ERC Stone-Masters Project

📢We are delighted to share an ‼️ exciting discovery ‼️ made on the ERC Stone-Masters Project , which Paweł Nowakowski presented last week at the Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar at the University of Oxford, convened by Phil Booth, Stratis Papaioannou, and Ida Toth. While working on newly found inscriptions from western Anatolia, Pawel and Prof. Mustafa Adak identified inconspicuous fragments as the missing parts of a legal decision by the Praetorian Prefect of the East, Flavius Illus Pusaeus Dionysius, dated 480 CE. This important text deals with financial abuses by tax collectors in the estates of Placidia, the daughter of Emperor Valentinian III and mother of the great Late Roman aristocrat, Anicia Juliana. It provides valuable insight into the management of the imperial family's estates during the turbulent reign of Emperor Zeno.

The document has been known since 1745, when Richard Pococke visited Mylasa and documented it for the first time. We know it thanks to three inscriptions – one from Mylasa, one from Stratonikeia and one from Keramos. The text later attracted the attention of renowned epigraphists such as Louis Robert, Denis Feissel and, most recently, Anna Sitz.

The images attached to this post show the photographs of the old fragments made by Louis Robert in the 1930s and published by Denis Feissel.

The text is also of great interest to the STONE-MASTERS Project because of its unusual layout and faithful engraving of the Latin cursive script in the subscription, as well as the differences between the three copies, which shed light on the production process of such important official inscriptions. We will therefore be planning more events focused on this find.

Pawel and Mustafa are currently preparing the full publication of the new fragments, which should be ready in a few months.

During Pawel's time in Oxford, the STONE-MASTERS Team was also invited to present their current work. On Monday, during the Epigraphy Workshop convened by Marcus Chin, Charles Crowther, and Ariadne Pagoni, Pawel, together with Andrés Rea and Lorena Pérez Yarza, presented their study of serifs from the sanctuary of Hecate at Lagina near Stratonikeia, which they argued were a manifestation of interactions between Roman and Greek carving cultures.

Uniwersytet Warszawski

We are pleased to share that, on Saturday, the speakers Martyna Świerk, Lorena Pérez Yarza, Marta Fernández Corral, and Marina Bastero Acha participated in the panel Hands at Work in Stone: Identifying Epigraphic Styles, Workshops, and Individual Artisans in Antiquity at the Colloquia Ceranea VIII (University of Lodz).

Organised within the framework of the ERC Stone Masters Project, the panel explored how the material and technical study of inscriptions can help identify epigraphic workshops, carving practices, and even individual artisans across the ancient Mediterranean. Bringing together case studies from Roman and Late Antique contexts, the contributions examined the production processes behind inscriptions and mosaics, highlighting the importance of craft, materiality, and embodied technical knowledge in the making of written monuments.

The papers addressed topics ranging from the self-representation of mosaicists in Late Antiquity, to the technical diversity of Roman epigraphic production, and the identification of workshops and carving hands in the inscriptions of Lara de los Infantes (Burgos, Spain). Collectively, the panel demonstrated the value of practice-oriented approaches to ancient epigraphy and contributed to restoring analytical visibility to the artisans whose work shaped the inscribed landscapes of antiquity.

As advertised, the Warsaw Epigraphy and Papyrology Seminar hosted Hernán González Bordas (CNRS and Université Bordeaux-Montaigne). He gave a very engaging paper on the palaeography of publications of agrarian laws from Roman North Africa. We also had excellent respondents, including colleagues from the Musti Archaeological Project: Tomasz Waliszewski and Karol Kłodziński. It was a very eventful day which provided us with many new insights!