Rebecca Sweetman

This book examines the rich corpus of mosaics created in Crete during the Roman and Late Antique eras. It provides essential information on the style, iconography and chronology of the material, as well as discussion of the craftspeople who created them and the technologies they used. The contextualized mosaic evidence also reveals a new understanding of Roman and Late Antique Crete. It helps shed light on the processes by which Crete became part of the Roman Empire, its subsequent Christianization and the pivotal role the island played in the Mediterranean network of societies during these periods. This book provides an original approach to the study of mosaics and an innovative method of presenting a diachronic view of provincial Cretan society.

This book offers a new perspective on, and approach to the study of Roman colonial foundations.  The collection of papers comes from the 2007 conference, 100 Years of Solitude, Colonies in the first century of their foundation held in St Andrews. This volume brings together studies on Roman colonies of the Eastern and the Western Empire across a period of some 400 years. The contributors address key questions about the nature of the foundation and development of colonies using literary, epigraphic, numismatic, architectural and other archaeological evidence to challenge traditional ideas of what a Roman colony is. While the papers focus on diverse colonies, several critical themes remain common to many, such as issues of patronage, changing relationships with Rome, the time it takes for the effects of the colonial status to be visible in the archaeological record, and topics relating to different levels of identity and defining population groups. Altogether, the work provides an inclusive geographical and chronological approach which allows an examination of both local and Roman perspectives, and shows that the foundation and development of a colony are not homogenous processes.