Ancient Urbanism

Each year, The Antiquity Trust sponsors the Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG) plenary session. The keynote speaker at Edinburgh TAG 2022 was David Wengrow, who spoke about ‘The Nebelivka Hypothesis (or, cities against the state)’, using the Trypillia mega-sites to question the definition of urbanisation and the position of the modern state as a telos of human political development. Now, the Nebelivka Hypothesis has evolved into an installation at the Venice Biennale. John Chapman and Bisserka Gaydarska, who have worked extensively on the mega-sites including Nebelivka, reflect on their recent visit to La Serenissima.

The aim of the paper is to highlight a particular urban ensemble within the city of Pompeii as an example of a well-defined ancient city quarter. The outline of the specific tangible and intangible qualities of the district is accompanied by a brief discussion of its chronological development. The district under consideration, the southeastern part of the city, is characterised by the presence of vineyards and market gardens. Another singular feature is al fresco dining establishments, which are found only in this area of the town - in the immediate vicinity of the amphitheatre and the Palestra Grande. Taken together, the architectural, archaeological and archaeobotanical evidence reveal a green quarter full of characteristic 'voids', with perceivable breaks in the urban landscape and temporal clustering of activities. Thus, at least in the example presented here, infrastructural and functional density turns out to be crucial for defining an ancient city quarter, while economic factors in our case study appear decisive for the emergence of this particular district within the city walls. Furthermore, topical issues such as resilience and sustainability are addressed in this contribution, since the Pompeian rus in urbe stands for one of the basic economic components, as well as for the rural identity, of the local community.

Research activities conducted within the Aragonese Castle of Taranto over the last fifteen years have yielded numerous data that have proved useful for the integration of the cognitive framework of the eastern sector of the acropolis of the Greek polis. In particular, the discovery of two new vascular graffiti, as part of an unloading of ceramic and architectural evidence probably belonging to the sacred sphere, seems to offer new insights into the reconstruction of the topography and the cultic attribution of the sacred area of the Doric Temple in Piazza Castello. Keywords Greek urbanism. Acropolis of Taranto. Castello Aragonese of Taranto. Doric Temple of Taranto. Sommario 1 Il contesto di rinvenimento.-2 I nuovi dati epigrafici.-3 Analisi del dato epigrafico e spunti per nuove riflessioni.

Chetoui, M. et al., « Nouvelles données sur l’église de Koustilya: interprétation des résultats des fouilles de 2017-2020 », In Actes du septième colloque International :  Église et christianisme au Maghreb: Antiquité et Moyen Age, [Sousse, 2-4 décembre 2021], Sousse, 2023, p. 315-350.

Esta monografia aborda a relação entre o corpo e a materialidade do Partenon, templo
dedicado à deusa Atena na Grécia antiga, buscando uma compreensão sensível e afetiva do
monumento grego. O objetivo é explorar as dimensões históricas, culturais e estéticas do
templo, considerando a relação entre o corpo e a estrutura. Por meio de uma análise
arqueológica, é enfatizada a importância da experiência vivida e encarnada nessa interação.
Destaca-se a necessidade de considerar a experiência multissensorial e afetiva entre pessoas,
objetos e paisagens para uma compreensão aprofundada dos contextos arqueológicos. Além
disso, é explorado como o Partenon foi concebido para impactar os espectadores da época,
examinando os efeitos pretendidos pelos arquitetos. Em suma, esta monografia busca trazer
uma perspectiva única e envolvente da arqueologia da paisagem e dos sentidos do Partenon,
valorizando a experiência sensorial e a relação entre o corpo e o templo.
Palavras-chave: Paisagem, sentidos, corpo, Partenon, experiência.

Epidam/Dyrrah (Epidamnus/Dyrrachium), das heutige Durrës in Albanien, war eine der größten Städte und einer der bedeutendsten Häfen des östlichen Adriaraumes, während der illyrisch-hellenisch-römischen Antike, der Spätantike und während des Mittelalters. Es ist das mehr als zweitausendjährige Bindeglied zwischen Rom (bzw. Venedig) und Konstantinopel (Byzantion), das Tor der Via Egnatia und wurde von römischen Autoren auch als „taberna der Adria“ bezeichnet.

Im Zentrum der Monographie stehen die Ergebnisse der von Prof. Dr. Frasheri im Jahr 2010 geleiteten archäologischen Rettungsgrabung im Stadtpark Lulishtja 1 Maj. Auf der ca. 5.000 m² großen Grabungsfläche kamen die Überreste eines antiken, peripheren Stadtviertels der Händler und Handwerker zutage, wie sie in anderen antiken Großstädten noch nicht erforscht worden sind. Die Grabungsergebnisse bedeuten einen großen Schritt für die Erforschung der antiken Stadttopographie von Durrës.
Erstmals ist es gelungen, einen Teil eines Stadtviertels der mittleren und einfachen Bevölkerungsschicht – viele Jahrhunderte lang genutzt und bewohnt von Handwerkern und Händlern verschiedenster Art – auszugraben und die Entwicklung seiner Bebauung, Nutzung und Infrastruktur über alle Epochen von der archaischen Zeit bis in das hohe Mittelalter nachzuvollziehen. Durch die Anwendung eines modernen Grabungskonzeptes sowie modernste Technik gelang eine gründliche stratigraphische Untersuchung, welche die Rettungsgrabung inhaltlich in eine wissenschaftliche Grabung umwandelte, bei der erstmals die kulturellen Horizonte des antiken Dyrrah sicher bestimmt werden konnten. Es wurden Belege dafür erbracht, dass das Areal bereits in spätarchaischer Zeit für Bau- und Arbeitsaktivitäten genutzt worden ist. Eine planmäßige Erschließung und Besiedlung innerhalb der Stadt war ab dem 4. Jh. v. Chr. feststellbar. Von dieser zeugten zunächst nur kleine Häuser und Werkstätten, die im Verlauf des 3. Jh. v. Chr. großen Hofhäusern mit gehobenem Lebensstandard und einer regelmäßigen Bebauung wichen. Darüber hinaus brachten die Grabungen gut erhaltene Straßenzüge, Kanäle und Hausgrundrisse eines römischen Wohn- und Gewerbeviertels zutage, welches vom späten 2. Jh. v. Chr. bis zur Mitte des 4. Jh. n. Chr. ununterbrochen genutzt worden war. Über dem in der Mitte des 4. Jh. n. Chr. verlassenen römischen Stadtviertel fanden sich Reste von Großbauten mit frühchristlicher Funktion des 5. und frühen 6. Jh. n. Chr. Im Verlauf des 6. Jh. n. Chr. wurde das Gelände endgültig als Baufläche aufgegeben, diente jedoch noch bis in das hohe Mittelalter hinein als Bestattungsplatz.

Nel contributo vengono esaminati, come casi di studio, alcuni abitati urbani delle apoikiai d’Occidente al fine di rilevare l’eventuale presenza di peculiarità nella costruzione degli spazi insediativi nelle poleis con comune matrice culturale e, in definitiva, per osservare come cambia nel tempo, nelle città di nuova fondazione, il rapporto tra oikopeda, insulae ed impianto urbano, e contemporaneamente valutare se tale schēma consente di instituire rapporti con l’organizzazione della chora. Partiremo da Megara Hyblaea che rappresenta il punto di riferimento imprescindibile per affrontare questo argomento, saranno sottolineati alcuni tratti comuni tra le colonie megaresi, tra quelle siracusane, tra quelle calcidesi e tra quelle achee, per arrivare a Neapolis e Olinto e, infine, approdare a Thurii, e tentare un bilancio.

Medieval European urbanization presents a line of continuity between earlier cities and modern European urban systems. Yet, many of the spatial, political and economic features of medieval European cities were particular to the Middle Ages, and subsequently changed over the Early Modern Period and Industrial Revolution. There is a long tradition of demographic studies estimating the population sizes of medieval European cities, and comparative analyses of these data have shed much light on the long-term evolution of urban systems. However, the next step-to systematically relate the population size of these cities to their spatial and socioeconomic characteristics-has seldom been taken. This raises a series of interesting questions, as both modern and ancient cities have been observed to obey area-population relationships predicted by settlement scaling theory. To address these questions, we analyze a new dataset for the settled area and population of 173 European cities from the ear...

The Cahokia Mound Group in Illinois, USA, is acknowledged as the largest Native American city north of Mexico. It flourished during the Mississippian Period. Cahokia, however, was only one of three complexes in the immediate area. Located across the Mississippi River from Cahokia, the St. Louis Mound Group was part of the larger complex. The St. Louis Mound Group featured at least 25 earthen mounds including the so-called Big Mound that contained dozens of human burials. In the 1800s the St. Louis Mound Group was leveled to allow for urban expansion. Few records are in existence documenting the location or other details concerning the group. As a result, an important part of prehistory seems lost. In this paper the likely location for the St. Louis Mound Group is identified using survey plats from the 1850s, early lithographs and other data. Findings are assessed for astronomic alignments and landscape relationships, with possible cosmological implications noted.

On the eastern bank of the Suez Canal in northwestern Sinai, at the site of Tell Heboua I near the actual town of el-Qantara East, the excavations have revealed a religious complex of Saite period consisting of temenos, temple, ceremonial palace, and a casemate foundation platform. This paper aims to shed new light on the architectural elements that appeared in Tell Heboua I, and prevailed in many contemporary deltaic sites during the 26th Dynasty.

The ancient Maya site of Sayi1 is located in the Puuc region of northern Yucatan approximately halfway between the sites of Kabah and Labna (Figure 1). It is a very large site both in terms of extensive public architecture and areal extent, although it is not nearly as well known as Uxma1 nor are many of its structures visited by tourists. Our current knowledge of the site's overall layout is based on the 1934 map prepared by Edwin Shook under the direction of Harry Pollock during the latter's survey of Puuc architecture for the ...

The site of Tor, an ancient tower on the island of Hvar in Dalmatia, has been the subject of several scholarly studies. However, many of them are controversial, and our understan-ding of the site’s functions and chronology remains incomple-te, mainly due to of a lack of systematic excavations. This pa-per provides a comprehensive overview of what has been pu-blished or unpublished about the site in the last five centu-ries and re-examines all thus far proposed interpretations. It also analyses the architectural remains and other archaeologi-cal evidence found at Tor and discusses the questions that sti-ll need to be answered

One of archaeology’s principal contributions to knowledge is its ability to track human actions and social conditions over long periods of time. I describe an approach to operationalizing this insight for the rise and fall of cities and other settlement over time. Cities that survive and thrive are considered successful, and urban success can be measured along three dimensions: persistence, population, and prosperity. Successful cities were those whose leaders, residents, and institutions found ways to adapt to a range of shocks and conditions, including the environment, local institutions, and regional political and economic forces. Urban success is therefore due to processes of urban adaptation that operated over long
periods of time. I outline a conceptual and methodological approach to urban success and position the concept with respect to notions of adaptation and time scales in sustainability science and the social and
historical sciences more broadly.
Keywords: cities,

Work undertaken in 2019 at Larsa and 'Uwaili continued into 2021-22. At Larsa, the audit of the surface condition of the site and its archaeological survey are now completed. The multidisciplinary program (aerial, geophysical, paleogeographic survey) on the urban planning of the Amorite city has focused on the urban envelope (ramparts) and the hydraulic, urban and peri-urban network, most of which has been mapped. An excavation trench extending this program has brought to light a bridge spanning the Grand Canal near the ziggurat, covered by a pottery workshop of the Kassite period. Two other trenches are devoted respectively to religious and domestic architecture. The first one uncovers the "Gipar" of the city (Building B50, 7250 m2), discovered north of E-Babbar; the second one, two sumptuary residences a little further north, including the residence of the grand vizier of the kings Gungunnum and Abî-sarê (Building B49, 1480 m2). Its archive room has yielded dozens of tablets and envelopes shedding new light on this period of Larsa's history. At 'Uwaili, more than 600 m2 of the Ubaid 0 village were excavated, including a building dedicated to the processing of cereals (B110), in the heart of a storage area. The abundant Ubaid 0 material collected documents the very strong cultural specificity of this period, compared to the next Ubaid phase.

The role and significance of fish and fishing in the ancient Near East has been little studied. A new assemblage of fish remains and fishing gear recovered from Bronze Age Bet Yerah on the Sea of Galilee, however, offers insights into the transition from village to town life, and illuminates interactions between local populations and incoming groups. The assemblage also reveals temporal and spatial variations in the utilisation of local fish resources. As the first such assemblage obtained from a systematically sampled Early Bronze Age stratigraphic sequence in the Southern Levant, it highlights the contribution of secondary food-production and -consumption activities to the interpretation of socio-cultural change.

Many ancient city sites display a remarkable regularity in their plan which has led to considerable debate on the symbolism and intentionality which may lie behind these arrangements. Grid plan cities of the Greek and Roman world were discussed by Haverfield almost a century ago, but it was above all the cities of South and East Asia analyzed by Wheatley in his influential Pivot of the Four Quarters (1971) which has given new emphasis to the potential of meaning and significance. Such planned cities necessarily incorporate an essential tension between praxis — the practical day-to-day needs of the urban community — and idealism, the desire to impose on those practical concerns a city-plan which expresses a symbolic or cosmological image. Contemporary texts, where they exist, may help towards an answer, but the physicality of the city plan itself provides the crucial ground for argument as to whether symbolic or ideological imperatives governed the actual outcome. Cities may be conce...

BackgroundHñahñu (Otomi) farmers organize their experiences and ecological learning into a farmland system designed to grow food in areas of scarce water and low soil fertility. The purpose of this paper is to examine Hñahñu concepts and categories pertaining to the farming landscape and the ecological foundations underlying the system, its management implications, and categorial organization in Huitexcalco de Morelos, Mezquital Valley, Mexico.MethodsNative terms and their links to landscape were recorded and discussed in various workshops. Open interviews and field trips with local experts were used to explain soil and water management practices that allow Hñahñu farmers to maintain sustained yields throughout the year. We then used participatory mapping in order to explore the semantic relations of the terms with the space and its validity in the productive landscape.ResultsWe elicited 7 Hñahñu language terms related to landforms, 4 related to land use categories, and 17 related t...