Finding Nero: shining a new light on Romano-British sculpture

School of Applied Sciences, Bournemouth University. Email: mrussell@bournemouth.ac.uk / hmanley@bournemouth.ac.uk

Cite this as: Russell, M. and Manley, H. 2013 Finding Nero: shining a new light on Romano-British sculpture, Internet Archaeology 32. https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.32.5

Summary

This article discusses the use of 3D laser scanning as an objective means to record and identify damaged Roman portraits in stone, in this case three mutilated images recovered from Romano British contexts that can now be identified as being of the fifth emperor of Rome, Nero (AD 54–68). The potential significance of such sculptured pieces has frequently been overlooked and the portraits themselves have, to date, made little or no contribution to the understanding of Roman art, the nature of imperial identity, the dissemination of artwork throughout the Roman world, the worship of the head of state in the provinces, or the development of Britain following conquest and assimilation by Rome. This report represents the first stage of a wider project set up to create a 3D digital database of Roman portraiture and the subsequent dissemination of datasets in an educational and interactive format.

Features

• Keywords: Roman; imperial portraiture; Nero; Britain; facial identification; 3D laser scanning; damnatio memoriae; memory sanctions; museum archives
• This article is Open Access, made possible by the generous support of the School of Applied Sciences, Bournemouth University.
• This article and associated image dataset will be of use to anyone with an interest in Roman material culture, imperial portraiture, facial recognition, the post-mortem treatment of sculptured images and the use of museum archives. The reproduction of images in 3D will permit the full examination of surface detail not immediately apparent to the naked eye and will prove of interest to a wide range of individuals from art historians, archaeologists, classical historians, academic researchers, museum curators and the general public.

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