Both interdisciplinary groups examine the grossly understudied evidence for the public parks of ancient Rome. Three core "prisms" through which to view the causes and long duration of the Roman landscape tradition: I. Orientation, in Republican and Augustan Rome and its monuments’ influential afterlife, the garden-museum Portico of Pompey in the Campus Martius, and its zone of public benefice (grain storage and distribution, bathing and spectacle sites), religion and commerce related to natural productivity, and civic activity (the Saepta (Voting Precinct) and Diribitorium). II. The Templum Pacis of the first Flavian emperor Vespasian, emulatory like the Flavian Sanctuary of Divus Claudius specifically of the earlier "garden" monument, so innovating as a museum of culture in the series of imperial fora and sacred landscapes (including the Forum Romanum) accumulating to make Rome’s heart. III- Third, the Flavian transformation in Domitian’s Domus Flavia of the imperial Palatine (paradigm to the later western and Byzantine "palace") into an accessible, intensively gardened and decorated terrain maintained (like the two prior cases) into late antiquity (The two Pliny’s tree books and villa letters, and Flavian place poetry, as gloss).

Around these prismatic cases, the seminar(s) will constellate data from science analysis of terrain, soils and materials; archaeological analysis of structures and topography; period texts (prose, poetry, treatise, letters); the Severan Marble Plan and Roman itinerary texts; mass-produced and monumental images within these sites and relating to them (e.g. Arch of Titus), etc.. Contexts of special interest are how these accumulating display sites addressed, as mythic paradigms for high and urban civilization: the productive and numinous landscapes of Italy and the wider empire (especially, Palestine and the Near East); the glorification of "plant" and "water" knowledge and technology; and the propaganda of (imperial) government as assuring the pleasure, sustenance and cultural well-being of the governed. The joint, co-supervised courses will communicate virtually (Distributed/Distance Learning) and by physical meeting, and in combination produce the originary components of a multi-authored web site (e.g. art programs, text translation and commentary, etc. linked with plans and graphics.) Potential excavation and site research component. Course cap: 18. Participation encouraged from ArtH, AAMW, AncH, ClSt, RelSt, AMES, Anthro, GSFA grad. groups.