Dirk Booms

Dirk Booms studied Classical Archaeology at Leuven (Belgium), Reading, Rome, and Cambridge (PhD), and taught at Cambridge, Oxford, and Birkbeck College before joining the British Museum.

His main interest is Roman architecture, but other responsibilities include sculpture, particularly the Townley collection and the Museum’s cast collection, inscriptions, cameos, and glass inlays.

He has participated in excavations in Belgium, Turkey, Italy, and Tunisia, and is finalising the publication of the architectural fragments, design, and reconstruction of the imperial villa of Marcus Aurelius at Villa Magna, Italy, in a volume edited by E. Fentress, C. Goodson, and M. Maiuro, and of the so-called Domitianic Vestibule to the Palatine Palace in Rome, in its publication by H. Hurst. He is also turning his PhD thesis into a monograph, titled ‘Space and Identity at Roman Imperial Villas’.

Contact

dbooms@thebritishmuseum.ac.uk
+44 (0)20 7323 8564

Recent publications

Booms, D. (in press, 2012) Problematizing Privacy at Roman Imperial Villas, in Fenwick, C., K. Lafrenz Samuels, D. Totten (eds.) Roman Spaces, Heritage Traces: Past and Present Roman Place-making. JRA Supplementary Series: 81-92.

Booms, D. (2010) The vernae Caprenses: Traces of Capri’s History after Tiberius. Papers of the British School at Rome 78: 133-143.

Booms, D., F. Candilio, A. Di Miceli, E. Fentress, C. Fenwick, C. Goodson, M. McNamee, S. Privitera, R. Ricciardi (2009) Excavations at Villa Magna 2008. FOLD&R 126, http://www.fastionline.org/docs/FOLDER-it-2008-126.pdf

Booms, D. (2007) Scaffolding Signatures: Putlog holes and the identification of individual builders in two Ostian baths. Journal of Roman Archaeology 20: 273-283.

Lavan, L., E. Zanini and A. Sarantis, with the assistance of I. Jacobs, D. Booms, B. de Graeve (eds.) (2007) Technology in transition: A.D. 300-650. Late antique archaeology 4. Leiden.