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Ben Russell

University of Edinburgh, School of History Classics and Archaeology, Faculty Member

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Address: School of History, Classics and Archaeology,
University of Edinburgh,
Old Medical School,
Teviot Place,
Edinburgh EH8 9AG

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University of Oxford

Ursula Quatember

Karl Franzens Universität Graz

Philip T Stinson

University of Kansas

Angelos Chaniotis

Institute for Advanced Study

University of Oxford

Clemente Marconi

New York University

Ahmet Tolga Tek

Anadolu University

Pamukkale University

Hüseyin Köker

Suleyman Demirel University

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Books by Ben Russell

The Place of Palms: An Urban Park at Aphrodisias. Results of The Mica and Ahmet Ertegün South Agora Pool Project

by Andrew Wilson and Ben Russell

The Place of Palms: An Urban Park at Aphrodisias. Results of The Mica and Ahmet Ertegün South Agora Pool Project (Aphrodisias XIV). Reichert Verlag, Wiesbaden, 2024

Excavations at Aphrodisias in the 1980s revealed an extraordinary monumental water-basin (170 x 3... more Excavations at Aphrodisias in the 1980s revealed an extraordinary monumental water-basin (170 x 30m) in the centre of a colonnaded square, formerly called the ‘South Agora’. A hypothesis that the complex was not an agora at all but ‘the place of palms’ mentioned by a sixth-century benefactor in an inscription on its Propylon was demonstrated during a five-year excavation project — The Mica and Ahmet Ertegün South Agora Pool Project. This volume publishes the rich results of this excavation and the long life of the complex, from its construction in the first century, through rebuilding after a major earthquake in the late fifth century, to various destruction events (a Persian sack, an earthquake, and Arab raids) in the seventh century; and then the Seljuk and Ottoman settlement that developed over the silted-up pool. The pool in its Roman heydey was surrounded by palm trees and Ionic stoas, in the manner of the urban parks or porticus familiar in early imperial Rome. The Aphrodisian example gives us an entirely new sense of what these porticus complexes were like.

2021: The Value of Making: Theory and Practice in Ancient Craft Production

Hochscheid, H. and Russell, B. (eds) 2021. The Value of Making: Theory and Practice in Ancient Cr... more

2013: The Economics of the Roman Stone Trade

The Economics of the Roman Stone Trade (Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy). Oxford, 2013

The use of stone in vast quantities is a ubiquitous and defining feature of the material culture ... more The use of stone in vast quantities is a ubiquitous and defining feature of the material culture of the Roman world. In aggregate terms, more stone was probably quarried and consumed in building and sculptural projects in the first three centuries AD than at any time previously and for at least one thousand years afterwards; significant surplus capital were invested by individuals and communities in buying stone for both prestigious monuments and everyday commissions. While most of the stone for these projects was supplied from small local quarries dotted through the Roman world, enormous quantities of high-quality white and polychrome marbles, as well as fully- and part-finished products, were also moved all around the Mediterranean to meet demand for exotic material. The development of this long-distance stone trade, organised on a scale not matched again until the early modern period, remains one of the most remarkable features of Roman art and architecture. This study provides a new synthesis of all aspects of this phenomenon. The first two chapters of this study focus on the market for stone and its supply, dealing with the administration, distribution, and chronology of quarrying, based on a dataset of nearly 800 quarries. These are followed by a detailed assessment of the practicalities of stone transport, including a new evaluation of the shipwreck evidence, and the distribution patterns of stone in different areas of the Roman world. The final three chapters concentrate on the question of production, dealing in turn with architectural elements, sarcophagi, and statuary, exploring how the relationship between producer and customer functioned even over considerable distances.

2010: TRAC 2010. Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, Oxford 2010

Papers by Ben Russell

Kostoperska Karpa:New results from an integrated intensive field and remote sensing survey

This article summarizes the preliminary results of the 2015 and 2016 field campaigns of the Kosto... more This article summarizes the preliminary results of the 2015 and 2016 field campaigns of the Kostoperska Karpa Regional Archaeology Project. Work was conducted on three sites within the survey area, at Kostoperska Karpa, Klečovce-Crkvište, and near the village of Biljanovce, and involved field walking, ceramic survey, and geophysical prospection. The results presented will form the basis of future work of the project and demonstrate the potential of integrated field and remote sensing survey methods in this region.

New Excavations in the Central and Southern Sectors of Aeclanum in 2019 (Comune DI Mirabella Eclano, Provincia DI Avellino, Regione Campania)

Papers of the British School at Rome, 2020

Mud brick and pisé de terre between Punic and Roman North Africa

Excavation and Survey at Aeclanum in 2018 (Comune DI Mirabella Eclano, Provincia DI Avellino, Regione Campania)

Papers of the British School at Rome, 2019

The late-antique eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 472 and its impact from the Bay of Naples to Aeclanum

Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2019

The eruption of A.D. 79 has long dominated archaeological discourse on Vesuvius. Other eruptions,... more The eruption of A.D. 79 has long dominated archaeological discourse on Vesuvius. Other eruptions, both earlier and later, have received less attention but are no less valuable from an archaeological point of view.1 Those eruptions deposited distinctive volcanic materials often easily identifiable in the stratigraphic record, thereby providing dated termini ante quos, which can in turn offer a snapshot of life around the volcano in different periods. The eruption of A.D. 79 provides just such an horizon for 1st-c. A.D. Campania; the earlier ‘Avellino pumices eruption’ does the same for the Bronze Age.2 By tracking the volcanic deposits that can be tied to such events, the situation on the ground prior to the eruptions can be examined, as can the ways in which communities and landscapes reacted to, and recovered from, them.

Utica’s urban centre from Augustus to the Antonines

Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2019

Since 2010, a team from the Tunisian Institut National du Patrimoine and the University of Oxford... more Since 2010, a team from the Tunisian Institut National du Patrimoine and the University of Oxford1 has been investigating Utica’s monumental centre, located at the tip of the promontory on which the city is built (fig. 1). The range and scale of architectural elements littering this area were remarked upon by most antiquarian investigators of the site. Nathan Davis, working at the site in 1858, noted that, despite the fact that it “had been ransacked for building materials”, this part of the city was covered with “marble and granite shafts, capitals, and cornices, of every order, size, and dimension”.2 Alfred Daux even observed that local residents referred to the largest building of the zone as the “Dar Es Sultan” (Palace of the Sultan), such was its magnificence.3 Aerial photographs commissioned by A. Lézine in the 1950s (fig. 2) show the area at the head of the promontory almost completely robbed out during and immediately after the Second World War, giving it a rather desolate a...

New Work at Aeclanum (Comune DI Mirabella Eclano, Provincia DI Avellino, Regione Campania)

Papers of the British School at Rome, 2018

TRAC 2010: proceedings of the twentieth theoretical Roman archaeology conference

Excavations at Utica by the Tunisian-British Utica Project 2014

Interim report on the 2014 excavations at Utica.

2021: Roman stone carvers and their chaîne opératoire

Russell, B. 2021. 'Roman stone carvers and their chaîne opératoire', in The Value of Making: Theo... more

2021:Building with turf at Roman Vindolanda: multi-scalar analysis of earthen materials, construction techniques, and landscape context

Russell, B., Romankiewicz, T., Gardner, T., Birley, A., Snyder, J.R, and Beckett, C.T.S. 2021. 'B... more

2022: Another wall of turf': geoarchaeological analysis of the Antonine Wall at 72 Grahamsdyke Street, Laurieston, Falkirk

Romankiewicz, T., Russell, B., Bailey, G., Gardner, T., Snyder, J.R, and Beckett, C.T.S. 2022. ''... more

2021: 'On the Roman-Byzantine adoption of the stirrup once more: a new find from seventh-century Aphrodisias in Caria', Anatolian Studies 71: 129-139.

by Ben Russell and Tim Penn

2020: 'The energetics of lost cargoes: a new perspective on the late antique Marzamemi 2 wreck', Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 65: 194-260.

by Ben Russell and Justin Leidwanger

2020: 'New excavations in the central and southern sectors of Aeclanum in 2019 (Comune di Mirabella Eclano, Provincia di Avellino, Regione Campania)', Papers of the British School at Rome 88: 368-373.

by Ben Russell and Girolamo Ferdinando De Simone

2019: 'Sculpture new and old from the Antonine basilica at Utica', Archäologischer Anzeiger 2019/2: 206-235

The Place of Palms: An Urban Park at Aphrodisias. Results of The Mica and Ahmet Ertegün South Agora Pool Project

by Andrew Wilson and Ben Russell

The Place of Palms: An Urban Park at Aphrodisias. Results of The Mica and Ahmet Ertegün South Agora Pool Project (Aphrodisias XIV). Reichert Verlag, Wiesbaden, 2024

Excavations at Aphrodisias in the 1980s revealed an extraordinary monumental water-basin (170 x 3... more Excavations at Aphrodisias in the 1980s revealed an extraordinary monumental water-basin (170 x 30m) in the centre of a colonnaded square, formerly called the ‘South Agora’. A hypothesis that the complex was not an agora at all but ‘the place of palms’ mentioned by a sixth-century benefactor in an inscription on its Propylon was demonstrated during a five-year excavation project — The Mica and Ahmet Ertegün South Agora Pool Project. This volume publishes the rich results of this excavation and the long life of the complex, from its construction in the first century, through rebuilding after a major earthquake in the late fifth century, to various destruction events (a Persian sack, an earthquake, and Arab raids) in the seventh century; and then the Seljuk and Ottoman settlement that developed over the silted-up pool. The pool in its Roman heydey was surrounded by palm trees and Ionic stoas, in the manner of the urban parks or porticus familiar in early imperial Rome. The Aphrodisian example gives us an entirely new sense of what these porticus complexes were like.

2021: The Value of Making: Theory and Practice in Ancient Craft Production

Hochscheid, H. and Russell, B. (eds) 2021. The Value of Making: Theory and Practice in Ancient Cr... more

2013: The Economics of the Roman Stone Trade

The Economics of the Roman Stone Trade (Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy). Oxford, 2013

The use of stone in vast quantities is a ubiquitous and defining feature of the material culture ... more The use of stone in vast quantities is a ubiquitous and defining feature of the material culture of the Roman world. In aggregate terms, more stone was probably quarried and consumed in building and sculptural projects in the first three centuries AD than at any time previously and for at least one thousand years afterwards; significant surplus capital were invested by individuals and communities in buying stone for both prestigious monuments and everyday commissions. While most of the stone for these projects was supplied from small local quarries dotted through the Roman world, enormous quantities of high-quality white and polychrome marbles, as well as fully- and part-finished products, were also moved all around the Mediterranean to meet demand for exotic material. The development of this long-distance stone trade, organised on a scale not matched again until the early modern period, remains one of the most remarkable features of Roman art and architecture. This study provides a new synthesis of all aspects of this phenomenon. The first two chapters of this study focus on the market for stone and its supply, dealing with the administration, distribution, and chronology of quarrying, based on a dataset of nearly 800 quarries. These are followed by a detailed assessment of the practicalities of stone transport, including a new evaluation of the shipwreck evidence, and the distribution patterns of stone in different areas of the Roman world. The final three chapters concentrate on the question of production, dealing in turn with architectural elements, sarcophagi, and statuary, exploring how the relationship between producer and customer functioned even over considerable distances.

2010: TRAC 2010. Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, Oxford 2010

Kostoperska Karpa:New results from an integrated intensive field and remote sensing survey

This article summarizes the preliminary results of the 2015 and 2016 field campaigns of the Kosto... more This article summarizes the preliminary results of the 2015 and 2016 field campaigns of the Kostoperska Karpa Regional Archaeology Project. Work was conducted on three sites within the survey area, at Kostoperska Karpa, Klečovce-Crkvište, and near the village of Biljanovce, and involved field walking, ceramic survey, and geophysical prospection. The results presented will form the basis of future work of the project and demonstrate the potential of integrated field and remote sensing survey methods in this region.

New Excavations in the Central and Southern Sectors of Aeclanum in 2019 (Comune DI Mirabella Eclano, Provincia DI Avellino, Regione Campania)

Papers of the British School at Rome, 2020

Mud brick and pisé de terre between Punic and Roman North Africa

Excavation and Survey at Aeclanum in 2018 (Comune DI Mirabella Eclano, Provincia DI Avellino, Regione Campania)

Papers of the British School at Rome, 2019

The late-antique eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 472 and its impact from the Bay of Naples to Aeclanum

Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2019

The eruption of A.D. 79 has long dominated archaeological discourse on Vesuvius. Other eruptions,... more The eruption of A.D. 79 has long dominated archaeological discourse on Vesuvius. Other eruptions, both earlier and later, have received less attention but are no less valuable from an archaeological point of view.1 Those eruptions deposited distinctive volcanic materials often easily identifiable in the stratigraphic record, thereby providing dated termini ante quos, which can in turn offer a snapshot of life around the volcano in different periods. The eruption of A.D. 79 provides just such an horizon for 1st-c. A.D. Campania; the earlier ‘Avellino pumices eruption’ does the same for the Bronze Age.2 By tracking the volcanic deposits that can be tied to such events, the situation on the ground prior to the eruptions can be examined, as can the ways in which communities and landscapes reacted to, and recovered from, them.

Utica’s urban centre from Augustus to the Antonines

Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2019

Since 2010, a team from the Tunisian Institut National du Patrimoine and the University of Oxford... more Since 2010, a team from the Tunisian Institut National du Patrimoine and the University of Oxford1 has been investigating Utica’s monumental centre, located at the tip of the promontory on which the city is built (fig. 1). The range and scale of architectural elements littering this area were remarked upon by most antiquarian investigators of the site. Nathan Davis, working at the site in 1858, noted that, despite the fact that it “had been ransacked for building materials”, this part of the city was covered with “marble and granite shafts, capitals, and cornices, of every order, size, and dimension”.2 Alfred Daux even observed that local residents referred to the largest building of the zone as the “Dar Es Sultan” (Palace of the Sultan), such was its magnificence.3 Aerial photographs commissioned by A. Lézine in the 1950s (fig. 2) show the area at the head of the promontory almost completely robbed out during and immediately after the Second World War, giving it a rather desolate a...

New Work at Aeclanum (Comune DI Mirabella Eclano, Provincia DI Avellino, Regione Campania)

Papers of the British School at Rome, 2018

TRAC 2010: proceedings of the twentieth theoretical Roman archaeology conference

Excavations at Utica by the Tunisian-British Utica Project 2014

Interim report on the 2014 excavations at Utica.

2021: Roman stone carvers and their chaîne opératoire

Russell, B. 2021. 'Roman stone carvers and their chaîne opératoire', in The Value of Making: Theo... more

2021:Building with turf at Roman Vindolanda: multi-scalar analysis of earthen materials, construction techniques, and landscape context

Russell, B., Romankiewicz, T., Gardner, T., Birley, A., Snyder, J.R, and Beckett, C.T.S. 2021. 'B... more

2022: Another wall of turf': geoarchaeological analysis of the Antonine Wall at 72 Grahamsdyke Street, Laurieston, Falkirk

Romankiewicz, T., Russell, B., Bailey, G., Gardner, T., Snyder, J.R, and Beckett, C.T.S. 2022. ''... more

2021: 'On the Roman-Byzantine adoption of the stirrup once more: a new find from seventh-century Aphrodisias in Caria', Anatolian Studies 71: 129-139.

by Ben Russell and Tim Penn

2020: 'The energetics of lost cargoes: a new perspective on the late antique Marzamemi 2 wreck', Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 65: 194-260.

by Ben Russell and Justin Leidwanger

2020: 'New excavations in the central and southern sectors of Aeclanum in 2019 (Comune di Mirabella Eclano, Provincia di Avellino, Regione Campania)', Papers of the British School at Rome 88: 368-373.

by Ben Russell and Girolamo Ferdinando De Simone

2019: 'Sculpture new and old from the Antonine basilica at Utica', Archäologischer Anzeiger 2019/2: 206-235

2019: 'Excavation and survey at Aeclanum in 2018 (Comune di Mirabella Eclano, Provincia di Avellino, Regione Campania)', Papers of the British School at Rome 87: 336-340.

by Ben Russell and Girolamo Ferdinando De Simone

2019: 'The late-antique eruption of Vesuvius in AD 472 and its impact from the Bay of Naples to Aeclanum', Journal of Roman Archaeology 32: 359-389.

by Ben Russell and Girolamo Ferdinando De Simone

2019: 'Utica's urban centre from Augustus to the Antonines', Journal of Roman Archaeology 32: 66-96.

by Ben Russell, Imed BEN JERBANIA, and Elizabeth Fentress

2018: 'Stone quarrying in Greece: ten years of research', Archaeological Reports 63: 77-88.

The Art of Making in Antiquity: Stoneworking in the Roman World

The Art of Making in Antiquity: Stoneworking in the Roman World is a two-year research project fu... more The Art of Making in Antiquity: Stoneworking in the Roman World is a two-year research project funded by the Leverhulme Trust between July 2011 and June 2013 and based in the Departments of Classics and of Digital Humanities at King’s College London. The project’s aim is to enhance our understanding of the physical process of working stone in the Roman period and to investigate the relationship between the surviving objects, the techniques of production and their makers. This is achieved via a web resource which enables people to explore the tools, materials and processes used in the making of Roman stone monuments.

Carving Imperial Reliefs at Rome

Making the Art of Making in Antiquity

Stoneworking Tools and Toolmarks

Stoneworking Techniques and Processes

Thematic Bibliography

Stone Quarries Database

The Stone Quarries Database was compiled as part of my doctoral research. The database comes in t... more The Stone Quarries Database was compiled as part of my doctoral research. The database comes in two forms - an online version that can be queried through the above table view, and a downloadable PDF including a full gazetteer of quarry sites, and some introductory notes. The database includes all those quarries at which activity in the Roman period is proven or suspected. As such it builds on the ground-breaking studies of A. Dworakowska (especially Quarries in the Roman Provinces (Warsaw: Zaklad Narodowy, 1983)) and those by F. Braemer. It is intended to be used in conjunction with B. Russell, The Economics of the Roman Stone Trade (Oxford: OUP, forthcoming), Chapter 3 of which focuses on the overall distribution and chronology of the quarries listed in this database.

This is an on-going project and queries or new information are very welcome. The database will be routinely updated."

The Art of Making in Antiquity: Stoneworking in the Roman World

The Art of Making in Antiquity: Stoneworking in the Roman World is a two-year research project fu... more The Art of Making in Antiquity: Stoneworking in the Roman World is a two-year research project funded by the Leverhulme Trust between July 2011 and June 2013 and based in the Departments of Classics and of Digital Humanities at King’s College London. The project’s aim is to enhance our understanding of the physical process of working stone in the Roman period and to investigate the relationship between the surviving objects, the techniques of production and their makers. This is achieved via a web resource which enables people to explore the tools, materials and processes used in the making of Roman stone monuments.

Website of the Tunisian-British Utica Project

(2024) The Place of Palms: An Urban Park at Aphrodisias. Results of The Mica and Ahmet Ertegün South Agora Pool Project

by Ahmet Tolga Tek, Andrew Wilson, Ben Russell, and Hüseyin Köker

2024, The Place of Palms: An Urban Park at Aphrodisias. Results of The Mica and Ahmet Ertegün Sou... more 2024, The Place of Palms: An Urban Park at Aphrodisias. Results of The Mica and Ahmet Ertegün South Agora Pool Project (Aphrodisias XIV). Reichert Verlag, Wiesbaden. Excavations at Aphrodisias in the 1980s revealed an extraordinary monumental water-basin (170 x 30m) in the centre of a colonnaded square, formerly called the ‘South Agora’. A hypothesis that the complex was not an agora at all but ‘the place of palms’ mentioned by a sixth-century benefactor in an inscription on its Propylon was demonstrated during a five-year excavation project — The Mica and Ahmet Ertegün South Agora Pool Project. This volume publishes the rich results of this excavation and the long life of the complex, from its construction in the first century, through rebuilding after a major earthquake in the late fifth century, to various destruction events (a Persian sack, an earthquake, and Arab raids) in the seventh century; and then the Seljuk and Ottoman settlement that developed over the silted-up pool. The pool in its Roman heydey was surrounded by palm trees and Ionic stoas, in the manner of the urban parks or porticus familiar in early imperial Rome. The Aphrodisian example gives us an entirely new sense of what these porticus complexes were like.