Arizona State Museum Deputy Director Dr. Irene Bald Romano reports on her summer 2012 research in Italy. Dr. Romano came to ASM and the University of Arizona last February. She is a specialist in Greek cult practices, Greek and Roman sculpture, terracotta figurines, and Hellenistic pottery, and is the author/co-author of five books and numerous articles on those topics. Dr. Romano has conducted fieldwork in Spain, Italy, Greece, and Turkey. She currently serves as a senior archaeologist with the Mt. Lykaion Excavation and Survey Project in Greece.
This past summer I was deeply immersed in ancient Italian sculpture! Not so unusual since my area of scholarly expertise is Greek and Roman sculpture and the use and presentation of classical sculpture in various contexts. My summer’s research in Italy was mostly picking up loose threads of work that I had begun in previous years — in Rome, the Alban Hills, the Bay of Naples region, and Umbria.
One area of my research focuses on understanding the limestone monument bases from the Sanctuary of Zeus on Mt. Lykaion in Arcadia, Greece. I work with David Gilman Romano and George H. Davis, both faculty at the University of Arizona, and with an international team of archaeologists, architects, geologists, and other specialists on The Mt. Lykaion Excavation and Survey Project
at Mt. Lykaion.
We are trying to make sense of 45 limestone bases from the 6th to 3rd centuries B.C. that once supported sculpture, inscribed stelai, anthropomorphic pillars, columns, and possibly bronze tripod cauldrons and other votive or honorific monuments. Unfortunately, few of the monuments themselves survive, and none of the bases are inscribed, so it is a puzzle that requires studying the ancient literary sources, the form of the base, the cuttings, the position of the monument, and other clues in order to shed some light on their use. The broader goal is to provide insights into the character of the Sanctuary of Zeus and its cult activity in various periods. We are also interested in documenting the use of local limestone at this important sanctuary of the Arcadian region.
Another mission of this research trip was to examine the sculpture excavated at the site of Puteoli (modern Pozzuoli) in the Bay of Naples region, housed in the Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei in the Castello Aragonese in the beautiful town of Baia. I stayed at the International Vesuvian Institute in Castellammare di Stabia with other scholars working on sites in the region. From my room I had amazing views across the Bay of Naples to Mt. Vesuvius that I climbed to the top of one hot day!
I have previously published on an important inscription and sculptural monument from Puteoli in the collections of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. 
The marble inscription honoring the emperor Domitian was erased after his assassination and public condemnation (damnatio memoriae) in A.D. 96, and reused in the Trajanic period (ca. A.D. 102) when the back was carved in high-relief with members of the Praetorian Guard. A joining fragment of this monument is in Berlin, and I wanted to check a Puteoli sculpture in the Baia museum to see if there were any other fragments of the same monument. I located what I believe is another fragment, and am pursuing further study of it, including analysis of the marble of the fragments in Berlin and Baia to see if they are compatible and likely part of the same monument.
While in Italy I visited other archaeological sites and museums to follow up on research questions related to these projects and additional ones. Since I am teaching an undergraduate course this fall called “Critical Issues for Museums in the 21st Century” I was especially interested to see what was happening in Italian museums, which, from the origins of museums, have been at the forefront, pushing in new directions and setting high standards for aesthetics in museum architecture and exhibition design. I visited Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli, Ostia, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae, and spent many hours in the Naples Archaeological Museum, the Capitoline Museum, and the Museo Nazionale Romano/Palazzo Massimo. My only regret is that I did not have time to go to some of the newer museums in Italy, providing myself with a good excuse to return to Italy soon!
