The Prison Project: New Research on Ancient Incarceration | Mark Letteney | 16.09.2024

The Prison Project at the University of Copenhagen studies material aspects of ancient incarceration, focusing on archaeological, epigraphic, and papyrological evidence for carceral practices across the ancient Mediterranean world. This year at the Danish Institute, Principal Investigator Matthew Larsen and members of the team will present pieces of their ongoing work, which is funded by the Carlsberg Foundation. Mark Letteney’s introductory lecture on September 16th outlines the project and presents the variety of carceral practices during the Roman imperial period. Using evidence from his and Larsen’s co-authored monograph Ancient Mediterranean Incarceration, Letteney will argue that prisons dotted the ancient landscape from city centers to private villas and industrial centers of extraction on the imperial peripheries, and that their captives were fully integrated into the legal, economic and social apparatus of the Roman empire. Mark Letteney is assistant professor at the University of Washington and serves as assistant director on the excavation of the Roman 6th Legion at Legio, Israel, where he directs excavations in the legionary amphitheater, and co-director of the Solomon's Pools Archaeological Project. He is the author of the monograph, The Christianization of Knowledge in Late Antiquity: Intellectual and Material Transformations. His second book, Ancient Mediterranean Incarceration (co-authored with Matthew David Larsen) is under contract with University of California Press. The lecture is followed by a discussion led by Sarah Morris, Steinmetz Professor of Classical Archaeology and Material Culture at UCLA