City of emperors (c. AD 285–350)

This chapter explores the archaeological evidence from London for the short-lived ‘British Empire’ of Carausius and his successor Allectus, when the city gained the pretensions of an imperial capital. Allectus commissioned a massive new public building complex along the riverside. This appears to have incorporated two unusually late examples of classical temples, which were perhaps attached to an imperial palace. In addition to summarizing previously published work, the text includes new speculations as to the character and identity of these temples. The suggestion that the boat found at County Hall in 1910 had been built as part of Carausius’ fleet is tentatively revived. The mint established at this time continued in operation after Constantius’s reconquest of Britain and Constantine’s subsequent assumption of power. The archaeological remains of this period are described to show that London remained an important administrative centre, but power was exercised from private houses and compounds. The city was no longer a port of consequence, and several of London’s most important public buildings were made redundant, quarried for buildings materials, and replaced by workshops.

Microbial Empires: Active Transmission Strategies and Postcolonial Critique

In this chapter Taylor-Pirie illuminates how the microbiological imagination made its mark on anxious imperial fictions by close reading H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds (1898) and John Masefield’s Multitude and Solitude (1909) alongside parasitologists’ characterisations of parasite-vector-host relationships. The anthropocentric semantics of war, violence, and criminality characterised tropical illness as another form of colonial insurrection, bolstering the biopolitical power of medicine as an extension of the disciplinary law-and-order state. She interrogates the collision of the ‘medicine as war’ metaphor with a medicalised concept of ‘the Other’ to think through biomedical and national identity—as well as the discomforting agency of non-human vectors—in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), H. P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald’s ‘Wingéd Death’ (1934), and the poetry and correspondence of parasitologists. Taylor-Pirie examines how vengeful insects, alien invasions, microbial villains, and the supernatural gave shape to the anxiety that Britain’s geopolitical relationships were immersing the imperial capital in a global marketplace of pathogens. By excavating the medical and political contexts of popular cultural forms like the vampire, she historicises lexes of contagion and parasitism that persist in contemporary political discourse surrounding immigration.

Babylon

Babylon, located on the river Euphrates some 56 miles south of modern Baghdad, is first documented in the second half of the 3rd millennium bce, although very little is known about it from that time. The city rose to prominence in the early 2nd millennium bce after Sumu-la-el (1880–1845 bce), a predecessor of Hammurabi, made it the capital of the newly founded Amorite dynasty of Babylon (the so-called “First Dynasty of Babylon”). From then on Babylon remained the most important city of southern Mesopotamia, achieving the status of imperial capital following the final defeat of Assyria by the Babylonian king Nabopolassar (626–605 bce) and his Median allies in 612 bce. The reign of Nabopolassar’s son, Nebuchadnezzar II (604–562 bce), is regarded as Babylon’s heyday. This was a time of enormous prosperity, intense building activity, and urban population growth. It was also the time of the Babylonian exile, when deported Judeans were settled in Babylonia following Nebuchadnezzar’s sack of Jerusalem in 586 bce. However, the Neo-Babylonian empire was short-lived: with its conquest by Cyrus II in 539 bce, Babylon was no longer an imperial capital, although it remained a major city within the Achaemenid empire. After Alexander the Great conquered the region in 331 bce, Babylon remained important in spite of the new foundation of Seleuceia-on-the-Tigris in around 300 bce. Scholars attached to the great temple of Marduk were instrumental in preserving and handing down Mesopotamian learning right down until the demise of the cuneiform writing tradition in the 1st century ce (or possibly even later). Babylon’s legacy is such that popular accounts have tended to prioritize the well-known classical and Biblical stories at the expense of the contemporary archaeological and cuneiform textual evidence that bear direct testimony to the city and its history. Although the ruins of Babylon had attracted the interest of travelers for several centuries, it was not until the 19th century that archaeological investigation began, and this only took on a more systematic, scientific format with the German excavations that began at the turn of the 20th century. Those campaigns, and the publication of their results, revolutionized our knowledge of the city and made it possible for scholars to integrate information about the city’s topography drawn from the cuneiform tablets. The last fifty years or so have seen further excavation campaigns, more limited in scope, and in some cases associated with ambitious reconstruction projects aimed at making the remains more accessible to the public and showcasing Iraq’s cultural heritage. The archaeological evidence as a whole is skewed toward the city’s later history: the excavators were hardly able to access the 2nd-millennium-bce occupation levels on account of the high ground water. The excavated remains primarily reflect the city layout of Nebuchadnezzar II’s time, although a good many of its monuments survived well into the Seleucid or even the Parthian era.

A Teotihuacan complex at the Classic Maya city of Tikal, Guatemala

Lidar reveals the presence of a precinct at the Classic Maya city of Tikal that probably reproduces the Ciudadela and Temple of the Feathered Serpent at the imperial capital of Teotihuacan.

Changes in the life of Germans in St. Petersburg in the late 19th – early 20th century

The subject of this paper is an overview of changes in the material and spiritual life of Germans living in St. Petersburg in the late 19th – early 20th century. The overview of various facets of life of German population of St. Petersburg makes it possible to comprehensively address the problem of transformation of the State nationalities policy toward the largest ethnic diaspora in the Imperial Capital. The research work of Russian and foreign scholars became the theoretical framework for the article that enabled to ensure continuity of historical analysis. This study used a problematic and chronological approach to review the dynamics of state legislative initiatives related to in relation to the German community of St. Petersburg. The legislative acts issued in the Russian Empire during the period under study to toughen up the legal regulations governing the life of Russian Germans served as the factual basis of the overview. The conclusions drawn in the paper give a better idea of general trends in the nationalities policy of the Russian state in the midst of the most important domestic and international events of the late 19th and early 20th century.

The Making of Medieval Rome

Integrating the written sources with Rome's surviving remains and, most importantly, with the results of the past half-century's worth of medieval archaeology in the city, The Making of Medieval Rome is the first in-depth profile of Rome's transformation over a millennium to appear in any language in over forty years. Though the main focus rests on Rome's urban trajectory in topographical, architectural, and archaeological terms, Hendrik folds aspects of ecclesiastical, political, social, military, economic, and intellectual history into the narrative in order to illustrate how and why the cityscape evolved as it did during the thousand years between the end of the Roman Empire and the start of the Renaissance. A wide-ranging synthesis of decades' worth of specialized research and remarkable archaeological discoveries, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in how and why the ancient imperial capital transformed into the spiritual heart of Western Christendom.

A NEO-ASSYRIAN PROVINCIAL PALACE AT TELL BILLA

The Neo-Assyrian site Šibaniba (modern Tell Billa) served as a provincial center at the very edge of what is traditionally known as the “Assyrian Heartland”. Excavations in the early 1900s under Dr. Speiser of the University of Pennsylvania uncovered architecture in the southwestern portion of the mound, but a loss of records and lack of publication have prevented any comprehensive publications or analysis of the archaeological material. The architecture from Level I in the southwest corner is the remains of a palace from the latter half of the Neo-Assyrian period – comprised of an inner, paved courtyard and surrounding rooms. The analysis of this palace complex is carried out herein, with a discussion of its positioning and importance, especially during Nineveh's tenure as imperial capital. Overall, Šibaniba, despite being located so close to the Heartland, was an important administrative center in its own right – illustrated by a restructuring of the citadel's organization in the later Neo-Assyrian period and its inclusion in Sennacherib's irrigation program.

Creating the Imperial City

This chapter discusses the creation of imperial cities: Paris was remodelled by Napoleon III, the layout of Vienna was altered in the era of Franz Joseph, and Berlin was expanded under Wilhelm I and Wilhelm II from a Prussian into an imperial capital. In each case this meant creating broad boulevards, green spaces, and impressive buildings, but also providing clean water, efficient sewage systems, street lighting, and local transport. Monuments celebrating victories and generals were also part of the urban design. London only built a ceremonial avenue in the twentieth century. Maximilian had great plans for Mexico City based on what he had seen in Paris, Vienna, and Brussels, while Pedro II built Petrópolis, a summer residence in the hills above Rio de Janeiro.