ABSTRACT
Ann Marie Yasin discusses some early Christian graffiti collections both from the East and the West in their cultural and spatial context. More than forty thousand inscriptions have been counted in the Roman catacombs, and many graffiti among them mostly regarded as scribblings and carvings of visitors and pilgrims. Even though the early Christian graffiti of Trier have been examined carefully and thoroughly, their very sense and function remain unclear. The term ‘graffiti’ denotes a widespread and popular form of artistic expression called Street Art, or in other terms Urban Art, Guerrilla Art, even Post-Graffiti and Neo-Graffiti. The graffiti stone once covered the main altar of Egino’s church, its surface had been open to carving and writing till the mid-11th century when the Carolingian building complex was dismantled and replaced by the actual basilica. The altar of Reichenau-Niederzell with its names written in ink on sandstone seems to have been a unique specimen in the world of ancient Christian graffiti.
