Late Roman wall painting at Sardis

This dissertation catalogs and analyzes the Late Roman wall painting found in sepulchral, domestic and public spaces at the city of Sardis, in western Turkey. The majority of paintings date from the fourth to sixth centuries C.E. and present a rare opportunity to compare paintings from functionally different spaces at one archaeological site. The painting styles and motifs have been examined in three ways: in the context of the city of Sardis to understand how sepulchral, domestic and civic painting did or did not relate to one another in the context of Late Roman painting, in order to understand how Sardis' traditions are similar to or distinct from painting in other Roman cities and fit into the broader evolution of Roman wall painting and in the context of the wider development of Late Antique art.The styles of painting in tombs and in houses at Sardis are largely unrelated, with freefield floral painting in fourth-century tombs and mostly incrustation style painting in fifth- and sixth-century houses. At comparable sites, such as Ephesus, stylistic comparanda are found, but at an earlier date and with more overlap between domestic and sepulchral painting. This difference may be a matter of local trends or the happenstance of discovery. The types of painting at Sardis have parallels in the region and in the broader Roman world. However, the very closest parallels come from western Anatolia, which suggests a regional visual language.The disparate styles at Sardis all reflect larger stylistic and iconographic trends in decoration and ornament in the Late Antique period. The approach to the painted wall surface shares the planar, two-dimensional treatment of space and use of repeated patterns also echoed in other media such as mosaic and textiles. Multivalent imagery is typical of Late Antique syncretism that reflects a common Greco-Roman cultural identity with symbols that could be interpreted for religious or secular use. The remains at Sardis thus reflect a broader Late Antique visual language with strong regional parallels.