Panel 8.22 – Transformation of rural landscapes in the Roman and Late Antique West


Organisation/Vorsitz:

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Paper abstracts

1. Luis Gutiérrez Soler, María Alejo Armijo und Antonio Ortiz Villarejo (Universidad de Jaén)

The transformation of the Giribaile-Baessuci landscape in the hinterland of Cástulo (Jaén, Spain)
The second punic war changed the local economy belongs to the late Iberian Culture. The fortified Iberian city of Giribaile was founded in the agrarian colonization of the valley. This central political rol was developed by the municipality of Baessuci from the Roman Imperial times. The new economic strategie was focused on a large scale explotation of the minier local resources, linking this mountain landscape with far away zones of the Roman Empire.
The intensive archaeological survey campaigns carried out in the hinterland of Giribaile and Baessuci landscape has permitted us to show the evolution of the social and economic patterns from the IV century B.C. to the Roman Imperial times and beyond. Also, the recent low level of the water of the Guadalén and Giribaile dams has given us a good opportunity to survey an unknow part of the landscape.
This presentation try to show the new economic plan of the Roman Imperial times defined by a regular settlement pattern distributed around the Baessuci municipality and the global defensive control of the whole minier lanscape in front of the Iberian economic strategy focused on the specific defences of the ancient city of Giribaile.

 

2. Isabel Sanchez Ramos (Autónoma University of Madrid) / Felix Teichner (Philipps-Universität Marburg) / Fernando Valdés (Autónoma University of Madrid)

Late antique and medieval landscape in the Guadiana valley. The Roman villa of 'La Dehesa de la Cocosa' (Badajoz, Spain)
This papers aims to present the recent study about the evolution of the territory of the middle valley of the Guadiana between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages periods (4th-10th centuries), to understand the articulation and management of this geographical border area in administrative, economic, social and ideological terms. One of the main goals is to know the impact of both Christianization and Islamization phenomena in the territory, and the new rural settlements evidences after the fall of the Roman Empire system, as well as the structural characterization of the new cultural landscape in which the transformation of the Hispanic Roman villae is inserted and involved.

 

3. Isabel Sanchez Ramos (Autonoma University of Madrid) / Jorge Morín de Pablos (Audema)

Sacred landscapes in the Hinterland of Toledo (Spain) during the late antiquity (6th-7th centuries)
This works aims to present results from the excavations carried out from 2016 to 2018 in a large late antique both residencial and funerary building located at Los Hitos (Orgaz, Toledo, Spain). Los Hitos is a relevant rural and sacred complex related to the local elites of the Visigoth capital of the Iberian Peninsula. The Regnum Gothorum was consolidated since the middle second half of the 6th c. An ambitious cultural and legislative programme, perfectly elaborated, was set into action in order to reach the new unification of ancient Roman Hispania. The site underwent some transformations regarding functions and architectural spaces from his foundation as rural privileged residence, mausoleum, ecclesiastical complex, and it continued being occupied during the Umayyad period.

 

4. Javier Salido (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)

From the villae and villages: The Grain production in the Roman Spain
Food supply in Roman Spain has been a scarcely studied subject in historiography due to poor conservation of relevant structures (horrea –granaries and store buildings- and pistrina) and a lack of interest on part of experts dedicated to the archaeology of architecture, who have focused more on another types of sites and monuments. Consequently, the study of warehouses and other store buildings has been long neglected, despite being of great importance in terms of understanding the management of primary resources such as grain, one of the most crucial factors behind the functioning of a city.

 

5. Marion Dessaint (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)

Durocortorum and the Remi territory: dynamics and evolution of the economic relationships between the capital of a roman province and its territory
The multiplication of preventive excavations in Champagne-Ardenne in the last fifteen years brought forth new elements regarding land use in the Remi territory and its centre civitas, also capital of the Gallia Belgica: Durocortorum (Reims). Today, thanks to an exhaustive inventory of rural settlements in this area, made as part of a PhD thesis on the Remi territory between the c. 3rd BC and the c. 6th AD, it is possible to offer new leads concerning the relationships between cities and the countryside, as well as economic flows that animate them.
What are the ties between the provincial capital and the Remi territory? Can we determine if products made in the neighbouring area of Reims were destined for the city, and inversely? Is there a connexion between territory organisation and economic relationships in the city/countryside system?
Faunal and carpological studies, considered alongside a spatial approach to rural settlements, allow us to propose several hypothesis concerning the networks and economic dynamics that organise Durocortorum and the Remi territory. The recognised differences in productions in nearby and farther rural settlements bear witness to a specific economic organisation between a capital and its neighbouring territory.
Moreover, studying the spatial distribution of the settlements discovered in this area allow us to grasp the provincial capital’s impact on the establishment of rural settlements, main actors in the economic relationships with Durocortorum.