Urban Centers and Rural Contexts in Late Antiquity

Urban Centers and Rural Contexts in Late Antiquity

Author: Thomas S. Burns

Publisher: MSU Press

Published: 2001-02-28

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13:

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The essays in this volume reevaluate the cities and towns of the Empire as centers of habitation, rather than archaeological museums, and reconsider the evidence of continuous and pervasive cultural change across the countryside.


Urban Centers and Rural Contexts in Late Antiquity

Urban Centers and Rural Contexts in Late Antiquity

Author: Thomas S. Burns

Publisher: MSU Press

Published: 2012-01-01

Total Pages: 454

ISBN-13: 0870138987

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Recent publications on urbanism and the rural environment in Late Antiquity, most of which explore a single region or narrow chronological niche, have emphasized either textual or archeological evidence. None has attempted the more ambitious task of bringing together the full range of such evidence within a multiregional perspective and around common themes. Urban Centers and Rural Contexts seeks to redress this omission. While ancient literature and the physical remains of cities attest to the power that urban values held over the lives of their inhabitants, the rural areas in which the majority of imperial citizens lived have not been well served by the historical record. Only recently have archeological excavations and integrated field surveys sufficiently enhanced our knowledge of the rural contexts to demonstrate the continuing interdependence of urban centers and rural communities in Late Antiquity. These new data call into question the conventional view that this interdependence progressively declined as a result of governmental crises, invasions, economic dislocation, and the success of Christianization. The essays in this volume require us to abandon the search for a single model of urban and rural change; to reevaluate the cities and towns of the Empire as centers of habitation, rather than archeological museums; and to reconsider the evidence of continuous and pervasive cultural change across the countryside. Deploying a wide range of material as well as literary evidence, the authors provide access not only into the world of élites, but also to the scarcely known lives of those without a voice in the literature, those men and women who worked in the shops, labored in the fields, and humbled themselves before their gods. They bring us closer to the complexity of life in late ancient communities and, in consequence, closer to both urban and rural citizens.


Urban Interactions

Urban Interactions

Author: Michael J. Kelly

Publisher: punctum books

Published: 2020-10-15

Total Pages: 443

ISBN-13: 195303506X

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This volume is dedicated to eliciting the interactions between localities across late antique and early medieval Europe and the wider Mediterranean. Significant research has been done in recent years to explore how late "Roman" and post-"Roman" cities, towns and other localities communicated vis-à-vis larger structural phenomena, such as provinces, empires, kingdoms, institutions and so on. This research has contributed considerably to our understanding of the place of the city in its context, but tends to portray the city as a necessarily subordinate conduit within larger structures, rather than an entity in itself, or as a hermeneutical object of enquiry. Consequently, not enough research has been committed to examining how local people and communities thought about, engaged with, and struggled against nearby or distant urban neighbors.Urban Interactions addresses this lacuna in urban history by presenting articles that apply a diverse spectrum of approaches, from archaeological investigation to critical analyses of historiographical and historical biases and developmental consideration of antagonisms between ecclesiastical centers. Through these avenues of investigation, this volume elucidates the relationship between the urban centers and their immediate hinterlands and neighboring cities with which they might vie or collaborate. This entanglement and competition, whether subterraneous or explicit across overarching political, religious or other macro categories, is evaluated through a broad geographical range of late "Roman" provinces and post-"Roman" states to maintain an expansive perspective of developmental trends within and about the city.


Cities and the Meanings of Late Antiquity

Cities and the Meanings of Late Antiquity

Author: Mark Humphries

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2019-11-04

Total Pages: 118

ISBN-13: 9004422617

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This study examines how cities have become an area of significant historical debate about late antiquity, challenging accepted notions that it is a period of dynamic change and reasserting views of the era as one of decline and fall.


Housing in Late Antiquity

Housing in Late Antiquity

Author: Luke Lavan

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 556

ISBN-13: 9004162283

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This collection of papers, arising from the conference series Late Antique Archaeology, examines the housing in the late antique period, through thematic and regional syntheses, complemented by cases studies and two bibliographic essays.


City Walls in Late Antiquity

City Walls in Late Antiquity

Author: Emanuele Intagliata

Publisher: Oxbow Books

Published: 2020-06-30

Total Pages: 463

ISBN-13: 1789253659

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The construction of urban defences was one of the hallmarks of the late Roman and late-antique periods (300–600 AD) throughout the western and eastern empire. City walls were the most significant construction projects of their time and they redefined the urban landscape. Their appearance and monumental scale, as well as the cost of labour and material, are easily comparable to projects from the High Empire; however, urban circuits provided late-antique towns with a new means of self-representation. While their final appearance and construction techniques varied greatly, the cost involved and the dramatic impact that such projects had on the urban topography of late-antique cities mark city walls as one of the most important urban initiatives of the period. To-date, research on city walls in the two halves of the empire has highlighted chronological and regional variations, enabling scholars to rethink how and why urban circuits were built and functioned in Late Antiquity. Although these developments have made a significant contribution to the understanding of late-antique city walls, studies are often concerned with one single monument/small group of monuments or a particular region, and the issues raised do not usually lead to a broader perspective, creating an artificial divide between east and west. It is this broader understanding that this book seeks to provide. The volume and its contributions arise from a conference held at the British School at Rome and the Swedish Institute of Classical Studies in Rome on June 20-21, 2018. It includes articles from world-leading experts in late-antique history and archaeology and is based around important themes that emerged at the conference, such as construction, spolia-use, late-antique architecture, culture and urbanism, empire-wide changes in Late Antiquity, and the perception of this practice by local inhabitants.


Towns in Transition

Towns in Transition

Author: Neil Christie

Publisher:

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13:

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The studies in this volume are based on new archaeological data and provide a full and convincing reassessment of the old image of urban decay and the impact of incoming 'Barbarians' and Arabs on towns. The broad geographical range of towns studied, and the informed and authoritative interpretations offered in this volume, will be invaluable to scholars seeking to understand this complex, intriguing and misunderstood period of history.


Social and Political Life in Late Antiquity

Social and Political Life in Late Antiquity

Author: William Bowden

Publisher: Late Antique Archaeology

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 696

ISBN-13:

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This collection of papers, arising from the conference series Late Antique Archaeology, examines the social and political structures of the late antique period and the ways in which they are manifested in the archaeological and textual record.


The Idea and Ideal of the Town Between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

The Idea and Ideal of the Town Between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

Author: Gian Pietro Brogiolo

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 9789004109018

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This volume collects papers by distinguished European scholars, on the changing perception of the city in the period of transition from the Roman World to the Early Middle Ages. Central themes are the persistence of classical ideals of urban life, within a rapidly-changing world, and the emergence of a new ideal of the city that was specifically Christian.