Physical and Intellectual Issues
The issues associated with this study are both physical and intellectual, as are the factors in urban development. The correlation of known data from inscriptions (epigraphy), literary references (ancient history and more recent government and church documents), evidence from destroyed and rebuilt buildings (archaeology), and modern scientific and technical findings (several kinds of engineering and subfields of geology such as seismology and sedimentology) can give a more complete picture of each city’s development than does one kind of information alone. Most of the necessary site-specific studies, however, have not been done. Our problem parallels the study of global warming, where precise records of weather events have been kept for less than 200 years. Urban elements must be studied by experts in that building type and in social expression. Ramparts need more study by historians of warfare, theaters by scholars of drama and literature, stadia by those who study the history of sports, plumbing by hydraulic, civil, and fluids engineers, and temples by historians of comparative religion. Insights into institutional and political aspects of ancient studies and the historiography of all the disciplines involved in ancient studies would be both useful and fascinating (Kardulias 1994). The benefits and difficulties of interdisciplinary research are clearer now to us than when we started. In considering the physical setting and geological processes in the Mediterranean area, is description sufficient or should scholars strive for explanation, even if this involves theory building? “In much of art history and classical archaeology traditional practices have continued without explicit theoretical support” (McNally 1985; but cf. Preziosi 1989). The theorists of archaeology and urban history desire comprehensive and precise theories—even in the absence of enough data to make that possible. Some data may be rescued by followers of one discipline after being ignored or thrown out by followers of another. The awareness of theoretical difficulty is part of the increase in consciousness typical of the second half of the twentieth century when we began to question the nature of both knowledge and culture.