{"title":"Late Antique Urban Topography: From Architecture to Human Space","authors":"L. Lavan","doi":"10.1163/22134522-90000008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22134522-90000008","url":null,"abstract":"Writing about the late antique city is dominated by topographical mapping, architectural studies and site syntheses. These approaches operate within a conception of space as the location of points within an imaginary grid. However, other notions of space exist. This paper proposes a move away from the location and description of physical remains towards a study of human spatiality. It also seeks to re-establish the study of topography at a general, rather than site-focused level. The limitations of existing approaches and the needs of late antique evidence are explored. An alternative topographical approach is suggested, based on studying ‘activity spaces’ (human activities in their total material setting) instead of simple buildings. This gives special prominence to texts, but seeks to combine all kinds of evidence. The methodological issues involved in doing this are considered. Possible implications for archaeological field practice are also explored.","PeriodicalId":123587,"journal":{"name":"Theory and Practice in Late Antique Archaeology","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117279718","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Political Topography of the Late Antique City: Activity Spaces in Practice","authors":"L. Lavan","doi":"10.1163/22134522-90000013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22134522-90000013","url":null,"abstract":"The political topography of the late antique city is a subject that has been largely neglected. This is largely because research has concentrated on new buildings, mainly churches, rather on than the re-use of older structures and because textual evidence has been neglected. In this article aspects of political topography are examined in terms of ‘activity spaces’. This involves studying discrete units of human activity, plus their material setting, whether this involves a specific building type or not. All source types are used to create a general narrative, which here mainly concerns cities of the East and Central Mediterranean. Emphasis is placed on changes that this approach can bring to our understanding of urban life.","PeriodicalId":123587,"journal":{"name":"Theory and Practice in Late Antique Archaeology","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126915947","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Construction of Identities in post-Roman Albania","authors":"","doi":"10.1163/9789047401490_005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789047401490_005","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":123587,"journal":{"name":"Theory and Practice in Late Antique Archaeology","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122330843","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Studying Long-term Change in the West, A.D. 400-800","authors":"Chris Wickham","doi":"10.1163/22134522-90000016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22134522-90000016","url":null,"abstract":"Since the 1930s, three principal models (continuity, 5th c. catastrophe and the Pirenne thesis) have been used to interpret socio-economic change in the Late Roman and Early Medieval West. With minor modifications, these models have survived with little sustained attempt to replace them. Using the examples of Tunisia, Italy and northern Gaul, this paper argues that four basic parameters of change can be identified for the period AD 400- 800. These are the occurrence of war, the level of survival of state economic infrastructures, the extent of large-scale land-ownership, and the level of structural integration into the Roman world system. Since the extent to which these four factors affect a given region varies, it is concluded that long-term economic change is dependent on structures that operate at a regional and sub-regional level.","PeriodicalId":123587,"journal":{"name":"Theory and Practice in Late Antique Archaeology","volume":"46 4","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114131060","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Coins and the Late Roman Economy","authors":"","doi":"10.1163/9789047401490_008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789047401490_008","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":123587,"journal":{"name":"Theory and Practice in Late Antique Archaeology","volume":"46 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"120952719","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Topographies of Production in North African Cities during the Vandal and Byzantine Periods","authors":"A. Leone","doi":"10.1163/22134522-90000011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22134522-90000011","url":null,"abstract":"An important characteristic of North African cities in Late Antiquity is the appearance of structures relating to artisanal production in unusual settings, often in former public buildings. In this paper I argue for developing a study of this sector, looking not only at products, such as pottery, but also at productive structures and their wider urban location. Archaeological evidence from Tunisia and Tripolitania is analysed, dating from Vandal, Byzantine and also, occasionally, Early Islamic times, relating principally to murex dyeing, fish salting, olive oil production and pottery manufacturing. Lime kilns are also considered.","PeriodicalId":123587,"journal":{"name":"Theory and Practice in Late Antique Archaeology","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127989491","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Decline and Fall? Studying Long-term Change in the East","authors":"M. Whittow","doi":"10.1163/22134522-90000017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22134522-90000017","url":null,"abstract":"With ‘decline and fall’ no longer a satisfactory model for long-term change in the Late Antique Near East (400-800 A.D.), attention has shifted to alternatives, here dubbed the ‘Fiscal’ model and the ‘Intensification and Abatement’ model. In the light of new evidence which makes the fiscal model less persuasive, that of intensification and abatement is attracting growing attention. However, its practical application will require the sort of longterm multi-period, and multi-disciplinary regional projects that have become very hard to organise under current UK funding arrangements.","PeriodicalId":123587,"journal":{"name":"Theory and Practice in Late Antique Archaeology","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134282740","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Attitudes to Spolia in some Late Antique Texts","authors":"Robert Coates-Stephens","doi":"10.1163/22134522-90000014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22134522-90000014","url":null,"abstract":"Current art historical and archaeological studies of spolia tend to assign willed, conceptual motives to the re-use of architectural and sculptural material in late antique building. But such ‘motives’—usually said to be of the propagandistic, ‘auto-legitimisation’ type—do not differ from those of past patrons, who built only with new-made materials; they can therefore in no way explain why builders started to use spolia as opposed to new materials. This paper highlights textual evidence (John of Ephesus, al-Tabari, Minucius Felix, Socrates Scholasticus, Cassiodorus) that suggests conceptual motives for using spolia which could not have been expressed with new material. Such motives include triumphalism, religious appropriation, and aesthetic conservatism. But the texts also display as multifarious a range of viewpoints regarding the spolia phenomenon as do the varying currents of modern scholarship.","PeriodicalId":123587,"journal":{"name":"Theory and Practice in Late Antique Archaeology","volume":"60 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128469747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Urban Ideal and Urban Planning in Byzantine New Cities of the Sixth Century A.D.","authors":"","doi":"10.1163/9789047401490_010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789047401490_010","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":123587,"journal":{"name":"Theory and Practice in Late Antique Archaeology","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127034723","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Late Antique Trade: Research Methodologies & Field Practices","authors":"S. Kingsley","doi":"10.1163/22134522-90000006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22134522-90000006","url":null,"abstract":"Trade patterns offer multifarious insights into ideology, politics and social orders between the 4th and 7th centuries A.D. Whilst various models of trade have been formulated for the West Mediterranean, the East is in comparison very poorly understood. This paper examines trade in the East, with special reference to Byzantine Palestine, by considering three key topics: rural production, urban economies, and overseas trade as represented by shipwrecks and pottery. It is argued that more focused research strategies are required to maximise available sources.","PeriodicalId":123587,"journal":{"name":"Theory and Practice in Late Antique Archaeology","volume":"139 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132783410","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}