Urban, Landscape & environmental Archaeology

While the role of the city in Late Antiquity has often been discussed by archaeologists and historians alike it is only in recent years that scholarship has begun to offer a more nuanced approach in our understanding to how such cities functioned stepping away from the traditional paradigm of their decline and fall with the collapse of the Roman Empire. In line with this approach this deliberately interdisciplinary volume seeks to provide a more multifaceted understanding of urban history by drawing together scholars of literary and material culture to discuss the concepts of imagery and aesthetics of late antique cities.

Gathering together contributions by historians philologists archaeologists literature specialists and art historians the volume aims to explore the imagery and aesthetics of cities in Late Antiquity within a strong theoretical framework. The different chapters explore the aesthetics of cityscape representations in literature and art asking in particular whether literary representations of late antique urban landscapes mirror the urban reality of eclectic ensembles of pre-existing architecture and new buildings as well as questioning both how the ideal of the city evolved in the imagination of the period and if imperial ideology was reflected in literary depictions of cities.

In recent years archaeologists working at Norse sites across the North Atlantic have excavated a number of very small churches with cemeteries often associated with individual farms. Such sites seem to be a characteristic feature of early ecclesiastical establishments in Norse settlements around the North Atlantic and they stand in marked contrast to church sites elsewhere in Europe. But what was the reason behind this phenomenon?

From Greenland to Denmark and from Ireland to the Hebrides Iceland and Norway this volume presents a much-needed overview of small church studies from around the North Atlantic. The chapters gathered here discuss the different types of evidence for small churches and early ecclesiastical landscapes review existing debates and develop a synthesis that places the small churches in a broader context. Ultimately despite the varied types of data at play the contributions to this volume combine to offer a more coherent picture of the small church phenomenon pointing to a church that was able to answer the needs of a newly converted population despite the lack of an established infrastructure and throwing new light on how people lived and worshipped in an environment of dispersed settlements.

Gerasa/Jerash and the Decapolis are located along the seismically active area of the Dead Sea Rift a point where four tectonic plates meet to create the 110 km-long fault known as the Dead Sea Transform. It was activity along this fault that led in ad 749 to a famously devastating earthquake in the region. Measuring at least 7.0 on the Richter scale this quake not only had a profound physical impact on the Decapolis Galilee Caesarea and Jerusalem causing widespread destruction and reshaping urban landscapes but also led to a clear shift in socio-economic dynamics through a combination of economic decline and population displacement. It thus stands as a clear watershed moment in Late Antiquity. In its aftermath some cities struggled to regain prominence while others declined and were abandoned. Taking the ad 749 earthquake as its starting point this volume aims to provide a nuanced understanding of the quake’s effects questioning its role as a sole watershed moment and exploring the various other factors at play that influenced urban change. The contributions gathered here which clearly recognize earthquakes as non-human actors in this process clearly highlight the diverse impacts that this seismic event had on the city life in the southern Levant and the fallout in the decades that followed.

La Dacia Ripensis fu una provincia danubiana la cui esistenza si data fra gli anni ‘80 del III secolo e i primi anni del VII. Il suo territorio funse da cerniera fra il medio ed il basso corso del Danubio e al tempo stesso da raccordo fra il barbaricum e l’entroterra illirico. L’urbanizzazione vi ebbe un modesto successo; cionondimeno essa favorì la romanizzazione della provincia dove la militarizzazione si manifesta invece in modo evidente grazie a quanto noto dalla Notitia dignitatum e dall’archeologia. L’attenzione per la difesa dell’area era del resto giustificata per via della pressione esercitata da popolazioni come Goti Unni Slavi e Avari che condizionarono la storia dell’intera penisola proprio attraversando la Dacia Ripensis.

Dalle fonti letterarie è noto che la provincia fu anche interessata dalla diffusione della religione cristiana le cui prime testimonianze si datano ai primordi del IV secolo. Il processo rese possibile l’ascesa di sedi vescovili assai implicate nelle dispute teologiche e nella lotta a dottrine eretiche localmente diffuse ancora nel VI secolo. L’archeologia ha permesso di riconoscere la graduale formazione di questa rete ecclesiastica che in forme monumentali è riconoscibile sia in ambito urbano che rurale. Nonostante la sua importanza questa provincia è stata finora studiata solo occasionalmente e questo volume vuole ovviare a questo problema proponendo uno studio aggiornato mirato a definire le conoscenze storiche e archeologiche necessarie alla comprensione generale della topografia provinciale così come alla contestualizzazione del processo di cristianizzazione di questa porzione dell’area danubiana.

The Battle of Gaugamela in which Alexander the Great’s army faced the Persian army of King Darius III in 331 bce remains a famous date in history the last battle that led to Alexander’s conquest of the Achaemenid Empire. However the topography and chronology of the campaign have up to now remained little studied. Taking these two elements as its starting point this volume draws both on the latest archaeological research in the region and on recent advances in science (in particular GIS) to offer a completely new reconstruction of the Gaugamela campaign arguing for a much shorter campaign than has hitherto been understood. By turning the spotlight for the first time onto the geographical and topographical context of the campaign the author here also provides a new understanding of both the scale of Alexander’s military achievement and the long-term effects of the military reforms introduced by his father Philip II.

The Early Bronze Age site of Jebel al-Mutawwaq located on a hill overlooking the Zarqa River in Jordan was a thriving centre of population from the second half of the fourth millennium into the third millennium bce. During this time the settlement developed both in population and social complexity undergoing the beginnings of an urbanization process that fundamentally changed the relationship between this community of the Transjordanian Highlands with the surrounding landscape until it was completely abandoned around 2900 bce. This volume offers a new assessment of the site by combining data from the first surveys of the site under a Spanish team led by J. A. Fernandez-Tresguerres with the new results from six seasons of excavations led by teams from Perugia in Italy and San Esteban in Spain. In doing so this work sheds new light on this walled settlement and its huge megalithic necropolises and offers a fresh understanding of the site.

Il libro raccoglie una serie di contributi che scaturiscono dallo scavo e dallo studio della villa romana di San Marco sull’isola d’Elba dei suoi reperti e del suo contesto storico ed ambientale. I ritrovamenti archeologici sono pertinenti un periodo molto ristretto di vita dell’insediamento all’incirca tra il II secolo a.C e il II secolo d.C. quando la villa fu verosimilmente distrutta da un’incendio. Tale drammatico evento ha permesso la conservazione straordinaria di una serie di reperti organici (come la travatura di un solaio) attraverso i quali è stato possibile procedere ad una ricostruzione dettagliata della planimetria e degli elevati dell’edificio. Lo studio poi delle incredibili decorazioni pittoriche insieme ad i ritrovamenti epigrafici hanno permesso di attribuire la villa ad una delle proprietà dell’importante famiglia senatoria dei Valerii.