Panel 8.21 – City and countryside in the Roman East


Organiser/Chair:

  • Alfred Schäfer (Römisch-Germanisches Museum, Köln)

Speakers:

Paper abstracts

1. Erika Jeck (University of Chicago)

Reinterpreting Survey Data, Reimagining Roman Greece
Survey data have often been used to confirm a decline in the countryside of Roman Greece described by ancient authors. But we need not be seduced by the plummeting number of alleged sites, nor by the sudden loss of finewares in certain areas, to read the rural landscape of this period as one of barren fields mottled with villa estates. Instead, using survey data from the provinces of Achaia and Epirus, I present an approach that avoids the methodological pitfalls of identifying discrete ‘sites’ by interpreting artifact scatter collectively as a sign of social, political, or agricultural investment. Attending to the artifacts themselves, this approach remains geographically rooted, simply at a much broader scale based on zones of investment rather than individual sites. In this way, the survey data rather suggest that investment in agriculture was largely maintained under the Romans, while investment in social display became concentrated in suburban zones of major metropoleis. This new pattern of spatial investment developed in response to the growth of cities and hinterlands far larger than pre-Roman poleis and chorai. In the end, rather than widespread economic decline throughout the countryside, these changes point toward a new landscape of grand metropoleis with a suburbium-style outspread of gardens, small farms, and villas, where social investments intensified at suburban nodes of connectivity—keeping urban and rural spheres deeply intertwined throughout the Roman era.

 

2. George Cupcea and Felix Marcu (University Babes-Bolyai)

The Rural Environment of Northern Dacia. Systems of Habitat, Production and Supply
In the Romanian (and Dacian) particular case, research has tended to focus on military and urban sites, where clear traces of urbanization are recognizable and easy to present in a festive manner. Interestingly enough, this was not the case at the beginning of the 20th century, when Transylvanian archaeologists excavated several Roman villas and provided us with most of the results in this aspect of Roman Dacia. After WWII, interest began to grow in the rural settlements in Roman Dacia, but only from the perspective that they could offer evidence for the historiographical goal of more than one century of Romanian research – the native continuity in Roman Dacia and the traditional Romanian ethnic genesis. Not even the more recent, meaning from the 70’s and 80’s, excavations and their reports or the more recent catalogues of rural discoveries are satisfactory, as they are narrowly focused and produce doubtful results. The more recent, aerial approach is very pertinent and attempts to solve this gap, at least for the Mures valley. The objectives of our research, are, in short: The drawing of the map of the Dacia Porolissensis’ countryside; The identification of the systems of production, market and supply; The registry of people living/working in this countryside; The supply of the military on the northern frontier; all of these going towards a general/synthetic look on the provincial rural economy.

 

3. Alina Streinu (Bucharest Municipality Museum)

The evolution of rural sites in Moesia Inferior/Scythia Minor
Moesia Inferior/Scythia Minor is a small province of the shore of the Black Sea, on the territory of modern day Dobroudja region, Romania. Despite its small size, in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD there are ca. 22 fortified settlements attested, the number reaches 29 in the 4th century, while in the 6th there are 40 listed by the ancient writer Procopius. The aim of this presentation is to review the settlement patterns in the rural environment and the relation with the fortified centers during the 2nd-3rd centuries, when it was called Moesia Inferior and the change noticed starting with the 4th century AD, after the emperor Diocletian established the province of Scythia Minor and strengthened the frontier. Two major phases impacted the urban development of the province during Late Antique: the first is the rule of emperors Diocletian and Constantine and the second is the rule of emperor Justinian. Both moments are marked by major architectural endeavors affecting most of the cities and fortifications that also impacted the spread of rural settlements in their respective territories. Recent research has shown different patterns for the use of land in rural settlements and new settlements have been discovered that bring new valuable information regarding the distribution of people and resources both in the first centuries of Roman rule and during late antique, as well as the evolution of trade networks between urban centers and settlements founded in their proximity.

 

4. Musa Kadıoğlu (Ankara Üniversitesi)

Wirtschaftliche Entwicklung von Teos
Teos gehörte zu den wichtigsten Städten Ioniens. Dank der nahezu 300-jährigen Grabungs- und Forschungsarbeiten ist nunmehr klar, dass die Gründung der Stadt im 10. Jahrhundert v. Chr. erfolgte. Eine erste wirtschaftliche Blüte erlebte die Stadt im 8.–6. Jh. v. Chr. durch die Keramikproduktion. In der öffentlichen Architektur wurde importiertes Baumaterial (weißer Marmor) verwendet. Mittels Neutronenaktivierungsanalyse der Fehlbrände konnte Teos neben Chios als das bedeutendste Töpferzentrum des 8.–6. Jhs. v. Chr. in Nordionien identifiziert werden. Zum spätarchaischen Stadtbild gehörte ein großer ionischer Tempel mit seinem Altar, der durch dokumentierte Bauglieder dem Kroisos-Tempel in Ephesos nahesteht. Die zweite, in der monumentalen Architektur fassbare Blütezeit, erlebte die Stadt 3. und 2. Jh. v. Chr. Damals entstanden öffentlichen Bauten wie die Stadtmauer, der Dionysos-Tempel, das Buleuterion, das Theater, das Gymnasium und der Südhafen. Trotz dieser starken Eingriffe in das Stadtbild hat sich bis in die Kaiserzeit kein einheitliches, orthogonales Rastersystem herausgestellt; vielmehr lassen die seit 2010 durchgeführten geophysikalischen Prospektionen in der antiken Stadt einen organisch entwickelten Stadtplan erkennen. Zahlreiche Inschriften, darunter die Schulstiftung des Polythros, Beschlüsse für die Dionysischen Techniten und ein Mietvertrag der Neoi, gewähren Einblicke in das kulturelle und wirtschaftliche Leben der Stadt. Im Vortrag sollen die verschiedenen wirtschaftlichen Entwicklungsphasen der Stadt von der spätgeometrischen bis zur späthellenistischer Zeit nachgezeichnet werden.