The <scp>R</scp>oman City as Articulated through <scp>T</scp>erra <scp>S</scp>igillata

Oyen, Astrid Van

doi:10.1111/ojoa.12059

Cited by 28 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…In Roman urbanism, one of the basic conditions for towns has always been centrality [6] (p. 83). According to the economic function of towns as either consumers and/or market vessels [56,57], the principles of territorial administration, and the specific relationship between settlement and hinterland in the Roman Empire in general, Roman towns somehow always were central places. A certain amount of centrality is, thus, immanent to Roman settlement and urbanism.…”

Section: Timacum Minus As a Central Place And Urban Mining Sitementioning

confidence: 99%

Timacum Minus in Moesia Superior—Centrality and Urbanism at a Roman Mining Settlement

Diers

2018

Land

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When applying traditional criteria of Roman urbanism, several settlements in the province of Moesia are not recognised as parts of the urban network. To avoid this, previous criteria of urbanism should be revised. This paper suggests revisions, which provide a more inclusive definition of urbanism: Thus, instead of focusing on administrative status and monumentality as primary markers of urbanity and urbanization, development factors for agglomeration and centrality are emphasized as decisive conditions for, and characteristics of, urban settlement. To provide a case study for this theoretical outline, the upper-Moesian mining settlement of Timacum Minus is evaluated by ideas derived from a critical appreciation of Walter Christaller’s central place theory. Timacum Minus did not have official settlement status and monumental character, yet, it developed as a central place in the unique landscape of the Timok valley. This was due to its location as a central road station, military post, and settlement along the important interregional Timok valley road as well as the site hierarchy as the base of the centralized administration of the Timok valley mining district. Hence, Timacum Minus displays different levels of centrality. Interestingly, the site only held these properties during the Roman Principate, although its central location and mining activities also existed in pre-Roman and post-Roman times. This demonstrates the significance of centrality mechanisms as determined by local and regional circumstances and historical conditions. Accordingly, it is argued that these circumstances and the diverse character as a central place also turned Timacum Minus into an urban site, irrespective of status and monumentality. This definition of the site provides not only an example of how to use central place theory in current archaeological thought but also possibilities for re-thinking urbanism in Roman Moesia.

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Section: Timacum Minus As a Central Place And Urban Mining Sitementioning

confidence: 99%

Timacum Minus in Moesia Superior—Centrality and Urbanism at a Roman Mining Settlement

Diers

2018

Land

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“…Their challenge has not been universally accepted, as it remains hard to imagine Roman studies without cities (Harris, 2005: 29-34). However, their work encourages welcome tendencies in recent research to analyse cities not in isolation, but rather as nodes within broader landscapes and patterns of human mobility (Erdkamp 1999;van Oyen, 2015;Vermeulen and Zuiderhoek, 2021). Thus, one recent publication on ancient cities explicitly avoids celebrating ancient urban life and instead insists on its precarity and temporal compression (Woolf, 2020).…”

Section: Research Aimsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Falerii Novi Project

Andrews,

Bernard,

Dodd

et al. 2023

Pap. Br. Sch. Rome

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The Falerii Novi Project represents a newly formed archaeological initiative to explore the Roman city of Falerii Novi. The project forms a collaboration of the British School at Rome with a multinational team of partner institutions. Thanks to a rich legacy of geophysical work on both the site and its territory, Falerii Novi presents an exceptional opportunity to advance understanding of urbanism in ancient and medieval Italy. The Falerii Novi Project employs a range of methodologies, integrating continued site-scale survey with new campaigns of stratigraphic excavation, archival research and environmental archaeology. The project aims to present a more expansive and holistic urban history of this key Tiber Valley settlement by focusing on long-run socio-economic processes both within Falerii Novi and as they linked the city to its wider landscape.

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“…Historically, this shows that the city did not have the same role in shaping all pottery distributions (cf. Van Oyen 2015b). Rather than declaring that the Roman economy was (not) integrated, can we instead chart changes in network topology and its variables in time and space?…”

Section: Farewell To the Roman Economymentioning

confidence: 99%