Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere

The UF Synergies series features informal talks by the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere’s Rothman Faculty Summer Fellows, Tedder Doctoral Fellows, and Rothman Doctoral Fellows. Fellows will speak for 20 minutes in length about their funded work, leaving ample time for questions and discussion. Talks are paired across disciplinary boundaries to stimulate discussions about threads and connections across research areas and allow for synergies of ideas to emerge in interdisciplinary conversations.

Dr. Velvet Yates (Classics) “The ‘chain-saw’ in Archaic Greek quarries on Naxos and Paros”

Dr. Velvet Yates will present on her research on the gigantic unfinished statue that still lies in its quarry on the island of Naxos is surrounded by horizontal grooves cut into the marble cliffside. What tool made these marks? The light quarry pick, usually suggested by scholars, is impossible to wield in this situation. Based on comparative evidence from modern marble quarries and from the Roman quarries at Carrara, Italy, she suggests a type of ‘chain-saw’ incorporating emery stone, the second-hardest mineral in the world. Emery is still mined on Naxos today, and such use would also account for its abundance in the ancient marble quarries on neighboring Paros.

Mark Hodge (Art History) “From Portrait Blanks to Blank Portraits: Roman Sarcophagus Production and Religious Change in the Third Century”

Through an examination of their nodes of production and distribution, Mark Hodge’s presentation explores how Roman sarcophagi shaped and were shaped by the transformation of Roman religion in the third-fourth centuries. Sarcophagi were designed to be rapidly produced in large numbers, appeal to a wide audience and changing religious expectations. Patrons embraced the formal characteristics molded by these impetuses. Over the course of the third century CE, new meanings were applied to sculptural elements that originated within production strategies. The use of portrait blanks, for example, began as an efficiency measure between quarry workshops and local workshops, but eventually acquired meaning in their rough state.