Review of Maréchal, Public baths and bathing habits in late antiquity in BMCR

For the Brwn Mawr Classical Review, I recently wrote a review of Sadi Maréchal, Public baths and bathing habits in late antiquity: a study of the evidence from Italy, North Africa and Palestine A.D. 285-700. Late antique archaeology (supplementary series), volume 6. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2020. This volume, a revision of the author’s PhD thesis, provides a richly-illustrated synthesis of the archaeological and literary evidence for this important part of Roman culture. My review concludes:

This is a work of reference which interested academics will find to be a welcome resource for understanding Late Antique built environments. Maréchal pays strict attention to space and time and casts a very wide net for the types of data catalogued in this volume. The eight urban case studies in particular offer a comprehensive view of Late Antique cities as spaces that constantly changed alongside the needs of their residents. Maréchal keeps his readers cognizant that this study covers well-trodden ground—indeed the introduction even opens with the question ‘Why Baths Again?’—but the study’s strengths lie in the meticulous manner in which the data has been collected. By assembling data from hundreds of archaeological reports, standardizing representations of their plans, supplementing them with maps and colour photographs, and summarizing their findings in English, this volume significantly increases accessibility for non-specialist scholars to all manner of evidence for one of the most defining features of life in Late Antique cities.