Panel 8.7 – From "splendidissima ciuitas" to "oppidum labens": Financial Problems and Material Ruin in Roman Provincial Cities at the End of the High-Empire. The Hispanic Provinces


Organiser/Chair:

  • Javier Andreu Pintado (Universidad de Navarra)

External Discussant:

  •   Aitor Blanco (Universidad de Navarra)

Speakers:

Panel abstract

Between the Late Republic and the Flavian era Rome created an Empire of cities. Using that model Rome entrusted the local elite with the responsibility of managing their communities in an unprecedented approach. The result was the articulation of the Latin West as a network of cities as "parua simulacra" of Rome. The engagement of the local elites, their munificence, together with the financial autonomy of each center produced some of the most important changes in this model of urban life. So, in order to study the city as an economic centre it is necessary to take into account the epigraphic and archaeological evidence, to describe the city in its financial and institutional contexts and to explore whether or not the Roman Empire was successful and the idea of city durable. On the basis of some decrees from the Flavian era, the comments of Pliny the Younger on the financial problems of many cities and, finally, different notices in the Historia Augusta reporting the existence of oppida labentia –"cities in decline"– at the end of the 2nd century AD, we seek to discuss the following question: was the municipal system, at least in the Latin West, a useful and sustainable model of managing local autonomy? Was it a durable system? Were new cities more fragile than others in terms of financial sustainability? What were the causes for the lack of strength of many urban centres from the 2nd century AD onwards? Scholars working in different provinces of the Roman Empire have attested diverse signs of financial difficulties in many privileged urban centres from at least the reign of Marcus Aurelius. This evidence shows abandonment of public buildings –forums and water supply systems–, lack of private munificence initiatives promoting buildings, depreciation of sculptural programs –recycled or reused–, decline in the epigraphic habit and depopulation of complete clusters of cities. Such processes transformed in many ways the layout of the classical model of city and show us that, most likely, many of those formerly thriving communities expanded beyond their capacity and could not cope already at the end of the Antonine period with the troubles preceding the 3rd century crisis. The main goal of this panel is to discuss what were the conditions in which Roman cities began to loss their former economic power, reversing from the ideal of the "splendidissima" ciuitas to that of the "oppidum labens".

Paper abstracts

1. Laurent Brassous (University of La Rochelle)

Resources of wealth in the cities of the Roman Spain: approaching to the change of urban model
Various of epigraphic and, above all, archaeological signs seem to indicate a loss of vitality in the Hispanic cities between the second and fourth centuries AD. In several cities, the degradation of urban centers, and more specificly public spaces, seems to indicate a lack of resources, or a lack of interest in the maintenance of public monuments. At the same time, archeology allows to see the development of craft workshops installed in the very heart of the old public spaces. More than a sign of crisis, this phenomenon seems to be better the testimony of a reconversion and even a change of the urban populations. It could testify to a transformation of the nature of the city and the adoption by the inhabitants of the model of the city of production to survive.

"Resources of wealth in the cities of the Roman Spain: approaching to the change of urban model" (Fulltext)

 

2. Claudia Garía Villaba (Universidad de Zaragoza)

The decline of imperial propaganda. The end of the classical city and its honorary statuary programs
In Roman times architecture and statuary programs went together. They were considered essential parts of a classical Roman city. There was no Roman city without its public buildings and no public building without sculpture programs. In this way the decline in the epigraphic habit and the recycling or re-use of sculpture and Roman portraits were ordinarily linked by scholars to the ‘urban crisis’ happened in the IIIrd century.
Although, in the recent years archaeological evidences have shown portraits, sculpture and epigraphy discovered in recycling or reused archaeological contexts dated in the late IInd century, at least in the Latin West. Also, classical sources reported, in some occasions, the decline and the financial problems many Roman cities were going through at the end of the IInd century. Does this means that the first steps of the ‘urban crisis’ had started even before? Was recycled or re-used sculpture a main evidence of that process?
From my point of view scholars have not focus enough attention to these evidences. They have only studied the sculpture pieces but not why they were useless and therefore re-used. It has been proved that motivations for recycling and re-use varied from one city to another. In this way it is important to study some cases in the Mediterranean area where the decline of the classical city and the recycling or re-use of honorary statuary programs were related.

"The decline of imperial propaganda. The end of the classical city and its honorary statuary programs" (Fulltext)

 

3. Aitor Blanco (Universidad de Navarra)

Imperial Responses to urban Crisis in the Roman Empire: A Conceptual Approach
In 77 and 79 AD, the communities of Sabora and Munigua received imperial letters from Vespasian and Titus, respectively. These recent Flavian municipia had experienced difficulties and decided to petition the Roman emperors for effective solutions beyond the jurisdiction of the provincial governor. Both inscriptions shed almost unique light on to the impact of the new juridical status granted by the Flavians to Hispania. Organised urban centres multiplied on the Iberian Peninsula on an unprecedented scale and these two cities show some of the negative side effects of the process.
Unfortunately, such direct testimonies in the western provinces are rather exceptional. For the Greek East, by contrast, the habit of inscribing imperial letters and provincial edicts is better attested. Likewise, the insightful testimony of Pliny when he was governor of Bithynia under Trajan is available to us. The aim of this paper is to study this evidence collectively and determine whether there were common procedures in responding to local urban difficulties during the high imperial period. The language and measures communicated by the emperors and their representatives will be analysed, as well as the strategies of diplomacy and appeal available to the provincial population. This approach therefore seeks to show how the Roman administration conceptualised the challenges of its Empire of cities.

"Rome: an Empire of Cities and a Sustainable Model of Urbanism? Preface" (Fulltext)

 

4. David Espinosa-Espinosa (University of Santiago de Compostela)

From "splendidissimae urbes" to "infirmae ciuitates". On the crisis of the Roman city model during the High Empire in the Western provinces and its legal-administrative and institutional factors
The crisis of the Roman city model at the end of the High Empire in the Western provinces has an undeniable material dimension, which has been thoroughly studied from an archaeological point of view in order to understand its manifestations and extent. Less attention, however, has been given to the legal-administrative and institutional aspects of this historic process, whose origin would be the result of a chain of economic, political and environmental causes. These events would have decreased the sources of funding and wealth of the local elites and, therefore, the urban monumentalization and management practices would have been neglected. Aligned with that approach, this proposal aims to provide a reflection on the role of the legal-administrative and institutional factors in the crisis of the Roman city model. To this end, aspects such as the spread of "Latium minus", the introduction of "Latium maius", and the promulgation of Caracalla’s "Constitutio Antoniniana" in A.D. 212, are considered. Also, different signs of institutional weakness such as the loss of autonomy and the assistance or intervention of the Imperial power in the management of the "ciuitates" are analysed. Both groups of factors may be at the root of a structural crisis of the Roman municipal system, which would have transformed "splendidissimae urbes" into "infirmae ciuitates".

"From splendidissimae urbes to infirmae ciuitates" (Fulltext)

 

5. Pilar Diarte-Blasco (Universidad de Alcalá)

The end of the process: a changing urban model in Hispania – from classical to late antique
Traditional historiography has characterized Late Antiquity as a period in which many urban sites failed and disappeared. From our contemporary perspective in a modern western world of substantial cities, it is difficult to comprehend how an urban site could disappear completely in the landscape, taking with it its multiple activities and numerous inhabitants. However, in recent decades, this view of the historical period between the Roman Empire and the consolidation of the medieval states has been much revised and it has been accepted that only a small group of cities completely vanished during these turbulent centuries. The majority, however, did persist without sizeable upheaval, although each saw change in physiognomy across this period.
The loss in use and primary role of Roman (classical) urban public buildings and spaces and their later reuse with diverse functions are two of the essential characteristics of the transformations that cities underwent in Late Antiquity. This paper will offer a more nuanced view of this transitional process, taking into focus a specific territory, namely late and post-Roman Spain – Hispania – where these transformations were fundamental to the genesis of the new urban reality of Late Antiquity. A particular aim is to explore what archaeology can tell us of the fate and redesigning of towns in this crucial timespan and to question how the mutations in the urban fabric marked the start of what we might term 'medieval urban characteristics'.

"The end of the process: a changing urban model in Hispania – from classical to late antique" (Fulltext)

 

6. Maria Ruiz del Arbol Moro (Instituto de Historia, CSIC) / Penélope González Sampériz (Instituto Pirenaico de Ecologia, CISC)

Not islands in the landscape. Environmental and territorial transformations linked to the material ruin of provincial cities: the case study of Los Bañales
The analysis of the transformations and changes of the Hispanic cities from the end of the 2nd century AD raises interesting questions about the processes of change of the Mediterranean landscapes during the High Empire and their connection with the emergence of new forms of social organization. Our intervention aims, first of all, to assess the extent to which the action of man in the physical environment and the degradation of the environment are relevant aspects to understand the decline of Hispanic provincial cities; second, to analyze the character of the man / environment relations during this period.
To do so, we will make a general review of the state of the art in Hispania and, in particular, of the paleo-environmental and population data available for the region of Alto Aragón and, specifically, the municipality of Los Bañales (Uncastillo, Zaragoza) . Our intention is to contrast the various data sets from an interdisciplinary perspective (combining the points of view of geography, history and archeology) in order to assess aspects such as the effects of the intensification of agricultural production in the territory, density of settlement, expansion of the population to previously unoccupied areas, etc . In short, to assess the extent of the imposition of Roman interests on a regional scale and their diachronic impact on the environment.

 

7. Diego Romero Vera (Université Bordeaux Montaigne)

Murallas, calles y cloacas. Indicadores del vigor urbano en la ciudad hispanorromana de época antonina
El análisis de los elementos de infraestructura urbana supone un excelente indicador para calibrar la vitalidad de las ciudades antiguas. Los fenómenos de incuria y abandono de murallas, calles y redes de saneamiento se engloban dentro de las transformaciones propias de época tardía. Dichas alteraciones se han venido situando tradicionalmente en Hispania a partir del siglo III, pero su génesis arranca ya, como pretendemos demostrar, en la segunda centuria. Eso sí, ello no afecta entonces de forma generalizada a todas las urbes, sino solo a una minoría que comparte inequívocos signos de involución urbana.
En este sentido, no son pocos los cambios que afectan a la infraestructura urbana durante el siglo II. Uno de ellos es el papel secundario que juegan las murallas en este momento. Su progresiva irrelevancia defensiva determinó que, en algunos casos, la propia muralla o bien sus anexos fueran amortizados. En el ámbito del viario urbano, el fenómeno más frecuente fue la reparación de las calles y la limpieza de cloacas, actuaciones que deben englobarse dentro de la línea de mantenimiento y reparación que afecta a la mayoría de los elementos de topografía urbana en este siglo. Otro fenómeno que ha concitado nuestra atención es la ocupación de vías y pórticos por parte de construcciones privadas. Esta apropiación del espacio público se relaciona con la falta de suelo edificable y, asimismo, con la permisividad de las autoridades.

"Murallas, calles y cloacas. Indicadores del vigor urbano en la ciudad hispanorromana de época antonina" (Fulltext)

 

8. Felix Teichner

The Municipium Flavium Mirobrigense – an example of the false start of urbanisation in Roman Lusitania ?
The Roman city of Mirobriga, which developed from a celtiberian oppidum during the 1st century AD, embraced public facilities such as circus, baths and a forum. The present investigations concentrate on domestic architecture (domus), which were recently discovered through non-invasive geophysical survey. The following careful excavation of the houses provide us for the first time with the possibility to reconstruct the construction history of private architecture and its evolution in the small urban centres of southern Lusitania, between the Flavin period and the second half of the 3rd century A.D. when the city structures collapsed.

 

9. Pepita Padros and Clara Forn (Museu de Badalona) / Jacinto Sanchez

The Urban Transformations in the Roman Town of Baetulo from the Flavian Period
The roman town of Baetulo (Hispania Tarraconensis) is located beneath present-day Badalona, 10 km north of Barcelona. Baetulo was founded ex novo around 80 B.C. as part of a programme led by Rome at the end of the 2nd century B.C. and beginning of the 1st century B.C. to be one of the key elements of the new territorial distribution in Laietania.
Baetulo has a clear Roman filiation not only in its town planning but also in its documented public and private buildings in which it shows a clear and total italian influence. With regard to its legal category, Pliny refers to it as an oppidum civium romanorum, that is, a fortified urban settlement with an established presence of Roman citizens.
From the end of the first century AD and the first half of the second century AD, archaeology documents in Baetulo a process of change that led to major transformations in public and private use spaces. This fact did not mean abandoning the area, but a transformation of the functional use of these spaces, which may have to be related to the granting of the Ius Latii. The vitality of Baetulo during the second and third centuries is proved by the existence of archaeological contexts and epigraphic elements that document the evolution and transformation of urban life. This fact contrasts with the possible contraction of the city, or the lack of political power in the early third century AD, which translates into the use of public spaces as a place to dispose of domestic waste.

"The Urban Transformations in the Roman Town of Baetulo from the Flavian Period" (Fulltext)

 

10. Tamara Peñalver (Universitat de València)

Lucentum: the decline of the city through its domestic architecture
Domestic spaces in the Roman world are microcosms, they reflect the transformations and changes that take place on a large scale in society, so they are valuable tools for analyzing the phenomenon of cities classified as "shooting stars." The various phases of a house, from its construction, reforms and abandonment (sudden or premeditated), are symptomatic of the state of the cities to which they belong.
Our aim with this communication is to analyze this phenomenon of the oppida labentia through a concrete case study, the domestic spaces from the municipium of Lucentum. Its domus show through its construction techniques, its decorations and its material culture, a total symbiosis with the evolution of the city.
In the second hand, we will try to deduce the flows of the population once the city declined. In our case, the decadence of Lucentum (at the end of the second century AD) occurs at the same time that a relative splendor of Ilici and of the Portus Ilicitanus, where has been found one of the most luxurious late-antique domus in the Valencian territory.
Regarding the villas, two phenomena occurred, while those suburban villas suffered the same fate as Lucentum, disappearing in the s. III AD (Calle Rómulo and Remo, Casa Ferrer, Balsa del Castillo); Other surrounding villas flourished (Algorós, Xauxelles, Els Banyets de la Reina), becoming centers of political and social life, between the 3rd and 4th centuries AD.

"Lucentum: the decline of the city through its domestic architecture" (Fulltext)

 

11. Inmaculada Delage González (Universidad de Navarra)

Roman common ware and the issue of transition, crisis and discontinuity in urban building programs at the end of 2nd century AD and the beginning of 3rd century AD, the case of Los Bañales (Uncastillo, Zaragoza, Spain)
In addition to work by J. Galiay in the 1940s and A. Beltrán Martínez in the 1970s, nine excavation campaigns have been led by the current research project at the Roman city of Los Bañales. The site has become a paradigmatic case study for the difficulties that confronted many Hispanic-Roman cities in the late II century and early III century A.D. Different evidence for these difficulties has been recently analysed at Los Bañales and includes reused forum spaces, disuse of the hydraulic system and the collapse of the baths. The objective of this paper is to incorporate an analysis of the private buildings, in particular material from the area in front of the baths known as the “domestic-handcraft space”. This area was used during the II century A.D. in what was probably an earlier public building. This paper presents a detailed study of the everyday pottery, which includes table, cooking and storage wares.
With this analysis, we intend to outline elements of change and alteration identified in common ceramics, which until recent times have received little attention by investigators, and to make visible the small-scale changes in the behaviour and customs of inhabitants of this city that had a major impact in the habitational zones.

 

12. Luis Romero Novella (Universidad de Navarra)

El foro romano de Los Bañales (Uncastillo, Zaragoza): Construcción, reformas y amortización de un forum del conuentus Caesaraugustanus
La ciudad romana de Los Bañales presenta un conjunto forense construido, como máximo, en época augustea temprana, según se deduce de la presencia en el mismo de un ciclo escultórico dedicado a los nietos e hijos adoptivos de Augusto: Cayo y Lucio César. Posee una de las plazas forenses más pequeñas de Hispania, a la que se abren una porticus duplex en los lados norte y este, dos scholae y la curia en la zona este y la basílica jurídica hacia el oeste. El conjunto sufrió varias reformas, una vinculable a la promoción de la ciudad a municipium en época de Vespasiano. El recinto fue tempranamente amortizado, entre finales del s. II - principios del s. III d.C., según se deduce del material cerámico recuperado en las fases de amortización del criptopórtico este y la zona de tabernae sur. Este fenómeno es observado en otros foros hispanos, algunos de ellos en su ámbito geográfico más próximo. Se analizarán en detalle los procesos de amortización de los programas escultóricos, decorativos y epigráficos del mismo. Asimismo, se estudiarán las técnicas de adaptación de los antiguos espacios públicos del foro para fines distintos a los originales, para lo cual se dan procesos de compartimentación para adecuarlas a estos nuevos usos, en las que se reutilizan sillares e incluso decoración arquitectónica.

"El foro romano de Los Bañales (Uncastillo, Zaragoza): Construcción, reformas y amortización de un forum del conuentus Caesaraugustanus" (Fulltext)

 

13. Alessandro Alessio Rucco / Claudio Negrelli / Fabio Bracci / Renata Curina

Claterna (Bologna, Italy): crisis and transformation of a municipium between II and III century A.D.
The ancient town of Claterna lies in the countryside, along the via Aemilia, about 15 km east of Bologna.
Several archaeological campaigns have investigated the surface of the settlement helping us to detect the general plan of the town. Two domus were intensively excavated, while the public area is still under preliminary investigation.
Even if partial, the available data is sufficient to show the close bond between the case of Claterna and the general issue of the decline of towns around the II-III century A.D.
Born as a conciliabulum along the via Aemilia, between Bononia and Forum Cornelii, at the crossing with a road coming from the Apennines, Claterna is recorded as a municipium from the 1st half of the I century B.C. It is our opinion that after the floruit of the augustan age, the town underwent a severe crisis between the late II and the beginning of the III century A.D. The aim of our paper is to discuss this hypothesis starting from the presentation of a stratigraphic context.
The latest excavations in the so called Domus of the Blacksmith let us discover that a 50 cm thick extensive layer of ruins sealed the I-II century floors. The time-span between these ruins and the immediately later interfaces was about a century. Only in the V century, in fact, the domus was recovered, but the characteristics of the new occupation suggest that the surrounding settlement might had already lost its role as municipium and turned to its original condition of itinerary place.

 

14. Mario Gutiérrez-Rodríguez (Universidad de Granada)

Site formation processes and urban transformations during Late Antiquity from a high-resolution geoarchaeological perspective: Sedimentary contexts of Vrbes Baeticae
Understanding urban transformation processes in public spaces is a key-challenge to recognize the scope of the transformations of the Early Empire Roman cities towards Late Antiquity. In this sense, public areas experienced a great variety of transformation processes entailing the genesis of complex stratigraphy of anthropogenic and natural deposits. In this paper we use archaeological soil micromorphology, physico-chemical analyses and geochemistry to investigate site formation processes and non-traditional forms of occupation not visible in the macroscopic archaeological record. This methodology allows the distinction of several anthropogenic activities as recycling, housing and reflooring practices, middening of organic residues, animal penning, or expoliation and progressive decay of constructions among others. Further, sedimentary components inform about the changing geomorphological dynamics of the surrounding landscape of the Roman cities, and also about the interaction of residual occupation forms and sedimentation once public architecture experienced abandonment processes. Thus, the complex superposition of site formation processes seen at Roman cities of provincia Baetica underlines the role of Geoarchaeology for the identification of behavioral signatures and its relevance in deciphering urban transformation in public spaces during Late Antiquity. To illustrate this, we will present different case-studies as Munigua, Baelo Claudia, Hispalis and Torreparedones.