The Department of Classical & Archaeological Studies is delighted to announce that Solinda Kamani has been awarded a PhD in Classical & Archaeological Studies, under the supervision of Dr Luke Lavan, with a thesis entitled ‘Neglected Architectural Decoration from the Late Antique Mediterranean City: Public Porticoes, Small Baths, Shops/Workshops, and “Middle-Class” Houses’.
Her thesis examines the neglected architectural decoration from the late antique Mediterranean city (ca.300-650 A.D.). It aims to address the omission in scholarly literature of any discussion about the decoration of non-monumental secular buildings, namely porticoes flanking streets, agorai, macella and ornamental plazas, small public baths, shops/workshops and ‘middle-class’ houses.
The decoration of non-monumental secular buildings has been overlooked in favour of more lofty buildings and remains thus far one of the least known aspects of the late antique city. The examination of their architectural decoration in Solinda’s thesis represents the first attempt to redress this imbalance.
Drawing upon an array of archaeological evidence, written sources and depictions, her thesis attempts to reconstruct how public porticoes, small public baths, shops/workshops, and ‘middle-class’ houses might have looked on a daily basis. The geographical area entailed in this study presented more challenges than when focusing on a single site or province. Such a cross-regional approach of the topic allowed her to consider the decoration of public structures as both part of the history of individual cities and as part of Mediterranean-wide trends, leading toward a more reliable visualisation of the late antique built environment.
Our congratulations to Dr Solinda Kamani.
For more details of research programmes in Classical & Archaeological Studies see: www.kent.ac.uk/secl/classics/postgraduate/index.html