Ine Jacobs

Supernumerary Fellow in Classical Archaeology; Stavros Niarchos Foundation Associate Professor of Byzantine Archaeology and Visual Culture

Teaching

I teach late antique and Byzantine material and visual culture to graduate students of the Late Antique and Byzantine Studies course of the Department of History and to students of Classical Archaeology in the Department of Classics. In addition, I teach the late antique and Byzantine special subjects in the Final Honour Schools of Archaeology and Anthropology and of Classical Archaeology and Ancient History.

Research

My research focusses on the development of the Mediterranean in late antique and Byzantine times. It includes themes such as Late Roman and Byzantine architecture and urbanism, the reception of classical antiquity in later centuries and the archaeology of religion. I am particularly interested in how material evidence relates to and can or cannot be combined with contemporary literary sources. My current projects all focus on the influence of religion on late antique society. I am examining how the augmenting power of bishops over their congregations is expressed in the urban fabric as well as how ordinary Christians, Jews and pagans in Late Antiquity communicated with gods and supernatural powers.

In addition, I am field director at the Aphrodisias excavations in Turkey. Aphrodisias is a remarkably preserved Roman-period city in ancient Caria, SW Turkey, which was famous in antiquity for its sanctuary of Aphrodite and its marble sculptors. I also co-direct the Kostoperska Karpa Regional Archaeological Project in FYROM, a multi-disciplinary project seeking to illuminate the development of the region around modern Kumanovo from the Iron Age until Late Byzantine times.

Selected Publications

(forthcoming) Viewpoints: Everyday religion in Late Antiquity. A call for interdisciplinary research on religious practices and beliefs, Studies in Late Antiquity 2.

With L. Stirling (2017) Re-using the gods. A sixth-c. statuary display at Sagalassos and a re-evaluation of pagan-mythological statuary in Early Byzantine civic space, Journal of Roman Archaeology 30, 101-130.

(2017) Cross Graffiti as Physical Means to Christianize the Classical City: An Exploration of Their Function, Meaning, Topographical, and Socio-Historical Contexts, in: I. Garipzanov, C. Goodson and H. Maguire (eds) Graphic Signs of Power and Faith in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Essays on Early Graphicacy, Turnhout: Brepols, 175-221.

(2014) Ecclesiastical dominance and urban setting. Colonnaded streets as back-drop for Christian display, Antiquité Tardive 22. L’Orient chrétien de Constantin et d’Eusèbe de Césarée, 281-304.

(ed.) (2014) Production and Prosperity in the Theodosian period (Interdisciplinary Studies in Ancient Culture and Religion 14), Leuven.

With M. Waelkens (2014) Five centuries of glory. The Colonnaded Street of Sagalassos in the first and the sixth century AD, Istanbuler Mitteillungen 63 [2013], 219-266.

(2013) Aesthetic Maintenance of Civic Space. The ‘Classical’ City from the fourth to the seventh c. AD (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 193), Leuven-Paris-Walpole, MA.

(2012) The creation of the Late Antique city. Constantinople and Asia Minor during the “Theodosian renaissance”, Byzantion: revue internationale des études byzantines 82, 113-164.