Reviews
(2210±50 cal BC) through to a date-stone from
around the time of Ramesses X (1060±60 cal BC).
Finally, there are Ramessid storage jars (c. 1300–
1000 BC) bearing pot-marks in the form of charming
incised sketches of donkeys.
The 30 or so discrete archaeological sites that
make up the main points along the trail are above
all characterised by the survival of pottery vessels
of various dates, including the so-called Sheikh
Muftah ceramics used by nomadic pastoralists roughly
contemporary with the late Old Kingdom Egyptians.
The Egyptian vessels are mostly quite large closed
forms, presumably for water storage, and it is notable
that the most frequent types of container are,
chronologically, also among the earliest, that is, Sixth
Dynasty and First Intermediate Period (c. 2200–2100
BC). Not surprisingly, the latter are strikingly similar
to those excavated by a French team at the major Old
Kingdom town of Ayn Asil, in the Dakhla Oasis. The
use of large groups of pottery vessels as ‘water depots’
substituting for wells or springs, in order to allow
the crossing of barren desert regions, is mentioned by
Herodotus (Book III, 6–7), and it seems that the Abu
Ballas trail is perhaps our best archaeologically attested
instance of such a strategy. There are also some
sporadically surviving unusual artefacts (pp. 286–
310) that provide invaluable insights into the day-
to-day operation of the Abu Ballas donkey caravans,
including substantial fragments of a pack-bag woven
from plant materials, fragments of leather and a
sandstone Senet gaming board found near a cave
entrance at Abu Ballas itself. The fact that the
latter was identified and photographed in October
2000, but then subsequently mysteriously removed,
is just one of many indications of the increasing
vulnerability of the sites along the Abu Ballas trail.
The current severe dip in Egyptian tourism, although
disastrous economically and socially, has at least
significantly reduced the frequency of desert safari
trips, which seem to have been responsible for a
great deal of the looting of sites that were previously
protected primarily by their remote locations. Desert
routes such as the Abu Ballas trail are very fragile
resources, making the work of dedicated desert
archaeologists such as Förster all the more crucial.
Reference
FÖRSTER, F. & R. KUPER. 2003. Abu Ballas (‘Pottery
Hill’): call for information. Sahara 14: 167–68.

C Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2016
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IAN SHAW
Department of History and Archaeology,
University of Chester, UK
(Email: ishaw@chester.ac.uk)
GILBERT J. GORSKI & JAMES E. PACKER. The Roman
Forum: a reconstruction and architectural guide. 2015.
xxii+437 pages, 247 colour and 60 b&w illustrations.
New York: Cambridge University Press; 978-0-521-
19244-6 hardback £150.
With this volume—
a type of guide-
book—Gilbert Gor-
ski and James Packer
set out to treat
the Roman Forum
as an architec-
tural entity, detail-
ing the relation-
ships between its
many monuments
and buildings. The result is a lavish volume, packed
full of colour illustrations; it is also large, weighing
almost three kilograms. Production quality is thus to
the fore, even if it comes at a premium in terms of
price.
Rather than a conventional archaeological guidebook,
the focus is primarily on the provision of architectural
reconstruction drawings. This format links to the
tradition of architectural drawing and reconstruction
that lay at the heart of the work of the Prix de Rome
scholars from the seventeenth century onwards, and
the production, in the nineteenth century, of the
lavish volumes by Luigi Canina (e.g. 1851). The
latter’s work included images, both of the standing
remains and their architectural reconstruction. By
the end of that century, however, the veracity of
his reconstruction drawings had come into question.
Murray’s (1888) Handbook of Rome and its environs
stated categorically: “the imaginative archaeology
of Canina [ . . . ] can do nothing but mislead the
student” (p. 21). In the process, the very practice of
reconstruction itself had been brought into question;
as Flint (2000: 2–3, 139–66) points out, the unseen
proved to be problematic because you cannot know
what you cannot see.
Although this book seeks to show the architectural
relationships within the Forum, it only goes some
way to addressing this issue. The authors define
the Forum in terms of its component monuments,
providing a section on each; for example, the various
 Reviews
temples (including that of Vesta, and of Antoninus
and Faustina), basilicas, arches, columns and minor
monuments (e.g. the rostra). These sections form
the core of the volume in Part 2; they are preceded
in Part 1 with a discussion of the ‘Augustan
reconstruction of the Forum (31 BCE–14 CE)’ and
the chronology of the Forum ‘From Tiberius to
Phocas (14–608 CE)’, and the volume concludes,
in Part 3, with an overview of the Forum over time.
The decision to treat the Roman Forum in isolation
from the Forum of Julius Caesar and the Forum of
Augustus is strange given that these latter spaces were
physically joined to, and altered the very nature of,
the original Forum. We do, however, find discussion
of movement through the Roman Forum at the time
of Augustus (pp. 336–47), and the book is at its most
successful when, for example, highlighting changes
in the experience of entering the Forum from the
Vicus Tuscus at different dates (fig. 21.7 and fig. 21.8,
p. 343).
The authors provide useful notes that refer the reader
to the sources of information, ancient and modern,
that underlie the new reconstruction drawings.
There is, however, a sense of unease in viewing
these images—will they be seen by the naı̈ve as
‘real’? At the heart of this unease is the method
of reconstruction itself. For example, the Parthian
Arch is placed with certainty in the Forum; the
authors’ reconstruction combines the evidence of
extant foundation walls with representations of the
arch as featured on coins. But with two different
coin images to choose from, the authors have had
to decide which they believe to be more correct.
Moreover, some elements of the representations on
the coins are also rejected by the authors as “an
earlier design” for the monument, on the basis
that “the columns could not have had the same
proportions as the surviving capital and entablature
fragments” (pp. 306–307). This particular example
poses wider questions about the ways in which
monuments were represented on coins and how
these images may be used to reconstruct their actual
appearance.
There are some niggling tendencies across the volume.
For example, the authors reconstruct the thought
processes of emperors: “Severus must have appreciated
[his Arch’s] innovative decoration” (p. 50). More
significantly, our gaze into the recreated Forum is
characterised by a seemingly neutral, or perhaps
‘objective’, viewpoint, and the scenes enlivened by
the inclusion of rainbows, a snow-scene and lighting
1407
that looks ‘pretty’. Yet, the choice of viewpoint, along
with decisions about lighting as a result of the time
of day or season of the year, produces an inevitably
subjective rendering of the Forum. Also inserted
into the images are trees on the skyline, as well as
the authors themselves, clad in togas in the Domus
Tiberiana!
Issues of polychromy are hardly explored in favour
of rendering the reconstructed buildings in white.
The result verges on the picturesque of the nineteenth
century, and the potency of a space—the Forum
Romanum—designed to reveal the power of the state
and its emperor is simply absent. A particular issue is
that buildings from earlier periods do not appear to
age or require restoration as time passes. Worryingly,
when such restoration is acknowledged, as in the
case of the Temple of Concordia on the basis on
a third-century AD inscription (CIL VI 89), this
later version of the temple is then teleported back
in time to be included—along with its third-century
AD inscription—in the reconstructions of the Forum
dating to AD 14, 98 and 211.
The questions around the purpose of such
reconstructions are as strong in the twenty-first
century as they were 100 or more years ago.
However diligent the process of reconstruction may
be, the choices of style, content and composition
determine the outcome. This book will be a source
for the discussion of the value of reconstruction
in archaeology and the problem of how to reveal
the unseen or unknown—a question with which
our predecessors grappled in response to the advent
of photography. Such new technologies provide
opportunities and may alter our perceptions of
the unseen, but the nineteenth-century debate over
reconstruction remains relevant to archaeology today.
My understanding is that the images are not
available in any open-access format, presumably
in the hope of their monetisation. If your library
can afford it, this book will provide your students
with a set of illustrations for their critique and
the discussion of the role of reconstruction in
archaeology.
Review
References
CANINA, L. 1851. Vedute dei principali monumenti di
Roma antica. Roma: s.n.
FLINT, K. 2000. The Victorians and the visual
imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.

C Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2016
 Reviews
MURRAY, J. 1888. A handbook of Rome and its environs.
London: John Murray.
RAY LAURENCE
Classical and Archaeological Studies,
University of Kent, UK
(Email: r.laurence@kent.ac.uk)
PETER HALKON, MARTIN MILLETT & HELEN WOOD-
HOUSE (ed.). Hayton, East Yorkshire: archaeological
studies of the Iron Age and Roman landscapes.
Volumes 1 & 2 (Yorkshire Archaeological Report 7).
2015. xix+588 pages, numerous b&w illustrations,
tables. Leeds: Yorkshire Archaeological Society; 978-
0-9932383-2-1 paperback £30.
Following excava-
tion and survey pro-
jects on the Iron Age
and Romano-British
landscapes in the
Holme-on-Spalding
Moor area and
at Shiptonthorpe,
this is the third
landscape study undertaken by Peter Halkon and
Martin Millett in East Yorkshire since the early 1980s
(Halkon & Millett 1999; Millett 2006). As with
Shiptonthorpe, Hayton lies on the road between
the Roman legionary fortress and later colonia at
York and the Roman town at Brough-on-Humber
at approximately the mid-point and a day’s march
from each. The first modern archaeology to be
undertaken in the village followed the discovery
of a Roman auxiliary fort (1.5ha in size) by aerial
photography in 1974, which was then part excavated
by Stephen Johnson in 1975. The evidence suggested
to him a short-lived occupation associated with the
early Flavian conquest of the north of England.
The combined impact of deep ploughing, intensive
activity by metal detectorists and development
pressures led to a concentration of research on the 3
× 3km landscape block around Hayton from 1993–
2011. A variety of methodologies were deployed
to investigate the landscape: aerial photography,
LiDAR, systematic surface collection (field-walking),
geophysical survey (magnetometry), geochemical
survey and the excavation of a discrete site at
Burnby Lane, about 1km east of the Roman road,
to investigate the discovery of a small bath-house
following deep ploughing in 1993; the report on this

C Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2016
1408
excavation occupies about half of this two-volume
study.
The complementarity of the survey methods deployed
graphically illustrates the linearity of the roadside
settlement and the shallow depth at which it
lies. Particularly striking are the images of high
phosphorus and calcium concentrations and of the
surface collections of Roman pottery and ceramic
building material, none of which extend farther than
around 100m from the road frontage (figs 5.7 &
5.9). Along with the careful cataloguing of metal-
detected material, it is hard to see what excavation
would add to the picture derived from non-invasive
survey, but this is where the Burnby Lane excavation
provides important perspectives, including invaluable
information on change over time, the nature of the
buildings and various categories of environmental
data (Chapters 7–19). But for a simple, small, row-
type bath-house, which belongs to a widespread
Roman tradition, the structures were of timber with
round houses giving way to rectangular structures and
occupation continuing from the late Iron Age until at
least the late fourth century AD.
Except for the connections afforded by the road,
a picture emerges of a settlement isolated from its
hinterland. This is emphasised by a wider, contextual
study of the coins found and reported through
the Portable Antiquities Scheme from an area of
approximately 30 × 20km, extending either side
of the Roman road from the Humber northwards
(Chapter 22). The fall-off in coin numbers within
less than 5km from the road is striking. Via the
road, however, the settlement was linked to a wider
world, demonstrating traditions and practices that
connected to central and southern England, and to
nucleated settlements of varying levels of complexity.
For example, we might pick out the tradition of
infant burial in and around buildings discussed in
Chapter 16 or the deposition of articulated animal
remains, including burnt material, well documented
here in Chapter 17. These examples have strong
resonance with practices in southern towns such as
Silchester (cf. Eckardt 2006) and Winchester, the
latter providing Mark Maltby (2010: 297–304) with
the opportunity for a wide-ranging review of the
evidence for articulated animal remains, or associated
bone groups, in urban contexts across Roman Britain.
Even the discovery of the occasional special find,
such as the exquisitely decorated piece of furniture,
probably a cupboard (pp. 304–306, fig. 11.4), and
apparently at odds with the very modest social