LATE ROMAN MILITARY EQUIPMENT CULTURE

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 461-492
Author(s):  
J. C. N. Coulston
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Military Equipment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Equipment Development ◽  
New Form ◽  
Roman Military ◽  
Cultural Components ◽  
Late Roman

The paper explores the cultural components of Late Roman military equipment through the examination of specific categories: waist belts, helmets, shields and weaponry. Hellenistic, Roman, Iron Age European, Mesopotamian- Iranian and Asiatic steppe nomad elements all played a part. The conclusion is that the whole history of Roman military equipment involved cultural inclusivity, and specifically that Late Roman equipment development was not some new form of ‘degeneration’ or ‘barbarisation’, but a positive acculturation.

RECREATING THE LATE ROMAN ARMY

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 523-567
Author(s):  
John Conyard
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Roman Army ◽  
Standard Work ◽  
Military Equipment ◽  
Roman Military ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Late Roman

This paper attempts to give some insight into the role that Roman military reconstruction archaeology can play in the understanding of Roman military equipment from Late Antiquity. It can only provide a brief introduction to some of the equipment of the Late Roman army though, and Bishop and Coulston’s Roman Military Equipment, first published in 1993 (2nd ed., 2006), must remain the standard work.1 This contribution will chiefly aim to examine how items of equipment were made, and more importantly, to consider how they were used.

Developing a New Perspective on Dura’s Military Base

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon James
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Final Report ◽  
Chemical Weapon ◽  
Military Base ◽  
Military Equipment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Roman Military ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Military Archaeology

This research project arose, as many do, from an intersection of personal research interests and fieldwork opportunity. At its inception, I had already been working on material from Dura for twenty years, principally writing my PhD on the remarkable finds of (mostly Roman) arms and military equipment from the site, resulting in Final Report 7. I originally came to Dura as a Roman military archaeology specialist, but was acutely aware of my limited grounding in the specifics of the archaeology and history of the region. However, it is also clear that study of so huge and complex a data set as that from Dura must be a team effort involving many specialists from a wide array of disciplines and backgrounds, all of whom may bring outside perspectives potentially illuminating to the whole. My collaboration with MFSED began with an invitation from Pierre Leriche to examine some newly found items of military equipment. Spending time at Dura permitted an extended examination of the city, the Sasanian siege works, and Roman countermeasures (resulting in a publication on the Tower 19 complex, and indications of use of a ‘chemical weapon’ in the fighting: James 2011b), and especially of the military base where the soldiers whose equipment I had studied through artefacts and iconography had mostly lived. As previously mentioned, the base was not a primary research objective of MFSED. However, a project on the fixed infrastructure of the garrison would form a logical follow-on to my study of its martial material culture in FR 7. Contributing to MFSED’s general aims of recording and publishing the city’s remains, and to wider Dura scholarship, it also offered the chance to publish arguably the most important revealed but incompletely studied Roman military site in the empire. Further, this intra-urban military base constituted an ideal opportunity to pursue my own wider research interest, in how the Roman military interacted with civilian populations. At an early stage in my research career, I had come to believe that the Roman military could only be understood in context, of Roman society as a whole, and of the peoples it fought, conquered, and settled amongst.

The History of the Judahite Bench Tomb

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Suriano
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Mortuary Practices ◽  
Iron Age Ii ◽  
Gradual Development ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Insight Into

The history of the Judahite bench tomb provides important insight into the meaning of mortuary practices, and by extension, death in the Hebrew Bible. The bench tomb appeared in Judah during Iron Age II. Although it included certain burial features that appear earlier in the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, such as burial benches, and the use of caves for extramural burials, the Judahite bench tomb uniquely incorporated these features into a specific plan that emulated domestic structures and facilitated multigenerational burials. During the seventh century, and continuing into the sixth, the bench tombs become popular in Jerusalem. The history of this type of burial shows a gradual development of cultural practices that were meant to control death and contain the dead. It is possible to observe within these cultural practices the tomb as a means of constructing identity for both the dead and the living.

Religious Architecture in Latium and Etruria, c. 900-500 BC

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte R. Potts
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Central Italy ◽  
Archaic Period ◽  
Comprehensive Treatment ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Detailed History ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
Religious Architecture ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of

Religious Architecture in Latium and Etruria, c. 900-500 BC presents the first comprehensive treatment of cult buildings in western central Italy from the Iron Age to the Archaic Period. By analysing the archaeological evidence for the form of early religious buildings and their role in ancient communities, it reconstructs a detailed history of early Latial and Etruscan religious architecture that brings together the buildings and the people who used them. The first part of the study examines the processes by which religious buildings changed from huts and shrines to monumental temples, and explores apparent differences between these processes in Latium and Etruria. The second part analyses the broader architectural, religious, and topographical contexts of the first Etrusco-Italic temples alongside possible rationales for their introduction. The result is a new and extensive account of when, where, and why monumental cult buildings became features of early central Italic society.

The Roman Military Base at Dura-Europos, Syria

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon James
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Military Base ◽  
Roman World ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Dynamic ◽  
Holy Places ◽  
History Of ◽  
Roman Military ◽  
Roman East

Dura-Europos, a Parthian-ruled Greco-Syrian city, was captured by Rome c.AD165. It then accommodated a Roman garrison until its destruction by Sasanian siege c.AD256. Excavations of the site between the World Wars made sensational discoveries, and with renewed exploration from 1986 to 2011, Dura remains the best-explored city of the Roman East. A critical revelation was a sprawling Roman military base occupying a quarter of the city's interior. This included swathes of civilian housing converted to soldiers' accommodation and several existing sanctuaries, as well as baths, an amphitheatre, headquarters, and more temples added by the garrison. Base and garrison were clearly fundamental factors in the history of Roman Dura, but what impact did they have on the civil population? Original excavators gloomily portrayed Durenes evicted from their homes and holy places, and subjected to extortion and impoverishment by brutal soldiers, while recent commentators have envisaged military-civilian concordia, with shared prosperity and integration. Detailed examination of the evidence presents a new picture. Through the use of GPS, satellite, geophysical and archival evidence, this volume shows that the Roman military base and resident community were even bigger than previously understood, with both military and civil communities appearing much more internally complex than has been allowed until now. The result is a fascinating social dynamic which we can partly reconstruct, giving us a nuanced picture of life in a city near the eastern frontier of the Roman world.

Cyprus

2019 ◽  
pp. 479-491
Author(s):  
Sabine Fourrier
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
History Of

This chapter concentrates on the Phoenician presence in the island of Cyprus in the Iron Age (from the eleventh until the end of the fourth century bce). After a brief overview, it addresses the question of identification of the Cypriot Qarthadasht and the issue of a supposed Phoenician colonization in Cyprus. The political and cultural history of the Cypro-Phoenician kingdom of Kition also receives particular attention. At the same time, the widespread and multifaceted aspects of Phoenician presences on the island are underlined: Phoenician presence was not confined to Kition and Phoenician influence did not exclusively spread in the island from Kition.

scholarly journals Tufa und Armilausini

2020 ◽  
Vol 142 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-213
Author(s):  
Ludwig Rübekeil
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Migration Period ◽  
Linguistic Interference ◽  
History Of ◽  
Loan Word ◽  
Roman Military ◽  
The Military

AbstractThis article investigates the origin and history of two names dating from late Antiquity or the migration period. The first is the personal name Tufa, the second is the tribal name Armilausini. The two names can be traced back to a corresponding Germanic loan word in the Latin military language, tufa and armilausia, respectively, both of which are continued in the military language of the Eastern Roman and Byzantine Empire. The names are based on the appellative nouns. Both the appellatives and, even more so, the names turn out to be characteristic products of the multilingual background of the Roman military, as they show several signs of linguistic interference such as lexical reanalysis / folk etymology, morphological remodelling and semantic specialization.

scholarly journals Ancient genomic time transect from the Central Asian Steppe unravels the history of the Scythians

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (13) ◽  
pp. eabe4414
Author(s):  
Guido Alberto Gnecchi-Ruscone ◽  
Elmira Khussainova ◽  
Nurzhibek Kahbatkyzy ◽  
Lyazzat Musralina ◽  
Maria A. Spyrou ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Gene Pools ◽  
Social Rules ◽  
Eurasian Steppe ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Genome Wide ◽  
Genome Wide Data ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Millennium

The Scythians were a multitude of horse-warrior nomad cultures dwelling in the Eurasian steppe during the first millennium BCE. Because of the lack of first-hand written records, little is known about the origins and relations among the different cultures. To address these questions, we produced genome-wide data for 111 ancient individuals retrieved from 39 archaeological sites from the first millennia BCE and CE across the Central Asian Steppe. We uncovered major admixture events in the Late Bronze Age forming the genetic substratum for two main Iron Age gene-pools emerging around the Altai and the Urals respectively. Their demise was mirrored by new genetic turnovers, linked to the spread of the eastern nomad empires in the first centuries CE. Compared to the high genetic heterogeneity of the past, the homogenization of the present-day Kazakhs gene pool is notable, likely a result of 400 years of strict exogamous social rules.

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