Dr%20Ine%20Jacobs: List of publications

Cyprus was a thriving and densely populated late antique province. Contrary to what used to be thought, the Arab raids of the mid-seventh century did not abruptly bring the island’s prosperity to an end. Recent research instead highlights long-lasting continuity in both urban and rural contexts. This volume brings together historians and archaeologists working on diverse aspects of Cyprus between the sixth and eighth centuries. They discuss topics as varied as rural prosperity, urban endurance, artisanal production, civic and private religion and maritime connectivity. The role of the imperial administration and of the Church is touched upon in several contributions. Other articles place Cyprus back into its wider Mediterranean context. Together, they produce a comprehensive impression of the quality of life on the island in the long late antiquity.

This article examines literary, epigraphic and archaeological evidence for the Christian reidentification of statuary and reliefs as biblical scenes and protagonists, saints and angels. It argues that Christian identifications were promulgated, amongst others by local bishops, to make sense of imagery of which the original identity had been lost and/or was no longer meaningful. Three conditions for a new identification are discussed: the absence of an epigraphic label, geographical and/or chronological distance separating the statue from its original context of display, and the presence of a specific attribute or characteristic that could become the prompt for reidentification. In their manipulation and modernization of older statuary, Christians showed a much greater appreciation of the statuary medium than generally assumed.

Presents a comprehensive impression of the quality of life across Asia Minor during the last century or so before the end of Antiquity.

In this volume, twelve specialists examine the role of graphic signs such as cross signs, christograms, and monograms in the late Roman and post-Roman worlds and the contexts that facilitated their dissemination in diverse media.

This volume continues the series of five previous Roman Family publications, and puts special focus on social history and living conditions in the familial contexts.

This book challenges this assumption. It assesses the care still given to monuments and public space in the cities in the Eastern Mediterranean, reconstructs how the city represented itself, and focuses on the protagonists in this field.

Compared to their predecessors of imperial times, public fountains of Late Antiquity have triggered only a negligible interest among scholars. This study presents a current overview on the topic. It focuses on newly built fountains and on the visual and functional maintenance of earlier ones in Late Antiquity. Through a combination of architectural, decorative, and technical data, the authors address the overall meaning of both monumental and modest public fountains in the late antique cityscapes of the eastern Mediterranean. A review of late antique fountain architecture in the light of past realizations demonstrates that, even if the trend of grand nymphaea was still present, new investments were more modest and/or cost-effective. This pragmatism also reveals itself in the practice of converting existing monuments into public fountains. The active preservation of older fountains shows an uninterrupted concern for their functional continuity and the upkeep of their pleasant appearance. Besides architectural repairs and the preservation or update of statuary programs, the various alterations made to the hydraulic apparatus demonstrate a great flexibility in the way water was made available to consumers. Even if some of these alterations may at first sight seem negative, in many cases they can also be interpreted as a willingness to increase the comfort of users and to maintain good water quality. Sometimes, however, the changes made to older fountains led to the almost total disappearance of their functions, even if their decorative facade could be maintained. Many of them were turned into genuine castella aquarum or redistribution stations. The [End Page 3] wide array of functional alterations analyzed here testifies to a new culture of water management in many late antique cities. Water resources became increasingly diversified through the dissemination of fountains and basins of various sizes in the most densely populated areas. The aesthetic maintenance of earlier fountains, the pragmatic investment in new ones, and the willingness to improve comfort and to bring water resources closer to consumers all demonstrate the existence of a vivid late antique fountain culture.

Pagan and mythological statuary still functioned in the Late Roman city. Studies on this kind of imagery all too often focus on only one aspect or one type of action, frequently assuming that destruction was the preferred way of dealing with conflicted images. To understand the status of statues in an age when the Christian faith was steadily conquering the Roman world, an overview based on various kinds of evidence ranging from production and conscious preservation to violent destruction Is necessary. This article brings this data together for the cities of Asia Minor to enhance the general picture.

In Late Antiquity, cities and other important settlements in the Eastern Mediterranean almost completely disappeared from view behind massive fortifications. The walled areas could then only be entered through a small number of highly visible gates. This article investigates the physical appearance of these gates. It presents an overview of their basic requirements and their additional architectural and figurative decoration. It then attempts to explain why these features were used and how this relates to the nature of the settlement - imperial capital, ‘normal’ city, border town or Christian sanctuary - to which they belonged.