an Honorary Fellow in Classics at the University of Edinburgh where the School of History, Classics and Archaeology is the base for my ongoing research. |
