Late Roman belt

[Caballo]

"Of course, the only way to prove it would be to create a database of all such images"

As it happens, this is underway with the Last Statues of Antiquity project.http://www.ocla.ox.ac.uk/statues/index.shtml

"The aim of the ‘Last Statues’ project is to document and examine the remarkable changes in the way statues were used in Late Antiquity, in the context of contemporary historical and cultural developments. Changes in the statue-habit indeed provide a very effective way of charting and envisaging the broader transformations that created first ‘Late Antiquity’, and eventually the ‘End of Antiquity’ itself.
The project-team will collect all the evidence, empire-wide, for the erection of new statues, between about 280 and 650 AD: statue-bases with inscriptions (which provide most of the data); fragmentary and whole statues themselves; and scattered references to new statues in historical and literary texts. This systematic work of collection has never been done before....The project-team will eventually produce a study of ‘The Last Statues of Antiquity’, in book form. This will be supported by an illustrated and searchable on-line catalogue, freely available, of all the data for late antique statuary".

The online database which aims to have ALL Late Roman statues in it- searchable, online and free- was due to completed by Christmas when I talked to one of the contributors a month or so ago.



So Matt can carry on working up scabbards, swords and asorted belt parts rather than building a database....