Arja Karivieri Professor

Research

My research interests include the topography of Athens, Roman architecture (especially the archaeology of Ostia antica and Pompeii), mosaics, pottery (especially Greek and Roman oil lamps), sculpture; art and cultural policy in the age of Emperor Hadrian; Early Christian architecture and the use of spolia, as well as the cultural change in Late Antiquity.

My doctoral dissertation presented different aspects of the production of terracotta lamps in Athens from the 3rd to the 7th century AD, i.e. iconography, chronology, the organization of the lamp workshops, trade and local copying of Athenian lamps in different parts of the Late Roman world.

My studies on iconography include imperial portraits of the Early Roman period, iconography of oil lamps and mosaics. Though small objects, aimed for everyday use, lamps can give us important information about the ideological change in ancient society. Discus motifs on oil lamps reflect the changing attitudes in Late Antiquity, when Christianity became the main religion in the Mediterranean world: mythological motifs were successively abandoned and Christian symbols, as well as geometric, neutral motifs became dominating.
My studies on architecture include the archaeology and history of Ostia antica, Pompeian architecture, Late Roman villas and houses, Early Christian churches and the reuse of pagan and profane structures for church building.

Current projects, selection

I have continued lychnological studies by publishing, among others, studies on the ancient lamps at the Museum of Classical Antiquities at the Lund University, and I will publish the lamp finds from the Swedish excavations at the garden of the Villa of Livia at Prima Porta, and at the Sanctuary of Poseidon at Kalaureia, Poros. I have also acted as the president of the ILA, International Lychnological Association (2003-2015), an association that promotes the study of ancient lighting. ILA arranges international congresses and thematic round-tables in cooperation with museums, universities and other institutions.

I am a member of the executive committee of the Swedish Pompeii project since 2000, and I will publish the so-called House of Caecilius Iucundus in cooperation with Dr Renée Forsell from the Lund University. The fieldwork has been completed, and archival studies conducted since 2007. The field documentation and archival studies have already resulted in several studies (see www.academia.edu) and an on-line publication of field documentation sheets on the website of the Swedish Pompeii Project (www.pompejiprojektet.se) as preparation for the final publication of the project. Results of our study in the House of Caecilius Iucundus were presented in the exhibition “Pompeji” at Millesgården, Lidingö, 20 September 2014-18 May 2015.

Since 1999, I am the director of the excavation project of the Finnish Institute at Athens in an Early Christian Church at Arethousa in Northern Greece, where Finnish, Swedish and Greek scholars and students of Classical Archaeology participated in the fieldwork between 1999-2004. The results of the Arethousa project are published in the publication series of the Finnish Institute at Athens, the first volume was published in 2017.

From 2015 to 2019, I was the director of the project Segregated or Integrated? Living and Dying in the Harbour City of Ostia, 300 BCE-700 CE, financed by the Academy of Finland and Tampere University. One of the results of this project was the organisation of the exhibition Ostia, Gateway to Rome, in collaboration with Parco Archeologico di Ostia Antica and Museumcentre Vapriikki at Tampere, Finland (31 October 2019 – 10 January 2021, with 139 000 visitors) and the volume Life and Death in a Multicultural Harbour City: Ostia Antica from the Republic through Late Antiquity (ActaIRF, vol. 47), Rome: Institutum Romanum Finlandiae & Quasar, 2020. (see also my publications on DiVA from 2019 onwards).

Since 2022, students from Stockholm University participate in the international summer school Archaeological Heritage in Late Antique and Byzantine Sicily at Piazza Armerina. The summer school, where I am one of the professors, is directed by prof. Isabella Baldini and coordinated by the University of Bologna. I am also responsible for the restudy of terracotta lamps found in the excavations of the baths of Villa Romana del Casale.

Academic Award

In 2021, I received the "Prof. Luigi Tartufari" International prize in Archaeology from the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rome, ex aequo with Prof. Eva Margareta Steinby, Professor of the Archaeology of the Roman Empire, All Souls College, Oxford University.

Links

International Lychnological Association (http://www.lychnology.org)

The Swedish Pompeii project (http://www.pompejiprojektet.se/)

The Arethousa project (https://www.finninstitute.gr/en/paliambelan-varhaiskristillisen-kirkon-kaivaukset/)

Ostia – Segregated or Integrated? –project (https://projects.tuni.fi/ostia/)

Greece between Europa and Asia (GEA), Cambridge-Stockholm Collaborative Research Grant (2020-2023) (https://www.ccgs.csah.cam.ac.uk/subject/greece-between-europe-and-asia)

For publications, see also https://www.academia.edu/