A Jupiter Temple (?) Outside the West Gate of Venta Belgarum and the Development of Winchester’s Western Suburb

This paper deals with the Roman discoveries made in 1836–37 when the railway cutting was excavated on the west side of Winchester. These were studied by Charles Roach Smith and reported in The Gentleman’s Magazine and in the 1846 Winchester Transactions of the BAA. Several of the finds were of particular importance, including a copper-alloy head of Jupiter, a unique statuette of Omphale, likewise of copper-alloy, an intact copper-alloy jug, and two jug handles. The Omphale is still lost, but it emerged that the other objects were subsequently acquired by the British Museum.

These finds and such records of the excavation as were reported allow a re-evaluation of the western side of Venta Belgarum, which would seem to have had a special character throughout the Roman period, perhaps as a temple quarter. Antiquarian accounts can be of immense importance in modern archaeological research and, in this case, they highlight the key role of the BAA and one of its founders in the modern establishment of the discipline.     

Can we share an us-feeling with a digital machine? Emotional sharing and the recognition of one as another*

ABSTRACT

To share an us-feeling means to acknowledge one another. Can we share such a feeling with an extreme form of the other, for instance with a digital machine? The answer that is given in this article is ‘no’. Relevant tests like the Turing Test are based on a third-person perspective, whereas a second-person perspective would be needed.     

Iron in the soil: Living with military waste in Bosnia‐Herzegovina

Waste, in particular the waste produced by conflicts, has become a serious matter of concern in recent scholarship on materiality and society. But what is military post‐conflict waste, and what kind of materiality does it entail? This article retrains an ethnographic focus on post‐conflict materiality away from visible and easily recognized entities such as politicized monuments, towards (in)visible and misrecognized war remnants, those parts buried in the soil, in trees and sometimes in people's bodies. The article focuses on people's quotidian practices of re‐creating, re‐relating to and re‐dwelling in the world in the presence of military waste in rural Bosnia. It calls for an inclusive scholarship of materiality that takes the material‐cum‐emotional affects and effects that these material objects discharge upon persons as a matter of serious concern. The themes discussed in the article have far‐reaching implications, not just for Bosnian postwar anthropology, but for critically engaged anthropology and the role of the discipline in the contemporary world.     

A New Star Shining over Bath

The paper is concerned with some previously neglected features of the pediment of the temple of Sulis Minerva. It is argued that the star (related to the sidus Iulium), oak-wreath (corona civica) and armillary globe as well as the victories and tritons were all well-established aspects of Imperial iconography and consequently the work can be regarded as a sort of ' State relief '. The Bath temple appears to be the only major surviving monument concerned with the events of AD 43 and may have been dedicated in the time of the emperor Vespasian by the Great King, Togidubnus, at the western limit of his realm to mark the victory of the Atrebates/Regni and the Romans over a common foe. As such it should be viewed alongside other evidence from Chichester, including a sculptured base, as an indication of his vigorous attachment to the Imperial family and to Roman culture.