Mosaic Book
Encyclopedia
Roman-Byzantine Mosaics
Dr. Anat Avital
System Update: The Mosaic Book is currently under continuous development and daily updates. The content is gradually expanding and deepening as part of an ongoing research project. Visitors are encouraged to return in the coming days to discover new entries, expanded sections, and regular updates.
The Mosaic Book is a systematic scientific-research encyclopedia of human, animal, and plant imagery in ancient mosaics from the Roman and Byzantine periods in the Land of Israel and the surrounding region. The book presents a structured classification of mosaic imagery based on scientific and cultural categories: botany and zoology, agriculture and agrotechnology, economy and trade networks, culture and daily life. It brings together the author’s in-depth academic studies and reveals a broad corpus of realia concerning the domestication of animals and plants, illuminating the reflection of environment and nature within the spaces in which the mosaics were created.
Among the fascinating topics in the book
Main Content Sections in the Book
From Stones to Image: Fundamentals of Mosaic Language
Mosaic as a Medium for Presenting Worldview and Achievements
Birds and Fowl: Wild and Domesticated for Human Use
Mammals: Wild and Domesticated for Human Benefit
Flora: Fruits, Vegetables, and Flowers in Human Use
Agriculture and Food: Crafts, Tools, Transportation, and Serving
Hunting and Guarding
Aquatic Life and Human Use
The Mosaic Book is an encyclopedic summary of multidisciplinary academic research, systematic and in-depth. It offers a systematic framework for identification, classification, and taxonomic ordering of plant species, birds, and mammals, as well as selected species of aquatic animals in mosaic imagery from the Land of Israel and its surrounding region.
This book is based on a systematic biological-agricultural methodology for examining figurative imagery in ancient mosaics. The starting point is scientific identification of species, developmental stages, and processes of cultivation and domestication, integrating botanical, zoological, and agrotechnological knowledge.
This is a conscious epistemological choice: viewing the image not merely as decoration, but as material-visual evidence of environmental, agricultural, and economic knowledge. The approach seeks to examine the findings using taxonomic classification and ordering tools, and to establish the discussion on the basis of precise identification and documented realia.
On the botanical level, the research focuses on identifying plant species and analyzing their placement and appearance in mosaic imagery, while examining the history of plant cultivation in antiquity and agrotechnological aspects of growing, transporting, processing, and serving food. The discussion integrates economic and cultural contexts and positions the visual image as part of a system of production, trade, and representation of abundance.
On the zoological level, a systematic study of birds and mammals is conducted, including comprehensive survey, taxonomic classification, and analysis in various contexts: natural habitats, capture, use of animals for food, labor, and hunting, demonstration of domestication capabilities, and interregional trade relations.
Alongside the botanical and zoological mapping, the book emphasizes the cultural dimension of the imagery: representations of abundance, fertility, and blessing, concepts of ownership and control over nature, and long-term processes of domestication and cultivation of plants and animals for human benefit.
The mosaics are examined as an arena where agricultural knowledge, ideology of prosperity, social hierarchies, and household economy converge—from field and vineyard to dining table and public space. Thus it becomes clear that artistic imagery is not merely documentation of existing reality, but also a conscious cultural statement about order, abundance, and human capacity to shape the natural environment.
