Elizabeth Baltes

This article examines a prominent but overlooked feature of the landscape of the Athenian Agora: a monumental stepped base located at the north corner of the east wall of the Odeion. Archaeological evidence suggests that this monument was one of such importance that the construction of the Odeion accommodated the existing monument rather than displacing it. By integrating archaeological and literary evidence and leveraging 3D-modeling techniques, this article suggests that the stepped base is a strong candidate for the Tyrannicides monument. The permanence of this monument in the landscape helps challenge the persistent narrative of aggressive Romanization within the Agora.

Monument Avenue, a national historic landmark in Richmond, Virginia, has long been famous for its grand portrait monuments honouring local Civil War “heroes.” In 1996, the memorial landscape changed radically with the addition of a bronze portrait statue of Arthur Ashe, a black American who was honoured for his accomplishments as an international tennis star, an author, and a humanitarian. The location and the design of Ashe’s portrait
monument generated heated debate, and its ultimate inclusion on Monument Avenue was an attempt to challenge the traditional meaning of the space as a memorial to the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. In this article I trace how the racialised narrative of Monument Avenue has been constructed, challenged, upheld, and mediated throughout its long and
troubled history. I begin by looking to antiquity both as a framework for understanding how statues have historically worked to construct and challenge cultural narratives and as a means of placing viewer reactions to portrait monuments in a broader historical context. Against this background, I argue that the portrait statue of Arthur Ashe ultimately failed to establish an effective counter-narrative to the traditional interpretation of Monument Avenue as a celebration of a white, Confederate past. Finally, I suggest that repeated small-scale interventions, often in the form of graffiti, have been more successful in confronting, mediating, and challenging the visual message Confederate monuments continue to embody.

This chapter examines how we, as archaeologists, can recognize change in the statue landscape. I deploy archaeological, literary, and epigraphic evidence to demonstrate that statues are not the fixed points in the ancient landscape they often appear to be—they are repositioned with much more regularity than is usually presumed.

In 2010 a local Virginia paper published the results of a recent contest to complete the phrase, " You are very Richmond if… " The winning entry: " …Your favorite monument is Arthur Ashe because it proves Richmond isn't racist. " This problematic statement refers to Monument Avenue, a national historic landmark in Richmond, VA, famous for its grand portrait monuments honoring local Civil War " heroes, " including Confederate general Robert E. Lee and President of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis. This public space has become a defining and contentious aspect of the city's identity, functioning simultaneously as a civic commemorative space; a physical embodiment of local, regional, and national history; a site of constructed social memory; and a locus of racial tensions. In the early decades of the twentieth century the little political power held by African Americans in Richmond was stripped away under Jim Crow, and the black community as a whole was effectively disenfranchised. Early ideological challenges to Monument Avenue thus came to nothing, and later interventions, deemed " vandalism, " were quickly erased from sight. In the 1960s, amid white fear that if African Americans gained control of the city council, they would tear down the statues on Monument Avenue, Lee's monument was made property of the state, making it virtually untouchable. White politicians had taken from the African-American community the most powerful symbolic response it could have made: removing the Confederate portraits on Monument Avenue. How, then, might the resulting social narrative of white southern dominance be challenged? In 1996, after more than a century as the exclusive domain of Confederate heroes, the statuescape of Monument Avenue changed radically with the addition of a bronze portrait statue of Arthur Ashe. Ashe, a local son of Richmond, was honored for his accomplishments as an international tennis star, an author, and a humanitarian. He also happened to be black. The siting—not to mention the design—of Ashe's portrait statue generated heated debate, and its ultimate inclusion on Monument Avenue faced disapproval from a majority of both the white and black communities in Richmond. Both felt the placement of the statue was inappropriate, but for very different reasons. Its presence, however, has challenged the traditional meaning of the space as a landscape honoring the Lost Cause. Despite the counter-narrative Ashe's statue presents (and perhaps, in part, because of it), Monument Avenue remains a flashpoint of racial tension in Richmond. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement and the recent presidential election, the Confederate monuments in this space continue to draw small-scale interventions, often in the form of graffiti, that attempt to mediate and challenge the visual message these statues embody. The " troubling history " of this contested space and the ongoing debates surrounding its monuments provide an ideal case study for this exciting conference. My paper will explore the ways in which the (white) social narrative of Monument Avenue has been constructed, challenged, upheld, and mediated throughout its long history. Fundamental to this study is an attempt to understand how portrait monuments engage their viewers and why we respond to them in the ways we do.

Portrait statues were a common feature of life in the Hellenistic world, and, indeed, the orator Demosthenes famously counted the honor of a portrait statue among those things that make life worth living. During the Hellenistic period the portrait statue became a standard way for cities to confer honors on living men and women, a practice that quickly gave rise to private (non-state-sponsored) honorific portraits. In short order, privately dedicated portraits began to accumulate in astonishing numbers in the sanctuaries and cities of Greece and Asia Minor. But why did so many men, women, and families invest so much money, time, and effort in setting up portrait statues? Portrait monuments, composed of the base, inscription, and one or more statues, were an effective way of expressing and visualizing in a relatively permanent way all sorts of personal and political relationships between states, cities, groups, and individuals. Perhaps more importantly, through portrait statues—as opposed to some other type of dedication or document—relationships were literally embodied in the physical representation of one or more of the parties involved. As a way of approaching the role of private portrait statues in Hellenistic society, this talk will explore the materiality, the physicality, and the agency of the portrait statue itself. I will elucidate what individuals and families got out of setting up portrait statues and, ultimately, why portraits supplanted other, more traditional, kinds of statue dedications in the Hellenistic period.

Location, location, location! This familiar phrase expresses perfectly the power of place, but we often forget that location was a primary concern in the dedication of ancient portrait statues. To put it simply, place mattered. But place was not a straightforward issue when it came to dedicating a statue in ancient Greece. “Reading” a portrait involved reading its context, as well. Viewers would be conditioned by the social, historical, political, and economic cues built into the portrait’s placement. Different locations (i.e. agora versus sanctuary space) connoted different sets of information, and thus, portraits functioned differently in different kinds of spaces. But the specifics of place mattered just as much as the broader setting. When Athens began awarding portrait statues to victorious generals in the fourth century BCE, it was necessary to stipulate that these new statues could not be set up near the existing portraits of Harmodius and Aristogeiton––the famous Tyrannicides. The Athenians clearly understood the power portrait statues could wield through association.

When we consider Greek portrait statues in context, then, where they stood is only one aspect of the discussion, albeit an important one. We must also ask what other statues stood nearby when they were set up and what portraits were added to the statue landscape later. In other words, we must acknowledge not only the power of portrait statues to shape, alter, refine, or even contest the meaning of the statues around them, but also the dynamic nature of viewing context. Through a case study and digital reconstruction of portrait statues in the Athenian Agora, this paper will explore how (changing) context shaped the meaning, function, and even perhaps the style of Greek portrait statues. This context will also offer a way to think about how portrait statues functioned within the broader context of Greek society.

In this paper, I offer a theoretical critique of digital modeling––a kind of self-assessment, if you will. The first part explores the creative nature of digital modeling and visualization in contrast to the inherently destructive process of archaeology. The second examines how digital technologies change our perception of the evidence. I use the term landscape as a theoretical tool to help think through what we are doing when we map and model the ancient world. The third part presents a case study of my ongoing work reconstructing the statue landscape of Delos. I assess how modeling and mapping technologies might further research in the humanities, and archaeology in particular, with an eye toward issues of selectivity, transparency, and uncertainty, as well as the methodological assumptions that may be built into digital environments.

Statues are all around us, but we often walk past them without reflecting on who or what they represent. Once shiny new landmarks in the built environment, statues can become invisible over time. In our hurry to get from one place to another, we do not stop to read the inscriptions that often tell us why the statue was set up. In any case, the information given on the statue base is only part of the story. Statues can “speak” to us in many ways, but what if we could actually give them a voice? What would they want to tell us about themselves?

This project, a collaboration between undergraduate students and faculty at Duke University and Coastal Carolina University, aims to help statues speak, to help them tell their own stories. By combining historical research with mobile and web technologies, we will present the “autobiographies” of the statues on Duke’s campus, exploring how they fit into the fabric of Duke’s history and the long-standing practice of setting up honorific portrait statues.

The ASA is an international platform aiming to promote the study and preservation of ancient sculpture under threat not only by organizing seminars and conferences, but also by making data available on our (forthcoming) website to facilitate study by a wider audience.

This article examines a prominent but overlooked feature of the landscape of the Athenian Agora: a monumental stepped base located at the north corner of the east wall of the Odeion. Archaeological evidence suggests that this monument was one of such importance that the construction of the Odeion accommodated the existing monument rather than displacing it. By integrating archaeological and literary evidence and leveraging 3D-modeling techniques, this article suggests that the stepped base is a strong candidate for the Tyrannicides monument. The permanence of this monument in the landscape helps challenge the persistent narrative of aggressive Romanization within the Agora.

Monument Avenue, a national historic landmark in Richmond, Virginia, has long been famous for its grand portrait monuments honouring local Civil War “heroes.” In 1996, the memorial landscape changed radically with the addition of a bronze portrait statue of Arthur Ashe, a black American who was honoured for his accomplishments as an international tennis star, an author, and a humanitarian. The location and the design of Ashe’s portrait monument generated heated debate, and its ultimate inclusion on Monument Avenue was an attempt to challenge the traditional meaning of the space as a memorial to the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. In this article I trace how the racialised narrative of Monument Avenue has been constructed, challenged, upheld, and mediated throughout its long and troubled history. I begin by looking to antiquity both as a framework for understanding how statues have historically worked to construct and challenge cultural narratives and as a means of placing viewer reactions to portrait monuments in a broader historical context. Against this background, I argue that the portrait statue of Arthur Ashe ultimately failed to establish an effective counter-narrative to the traditional interpretation of Monument Avenue as a celebration of a white, Confederate past. Finally, I suggest that repeated small-scale interventions, often in the form of graffiti, have been more successful in confronting, mediating, and challenging the visual message Confederate monuments continue to embody.