THE PRISON PROJECT
Funded by
What?
The project "Materiality of Incarceration in Mediterranean Antiquity" will establish a research group of historians, archaeologists, and digital humanities experts at the University of Copenhagen to answer the questions: what did prisons look like and what it was like to experience incarceration in the ancient Mediterranean world.
Why?
While often though to be a globally urgent and uniquely modern problem, prisons and incarceration must have been a ubiquitous part of everyday life in the ancient Mediterranean world. The problem is that the materiality and archaeology of incarceration has almost entirely escaped the grasps of modern researchers. Scholars lament that ancient prisons are now gone and wrongly assert that we have no secure architectural evidence. I have demonstrated in recent publications that it is possible to securely identify prisons in the archaeological record (e.g. through the presence of prisoner graffiti inside rooms in secure buildings, through stocks attached to wall and chains with human remains still within them) as well as catalogued a significant amount of other material culture related to incarceration (e.g. several paintings of prison scenes from Pompeii). The project's hypothesis, then, is that incarceration remains hidden in the archaeological record, waiting to be exposed to scrutiny and integrated into our sense of the human past. The project's impact will be to disrupt a broad and century-old scholarly consensus about the prison relatively absent from the ancient world (Durkheim, Mommsen) and as born in early modern Europe and the US (Foucault), with the potential to shift central assumptions in the ancient Mediterranean world, not only opening up new lines of inquiry in my field of early Christianity — so full of sources on incarceration — as well as ancient Judaism, classics, early Islam, and medieval Europe.
How?
The project will first survey ca. 30 ancient prisons and sites of incarceration, producing high-resolution 3D models of each site through use of drones, ground and aerial imagery, laser scanning, and photogrammetry. With such survey and 3D models, team members will then study the different types and patterns of public prisons and other sites of incarceration. With a careful study of the archaeological remains of prison in place, the project will then synthesize the results with a catalogue of several hundred other material objects related to incarceration (paintings, statues, inscriptions, graffiti, etc.). The project's final phase will apply the material history of incarceration to our broader understanding of the the human past. The project will share its results not only through an international, interdisciplinary conference and scholarly publications, but also through a public website showcasing interactive 3D models of dozens of ancient prisons.
Materiality of Incarceration in Mediterranean Antiquity
Contributors: Niels Bargfeldt, Hallvard Indgjerd, Mark Letteney, Evan Levine, Rebecca Levitan, Naomi Reiss, Matthew D.C. Larsen
Synopsis of researching findings from The Prison Project, 2024.
Listen to more:
In this talk, Matthew Larsen discusses the recently identified prison of late antique Corinth and the lives and experiences its captives. First, his lecture discusses the Boudroumi and Northwest Shops in their initial construction and the key aspects of their later renovation into a carceral facility. It then discusses the prisoner graffiti left by the inmates of the prison on the floor and walls of the prison, which offer important social and cultural historical perspectives on the lived experiences of incarceration. It then situates the prison and its captives within the larger context of carcerality in ancient Corinth, as well as the ancient Mediterranean world more broadly. Especially, it contextualizes and offers new insight into the potential use of the Julian Basilica as a prison in the earlier imperial period, situates the renovations of the Boudroumi and Northwest Shops within the broader context of the earthquakes and subsequent renovations under the governor of Achaia at the end of fourth century CE, as well as the location of the prison within the shifting urban landscape of Corinth in Late Antiquity. After the lecture there will be a discussion led by Fotini Kondyli, Assoc. Prof. of Byzantine Art and Archaeology, University of Virginia, and Elizabeth A. Whitehead Distinguished Scholar at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Matthew Larsen is PI of the Prison Project: Materiality of Incarceration in Mediterranean Antiquity at The University of Copenhagen, where he is also Associate Professor (in Promotion Program). He is the author of Gospels before the Book (OUP, 2018), which won a Manfred Lautenschlaeger award, as well as numerous articles in leading journals. He is currently completing two book manuscripts: a monograph on early Christians and incarceration and an interdisciplinary book overviewing the institution of incarceration in Mediterranean antiquity (co-authored with Mark Letteney).