Mosaic and Kaleidoscope – The late Roman villa at Marboué, France

The Roman villa at Marboué (Eure-et-Loir, France) is a rare villa with continuous elite habitation from the second through the seventh centuries CE. Best known for an inscribed fifth-century mosaic, Marboué provides an exceptional opportunity to consider archaeology as a many-layered concept. To demonstrate the richness that multi-layered analysis can bring to material that bridges art history and archaeology, this presentation focuses on two small parts of the larger villa site, the famous fifth century mosaic and a mausoleum renovated in the fourth century. At the artifactual level, holistic, deeply contextualized analysis of the villa can provide insight into how Late Antiquity happened at Marboué and the decisions that this particular rural community made at a time of political, cultural, and artistic upheaval. Turning then to disciplinary history, the excavation and study of Marboué mirror the development of the discipline of archaeology in France and demonstrate how the decisions made by the local bourgeoisie in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries affect modern knowledge of the site. Finally, at a theoretical level, the gaps and difficulties in the evidence from Marboué require attention to the dissonance between the different discourses of its material record. By allowing dissonant material discourses to fuel and guide the analysis we can turn problems that arise from complexity into intellectual opportunities. By examining this site using the complementary disciplines of art history and archaeology and attention to different layers of analysis, it is possible to build a kaleidoscopic microhistory of the villa at Marboué.