Economy and Power in Late Roman Britain

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Gerrard
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
Agricultural Resources ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Surplus Extraction ◽  
Late Roman Period ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Late Roman

This chapter reviews the relationship between power and economics in fourth-century Britain. It argues that the Roman past has often been intuitively understood as rational and that its economics can be easily characterized as ‘proto-capitalist’. The Roman period was, however, both complex and irrational. Agricultural production was the powerhouse of the economy and provided the foundations of both power and status during the late Roman period. The focus on the agricultural economy allows the structures of power – tax, tribute and surplus extraction – and their transformation to be studied. During the fifth century the imperial superstructure collapsed, but the continued local control of agricultural resources provides a mechanism for how the late Roman world was transformed into early medieval societies.

Representations of Children in Ancient Greece

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olympia Bobou
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Vase Painting ◽  
Funerary Reliefs ◽  
The Relationship

Children’s representations appear early in the Greek visual material culture: first they appear in the large funerary vases of the geometric period, while in the archaic period they appear in funerary reliefs and vases. To the representations in vase painting, those in terracotta statuettes can be added in the fifth century, but it is in the fourth century bc that children become a noteworthy subject of representation, appearing both in small- and large-scale objects in different media. This chapter considers the relationship between changing imagery of children in ancient Greece and social and religious developments from the geometric period, through the Hellenistic period and into the Roman period in Greece.

The Risley Park Silver Lanx: A Lost Antiquity from Roman Britain

1981 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Johns
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
Silver Plate ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
Late Roman

SummaryIn 1729, a decorated fourth-century Roman silver dish bearing a Christian inscription was found at Risley Park, Derbyshire. Damaged when found, the fragments of the vessel were soon lost, but an illustrated account of it was published by William Stukeley in 1736. Stukeley and later authorities interpreted the inscription as implying that the dish had belonged to a late Roman church in France, and considered that it had been brought to Britain as loot in the Middle Ages. This paper presents a description and assessment of the Risley Park lanx in the light of the greater knowledge of late Roman silver plate now available, and makes the suggestion that the vessel may have been imported into Britain in the Roman period.

Church and State in the Notitia Galliarum

1978 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 26-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill Harries
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Late Roman Period ◽  
Accessible Form ◽  
Late Roman

Lists of provinces and cities of the Roman Empire were compiled and used for administrative or juridical purposes from as early as the time of Augustus, whose survey of Italy and the provinces formed the basis of the Elder Pliny's description of the Empire. The late Roman period is especially rich in such survivals, the proliferation of which can be ascribed to two tendencies prevalent in the fourth century. The first was the increasing bureaucratization of the Empire, reflected in the most famous and comprehensive of all official lists, the Notitia Dignitatum. The second was the urge to store information on a wide variety of topics in an economical and accessible form. Many lists, which may originally have had an official purpose, survive in literary forms alien to their inception, and which are the work of private individuals.

Finding the Fifth Century: A Late Fourth- and Early Fifth-Century Pottery Fabric from South-East Dorset

Britannia ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
pp. 293-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Gerrard
Keyword(s):  
Fifth Century ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Late Roman Period ◽  
Architectural Tradition ◽  
Made In ◽  
Late Roman

ABSTRACTThis paper describes a type of pottery made in the same region as Dorset Black Burnished Ware that can be shown to be current during the late fourth and early fifth centuries. This pottery — here named South-East Dorset Orange Wiped Ware — can be used as a diagnostic artefact to identify sites and features of the very late Roman period in Dorset. It also appears to be associated with a new architectural tradition typified by the ‘sunken featured buildings’ present at the late and post-Roman site of Poundbury.

scholarly journals A Third Century AD Burial Vault with Multiple Burials at the Cemetery of Opushki

2021 ◽  
pp. 217-250
Author(s):  
Igor Khrapunov ◽  
◽  
Anastasiya Stoyanova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Central Area ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
North Caucasus ◽  
Crimean Peninsula ◽  
The North ◽  
The Crimea ◽  
Late Roman Period ◽  
Archaeological Cultures ◽  
Late Roman

The cemetery of Opushki is located at 15 km to the east of modern Simferopol, in the central area of the Crimean foothills. The site has been being excavated since 2003. So far more than 300 graves of various types have been uncovered. They belong to the Late Scythian, Middle Sarmatian, and Late Sarmatian archaeological cultures. There is one cremation complex appeared as a result of the Germanic migration to the Crimea. The complex under present publication belongs to a large group of burial vaults with a short dromos (entry corridor) of the Late Roman period; this type of crypts is found in various cemeteries of the Crimean foothills. Burial constructions of this type are associated with the mediaeval Alans’ ancestors who migrated to the Crimea from the North Caucasus. Although the earliest crypts featuring dromos appeared in the foothill area of the Crimean Peninsula in the first half of the 3rd century AD, most of burials in these constructions were made in the fourth century AD. Burial vault no. 158 has two interesting features. It contains multiple burials typical for the Late Scythian vaults of the 1st and the first half of the 2nd centuries. Such a phenomenon is encountered for the first time in the Late Roman vault. According to the analysis of the grave goods, the complex under study is one of the earliest or even the earliest short-dromos vault discovered in the Crimea. It was constructed in the second half (or at the end) of 2nd or very early 3rd century AD and was in use throughout the first half of the 3rd century. The results of research of this burial construction supply new materials for the solution of highly disputable problem of the Crimean vaults with short dromos origin and of the reconstruction of ethnic processes in the Crimea in the Late Roman period.

The lunula pendants from the cemetery of Frontovoe 3 from the Late Roman Period in the South-Western Crimea

2021 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-136
Author(s):  
Anna Mastykova ◽  
Alexey Sviridov
Keyword(s):  
Fifth Century ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
The South ◽  
Crimean Peninsula ◽  
Western Area ◽  
The Crimea ◽  
Late Roman Period ◽  
Question Form ◽  
Academy Of Sciences ◽  
Late Roman

AbstractThe flat cemetery of Frontovoe 3 was discovered in 2018 by a team of the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the Nakhimovskii district of modern Sevastopol, in the south-western area of the Crimean Peninsula. The site comprising 328 graves was excavated completely. The cemetery appeared ca. late first century AD and ceased to exist in the late fourth or early fifth century AD. The cemetery showed expressive spatial structure and contained eloquent assemblages with abundant grave goods allowing us to determine its chronological zones. This paper addresses the finds of silver crescent-moon-shaped pendants from graves 13 and 94. Similar ornaments occurred in burial assemblages in the Crimea and the northern Dagestan, Kalmykia, Lower Don area, and also in Sarmatian graves in the Great Hungarian Plain. The lunula pendants in question form a chronological reference point for the Pontic-Danubian antiquities in the Late Roman Period.

scholarly journals Combat Knife with Eagle-Headed Handle from Cimmerian Bosporos

2021 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 70-78
Author(s):  
Michel Kazanski ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Central European ◽  
The Great Migration ◽  
Late Roman Period ◽  
Sea Area ◽  
Military Units ◽  
Late Roman

In the Romano-Germanic Museum in Cologne (Diergardt collection) there is a combat knife originating from Cimmerian Bosporos. Its hilt is decorated with a bronze image of eagle’s head. The purpose of this publication is to call attention to this artifact almost not known to Eastern European archaeologists. The handles of swords decorated with eagle’s heads from the Roman Period are well known primarily from iconographic data. Noteworthy is the image on a silver bowl from Avignon (the so-called “Briseis Cup”) dated to the fourth century. It depicts a weapon with a rather short blade and a U-shaped chape; all these features resemble the Bosporan combat knife. In the Late Roman Period, swords with eagle-headed hilts were well represented in the images of the persons of status, probably indicating their prominent role of a symbol of power. Generally, eagle is well represented among the symbols of power of the Late Empire, for example, on consular rods or shields with the emblems of military units mentioned in the Notitia Dignitatum. In the Late Roman Period, sword hilts featuring bird’s head also occurred outside the Empire. This is evidenced by the image of the Sassanian Shah Shapur II on a plate from Turusheva. In the “chieftain” culture of the Eastern and Central European Barbaricum and the Northern Black Sea Area from the Great Migration Period, the inlaid patterns showing eagle or bird’s heads is well known on weapons, including swords and horse trappings. In the Barbaricum, there probably appeared the well-known phenomenon of imitatio imperii.

scholarly journals Crypt with Third-Century Coins in the Cemetery of Opushki

2020 ◽  
pp. 247-278
Author(s):  
Igor Khrapunov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Archaeological Methods ◽  
Late Roman Period ◽  
Archaeological Cultures ◽  
Made In ◽  
Grave Goods ◽  
Late Roman

The cemetery of Opushki is located about 15 km east of Simferopol, in the Crimean foothills. In the process of excavations, carried out since 2003, a variety of funerary constructions belonging to different archaeological cultures have been discovered. The crypt researched in the current article contained four burials, which were especially interesting because of the find of six coins inside of them. The excavation above the burial chamber of this vault discovered a childs burial accompanied with varied grave goods, similarly to those made in the crypt. The burials discussed in the present study were made in the second half of the third century AD. The second half of the 3rd century AD was the period represented in Crimea by the smallest number of complexes in comparison with the previous and the following periods. Varied grave goods from the crypt and the childs grave greatly expand our notion of the material culture of those people who inhabited the Crimean foothills in that half of the century, which is difficult to be discovered by archaeological methods. Furthermore, the crypt No. 133 belongs to a big group of grave constructions which were widely spread in Crimea in the Late Roman period. Their distinctive feature is a short dromos. Initially, the latter crypts appeared in the first half of the 3rd century AD. However, several of them as well belong to the second half of the 3rd century AD. In the fourth century AD, the majority of burials were made in such crypts close to the Crimean foothills. Many researchers interpret specific construction of these crypts as an evidence of the penetration into Crimea of the forefathers of mediaeval North Caucasian Alans. The material culture of the population of the Crimean foothills in the Late Roman period could be interpreted as eclectic, developed under the influence from various factors. Its sources were ancient and the Sarmatian cultures. Besides, the research showed that there were found some local hand-made vessels, analogies of which were never found outside of the peninsula. Some of the artefacts had penetrated to Crimea area from the areas populated by Germanic tribes.

Plyshchan microregion of settlements of the Late Roman period in the Upper Don region

2020 ◽  
pp. 60-71
Author(s):  
Grigory L. Zemtsov ◽  
◽  
Dmitry V. Sarychev ◽  
Vladimir O. Goncharov ◽  
Ekaterina V. Fabritsius ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Period ◽  
Late Roman Period ◽  
Late Roman

Fortuna in Translation, Fortuna as Translation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniele Miano
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Structural Elements ◽  
Magna Graecia ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter considers the relationship between Fortuna and Tyche as one of translatability. The first half of the chapter focuses on Tyche, with the aim of determining semantic and structural elements common with Fortuna. The second part of the chapter looks at instances in which Fortuna is translated in Greek. The appearance of bronze strigils bearing the epithet soteira from Praeneste in the fourth century BC seems to presuppose this translation, and also points to the salvific meanings of Fortuna as a base for the process of translation. This process of translation had probably occurred through early contacts between Latium, Sicily, and Magna Graecia, where Tyche seems to be associated with salvation already from the fifth century BC. Other instances of translations of Fortuna and Tyche are studied across the Aegean.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document