Peter,- and Rome

Not exactly directly related to 1 Peter, but not too far away either, a couple of reviews from SBLReview of Biblical Literature might be mentioned here:

Cassidy, Richard,
Four Times Peter: Portrayals of Peter in the Four Gospels and at Philippi
Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical, 2007, pp. xiv + 154. Paperback $15.95
Description: "Because he plays such a prominent role in the New Testament and the tradition of the church, the apostle Peter has been the focus of much scholarship over the centuries. One wonders whether there can be anything more to say about Peter. Indeed, there is. In Four Times Peter Richard Cassidy takes a narrative critical look at Peter in the story of each gospel individually (rather than studying Peter via a side-by-side analysis of the gospels). Cassidy looks first to the character of Jesus in each of the gospels and then to the group of apostles as a whole before turning to Peter. In the end, Four Times Peter allows an intriguing portrait of this apostle to emerge. Readers discover a portrait of Peter that would have been familiar to the earliest Christian communities. And it is this ancient portrait that gives modern readers a refreshing new sense of Peter."The Review can be read from here.

There is also another relevant review of:
Zangenberg, Jurgen and Michael Labahn, editors, Christians as a Religious Minority in a Multicultural City: Modes of Interaction and Identity Formation in Early Imperial Rome.
European Studies on Christian Origins/Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series, 243. London: T & T Clark, 2004, pp. xi + 202. Hardcover $125.00
Intro from the review by Jonathan Reed
As the title indicates, the articles in this collection focus on the first Christians in Rome, though they approach the topic from various methodological perspectives and based on different kinds of sources. Except for two, all chapters were originally presented as papers at a seminar jointly sponsored by the European Association for Biblical Studies and the Society of Biblical Literature during the summer of 2001 in Rome. The papers were then revised and are presented here as articles with full footnotes and a few illustrations. They are divided into two sections: “Part I: Minorities Living in Early Imperial Rome” (1–54) and “Part II: Rome, Roman Christians and their Relationship in Early Christian Writings and Archaeology,” which is grouped into three papers under the heading “New Testament Reflections on the Early Christian Community in Rome” (56–102) and five papers under “Persons and Positions in the Early Christian Community in Rome” (103–85). A short abstract in English is attached to each German article. There are indices of ancient sources and modern authors but no bibliography.

Update Oct. 18:
It turns out that this anthology also contains this item:
Jürgen Zangenberg, “Gebeine des Apostelfürsten? Zu den angeblich frühchristlichen Gräbern unter der Peterskirche in Rom,” pp.108–38. According to the reviewer, "Zangenberg provides a healthy dose of well-argued skepticism about the alleged tomb after a careful review of the excavations — importantly, he does not deal with that location (“Grab X”) in isolation, but considers it in the context of, and comparing it to, all the lower-class burials around the Vatican. He criticizes the usual reasons for presuming that the site is Christian and Peter’s tomb."