Cities and Settlement under the Roman Empire

In exploring the development of towns and their related territories in the first three centuries AD, this course provides an introduction to Roman urbanism and the lively debate over how it worked and whom it served. The study of the physical design of the city, its public and private buildings, and its infrastructure, along with the objects of trade and manufacture, is placed in the broader context of the types and patterns of rural settlement, agricultural production, transport and communications. This allows various themes to be investigated, including what it meant to live in a Roman town, and in its countryside, and what contributed to the remarkable prosperity of urban centres before the widespread retrenchment of the third century.

Those taking the course will become familiar with the physical character of Roman cities based on selected representative sites (primarily Corinth, Caesarea Maritima, Lepcis Magna, Palmyra, Pompeii, Ostia, Verulamium [St.Albans] and Silchester) and with major landscape studies in Italy, Greece and North Africa. Particular attention is paid to problems and biases in assessing the character of the physical evidence; and in testing theoretical models against hard data. Evidence from written sources will be incorporated where appropriate. (Convenor: Prof. A Wilson, Institute of Archaeology).