SITES IN PULA
The female head features a hairstyle typical of the mid-1st century CE, similar to that worn by Empress Agrippina Minor, wife of Emperor Claudius and mother of Nero. The dimensions of the head suggest the statue was from 170 to 180 cm tall, slightly exceeding the natural height of the depicted Roman woman, with the local average height of women ranging from 155 to 165 cm. Its discovery in a public space on the forum, the quality of the marble, and the statue's dimensions indicate it may have been part of a group of statues of members of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, under the auspices of the state imperial cult. The facial features do not match those of Agrippina Minor, but it is clearly the portrait of a contemporary figure.
The head was found in a room adjacent to the southeast corner of the forum's portico, within a public building erected at the end of the 1st century BCE or the first half of the 1st century CE. This building was open to the forum on its western side through a portico, and to the main city street (decumanus), parallel to the forum's eastern side, through another portico on its eastern side. The room's floor was paved with polychrome marble tiles arranged in a geometric pattern, and the lower part of the walls were clad with white marble panels and marble moulding. A rectangular pedestal, possibly the base of a statue, was situated at the centre of the east, rear, wall of the room, opposite the entrance from the forum portico. This pedestal could have held either the marble statue of the woman whose head was found, or the marble statue of a military commander in armou discovered during the same excavation campaign.
A wall was erected in the post-antiquity period over the ruins of the early imperial building between the forum and the decumanus portico that incorporated the halved torso of a larger-than-life marble statue of a military commander in armour as part of the building material. The statue, made of Pentelic marble and originally 220 to 230 cm tall, may have depicted an emperor or a member of the imperial family, and today the prevailing opinion is that it dates to the 2nd century CE. The likely original location of the statue with body armour, and of the lost statue to which the female head belonged was near the discovery site.
