INCE THEY FIRST BECAME the subject of intensive study in the 186os, Roman sarcophagi have posed many questions for modern viewers. Early investigators, Otto Jahn and Carl Robert, for example, examined sarcophagi primarily for their iconographic content: to link them with lost Greek paintings or simply to understand them on their own terms. Beginning in the 192os, scholars such as Gerhart Rodenwaldt and Friedrich Matz considered how sarcophagi related to the overall development of Roman art; the questions they initiated led eventually to those of chronology and workshop attribution, which Bernard Andreae and others pursued in later years. More recently, the focus of inquiry has again shifted in the direction of the logistical and economic aspects of Roman sarcophagus production. Quarrying practices, marble identification, and patterns of marble distribution' have now emerged as appropriate fields of investigation for students of sarcophagi. In keeping with the latest direction of inquiry, this article will investigate the celebrated Badminton sarcophagus in the Metropolitan Museum (Figure 1)2 for technical evidence as to its design and execution. A large and impressive lenos (vat-shaped) casket of the highest quality, the New York-Badminton sarcophagus was carved in Rome in the first half of the third century A.D.3 Conventionally labeled a Dionysiac Seasons sarcophagus, it depicts personifications of the four Seasons (in cyclical order from left to right, Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn), flanking a central group consisting of Dionysus on a panther and an accompanying retinue of satyrs, maenads, and pans. Although the Seasons complement the Dionysiac realm thematically, the particular iconographic combination of the Seasons with the panther-riding god that appears in the New York chest is relatively rare.