City and Suburb in Roman Italy

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Allison L. C. Emmerson
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Ancient City ◽  
Urban Contexts ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Roman Italy ◽  
Roman Urbanism ◽  
The City

“City and Suburb in Roman Italy” introduces the book’s approach to Roman suburbs. It discusses the laws and practices that surrounded various urban boundaries, and highlights the concept of “death pollution,” the idea that Romans feared a contagious of uncleanliness that radiated from the dead. A long tradition has attributed the Roman ban on interment within the city to concerns with death pollution, and today most work on Roman urbanism begins from the assumption that tombs stood outside the religious boundary of the pomerium in order to preserve a city’s ritual purity. Nevertheless, no source prior to Late Antiquity mentioned death pollution. This chapter argues that the concept has unnecessarily separated tombs from suburban neighborhoods, and that reintegrating the dead into their urban contexts is necessary for understanding how an ancient city worked, both inside and outside its official boundaries.

Re-examining Roman Death Pollution

2020 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 5-27
Author(s):  
Allison L. C. Emmerson
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Fear Of Death ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Variable Combination ◽  
The City

AbstractThe idea that the dead were polluting — that is, that corpses posed a danger of making the living unclean, offensive both to their own communities and to the gods — has long occupied a fundamental position in Roman funerary studies. Nevertheless, what that pollution comprised, as well as how it affected living society, remain subject to debate. This article aims to clarify the issue by re-examining the evidence for Roman attitudes towards the dead. Focusing on the city of Rome itself, I conclude that we have little reason to reconstruct a fear of death pollution prior to Late Antiquity; in fact, the term itself has been detrimental to current understandings. No surviving text from the late republican or early imperial periods indicates that corpses were objects of metaphysical fear, and rather than polluted, mourners are better conceived as obligated, bound by a variable combination of emotions and conventions to behave in certain, if certainly changeable, ways following a death.

Тhe Metropolitan Archdiocese of Varna in the Historiography

Epohi ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nevyan Mitev ◽  
◽  
Ivan Tyutyunjiev ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
Ancient City ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

The Ecclesiastical work in Varna started during the Late Antiquity when the Ancient city of Odessos became a bishopric centre and later on a metropolitan archdiocese. There is no explicit data that during the First Bulgarian state the city was a seat of a high clergyman. In the period 13th–14th century, Varna established itself as one of the most important cities in the country and a metropolitan archdiocese. The Ottoman invasion and the fact that the city was captured by the Turks didn’t influence upon the strategic significance of the city, which remained a metropolitan archdiocese during the whole Ottoman period. The eparchy of Varna and Veliki Preslav has been one of the biggest spiritual centres in the Bulgarian lands since the Liberation in 1878 up to nowadays. The institution that has been in existence for more than thousand years and its importance, requires a significant work on its history to be written. Currently, some attempts for fractional studies have been made, but still there is no common research on the history of the institution. The presented historiographical review in this research doesn’t pretend to be comprehensive. The most important researches on the development and the role of the metropolitan archdiocese of Varna during the centuries and some other researches related to the topic are presented in the research. The basic problems which have occurred throughout the years have been dealt upon.

Life and Death, City and SuburbThe Transformations of Late Antiquity

2020 ◽  
pp. 229-234
Author(s):  
Allison L. C. Emmerson
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Cultivated Land ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The City

“Life and Death, City and Suburb: The Transformations of Late Antiquity” is a brief epilogue considering urbanism of the fifth century CE and beyond. As Rome’s population shrank, the city reoriented itself into a constellation of small settlements, scattered within the Aurelian Wall and surrounded by cultivated land. The residents of these settlements buried their dead within the wall, a development that has been seen to represent a sea change in mentality, but which is better read as a result of the city’s new topography and demography. Suburbs, furthermore, did not disappear in this period. Late Antique suburbs grew up around the suburban shrines of Christian martyrs, not only at Rome, but also in other Italian cities like Mediolanum and Nola. This period was marked by both continuity and change, but through it the dead remained present in urban life, continuing relationships carried through all stages in the history of Italy’s cities.

Life and Death in the Roman Suburb

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allison L. C. Emmerson
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Republican Period ◽  
The Social ◽  
Bounded Space ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Many ◽  
The City

A Roman city was a bounded space. Defined by borders both physical and conceptual, the city stood apart as a concentration of life and activity that was divided from its rural surroundings not only physically, but also legally, economically, and ritually. Death was a key area of control, and tombs were relegated outside city walls from the Republican period through Late Antiquity. Given this separation, an unexpected phenomenon marked the Augustan and early Imperial periods: Roman cities developed suburbs, built-up areas beyond their boundaries, where the living and the dead came together in environments that could become densely urban. Life and Death in the Roman Suburb examines these districts, drawing on the archaeological remains of cities across Italy to understand their character and to illuminate the factors that led to their rise and decline, with a particular focus on the tombs of the dead. Work on Roman cities still tends to pass over funerary material, while research on death has concentrated on issues seen as separate from urbanism. This book aims to reconnect those threads, considering tombs within their suburban landscapes of shops, houses, workshops, garbage dumps, extramural sanctuaries, and major entertainment buildings to trace the many roles they played within living cities. It argues that tombs were not passive memorials, but active spaces that both facilitated and furthered the social and economic life of the city, where relationships between the living and the dead were an enduring aspect of urban life.

Excavations at Tocra (1985-1992)

2000 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 59-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmed M. Buzaian
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Faunal Remains ◽  
City Wall ◽  
Ancient City ◽  
The University ◽  
Pottery Kiln ◽  
The City ◽  
Early Islamic ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractThis article presents a preliminary report on the post-excavation analysis of excavations conducted between 1985 and 1992 by the Department of Archaeology of the University of Garyunis (Benghazi) at the ancient city of Tocra. The construction and design of the buildings excavated are analysed, with particular emphasis on the late antique phases; and descriptions of pottery, other artefacts (including two early Islamic coins) are given. The area appears to have been an artisan district, as evidenced by the finds of a pottery kiln, ovens, vats and other structures associated with manufacturing activities. Mortar and plaster samples were analysed to help phase the structures, and to compare the excavated vats with their counterparts at another site within the city. A limited study of the faunal remains gives some insight into diet at the site in late antiquity.The study shows clearly that Tocra remained inhabited after the Arab conquest (AD 640s), confirming suggestions of previous excavations at other sites within the city wall.

The Resilient City

2005 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
World Trade Center ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Oklahoma City Bombing ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Ancient City ◽  
Trade Center ◽  
The City

In 1871, the city of Chicago was almost entirely destroyed by what became known as The Great Fire. Thirty-five years later, San Francisco lay in smoldering ruins after the catastrophic earthquake of 1906. Or consider the case of the Jerusalem, the greatest site of physical destruction and renewal in history, which, over three millennia, has suffered wars, earthquakes, fires, twenty sieges, eighteen reconstructions, and at least eleven transitions from one religious faith to another. Yet this ancient city has regenerated itself time and again, and still endures. Throughout history, cities have been sacked, burned, torched, bombed, flooded, besieged, and leveled. And yet they almost always rise from the ashes to rebuild. Viewing a wide array of urban disasters in global historical perspective, The Resilient City traces the aftermath of such cataclysms as: --the British invasion of Washington in 1814 --the devastation wrought on Berlin, Warsaw, and Tokyo during World War II --the late-20th century earthquakes that shattered Mexico City and the Chinese city of Tangshan --Los Angeles after the 1992 riots --the Oklahoma City bombing --the destruction of the World Trade Center Revealing how traumatized city-dwellers consistently develop narratives of resilience and how the pragmatic process of urban recovery is always fueled by highly symbolic actions, The Resilient City offers a deeply informative and unsentimental tribute to the dogged persistence of the city, and indeed of the human spirit.

Urban Space and Aristocratic Power in Late Antique Rome

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Machado
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
The Social ◽  
Traditional Elite ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

This book analyses the physical, social, and cultural history of Rome in late antiquity. Between AD 270 and 535, the former capital of the Roman empire experienced a series of dramatic transformations in its size, appearance, political standing, and identity, as emperors moved to other cities and the Christian church slowly became its dominating institution. Urban Space and Aristocratic Power in Late Antique Rome provides a new picture of these developments, focusing on the extraordinary role played by members of the traditional elite, the senatorial aristocracy, in the redefinition of the city, its institutions, and spaces. During this period, Roman senators and their families became increasingly involved in the management of the city and its population, in building works, and in the performance of secular and religious ceremonies and rituals. As this study shows, for approximately three hundred years the houses of the Roman elite competed with imperial palaces and churches in shaping the political map and the social life of the city. Making use of modern theories of urban space, the book considers a vast array of archaeological, literary, and epigraphic documents to show how the former centre of the Mediterranean world was progressively redefined and controlled by its own elite.

New inscriptions from rural Cyrenaica

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Hamid Alshareef ◽  
François Chevrollier ◽  
Catherine Dobias-Lalou
Keyword(s):  
The South ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The City

Abstract This paper publishes four inscriptions recently discovered by chance in the Cyrenaican countryside. Nos 1, 2 and 3 are in Greek. No. 1, from a tomb near Mgarnes, is a funerary stele inscribed in verse for a woman whose family was of some importance in the city of Cyrene. No. 2, from the same tomb, is an anthropomorphic stele for another woman, which is discussed on the basis of the dead person's name and the vicinity of the stone to the preceding stele. No. 3, from the middle plateau below Cyrene, is a marble panel with the epitaph of two women named Cornelia, increasing our knowledge of the Cornelii family in Cyrenaica. No. 4, from near Khawlan in the south-east, is a boundary stele in Latin mentioning the boundaries of the province; combining this with the evidence from another such stone from el-Khweimat, close to Gerdes el-Gerrari towards the south-east, also mentioning the provincial boundaries, we are now able to outline the Roman limes in the central part of Djebel Akhdar.

BEYOND BUTRINT: THE ‘MURSI SURVEY’, 2008

2016 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 269-297
Author(s):  
Richard Hodges ◽  
Erika Carr ◽  
Alessandro Sebastiani ◽  
Emanuele Vaccaro
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Short Report ◽  
Mediterranean Landscapes ◽  
Ancient City ◽  
History Of ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Town

This article provides a short report on a survey of the region to the east of the ancient city of Butrint, in south-west Albania. Centred on the modern villages of Mursi and Xarra, the field survey provides information on over 80 sites (including standing monuments). Previous surveys close to Butrint have brought to light the impact of Roman Imperial colonisation on its hinterland. This new survey confirms that the density of Imperial Roman sites extends well to the east of Butrint. As in the previous surveys, pre-Roman and post-Roman sites are remarkably scarce. As a result, taking the results of the Butrint Foundation's archaeological excavations in Butrint to show the urban history of the place from the Bronze Age to the Ottoman period, the authors challenge the central theme of urban continuity and impact upon Mediterranean landscapes posited by Horden and Purcell, inThe Corrupting Sea(2000). Instead, the hinterland of Butrint, on the evidence of this and previous field surveys, appears to have had intense engagement with the town in the Early Roman period following the creation of the Roman colony. Significant engagement with Butrint continued in Late Antiquity, but subsequently in the Byzantine period, as before the creation of the colony, the relationship between the town and its hinterland was limited and has left a modest impact upon the archaeological record.

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