Last suppers at Sardis

Abstract

AbstractThe realia of shared meals provide a key index for social behavior in Late Antiquity. Much attention has been paid to the architecture and ceramics of dining, but usually separately and from unrelated contexts. Three excavated rooms at Sardis present an opportunity to extend this discussion to the furnishings that once stood at the center of domestic hospitality. Nearly complete marble tabletops recovered from their places of intended use show differing approaches to the physical and social arrangements of convivial dining, with implications for interpreting reception areas in Late Roman houses. Circumstances of preservation indicate that all three rooms were leveled, probably by earthquakes, in the early 7th c. CE.