8. Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon

2016 ◽  
pp. 92-102
Author(s):  
Trevor Bryce
Keyword(s):  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Material Development ◽  
The City

Under Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon reached the height of its cultural, intellectual, and material splendour. Other cities of the kingdom also benefited greatly during his reign, especially in their material development. ‘Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon’ re-creates Nebuchadnezzar’s royal capital using evidence from the archaeological record. It describes the layout of the city and the design and structure of Babylon’s palaces and temples built by Nebuchadnezzar and his father, Nabopolassar. The twelve-day New Year festival, which celebrated the arrival of spring and Marduk’s triumph over the forces of evil, is also explained. Finally, the ‘Hanging Gardens of Babylon’ are considered. Were they real or simply a fantasy?

annona (other products)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Machado
Keyword(s):  
Olive Oil ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Food Items ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
The City ◽  
Different Parts

The annona was the imperial service responsible for overseeing the supply of key food items to the city of Rome and the army. Primarily concerned with grain, the service became increasingly involved in the provisioning of other commodities, such as olive oil, wine, and pork. By the end of the 3rd century, the annona was a complex machinery involving private and public agents in different parts of the empire, overseen by the prefect of the annona, based in Rome. The operation of this system is documented in literary texts, administrative documents such as papyri and writing tablets, inscriptions, and a rich archaeological record, in Rome and in the provinces. However, the precise working of the system and the degree to which it was controlled by the Roman state remain open to debate. The annona was also involved in the supply of the army, especially with regards to provisions brought from distant producing centres. During the later empire, the system became more centralised, being overseen by the praetorian prefecture.

Myth, Environment, and the Orientation of the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan

1988 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. F. Aveni ◽  
E. E. Calnek ◽  
H. Hartung
Keyword(s):  
Mexico City ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
The Other ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Foundation Myth ◽  
Spring Equinox ◽  
The City ◽  
The Temple

In the light of the recent excavations of the Templo Mayor in downtown Mexico City, we explore the problem of the role of astronomy, calendar, and the landscape in the design and orientation of the building and of the city in general. We employ ethnohistoric data relating to the foundation myth of Tenochtitlan as a means of generating hypotheses concerning astronomical orientation that can be tested by reference to the archaeological record. We find that eastward-looking observations (implied in dismantling and reconstructing the myth) that took place around the time of the equinox may have been related to an attempt to transform a true east orientation from the natural environment into the architecture via a line that passed through the center of the Temple of Huitzilopochtli (the more southerly temple of the pair constituting the top of the Templo Mayor). It also is possible that the notch between the twin temples served a calendrical/orientational function. Evidence is presented to support the view that the mountain cult of Tlaloc, represented in the environment on the periphery of the Valley of Mexico by Mount Tlaloc, also may have directly influenced the orientation of the building and that it was part of a scheme for marking out days of the calendar by reference to the position of the rising sun at intervals of 20 days from the spring equinox. In this regard, we discuss the connection between the Templo Mayor and an enclosure containing offertory chambers atop Mount Tlaloc, which is located on a line extended to the visible horizon 44 km east of the ceremonial center. The ethnohistoric record implies that this place had been used for sacrifices to the rain god after whom the other of the twin temples of the Templo Mayor was named.

When Absence Means Things Are Going Well: Waste Disposal in Roman Towns and its Impact on the Record as Observed in Aquileia

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-345 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guido Furlan
Keyword(s):  
Waste Disposal ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Roman Archaeology ◽  
Great Caution ◽  
Economic Trends ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City ◽  
Urban Sites ◽  
Historical Periods

Scholars of Roman archaeology, epigraphy, and history are increasingly discussing urban maintenance and waste disposal, but the impact of these phenomena on the archaeological record remains largely understudied. The presence of waste disposal systems in Roman towns entails that a large part of what was discarded was periodically removed from the urban area. This in turn implies that whole historical periods may be underrepresented by the finds recovered within the city. This aspect can be apprehended through the post-excavation analysis of the House of Titus Macer in Aquileia, whose mid-imperial phase, during which the domus was inhabited and regularly maintained, is poorly represented. What has been observed suggests that great caution must be exercised when using data collected within urban sites to draw conclusions on ancient economic trends. To tackle this problem, our research agendas should target large extra moenia dumps more frequently.

scholarly journals Death and the City: The Cemeteries of Amarna in Their Urban Context

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Stevens
Keyword(s):  
Urban Environments ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
The Past ◽  
Unique Character ◽  
Ancient Egyptian ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Amarna Period ◽  
The City ◽  
Burial Grounds

Burial grounds are increasingly being considered as components of lived urban environments in the past. This paper considers how the ancient Egyptian city of Akhetaten, built by king Akhenaten (c. 1349–1332 bc), was constructed and experienced as a space inhabited both by the living and the dead. Drawing upon results from ongoing excavations at the burial grounds of the general population, it considers how the archaeological record of the settlement and its cemeteries segue and explores how the nature of burial landscapes and the need to maintain reflexive relationships between the living and the dead in the midst of a changing religious milieu contributed to the unique character of Akhetaten as a city. It asks what kind of city Akhetaten was, and what it was like to live through the Amarna period.

Tahkāl: the nineteenth–century record of two lost Gandhāra Sites

1987 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-324
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Errington
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Works ◽  
Clear Picture ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Precise Location ◽  
Precise Nature ◽  
The City

The name Tahkā is today remembered by archaeologists only as the provenance of the famous Gandhāra statue of Kuvera in the Lahore Museum (fig. 1:Lahore 3/G101). Little is now known concerning the site itself, its precise location, or whether any architecural remains are still visible on the ground. Yet a hundred years age, the area around Tahkāl contained the most prominent Gandhāra ruins in the immediate neighbourhood of Peshawar, attracting the attention of all interested visitors who came to the city. It is moreover possible to construct a clear picture of the remains from their contemporary descriptions and from the forgotten archaeological record of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In particular, the recent rediscovery of Punjab Public works Department reports of the 1870s, printed in the Punjab Government Gazette, provides many details concerning the precise nature of two of the three major Buddhist structures in this area.

Afterword

2021 ◽  
pp. 399-404
Author(s):  
Dominic Perring
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Direct Product ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Systematic Change ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Strategic Choices ◽  
Exogenous Shock ◽  
Effects Of War ◽  
The City ◽  
Short Section

This short section reasserts and summarizes some of the key conclusions to the book, explaining how London responded to the strategic choices of Roman emperors and governors, initially as a gateway emporium and subsequently as a defended administrative enclave. Episodes of systematic change were also provoked by exogenous shock, and the effects of war and plague can be identified in the archaeological record from London. Imperial inputs helped London to recover from such events, but the city was wholly a creature of Rome and otherwise lacking in social capital. Its eventual failure was a direct product of the failure of the Roman administration. Some directions for future research are considered.

scholarly journals Fiesta y ritual en el Grupo IV de Palenque

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 ◽  
pp. 11-44
Author(s):  
Andrés Ciudad Ruiz ◽  
◽  
Carlos M. Varela Scherrer ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Group Iv ◽  
Classic Period ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Community Or ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Residential Space ◽  
The City

The collective ceremonies, whether of a community or family nature, were hierarchical in the societies of the Mayan Lowlands of the Classic period, and were designed within the framework of a wide range of purposes; so its footprint in the archaeological record also presents a high degree of variation. Many of these rituals culminated in the celebration of festivals and meals that, on rare occasions, reveal a similar "archaeological physiognomy" and make it difficult to interpret their nature. In this essay we analyze a ritual deposit excavated behind the J3 Structure of Group IV of Palenque, an elite residential space occupied by one of the most distinguished noble lineages of the city, as well as the collective ingestion of foods and beverages by its officiants and assistants.

POSSIBLE MIGRATIONS AND SHIFTING IDENTITIES IN THE CENTRAL MEXICAN EPICLASSIC

2013 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
George L. Cowgill
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural Identities ◽  
Internal Stresses ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Western Mexico ◽  
Basin Of Mexico ◽  
Slow Decline ◽  
Shifting Identities ◽  
The City ◽  
Lines Of Evidence

AbstractAfter a century or so of slow decline, major civic-ceremonial structures in the city of Teotihuacan were burned and desecrated, probably arounda.d. 600/650, at least some residential structures were abandoned, and the Teotihuacan state collapsed. Few features of Teotihuacan material culture survive in the Basin of Mexico in the ensuing Epiclassic period, which lasted from approximatelya.d. 600/650––800/850. Ceramic and other lines of evidence suggest a sizable in-migration of peoples from western Mexico. These newcomers may have arrived in time to add to internal stresses responsible for bringing about Teotihuacan's collapse, arrived later to take advantage of that collapse, or both. Whatever the case, interactions with Teotihuacan survivors were complex and still poorly understood. Descendants of Teotihuacanos probably soon adopted new cultural identities, making them untraceable in the archaeological record, except possibly by biological markers.

scholarly journals The Roman Road System in the Golan: Highways, Paths and Tracks in Quotidian Life

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 11-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Pažout
Keyword(s):  
Agricultural Land ◽  
High Mobility ◽  
Agricultural Activity ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Roman Army ◽  
Agricultural Communities ◽  
Lower Mobility ◽  
The City ◽  
Local Road ◽  
Road System

Abstract Roman Imperial Roads (highways) built, maintained and organized by the Roman army and provincial authorities were studied in the Golan Heights since Schumacher’s surveys in the 1880s. However, most of these were obliterated by building and agricultural activity since the beginning of the 20th century. Local ancient road system, linking individual communities and their agricultural land was never studied, since it barely leaves a trace in archaeological record. This paper presents reconstruction of inter-provincial highways passing through the southern Golan Heights, and local road system in GIS using cumulative focal mobility network (CFMN) analysis. The CFMN provides outline of natural corridors of movement in the region. From CFMN it is possible to extract path with higher mobility potential which will be tested against present evidence for Roman Imperial Highways, since it is assumed that corridors with high mobility potential would be suitable place for construction of (inter-)provincial road. Path with lower mobility potential might indicate local road system, so it would be possible to connect agricultural communities with the land they exploited; which in turn may have implications for site prediction and site-catchment analysis exploring quotidian movement of people and goods in the landscape. Two case studies in this respect are presented: the city of Hippos and settlement of es-Safuriyye.

Hospitals: N.Y. Appellate Court Denies Move to Privatize Public Hospital

1999 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-203
Author(s):  
Robert Chatham
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Public Health System ◽  
Municipal Hospital ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Benefit ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Benefit Corporation ◽  
The City

The Court of Appeals of New York held, in Council of the City of New York u. Giuliani, slip op. 02634, 1999 WL 179257 (N.Y. Mar. 30, 1999), that New York City may not privatize a public city hospital without state statutory authorization. The court found invalid a sublease of a municipal hospital operated by a public benefit corporation to a private, for-profit entity. The court reasoned that the controlling statute prescribed the operation of a municipal hospital as a government function that must be fulfilled by the public benefit corporation as long as it exists, and nothing short of legislative action could put an end to the corporation's existence.In 1969, the New York State legislature enacted the Health and Hospitals Corporation Act (HHCA), establishing the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) as an attempt to improve the New York City public health system. Thirty years later, on a renewed perception that the public health system was once again lacking, the city administration approved a sublease of Coney Island Hospital from HHC to PHS New York, Inc. (PHS), a private, for-profit entity.

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