Late Antique Portraits in a Public Context: Honorific Statuary at Aphrodisias in Caria, A.D. 300–600

Abstract

Aphrodisias in Caria is an unusually well preserved site that offers exceptional material for a case-study of the impact of changed social, political, and religious structures on the urban centre of a medium-sized prosperous city of the Late Empire, probably typical of others in Asia. Against the background of the city's well preserved late antique townscape and the (relatively modest) architectural reconfiguring of its classical fabric, this paper looks at the public statuary of the period, its context and significance.