Vasa Virumque Cano: Essays on Roman Ceramics in Honor of Archer Martin

Book cover: Vasa Virumque Cano: Essays on Roman Ceramics in Honor of Archer Martin

Extent: 370 pages

Publisher: Wiley-VCH

Subjects: Classical Studies, Mediterranean Archaeology

Series: Roman and Late Antique Mediterranean Pottery

Language: English, German, Italian, Spanish

Paperback (Forthcoming)

(December 2026)

ISBN: 9781805833482

8.31 x 11.69 inches

Price: $77.00

Vasa virumque cano honours ceramicist and archaeologist Archer Martin through 25 chapters by students and collaborators. Exploring Mediterranean pottery, archaeological method and interdisciplinary research, the volume highlights Martin’s influence on ceramic studies, teaching and new approaches to understanding past societies.


Vasa virumque cano is an editorial collaboration by three former students of the celebrated ceramicist and archaeologist Archer Martin, and brings together 39 contributors across 25 chapters to honor the illustrious achievements of his scholarly and pedagogical career. Martin’s long tenure as one of the key figures in Mediterranean pottery studies has combined a rigorous and encyclopedic command of the ceramic record of forms and fabrics with new ways of using pottery to explore the lives and connections of past communities, all predicated on generous long-term collaborations, peripatetic and wide-ranging travels, and an inimitable command of languages and global scholarship. But Martin has also dedicated himself and this knowledge to training the next generation of ceramicists, most notably through his summer seminars. This volume examines the impact of his scholarship via the work of his students and collaborators, a cross-section of some of the most important ceramics researchers of several generations, whose scholarship on themes and approaches ranges from an art historical reassessment of a famous Etruscan krater, the anthropological understanding of the agency of small ceramic objects, and a ceramicist’s scrupulous detailing of the small evidence of repair of old vessels. Chapters include an examination of Martin’s importance in the redating of the castrum at Ostia; the role of ceramics in making the sweet perfumes of Pompeii, the necessity of interdisciplinarity in future ceramic research, and the application of Marti n’s method to a new generation of students.