1st Edition
Rural Baths in Roman Britain A Colonisation of the Senses
1. Introduction; 2. An Ambiguous Heritage: Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Archaeology; 3. Villas and Rural Baths; 4. Early Rural Baths: A Colonisation of the Senses; 5. A Costly Showcase 1: Building and Maintaining a Set of Baths; 6. A Costly Showcase 2: Decorating the Baths; 7. Prestige and Competition in Late Roman Britain; 8. Conclusion.
Biography
Giacomo Savani is a Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Leeds. His research explores the adoption and adaptation of Roman culture across different spaces and times, focusing on bathing as a vector of political, social, and cultural interactions. He has published extensively on the reception of Roman baths in antiquarian texts and works of art, and he is currently working on the role of ancient hydrotherapy in creating gender-specific medical knowledge.
"...this book combines an overview of changing scholarly attitudes to Roman Britain with plentiful archaeological data, relevant Classical texts, and exciting new ideas about the senses. There is much here for specialists and amateurs alike." - Current Archaeology
"With this book [Savani] makes an important contribution to the new human-centred direction that current bath research is following. By placing the sensorial experience of the commissioners and users at the centre of his research, [Savani] demonstrates how baths spearheaded the cultural negotiation that characterises provincial context." - Classical Review
