Propylaeum

The aim of this volume is to present new data and current multidisciplinary projects on viticulture in antiquity, on the production and circulation of wine, and on the containers that held the wine, involving archaeology, archaeometry, archaeobotany and molecular-archaeology.

The studies in this volume focus on Italy, and its relations to other areas (Spain, Malta), to deepen our knowledge of the transformations in the agricultural landscape. Another focus are wine production facilities, which have until now remained under-studied, such as rock cut vats.

The advancement of technical knowledge is gradually answering the old question of differentiating between wine and olive oil production facilities. We knew that the same presses were used for both products, but now, systematic floatation can turn up olive stones or grape seeds, and biochemical analyses in gas-chromatography or liquid-chromatography coupled with mass-spectrometry now provide very reliable results on the remains in vats.

The second part of the volume presents some new archaeological and archaeometric data related to the production and distribution of wine amphorae - coming from the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy, Spain and Africa - in Italy and the western Mediterranean, the study of which was also carried out using laboratory methods.

Scholars have adopted an array of approaches, both traditional and experimental, to approximate the scale of craft production, which has always been central to the study of ancient economies. This panel examines these new methods, for estimating the workshop crew size, the workshop physical space, the time requirements for the chaîne opératoire for each product, the needs of the population for different goods, or the percentage of ancient products surviving to this day. These new approaches, some borrowed from related disciplines, should help us overcome the paucity of archaeological evidence. By employing social network analysis, individual worker’s output, architectural energetics, and production-consumption ratios, we aim to improve our understanding of the scale of craft production in the ancient Greek world, both in the Greek mainland and in the Greek colonies in Sicily. Archaeologists and ancient economists are using new approaches to study the ancient economy at a micro-level, taking into consideration several variables, such as raw material procurement, labor investment, cross-craft dependencies, apprenticeship periods, and product demand, to name a few. From Prehistoric to Classical Greece and Italy, the industries covered are mostly ceramics-centered, such as pottery and tiles, but also pavement construction and funerary monumental architecture.

      The Eastern Anatolian Highlands was one of the prominent sub-regions of the ancient Near East due to its very specific location. This region, which has rugged geographical features and harsh climate conditions, is situated between Northern Mesopotamia, the Southern Caucasus, Northwestern Iran and Central Anatolia, each of which were important cultural regions of the Near East. The Eastern Anatolian Highlands have played an important role in the economic networks and cultural relationships developed between the southern and northern regions through the ages. Despite its difficult geography and unfavourable climate conditions, the region hosted many cultures and societies through time on account of its strategic location and richness in natural resources and raw materials. The archaeological evidence shows that the initial periods of centralization and state formation in the region began with Urartu and continued through time. The most important factor in this regard is the fact that the region effectively functioned as a transit point on account of its strategic geographic position. Thereafter, the economic and political structures in this mountainous zone of the Near East are more easily observed. The economic structures of this marginal zone of the ancient Near East will be analysed from the Urartian period to the end of Late Antiquity in this session.

Rivers have always been vital supports for economies. They provided water for people and animals, irrigated the land, facilitated communication and trade through small vessels or rafts, aided industrial activities, formed rich hunting grounds for fishermen and hunters, and offered raw materials such as sand, gravel and placer deposits - including even gold. At the same time, the deltas and marshlands of rivers, created an inhospitable environment unsuitable for habitation, especially in periods of flood. Furthermore, rivers connected the sea and the littoral zone with the hinterland, and thus allowed the interaction between the populations which inhabited these areas, often locals and colonists/merchants. 
The papers address topics such as the reconfiguration of ancient river routes, the settlement and exploitation patterns that were formed around them, the boundaries of the chora of various cities, towns, villages and farmsteads, and the communication or the tensions between different groups that moved or expanded beyond their original habitation zone due to environmental and/or economic reasons.
Panels 2.4 and 2.7 explore multiple facets of some Central and Eastern Mediterranean riverlands. Panel 2.4 investigates Aegean Thrace, i.e. the Northeastern part of Greece and the European part of Turkey. Panel 2.7 looks at three river valleys in two different areas: Athens and Attica with the Ilissos River; and Northeastern Italy with the rivers that flow in the areas of Verona and Parma.

Economic aspects permeate all areas of public and private life in ancient societies, whether in urban development, religion, art, housing, or in death. Research on ancient economies has long played a significant role in ancient history. Increasingly in the last decades, awareness has grown in archaeology that the material culture of ancient societies offers excellent opportunities for studying the structure, performance, and dynamics of ancient economic systems and economic processes. Therefore, the main objective of this congress was to understand economy as a central element of classical societies and to analyse its interaction with ecological, political, social, religious, and cultural backgrounds. The theme of the congress was addressed to all disciplines that deal with Greco-Roman civilization and their neighbouring cultures from the Aegean Bronze Age to the end of Late Antiquity.
In this collective volume, single contributions from sessions 11 and 12 deal with digital topics such as computational approaches and 3D documentation in archaeology and building research. On the other hand, the studies include topics on ancient sculptures and sanctuaries as well as the rituals associated with them.
Furthermore, the numerous transcribed posters which have been presented and discussed during the congress week in the context of a poster session are published in this volume.

Economic aspects permeate all areas of public and private life in ancient societies, whether in urban development, religion, art, housing, or in death. Research on ancient economies has long played a significant role in ancient history. Increasingly in the last decades, awareness has grown in archaeology that the material culture of ancient societies offers excellent opportunities for studying the structure, performance, and dynamics of ancient economic systems and economic processes. Therefore, the main objective of this congress was to understand economy as a central element of classical societies and to analyse its interaction with ecological, political, social, religious, and cultural backgrounds. The theme of the congress was addressed to all disciplines that deal with Greco-Roman civilization and their neighbouring cultures from the Aegean Bronze Age to the end of Late Antiquity.
This collective volume contains single contributions from sessions 6, 7 and 8, which discuss questions about consumption and investment in everyday life, sanctuaries and urban contexts, as well as questions about the role of the city in the ancient economy.

Economic aspects permeate all areas of public and private life in ancient societies, whether in urban development, religion, art, housing, or in death. Research on ancient economies has long played a significant role in ancient history. Increasingly in the last decades, awareness has grown in archaeology that the material culture of ancient societies offers excellent opportunities for studying the structure, performance, and dynamics of ancient economic systems and economic processes. Therefore, the main objective of this congress was to understand economy as a central element of classical societies and to analyse its interaction with ecological, political, social, religious, and cultural backgrounds. The theme of the congress was addressed to all disciplines that deal with Greco-Roman civilization and their neighbouring cultures from the Aegean Bronze Age to the end of Late Antiquity.
In this collective volume, single contributions of sessions 4 and 5 deal with questions on the exploitation of resources such as metals and marble in the Roman imperial period and also on distribution, trade and networks in general in antiquity. Thematically, the studies range from trade and cultural contacts in the Iron Age and Archaic Mediterranean, Greek and Roman coinage, to Roman trade and transport systems.

Economic aspects permeate all areas of public and private life in ancient societies, whether in urban development, religion, art, housing, or in death. Research on ancient economies has long played a significant role in ancient history. Increasingly in the last decades, awareness has grown in archaeology that the material culture of ancient societies offers excellent opportunities for studying the structure, performance, and dynamics of ancient economic systems and economic processes. Therefore, the main objective of this congress was to understand economy as a central element of classical societies and to analyse its interaction with ecological, political, social, religious, and cultural backgrounds. The theme of the congress was addressed to all disciplines that deal with Greco-Roman civilization and their neighbouring cultures from the Aegean Bronze Age to the end of Late Antiquity.
In this collective volume, single contributions of sessions 2 and 3 are dealing on the one hand with the investigation of natural environmental factors – climate and landscape – as impacts on the ancient economy, and on the other hand with the exploration of production system. Thematically, the spectrum ranges from the contextualisation of ancient handicrafts, to questions about the production of, for example, decorative metal objects, glass, portrait statues and bricks, to ancient architecture and the associated construction system. The temporal and topographical framework extends from Mycenaean and Archaic Greece, through Iron Age Southern Italy and Hellenistic-Roman Sicily as well as Macedonia, to Imperial Spain and Asia Minor.

This small volume within the AIAC-proceedings is the result of a panel discussion on diversity in Classical Archaeology, and can be read as a call and pamphlet for more inclusivity and social justice in the field. In light of the dismay of many concerning the initial all-male keynote panel at AIAC2018, the panel was aimed at discussing broader issues concerning diversity and intersectionality in Greco-Roman archaeology. As archaeologists, we have made it one of our principal tasks to bring to the fore ‘the people without history’ and show a more diverse image of the Greek and Roman past. Then why is this diversity not reflected in the discipline itself? The all-male panel was symptomatic of more fundamental problems that the discipline suffers from, both in terms of gender and its inseparably related issues of whiteness, class, and the ‘Classical’. The AIAC-panel proved to be a constructive and empowering meeting ground, where vital matters of inequality and injustice were discussed, as well as the discipline’s capability of moving towards a more self-reflexive and socially engaged future. The contributions in this volume count as a reflection of this fruitful and ongoing debate, which will hopefully lead to more awareness as well as more dialogue.

Classical Archaeology is a discipline which has undergone major changes in recent decades. From its origin as an “Altertumswissenschaft” with a strong emphasis on art and architecture, Classical Archaeology has embraced the most modern methods in field archaeology and analysis of data. The application of digital humanities to Classical Archaeology has changed how archaeologists work, how data is collected and preserved, and how results are made available to the scholarly community and the public in general. The International Association for Classical Archaeology (AIAC) has been a forerunner in digital humanities with the creation and running of Fasti Online and the online peer-reviewed journal FOLD&R. This volume contains papers presented at the panel organized by AIAC in order to present the digital development of the discipline through examples from different countries. It is hoped that the case studies will provide a basis for a discussion on Classical Archaeology in a digital world – benefits, challenges and where the fast development may take our discipline in the future.

The aim of the AIAC 2018 session “The Rural Foundations of the Roman Economy, new approaches to Rome's ancient countryside from the Archaic to the Early Imperial period” was to bring together methodologically informed, data-driven studies to shed light on the drivers and performance of the Central Italian rural economy during the Archaic to Imperial periods. The session resulted in a coherent collection of papers by a broad range of international scholars in the field who approach the Roman agricultural economy from various disciplinary angles and at different scales. The collection has a sharp focus on the suburbium of Rome sensu lato. Topics range from rural settlement dispersal, economic and demographic modelling to survey artefact analysis and the study of pollen and plant macro-remains.

Mediterranean coastlines are highly dynamic landscapes, shifting up to tens of kilometres during the last ca. six millennia in the case of prograding delta plains. In these low-lying coastal environments, many ancient harbour installations became landlocked with severe impacts on the political and economic situation as well as the status of urban centres and their hinterland. At the same time, rising relative sea levels may have resulted in the salinization of aquifers and adverse effects on agricultural production. This collection of papers from Panel 2.3 “Coastal geoarchaeology in the Mediterranean – on the interdependence of landscape dynamics, harbour installations and economic prosperity in the littoral realm” covers those topics for different parts of the Mediterranean geographical entity over the last 2500 years. These studies successfully demonstrate how geoscience data either help to locate harbour sites or how they support the interpretation of archaeological remains and literature sources of ancient authors. Each contribution therefore represents a striking example for the relevance of interdisciplinary approaches in archaeology, as summarized in the concept of geoarchaeology. 

While the impact of major societal transformations on town and country has always been a central topic in field survey archaeology, recent methodological and theoretical advances are offering novel perspectives on this subject. Increasingly intensive field walking techniques, artefact collection strategies and both typological and technological artefact studies have transformed our understanding of rural settlements and ceramic consumption, especially of local (coarse) wares. These developments enable us to study changes in local systems of production and exchange with much more spatial and chronological detail, and in turn contribute to a revision of the impact that large-scale transformations had on local settlement systems and economies.
The papers in this volume explore how survey archaeology can refine our understanding of the links between socio-political change and local economic landscapes. Focusing on different micro-regions in Italy and Greece, the papers present new work that combines archaeological field surveys and ceramic research. Using both tested and novel methodologies, they explore socio-economic change (in consumer practices, systems of agricultural and artisanal production, exchange networks) in the context of the development of the Greek polis, of Roman expansion in different parts of Italy, and of the transformation of Late Antique (local) landscapes in Italy and Greece.

The production of military equipment is a subject that is much more complicated than often thought as Roman soldiers were not completely equipped by the state in an uniform manner. While a certain amount of ‘near-uniformity’ was necessary in the army, it was logistically impossible to ensure complete uniformity, even within a single unit. One reason for this was that Roman soldiers owned most of the equipment themselves, which allowed them to choose their own preferences (within limits).

After an introduction and overview of the subject, the three case studies look at what the tools found in a fort can say about the production of military equipment on the site, at the influence of workshop traditions on the making of mail armour and at whether state control or local production was the main impetus in the production of crossbow brooches.

Streets played a key role in shaping the ancient economic townscape. We usually consider streets simply as a thoroughfares for traffic, but this idea falls short of the facts as suggested by ancient authors like Martial or Juvenal. The “street space” was built in three dimensions and was an important place for the social and economic interactions constituting the urban social life in Antiquity. Such a function clearly appears in the architecture of the street shaped by numerous tabernae built within atrium houses, rows of shops or multi-storey buildings and by the activities which happened there. In other words, the economy of ancient cities was not confined to specific buildings such as macella.
On the contrary, economic activities extended beyond the walls of such buildings and invaded the whole urban fabric along the streets. The papers of the panel “Ancient Streets and Urban Economy” intend to shed new light on the role of the space of the street in the urban economy in ancient societies between the 2 nd century BC and the 3 rd century AD in particular. To further our understanding, the different authors propose to examine some case studies from for instances Alba Fucens, Athens, Lugdunum, Norba, Ostia and Pompeii.

The province Germania inferior is an interesting candidate for investigating town-country relations. While its southern part borders on the distribution area of oppida, its northern parts had no Iron Age tradition of large settlement agglomerations. Nonetheless, in the Roman period towns were founded here: the Colonia Ulpia Traiana (Xanten) and the municipia Ulpia Noviomagus (Nijmegen) and Forum Hadriani/Municipium Aelium Cananefatium (Voorburg). An important economic agent of the time was the Roman army with its numerous forts along the Lower German Limes. These massive and new agglomerations of persons that were not primarily involved in food production must have posed a challenge to the supply of provisions – in food as well as other commodities.

This panel summarises and compares the town-country relationships in two civitates: the civitas Cugernorum  with its capital Colonia Ulpia Traiana and the civitas Batavorum with its capital Municipium Ulpia Noviomagus. What supply strategies for the towns can be discerned? In what way did the primary centres influence the countryside? Are there differences between the civitates? Do they differ from those in the southern parts of Germania inferior? And if so, what are the reasons for it? Another focus are methodological questions, such as : with the data that we have, can we answer these questions? And if that is not the case, what other methods may be applied to gain a deeper insight into this aspect of Roman economy?

Ancient Roman writers used to think of the Classical city as a durable, even eternal, structure and to recognize and underline its symbolic value as a reflection of the maiestas Imperii Romani and an image of the Romanization itself. On the other hand, different sources, from Pliny the Younger to the Historia Augusta, in addition to some inscriptions relate the weaknesses and problems of the local governments in maintaining the urban way of life and in supporting the financial system of those centres, in particular after the second half of the 2^nd century AD, right before the much-discussed ‘crisis of the 3^rd century’. This phenomenon turned many former splendidissimae ciuitates that possessed all the facilities and equipment of a Classical Roman  city into oppida labentia, cities in decline and in process of abandonment. This exciting process is only visible through the appropriate analysis of the archaeological evidence. This book deals with some of the juridical, historical, institutional and political factors and facts, which can contribute to enlighten us about the elements of this decline of some of the small towns in the Roman West, in particular some paradigmatic evidence and case studies from  Roman Spain.

While already for several decades, survey archaeology and the investigationof city – hinterland relations have been in the focus of Mediterranean archaeology, the systematic implementation of this method in the southern Levant, is not commonly practiced. Only a few cities in this region were investigated by systematic intensive or extensive field surveys. This volume is dedicated to urban infrastructure and it aims at exploring the relationships between cities and their urban peripheries and hinterlands. It focusses on some southern Levantine major and secondary administrative centers of Judaea/Palaestina and Arabia under Roman and Byzantine rule (1st to 7th century CE). While investigating the historical geography of the southern Levant has a long tradition, today research questions have changed, and in many cases the study of micro-regions with their hinterlands are the focus of field projects. Such studies can only be undertaken in a systematic way, using multi-disciplinary approaches and high-resolution analyses looking at all kinds of zones of urban settlements and connections within the site and its periphery and hinterland. The contributions of this volume present a first attempt to look at urban settlements in the southern Levant from a comparative perspective.

This volume discusses the geography of cities of the Eastern Mediterranean that existed under the Roman Empire. Roman urbanism has a long historiography, however, many previous studies saw the ancient town as an isolated historical phenomenon, or at best as an index of the spread of Hellenism or Romanitas. This volume attempts to take a step further and place the town in its socio-economic context, while also presenting the most up-to-date statistics for the urban phenomenon in the Roman East. Six contributions all deal with issues related to the spatial patterns observed in the distribution of cities in the eastern half of the Empire. One contribution, by way of comparison, deals with Roman urbanism of the Iberian Peninsula. Starting off with an overview of the Eastern Mediterranean as a whole, each contribution zooms in on a specific region in order to investigate  the factors that shaped the pattern of urban settlement and the variation of city size on both (supra)regional and local scales. These factors are wide-ranging, from climatological variation, possibilities of connectivity through the road-network and sea-lanes, historical path-dependency, and agricultural potential to specific policies of Roman imperialism.

The material remains of Roman urban shops and workshops long played a marginal role in classical archaeology, but in recent years, they have enjoyed a marked increase of scholarly attention. Influenced by debates about the nature of ancient urban economies, scholars began to study the archaeological evidence for urban retail and manufacturing with an unprecedented vigour from the late 1990s onwards.

Since the turn of the millennium, scholars have increasingly begun to study shop- and workshop design in relation to profit-oriented investment strategies, and to explore the economic history of urban commercial landscapes.  This volume discusses the ways in which the study of urban shops and workshops has challenged our conceptualization of urban economic history in the Roman world, and it explores possible avenues to further deepen our understanding of the changing nature of Roman urban commerce, and to bridge spatial and chronological distances between local sets of evidence.

The archaeological research in Agrigento has undergone a new and important impulse thanks to a new collaboration between the Archaeological Park "Valley of the Temples" and many Italian and European universities, who have worked side by side on shared projects and excavations. This volume aims to be a synthesis of the most recent research carried out in the various sectors of the ancient city, but also a testimony of a correct way of proceeding, in which different universities and management, protection and research structures actively collaborate in the search for a common vision of such an important city of Antiquity as Agrigento, which, until a few years ago was isolated and little known in the research community, except for the famous Hill of the Temples. Agrigento now displays an unprecedented richness in archaeological research: the various aspects of the social, architectural and economic life of the ancient city now emerge with greater clarity, as well as the urban spaces, its sanctuaries, housing estates, production sites, but also the agricultural management of the chora and the extra-urban territory in an overall vision of the city which, although still partly incomplete, produces one of the few complex syntheses of the life of a city in ancient Sicily.

City and religion as subjects of archaeological research in the Mediterranean are often limited to sacred buildings within the spatial and social fabric of the city. However, specific urban factors such as the concentration of economic potential, control of financial resources, but also heterogeneous populations, marginalization, and power imbalances impact religious practices and their reflections in material culture.
The contributions in this volume discuss how economic characteristics of urbanity are reflected in institutional, medial, and performative expressions of religion(s) in cities of Italy and Asia Minor. These interactions are not only of interest for Greco-Roman antiquity, but are relevant in our modern world of globalized markets: With the concentration of economic power the potential for tensions and religious conflicts increases as rapidly as cities grow.

The increased interest in the mutual interdependence of socio-cultural and physical spaces has led to the fact that watercourses have gained in importance as a formative factor of societies. Landscapes shaped by rivers provide characteristics and specific conditions that have a major impact on the economic life of people living in riverine contexts. Rivers are significant natural resources and offer special opportunities for economic activities. They can act both as connecting arteries and as borderlines. The contributions of our panel describe rivers as dynamic factors of ancient communities and their economy. The articles presented in this volume focus on the interrelation between river landscapes and the economic habits of their inhabitants. The case studies cover a wide range of epochs and geographical areas and discuss phenomena such as geomorphic and anthropogenic changes in rivers, the role of rivers as transport and trade routes and their impact on settlement patterns.

The territories of the Adriatic and the Ionian area were separated from each other both from a political and a cultural point of view. Because of this circumstance, they represent a suitable area for the study of commercial and cultural exchange. This meeting of cultures generated mutual influences and cultural osmosis in various ways and at different times, and was linked to different historical and geographical contexts, which nevertheless sometimes generated similar results. Recent archaeological research allows us to assume that sanctuaries and sacred places are suitable contexts in which these phenomena can be analysed, as they were places in which large amounts of people gathered and centres of cultural mediation that were involved in economic and political interests.

The contributions collected in this book consider these issues from different points of view and include studies on historiography, material culture and numismatics. The case studies of the northern Adriatic area are located on the western shore, and in particular in the area of the ager Gallicus and of Picenum, with a particular focus on the period that precedes and witnesses the structuring of the Roman domination of this territory (3^rd / 2^nd century BC). The case studies in the southern Adriatic and Ionian area focus on Apulia and the area of Illyria and Epirus between the Archaic era and the beginning of the Roman age (4^thto 1st century BC).

The contributions of this volume study economic aspects of Roman burial architectures for extended numbers of burials, such as columbaria, large hypogea, or catacombs, and try to form a picture of their owners and users. They discuss how far economic reasons played a leading role in the invention, the development and the use of these big burial monuments in Rome and how these buildings fulfilled the religious and social needs of their users, especially in the transitional period from the Roman to the Early Christian period. New studies in Roman funeral monuments could document interesting evidence for the dynamic process of the preparation and use of burial space. Especially in larger architectures for much more than a single family, the economic aspects of the  ownership and use of these installations is fascinating. Who were the planners of the projects, why were certain places and specific architectures chosen? How and at what time in the project were the burials of the owners and their families provided for? In what manner were further tombs sold or given to others? And which locations within the installation were they able to get? During the last decades, a series of general studies on Roman burials and burial customs were base on older documentation out of necessity, while new and more detailed analysis of single monuments often provide new and different insights of interpretation."