Urban Network Evolutions: Towards a high-definition archaeology 9788771846386, 8771846387

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Urban network evolutions Towards a highdefinition archaeology Edited by Rubina Raja and Søren M. Sindbæk

Aarhus University Press |

Urban network evolutions Towards a high-definition archaeology © The authors and Aarhus University Press 2018 Cover by Louise Hilmar Illustrations: View of the Temple of Artemis in Jerash, Jordan (copyright: Rubina Raja); Comb cut from multiple pieces of deer antler and assembled with iron rivets. The word ‘comb’ is carved onto the surface in the Viking runic alphabet (copyright: Museum of Southwest Jutland); Segmented glass beads found in Ribe (copyright: The Museum of Southwest Jutland); Glass vessel sherds, beads and other finds from Unguja Ukuu, Zanzibar (copyright: Jason Hawkes). Back cover: Boats being loaded at Mkokotoni, Zanzibar (copyright: Søren M. Sindbæk).

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/ In accordance with requirements of the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science, the certification means that a PhD level peer has made a written assessment justifying this book’s scientific quality.

Acknowledgements by the editors The editors would like to thank the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF grant 119) for giving us the opportunity to pursue research on urban societies and their network dynamics in such a grand way, which the grant makes possible. Without the generous support of the foundation, this book and many other publications, which have come out over the last few years, would not have been possible to realise. Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), which is based on the grant awarded by the DNRF, has grown immensely over the last years and this book showcases much of the ongoing work undertaken within the framework of the centre. We furthermore also thank the Carlsberg Foundation for funding several projects, which have served as springboards for developing the centre idea and which have also allowed us to run large-scale fieldwork projects testing out some of the ideas developed within the framework of the centre. A number of other funders should also be thanked and they have been mentioned in all the relevant contributions. We are grateful to all funders, who have contributed in a variety of ways to make UrbNet a reality and let us undertake research, despite the costs, which this involves. We would also like to thank Mie Egelund Lind and Eva Mortensen warmly for the minutious copy-editing of the book and for keeping everything together during the process. Without them the book would not have come together this speedily. Thanks go to Aarhus University Press for turning around the peer-review process quickly as well as the lay-out of the book and the printing of it. Finally, the biggest thanks goes to our wonderful colleagues and staff at UrbNet and in its many projects, who have contributed their energy and acumen to this great research venture in general and to the making of this volume in particular. Rubina Raja and Søren M. Sindbæk, UrbNet, Aarhus June 2018

Acknowledgements by the editors

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Contents Acknowledgements by the editors

INTRODUCTION

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Urban network evolutions: Exploring dynamics and flows through evidence from urban contexts 13 Rubina Raja & Søren M. Sindbæk

ROME AND ITS CITIES

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A high-definition approach to the Forum of Caesar in Rome: Urban archaeology in a living city 21 Jan Kindberg Jacobsen & Rubina Raja

Burial and birds in pre-urban Rome

27

Nora M. Petersen

Caesar’s Forum: Excavating Italian Iron Age

35

Sine Grove Saxkjær & Gloria Paola Mittica

The Archaic period on the Forum of Caesar: The urbanisation of early Rome 39 Nikoline Sauer Petersen

A space for Caesar: The heart of Rome and urban development Line Egelund

Caesars, shepherds and cities

51

Trine Arlund Hass

Doliche and the exploration of Graeco-Roman urbanism in ancient Greater Syria 57 Michael Blömer

Public spaces and urban networks in the Roman Empire: Messene in the Peloponnese as an example of an approach Christopher Dickenson

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PALMYRA: THE URBAN DESERT

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Urbanizing the desert: Investigating the diversity of urban networks through the images of deceased Palmyrenes 75 Rubina Raja

Behind the scenes: Cataloguing as a tool for exploring urban networks 81 Olympia Bobou & Rikke Randeris Thomsen

Producing funerary portraits: An urban tradition in the Syrian Desert

87

Julia Steding

The urbanization of Palmyra: The dynamics of the family cemeteries Signe Krag

JERASH: FROM ROMAN TO ISLAMIC CITY

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Urban networks and dynamics seen through urban peripheries: The case of Gerasa on the golden river 101 Achim Lichtenberger & Rubina Raja

Mortar and plaster production in Jerash: Changing perspective from macro to micro

109

Kristine Damgaard Thomsen

Small change in big cities: Characterising the development of everyday coinage in Jerash 117 Thomas Birch & Vana Orfanou

River archaeology and urban resilience in Jerash

125

Achim Lichtenberger & Rubina Raja

Urban networks seen through ceramics: Formal modelling approaches to pottery distribution in Jerash 131 Iza Romanowska, Tom Brughmans, Achim Lichtenberger & Rubina Raja

Medieval Jerash: Investigating the pottery of a Middle Islamic hamlet in the Northwest Quarter 139 Alex Peterson

Travellers and early urban archaeology in the Levant: The case of Jerash 147 Eva Mortensen

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Archaeoseismology in Jerash: Understanding urban dynamics through catastrophic events 153 Christian Svejgård Lunde Jørgensen

RIBE: GATEWAY TO THE VIKING AGE

159

Northern Emporium: The archaeology of urban networks in Viking-Age Ribe 161 Søren M. Sindbæk

3D scanning as documentation and analytical tool: First field experiences at the Northern Emporium excavation project, Ribe 167 Sarah Croix

Geoarchaeology and micromorphology at Ribe: A Northern Emporium in high definition 175 Barbora Wouters

Geoarchaeology of the early northern cities: Microscopic and geochemical investigations of urban spaces in Denmark 183 Pernille Lærke Krantz Trant

Viking-Age metals and urbanisation: The case of Ribe in Denmark

189

Vana Orfanou & Thomas Birch

A new calibration curve for improved radiocarbon dating of urban contexts 197 Bente Philippsen & Mikkel Fristrup Schou

Missing links: Viking-Age silver rings and urban networks

203

Mahir Hrnjic

THE MAKING OF MEDIEVAL URBANITY

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An urban way of life: How to approach the study of networks and practices in medieval Odense, Denmark 211 Kirstine Haase

Towards the making of a town: Urbanity as practice and way of life in medieval Copenhagen 217 Hanna Dahlström

The chronology of two medieval cemeteries in central Copenhagen: Bayesian modelling and archaeological relative age information 223 Jesper Olsen, Bjørn Poulsen & Hanna Dahlström

Trade, import and urban development: An archaeobotanical approach to economic change in medieval Denmark 229 Neeke M. Hammers

Urbanisation and commercialisation on the periphery of medieval Europe 235 Olav Elias Gundersen

High-definition urban fashion: Proteins reveal preferred resources for medieval leather shoes 241 Luise Ørsted Brandt

Interdisciplinary methods in town archaeology

249

Johan Sandvang Larsen

Gardening and food security in early southern-Scandinavian urbanism: Existing evidence and the need for a high-definition approach 255 Søren M. Kristiansen

SWAHILI EMPORIA: AFRICAN NETWORK CITIES

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Defining space in house contexts: Chemical mapping at Unguja Ukuu, Zanzibar 263 Federica Sulas & Stephanie Wynne-Jones

Iron production technologies and trade networks in Swahili East Africa 271 Ema Baužytė

Dating Kilwa Kisiwani: A thousand years of East African history in an urban stratigraphy 277 Stephanie Wynne-Jones, Mark Horton, Jeffrey Fleisher & Jesper Olsen

BETWEEN URBAN WORLDS

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Through the looking glass: Glass, high-definition archaeology and urban networks in the 8th century CE from North to South 289 Rubina Raja & Søren M. Sindbæk

About the authors

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INTRODUCTION

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RUBINA RAJA & SØREN M. SINDBÆK

Urban network evolutions: Exploring dynamics and flows through evidence from urban contexts Now in earlier times the world’s history had consisted, so to speak, of a series of unrelated episodes, the origins and results of each being as widely separated as their localities, but from this point onwards [after the Second Punic war] history becomes an organic whole: the affairs of Italy and Africa are connected with those of Asia and of Greece, and all events bear a relationship and contribute to a single end. Polybius, Histories 1.3

The rise of urban societies as the vehicles of societal processes has long been recognized as a turning point in history. However, the nature of urbanism and the way in which scholars define it remains a point of fierce discussion. While one might argue that there is no one way of defining urbanism and the forms it takes, it is important to try to tackle the underlying issues of what distinguishes urban societies, in particular what qualities make them urban. Urbanism and urban development are often discussed and researched within a diachronic perspective, giving the subject an evolutionary or linear framing. Such a framing insists that there is a defined beginning, trajectory and model, as well as, potentially, a defined end to urban societies and urbanism that can be studied through the interpretation of urban remains or historical sources. Thus urbanism is often taken to have emerged in a recognizable, coherent form at one point in time – and fairly rapidly – and thence developed into something more refined and elaborate. Moreover, the emergence of urban societies is often assumed to be embedded in the emergence of states and political organizations. While this mode of inquiry has colored our conception of what it meant to be urban, there are other useful approaches that might shed light on how societies developed and which mechanisms lay behind such developments. One mode is to consider urban networks as dynamics and flows, which can inform us about the ways societies respond and develop, and which tell us about their thresholds of resilience (Raja and Sindbæk forthcoming). Urban network evolutions

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The quote opening this chapter clearly shows how, already by the time of the Punic Wars, a contemporary observer could perceive his world as intimately connected across a wide geographical space; Polybius even notes the idea of an interlinked world history. Networks are underlined as central to understanding developments in the world. Cities were indeed the glue that bound regions together both internally and externally. Cities and their societies were the drivers of both contact and development. Since relationships and connections might be seen as imperative to urban behavior and dynamics, we are interested in exploring them from a network perspective. Understanding the nature of such connections and their meanings might allow for a more nuanced view of the diversity of urban societies and their behaviors over time. While much emphasis has been given to the material culture, particularly its monumental expressions, a network perspective brings new means of viewing different urban societies and how they interacted with the surrounding world as well as the strength of these networks. The Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), based at Aarhus University, Denmark, was established in 2015 with a grant awarded by the Danish National Research Foundation. Its mission is to study urban societies in terms of their social networks in the broadest sense. In archaeological and historical research, this approach represents a new, explorative, even experimental perspective on a crucial topic. There is much debate among researchers about the transformative significance of urbanism in human history. Still, this development has often been studied as a byproduct of the development of political institutions, particularly state power; otherwise it is seen in material terms as a rise in settlement complexity rooted in regionally founded demographic growth. UrbNet explores an alternative suggestion: that what is distinct about urban civilizations and their role in world history is a property of the communications that they facilitate within and between societies. In this perspective, the networks of societies take center stage and become benchmarks for the ways in which those societies act and prioritize. Urbanism can be a catalyst for changes in ways of life marked by social complexity and networks of wider, ultimately global, interdependence. Current research suggests that urban networks may have been critical in rapidly triggering societal and environmental changes across vast spaces a number of times in history. Crucial – and controversial – examples include the 4th-century BCE Hellenistic expansion, the rise of the Roman Empire, the 6th-century CE Justinian Plague, the 8th-century CE AbbasidTang ‘maritime silk road’ and the 13th-century CE Mongol World System. In situations like these, it is crucial that we investigate and understand the relevant networks in detail. Here, a high-definition archaeological approach is one way to gain insight into specific situations that may have marked turning points. By investigating materials, such as glass or bones in a high-definition perspective (Barfod et al. forthcoming; Ashby et al. 2015) – and guided by new questions pertaining to wider networks and local developments, for example, availability of local fuel or import possibilities – new patterns and explanations emerge. The development of urbanism affects social networks in a number of ways. Family affiliations may become more entangled and focused on individuals in urban societ14

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ies as compared, for instance, to societies primarily organized through clans, tribes or lineages. The frequency of day-to-day meetings, and the likeliness of encountering strangers, are multiplied in urban centers, whence reciprocal non-kinship (‘civil’) relations and modes of dealing with others are stimulated. Political societies in urban populations tend to involve a negotiation of interest between interdependent, crisscrossing groups, which could weaken and balance power hierarchies and encourage wider participation in political affairs. Perhaps the most widely debated aspect of urbanism and social networks, however, concerns the emergence of commercial networks of exchange, which may also be tied to the networks linked to social structures. How we can disentangle networks, which on the one hand pertain to close affiliations and on the other hand stretch beyond these, remains to be seen. Commercial exchanges are seen in some historical studies as an almost universal catalyst for social complexity, particularly for the emergence of urban places as markets in the widest sense – be it for politics, trade or religion (e.g., Taylor 2013). At the other end of a wide continuum of models, others regard it as a derived mechanism of distribution, dependent on the political institutions of state power (e.g., Wickham 2005). A pervasive lack of data on the early stages of many urban societies has allowed widely diverging reconstructions of their origins and development to persist. Research on urbanism is still chiefly informed by the privileged view afforded by the extensive records left by later, sometimes millennium-old urban societies (e.g., Ancient Mesopotamia, Classical Rome and Greece, medieval Europe and China). Consequently, whether urbanism and exchange patterns are viewed as developing as (in a pertinent metaphor) two sides of one coin or as developments that unfolded independently depends on the convictions of the individual scholar. UrbNet seeks to expand our knowledge beyond these – often politicized – conceptions by focusing on case studies that are considered marginal to, or at odds with, established definitions or narratives. This may come about by considering sites that seem to diverge from the pattern of ‘normal’ towns and cities, such as maritime emporia, caravan stations, or religious centers. It could also come about by focusing on aspects of citizens’ life that have not been considered specifically ‘urban’, for example religion, family patterns, or economic activities such as urban gardening or fishing. Or it may be by tracing the flow of materials – metals, glass, furs and hides, etc. – that challenge the traditional, conceptual divide between bulk consumption and luxury commodities as well as between long-distance trade and local circulation. This research may provide a better basis for determining, for example, if the development of long-distance trading networks always involves the emergence of sites and societies with urban characteristics; or how often the emergence of large, dense and complex settlements stimulate exchange networks. This book showcases a number of examples that define the UrbNet approach to network evolutions in order to illustrate the various ways in which it is possible to enquire into the diverse nature of the networks and dynamics that stood at the core of ancient urban societies. When seeking to characterize how urbanisms have developed in terms of social networks it is not enough to reconsider existing data from a new Urban network evolutions

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perspective. The majority of evidence known today has been gathered with reference to different perspectives, and much of it focuses on the structural and political properties of urban sites, such as their size and density, or features like town walls, monuments or public spaces (Hansen 2006). To understand how networks have operated in and between urban societies, we need to establish new datasets and, sometimes, develop and refine new methods for acquiring these data. A key challenge is thus to improve the means of archaeology to study developments across sites and regions. This requires us to understand the nature of contexts and finds and identify the pace of changes in site histories well enough to assess and compare their potential causes. This is why some of the work conducted at UrbNet concerns technical matters such as improving the precision of dating methods for site-chronologies, improving the means of tracing the origin of archaeological materials, or assessing the nature of the contexts. A much more challenging task than mapping sites and ruins and establishing the relative age of building phases, this quest for new types of data aligns UrbNet’s research agenda with the potential of recent advances in archaeological science and geoscience. To obtain new answers, fundamental questions concerning human history must translate into investigations concerning things such as the isotopic composition of materials; the morphology, geochemistry or microbiology of sediments; the statistical distribution of dating results or the subtle patterns of ‘big data’. Even more challenging, the results need to translate back into historical narratives in order to realize their potential. This last task calls for researchers with interdisciplinary training and broad outlooks, which is rare among researchers today but critical to the future development of historical and archaeological research on complex societies. UrbNet, therefore, has an important task in training scholars within this field, bridging scientific methods with contextual, historical studies. Such training must build on a knowledge of several fields of research, often crossing the boundaries of the humanities and sciences. It must also seek to bridge these through common hermeneutics, in some case by synthesizing approaches that may seem mutually exclusive. Developing UrbNet, and pursuing the basic research problems it aims to answer, is therefore not a short-term goal but a process which will require multiple levels of development and will inevitably take several years to unfold. The current book and its contributions are one step along this path. Acknowledgements

This work was generously supported by the Danish National Research Foundation (grant number: 119) and the Carlsberg Foundation.

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Bibliography Ashby, S.P., Coutu, A.N. & Sindbæk, S.M. (2015). Urban networks and Arctic outlands: craft specialists and reindeer antler in Viking towns. European Journal of Archaeology, 18 (4), 679‑704. Barfod, G., Freestone, I., Lichtenberger, A., Raja, R. & Schwarzer, H. (forthcoming). Typology, provenance and recycling of Byzantine and Early Islamic glass from Jerash, Jordan. Geoarchaeology. Hansen, M.H. (2006). Polis: an introduction to the ancient Greek city-state. Oxford University Press. Raja, R. & Sindbæk, S. (forthcoming). Urban networks and high‑definition narratives. Rethinking the archaeology of urbanism. In: Raja, R. & Sindbæk, S. (eds.). Biographies of Place. Taylor, P.J. (2013). Extraordinary Cities. Millenia of Moral Syndromes, World-Systems and City/State Relations. Chelten‑ ham: Edward Elgar. Wickham, C. (2005). Framing the Early Middle Ages. Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-800. Oxford: Oxford Uni‑ versity Press.

Urban network evolutions

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ROME AND ITS CITIES Contents This page is protected by copyright and may not be redistributed.

JAN KINDBERG JACOBSEN & RUBINA RAJA

A high-definition approach to the Forum of Caesar in Rome: Urban archaeology in a living city 1. Caesar’s Forum: As urban as it gets

Danish classical archaeologists have a long and well-established tradition of undertaking archaeological fieldwork in Italy both as individual archaeological missions and as as partners in excavations within frameworks of Danish-Italian institutional collaborations. In 2018 new and extensive collaborative excavations are being launched in Rome. These excavations will focus on laying open the until now un-excavated parts of the central Forum of Caesar (Figs. 1-2), a public monumental space in what was central ancient Rome, and which still is the centre of modern Rome, a place visited by millions of people every year. Inaugurated in 46 BCE as a manifestation of Caesar’s achievements and his strive for a single-ruler regime, this space quickly became a contested one – not least after the murder of Caesar in 44 BCE – but the space was also situated as centrally as possible in what was then the largest city in the Mediterranean region. It was a product of a much-needed extension of the public space northeast of the Forum Romanum, and the Forum of Caesar became a benchmark for the displays of imperial power encountered in the imperial fora to follow in later centuries, including the eras of Augustus, Nerva and Trajan. However, within the context of the new archaeological investigations, the archaeological potential of the area reaches far beyond the forum space from the Late Republican period. Previous research has shown that the earliest remains underneath the Roman-period structures date back to as early as the 13th century BCE – well before the mythical foundation of Rome in 753 BCE (De Santis et al. 2010: 261-262) and continue into the Renaissance and later. Therefore, the new excavations will provide a potential key to the further understanding of more than 3000 years of cultural, environmental and architectural development in central Rome, which remains one of the most researched, yet still incompletely understood, cities in the ancient world. Cities were vehicles for communication and networks in the Mediterranean world. They were hubs and nodes for trade, religion, politics, culture and economic exchanges. They were drivers of the hinterlands, and they sometimes hampered progress and innovation through their complexities. They were also often home to diseases and epidemics. However, they were all in all desirable to live in over millennia due to their facilitaA high-definition approach to the Forum of Caesar in Rome

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Fig. 1. Forum of Caesar (photo: Carlsberg Foundation).

tion of fast and efficient communication in a world that was already globalised. In the Late Republican and Early as well as High Imperial periods (100 BCE to 250 CE), cities were founded and expanded across the Mediterranean regions to an extent not seen in earlier periods. The Mediterranean was dominated in this period largely by Rome and the string of Roman leaders and emperors, whose main seat was Rome, but who also travelled widely in the Empire in order to maintain peace and economic stability in the provinces. Therefore, the public spaces reminding the citizens in the capital of who was, indeed, in charge were important spaces through which power structures were clearly communicated. The new excavations will shed new light on the ways in which people in power used central urban spaces. Furthermore, both the expected early phases – which will inform us about Rome before Rome – and the phases from Late Antiquity up into the medieval period will shed light on greatly understudied urban phases that have influence the shape of Rome as it stands today. Another new aspect of this research is the investigation of the period between the Renaissance and the era in which Benito Mussolini had the Via dei Fori Imperiali laid out. Until now, these periods have not been studied in a central archaeological context in Rome and may provide essential information about the climate and environmental history of Rome in these historical periods. 2. Excavation history

The first excavations to take place on the imperial fora were conducted during the reign of Napoleon between 1812 and 1814. These excavations took place in the area of the 22

Jan Kindberg Jacobsen & Rubina Raja

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The project was officially opened on 26 October 2017, with the presence of Her Majesty Queen

Fig. 2.

Margrethe II of Denmark (photo: Carlsberg Foundation).

column of Trajan as well as the Basilica Ulpia in Trajan’s Forum, and, as such, these excavations laid the ground for a continuing archaeological interest in the imperial fora, the central public spaces founded by the Roman emperors, in Rome. The subsequent archaeological exploits were concentrated in two main periods. In the initial period between 1924 and 1934, the post-Roman Alessandrino Quarter of the 16th century CE, which was constructed on Roman-period remains, was demolished. Afterwards, large-scale excavations uncovered substantial parts of the Forum of Caesar together with the main part of the Forum of Augustus, the Forum of Nerva and that of Trajan. The same period saw the construction of the monumental Via dei Fori Imperiali that, until now, has prevented an overall archaeological reading of the spaces of the imperial fora, their interrelations and the ways in which they were separated from each other. In more recent times, excavations were conducted from 1989 onwards. Following the initial uncovering of the Forum of Caesar in the 1920s and 1930s, limited excavations took place between 1961 and 1970 (Lamboglia 1980: 123-134; Amici et al. 2007), and recently the Sovraintendenza ai Beni Culturale del Comune di Roma has undertaken two extensive excavation projects in the years 1998-2000 and 2005-2008. These were directed by Eugenio La Rocca and coordinated by Roberto Meneghini and Riccardo Santangeli Valenzani in collaboration with Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma. These recent investigations added important new insights into the very early cultural developments of the area that would become Rome by identifying proto-historic phases under the Forum of Caesar. The investigations provided A high-definition approach to the Forum of Caesar in Rome

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key information about the transformations of the area from the Recent Bronze Age to the Orientalising period (13th century BCE to the beginning of the 6th century BCE). Overall, the results confirm the view that the process of urbanisation developed in Rome somewhat earlier in respect to other centres in Latium (De Santis et al. 2010). While this might be unsurprising, it still underlines the importance of the location of Rome and its centre at an earlier time than had hitherto been shown. One question that remains unsolved, however, is to what extent we can, in fact, call Rome urban at this point in time, or whether the urban character of the settlement went even further back in time. One line of enquiry would be through the new excavations, to look at the early remains in a more holistic manner by applying high-definition methods to the findings and hopefully pushing questions such as: Who were the people inhabiting the area at this point in time? What urban practices can we trace in the archaeological material? What consumption habits and burial practices did they have, and how does that inform us about the character of the settlement at the early points in time? Meanwhile, excavations in the southeast part of Caesar’s Forum revealed substantial remains of building phases from before the construction of the forum in the Late Republican period. These can be dated to the Archaic and Early Republican period (6th century BCE until c. 390 BCE). Notably two rectangular buildings from the Late Archaic period were found to be well preserved. A detailed architectural and contextual study has outlined how these buildings underwent several changes and extensions over the years, until they were destroyed by a fire around 390 BCE, which can probably be related to the Gallic sack of the city (Delfino 2010; 2014). It appears that one of the buildings was re-erected in the aftermath of the fire, and the future excavations are likely to clarify whether the area experienced a general reconstruction in the years after 390 BCE, or only a limited part was the object of the supposed Gallic destruction. 3. Conclusion

The broad chronological span of more than, potentially, 3000 years and the diversity of the archaeological remains, which will tell us about the development of one of the most significant urban sites in the Mediterranean, provide exciting archaeological perspectives. For the most part, urban dynamics can not be studied over such long time spans and certainly not in such central spaces. Furthermore, both the structural and non-structural features in the region of the Forum of Caesar provide the opportunity to combine traditional contextual-based excavations (context-first approach) with highdefinition investigations that will, in turn, allow for a comprehensive understanding of the overall development of the area over several millennia. With the Forum of Caesar as the point of departure, the excavations will uncover the full extent of the forum complex permitting – for the first time – a complete architectural overview. Focus is therefore dedicated to adding additional layers of understanding to the overall architectural development of the Forum of Caesar from the initial layout to the reconstructions and changes that occurred during the following five centuries (for

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Jan Kindberg Jacobsen & Rubina Raja

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an overview, cf. Meneghini 2009: 43‑58). In this context, a better understanding of the architectural programme is likely to be reached. Through its long continuous urban history, the understanding of the urban develop‑ ment of Rome has traditionally been limited by inadequate accessibility to connected excavation areas. In particular, the phases dating to the early part of the city’s life, not to mention the centuries prior to the mythological founding of Rome 753 BCE, have been under‑researched. Much of early Rome had already been erased in Antiquity through the continuing transformation of the public and private architectural settings of the central part of the city. In addition, the archaeological record at hand often derives from trenches of limited dimensions from which it is often difficult to extract contextual understanding and absolute chronology. In contrast to these situations, the new excavation on the Forum of Caesar will cover an area of up to 2,000 m2, and parts of the area will reveal extensive chronological sequences. This provides a unique possibility to study contextual changes over a large area through a long period. Both will be central archaeological parameters in defining, in high‑definition, a broad empirical contextualised approach to the development of central Rome for over 3000 years. Large‑scale urban excavation can rarely be undertaken today – due to their expense as well as the continuous development that has often taken place at such sites for millennia. However, such excavations are still needed because, despite much archaeological research and excavations, we still stand on the threshold to new frames of enquiry and new scales of definition that can be further tested through large‑scale urban excavations. 4. Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Carlsberg Foundation and the Danish National Re‑ search Foundation under the grant DNRF119 – Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet). 5. Bibliography Amici, C.M. et al. (2007). Lo scavo didattico della zona retrostante la Curia (Foro de Cesare). Campagne di scavo 1961‑1970. Rome: Bonsignori. De Santis, A., Mieli, G., Rosa, C., Matteucci, R., Celant, A., Minniti, C., Catalano, P., De Angelis, F., Di Giannanto‑ nio, S., Giardino, C. & Giannini, P. (2010). Le fasi di occupazione nell’area centrale di Roma in età protostorica: nuovi dati dagli scavi nel Foro di Cesare. Scienze dell’Antichita, 16, 259‑284. Delfino, A. (2010). Le fasi archaiche e alto‑repubblicane nell’area del Foro di Cesare, Sc. Scienze dell’Antichita, 16, 285‑302. Delfino, A. (2014). FORUM IULIUM: L’area del Foro di Cesare alla luce delle campagne di scavo 2005‑2008 Le fasi arcaica, repubblicana e cesariano‑augustea. British Archaeological Reports International Series, 2607. Oxford: Archaeopress. Lamboglia, N. (1980). Prime conclusioni sugli scavi nel Foro di Cesare dietro la Curia (1960‑1970). Cuadernos de trabajos de la Escuela Española de Historia y Arqueología en Roma, 14, 123‑134. Meneghini, R. (2009). I fori imperiali e i mercati di Traiano. Rome: Palombi.

A high-definition approach to the Forum of Caesar in Rome

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NORA M. PETERSEN

Burial and birds in pre-urban Rome 1. Introduction

Previous excavation campaigns in the Forum of Caesar carried out during the period from 1999 to 2008 revealed a number of burials belonging to the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age (11th-10th century BCE). In the Final Bronze Age, the site of Rome consisted of two small settlements, one on the Palatine Hill and one on the Capitoline Hill. The burials belonging to this period all contain different types of grave offerings. Among these offerings are birds, recovered in a burial, tomb 2 (Figs. 1-2). According to legend, birds have played an important role in Rome since the founding of the city. The gods spoke their will through the birds, and the activities of birds in the sky showed whether the omens of the gods were favourable or unfavourable. According to Roman mythology, the twins Romulus and Remus observed the flight of the birds in the sky, to determine which of them was to be founder of the city. Romulus went to the Palatine Hill where he saw twelve vultures, while his twin brother, Remus, saw only six from the Aventine Hill. The observation of the flight of birds for divination is often referred to as an Etruscan custom. However, other scholars believe it began as a Roman practice. Even though there are numerous examples of divination from Etruria involving birds, such as the destiny of the future king of Rome, Tarquinius Priscus, it has not yet been clarified. During the period of Etruscan kings in Rome, the observation of birds was the most commonly used religious practice, and the early institutionalisation of the augur’s college in Rome is thought to have occurred during the regal period. This suggests that the practice had already existed for a long time (Capdeville 2011: 124-125). Tomb 2 in the Forum of Caesar is of particular interest because the buried individual is the first known person in Rome to be associated with both a religious role and with birds, which may refer to the augural observation of birds. Here, these finds will be presented alongside insight into their interpretation and the religious role of the deceased. Tomb 2 is dated to the transition between the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age. The main focus will therefore be on the archaeological material from the 11th and 10th centuries BCE from the Forum of Caesar and the religious role that may be associated with tomb 2. 2. The early burials on the Forum of Caesar

The excavation campaigns in the years 1999-2008 revealed ten tombs. Five of these burials belong to the transitional period between the Final Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age Burial and birds in pre-urban Rome

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Fig. 1. Tomb 2 from the Forum of

Caesar (from De Santis 2001).

(11th-10th century BCE, Latial period I – phase IIA1). All five burials were cremations of male individuals placed in cylindrical pit tombs cut into the soil, so-called pozzo tombs (tombs 1, 2, 3, 5 and 8). Four burials belong to the Early Iron Age (10th century BCE). Three of these are inhumation burials (tombs 4, 6 and 10), while one is a cremation (tomb 7). The last burial (tomb 12) was damaged sometime during Antiquity, the type of deposition is therefore unknown (De Santis et al. 2010: 263-273). 2.1 The burials from the 11th-10th century BCE

The five tombs (tombs 1, 2, 3, 5 and 8) dated to the early period contain miniature impasto vessels, miniature weapons and personal objects such as fibulae. Throughout Latium, bronze miniature objects were used to define the role of the deceased, which can be divided into two categories: religious and military-political roles. The religious role is associated with miniature bronze knives, double shields and small terracotta figurines, while the political or military role is reflected in miniature bronze swords (De Santis et al 2010: 264-271). Tomb 2 (Figs. 1-2) contained the cremation of a young man of 18-25 years of age, an urn with a conical lid (also interpreted as a hut roof ), nine miniature impasto vessels, a bronze serpentine fibula and miniature bronzes; a sacrificial knife, two double shields and 28

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Grave goods, minus the fibula, found in tomb 2 from the Forum of Caesar, 11th-10th century BCE

Fig. 2.

(from De Santis et al. 2010, 264).

a spear. The sacrificial knife and the two double shields indicate that the deceased had a religious role in society. Other bronzes, such as the miniature bronze spear, are more difficult to associate with a specific role. In the Forum of Caesar, no miniature swords were found, and only religious symbols are found in the tombs. This is consistent with the tendency throughout the whole region where the religious role is represented in the tombs rather than the military-political role (De Santis 2010: 173-174). The priestly role indicated by the presence of a sacrificial knife and double shields, in three tombs (tombs 1, 2 and 8) from the Forum of Caesar, highlights the importance of religion in the period in which the pre-urban site of Rome and the Latial culture began to take shape. Additionally, the food offerings are thought to be a central part of the funerary ritual and cult in Rome at this time. In the area of Caesar’s Forum, there is a majority of sheep and pig bones in tombs from the Final Bronze Age and Early Iron Age, only tomb 8 contained bovine (cow) remains as well as bones from a sheep. The only burial to contain bird bones was tomb 2, where part of a piglet and bird bones from three different bird species were recovered. Zooarchaeological analyses have shown that the bones came from lark (Alaudidae), chaffinch (Fringillidae) and dove (Columbidae). These bird remains, their amount and variety of species present a unique case for Rome and for the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age burials in all of Latium. The animal bones were placed in the miniature vessels; the piglet bones and some dove bones were found in the miniature table-plate (piattello-tavolino). Other dove bones were found in a smooth, ovoid miniature olla, while two bones from a wing, the right radius and the Burial and birds in pre-urban Rome

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ulna, were found in the boat-shaped vessel. All the dove bones are thought to belong to the same bird, and almost the entire skeleton is present except for the right hind limb and the skull. The lark remains consisted of wing bones and part of the beak, whereas part of a scapula and humerus belong to the chaffinch (De Grossi Mazzorin & Gala 2015). It is not clear were the lark and the chaffinch were recovered in the tomb. Inside the urn, there were also two non-identifiable animal bone fragments (Minniti 2012: 158). Furthermore, it is possible to detect several cutting marks on the bird bones as well as combustion marks on the articulate ends of the wing bones, showing that the wings were cut off before they were cooked (De Grossi Mazzorin & Gala 2015: 8). Carbonised boxwood was also found in tomb 2. 2.2 The burials from the 10th century BCE on the Forum of Caesar

The three inhumation tombs (tombs 4, 6 and 10) all contained female individuals. The grave goods consisted of impasto vessels and bronze objects, such as fibulae, rings and small spirals, so-called fermatreccie. Two of the deceased were buried with necklaces; in tomb 6 it was made of amber, pasta vitrea and gold while the necklace from tomb 10 was made of amber and pasta vitrea. In the burial of tomb 4, only amber beads were found. The food offerings consisted of the same animals as in the previous period. However, no bird remains were found. Tomb 7 contained the cremation of a 2-year-old boy who was buried with impasto ceramics and food offerings, such as part of a lamb and a sheep. The cremation also contained carbonised evergreen oak while tomb 4 also contained carbonised boxwood (De Santis et al. 2010: 267-269). 3. Burials and bones

All the tombs in the Forum of Caesar contain faunal remains. In comparison, only 53% of the burials in the necropolis close to the Temple of Faustina and Antoninus in the Roman Forum contained animal bones while the same can be said for only 6% of the tombs of Osteria dell’Osa near Gabi. Food remains have also been found in the tombs from the Early Iron Age in the area of Giardino Romano on the Capitoline Hill. The deposition of food in burials played a central part in the funerary ritual in Rome, which was continued until the Orientalising period (Catalano et al. 2015: 7). The animal bones from tomb 2 could be interpreted either as food offerings for the afterlife of the deceased or as food prepared for the funerary ceremony itself. However, it could also signify that a particular animal was prepared and offered to the deceased because it was somehow associated with the individual and his role in the society. Not every part of the animals was found in tomb 2, which might indicate that some of the bones were consumed by the participants in the funerary ritual or banquet. Meat was high-status food in Antiquity and the high social status of the deceased explains the large amount of piglet and bird bones. Raising animals was naturally more expensive than the growth of cereals and plants, and meat was most likely primarily eaten on certain religious occasions and thus rarely separated from animal sacrifice. During the pre-urban period, Rome only had two other tombs (Q and V) containing 30

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Tomb Q from the necropolis of the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina. Left: Pozzo tombs with cave. Fig. 3. Right: Detail from inside the cave (from Gjerstad 1956, photo no. Dfs8147).

bird bones. Tomb Q and tomb V are both pozzo tombs located in the necropolis near the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina on the Forum Romanum (Boni 1906: 9‑16, 50‑54 and 253‑256). Both tombs are dated to the Early Iron Age (Latial phase IIA), a period in which small settlements were founded in the area of Rome and therefore some of the necropoles were moved. The small necropolis close to the Arch of Augustus moved to the area near the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina. Tomb Q (Fig. 3) stands out in relation to the surrounding tombs because a small cave was dug into the side of the pozzo at the bottom. In this aspect, only tomb R is similar. Inside the small cave, a hut urn with the unburned bones of a dove (turtle tenera) was placed on top of the cremated bones. Inside the cave, eleven impasto vessels and the bones, deriving either from a pig or a calf, were found. However, the species cannot be determined because the animal bones have gone missing. Tomb V consisted of a large dolium placed at the bottom of the pozzo in which the cremation of a young individual was found inside an amphora. Different kinds of impasto vessels and the bones of an entire bird, probably a thrush, were found in the dolium mixed with earth and human bones. A stone placed on the surface of the tomb had a hole in its centre that, according to Giacomo Boni, excavator of the necropolis, could have been designed for a staff. In Latium, only a few other tombs from this period contain bird bones. At Monte Cucco near Castel Gandolfo, chicken bones were found inside a hut urn; these are considered the earliest chicken remains from ancient Italy (De Grossi Mazzorin & Gala 2015). Additionally, bones of Aves sp. were found in the necropolis of Le Caprine (Final Bronze Age) in the very rich tomb 5 belonging to a c. 2‑3‑year‑old girl who was Burial and birds in pre-urban Rome

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associated with a religious role in life (Minniti 2012: 158). Hence, bird bones are a rarity in tombs from the Final Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age, and the few known examples are either found in tombs where the deceased is associated with a religious role or they are found inside a hut urn. These hut urns contain cremated individuals who often belonged to groups of high status. Furthermore, tomb Q is interesting because of the cave containing the urn, and the grave goods and the marking of a staff makes tomb V a unique case. 4. Birds and beliefs

Birds played an important role in Rome since the foundation of the city in which Romulus and Remus observed the flight of birds in the sky. The presence of birds in one of the earliest tombs found in Rome to date could, therefore, be associated with pre-urban religious practice and with the priestly role of the deceased. Other bird bones have already been connected to auguries. In the Archaic votive deposit, Lapis Niger, in the Forum Romanum, fragmented vulture bones with cutting marks were found among other animal bones and votive objects. The bird bones have been associated with a ritual act, due to the fact that vulture meat is inedible and that the bones were found in the votive deposit. The vulture remains have been linked to Romulus and the foundation myth. Roman sources refer to different kinds of birds used in auguries. The Roman writer Varro, for instance, states that chickens were used for consultations and that the augurs were the first to breed this fowl (Capdeville 2011: 109) while other sources note that doves were connected to the goddess Venus. Both animals, chickens and doves were found in the pre-urban Latial tombs. The tomb from Monte Cucco contained chicken bones inside the hut urn, and the hut urn from tomb Q in Rome contained a dove wing while tomb 2 had dove bones in the miniature vessels. However, it cannot be excluded that the unidentifiable bones found inside the urn of tomb 2 also belonged to birds. Furthermore, the location of the bird bones inside the urn might refer to the deceased’s personal connection to the animal or even to his or her apotheosis, since, for instance, the legend says that Romulus went to heaven after his death and the Romans deified him. The exact meaning of the bird remains in the pre-urban burials in Rome is uncertain. However, the unique burial of tomb 2 with bones from three different birds is the first case combining a high-status individual, religion and birds in association with the beginning of Rome. The myth of the Roman twins is hardly a factual story; nevertheless, elements from the foundation myth might contain aspects of both fiction and fact. The religious aspects of the pre-urban site might furthermore have had an important impact on the urban evolution. Rome grew bigger and became the largest urban centre of Latium, and one of the explanations, besides being neighbour to the Etruscan urban culture, is that Rome evolved into an important religious centre wherein the observation of birds became the essential myth associated with the foundation of the city.

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5. Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Carlsberg Foundation and the Danish National Re‑ search Foundation under the grant DNRF119 – Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet). 6. Bibliography Boni, G. (1906). Foro Romano – Esplorazione del Sepolcreto. Notizie degli Scavi, 1906, 5‑54, 253‑294. Capdeville, G. (2011). L’uccello nella divinazione in Italia central. In: Ancillotti, A., Calderini, A. & Massarelli, R. (eds.). Forme e strutture della religion nell’Italia mediana antica. Roma: L’Erma di Bretschneider, pp. 79‑155. Catalano, P., Cavazzuti, C., Celant, A., De Angelis, F., De Santis, A., Freeman, R., Magri, D., Mieli, G., Minniti, C. & Pantano, W.B. (2015). 10. Analisi contestuale di alimentazione e salute nel Lazio nella I età del Ferro (II periodo laziale ca. X‑IX sec. a.C.). Preistoria del cibo, 50 ma Riunione Scientifica dell’Istituto Italiano di Preistoria e Protostoria, L’uoma e ciò che mangia? – Sessione 1. http://preistoriadelcibo.iipp.it/contributi/1_10.pdf. De Grossi Mazzorin, J. & Gala, M. (2015). The use of birds in funerary practice: the example of the tomb 2 in the Forum of Caesar (Rome –Italy). Preistoria del cibo, 50 ma Riunione Scientifica dell’Istituto Italiano di Preistoria e Protostoria, Tra ritualita e potere – sessione 4. http://preistoriadelcibo.iipp.it/contributi/4_21.pdf. De Santis, A., Mieli, G., Rosa, C., Matteucci, R., Celant, A., Minniti, C., Catalano, P., Dee Angelis, F., Di Giannanto‑ nio, S., Giardino, C. & Giannini, P. (2010). Le fasi di occupazione nell’area centrale di Roma in età protostorica: nuovi dati dagli scavi nel Foro di Cesare. Scienze dell’Antichità, 16, 259‑284. De Santis, A. (2010). L’ideologia del potere. Le figure al vertice delle comunità nel Lazio protostorico. In: Nizzo, V. (ed.). Dalla nascita alla morte. Antropologia e archeologia a confronto. Atti dell’incontro internazionale di studi in onore di Claude Levi- Straus. Roma: E.S.S., pp. 171‑197. Gjerstad, E. (1956). Early Rome, II: The Tombs. Skrifter Utgivne av Svenska Institutet i Rom, 4°, xvii. 2. Lund: C.W.K. Gleerup. Minniti, C. (2012). Offerte rituali di cibo animale in contesti funerary dell’Etruria e del Lazio nella prima età del Ferro. In: De Grossi Mazzorin, J., Saccà, D. & Tozzi, C. (eds.). Atti del 6 Convegno Nationale di Archeozoologia. Lecce: Associazione italiana di archeozoologia, pp. 153‑161.

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SINE GROVE SAXKJÆR & GLORIA PAOLA MITTICA

Caesar’s Forum: Excavating Italian Iron Age 1. The archaeological site of Caesar’s Forum

The excavation project, from which the present contribution stems, takes its name from the most famous era of the site, which is – needless to say – when the site was the Forum of Caesar. However, the story of this pivotal locality in Roman history neither began nor ended with its Late Republican phase. On the contrary, it is expected that the upcoming excavations will uncover a stratigraphy and timeline of more than 3000 years rarely encountered in the centre of Rome and even more rarely on this scale because the excavations will uncover a field of several thousand m2. An excavation field of this size is unique in the city centre due to the high density of later building structures. However, it is made possible in this area – the last un-excavated third of the first ‘imperial’ forum – because it has been lying untouched beneath the broad sidewalk areas running along the Via dei Fori Imperiali, the road running from Piazza Venezia to the Colosseum that was created by Mussolini. Today, the road plays a minor role in the traffic network of the city, and thus it has become possible to remove parts of the sidewalks and make room for the new excavations. Since the Forum of Caesar was first uncovered in the 1920s and 1930s, the Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali has conducted two series of excavations on the forum (1998-2000, 2005-2008), although neither of these was of the scale of the upcoming project. Looking at the area diachronically, it is situated in the midst of the very birth of the settlement that would later become Rome. In the area of Rome, the establishment of permanent settlements took place from the Middle Bronze Age onwards, that is, from the middle of the 2nd millennium BCE. Traces from these have been found on the Capitoline, the Palatine and the Quirinal Hills as well as in the valley of the later Roman Forum. In fact, previous excavations at the site of Caesar’s Forum have uncovered two series of wheel tracks dating to the 13th-11th centuries BCE, which are among the earliest traces of these settlements (found in the recent excavations on Caesar’s Forum [1998-2000 and 2005-2008], see for example Meneghini 2009; De Santis et al. 2010; Delfino 2014). What is more, the wheel tracks have been interrupted by pits from a later necropolis dating to the 11th-10th centuries BCE. At the opposite end of the timeline, there are still visible remains from cellars and sewer facilities belonging to the Alessandrino neighbourhood that was erected in the area above the imperial fora during the late 16th century CE and removed by Governatorato di Roma in the years between 1924 Caesar’s Forum: Excavating Italian Iron Age

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Fig. 1. The extension of Rome between

c. 900 and 660 BCE and the central position of the site of Caesar’s Forum (illustration: S.G. Saxkjær).

and 1934. Between the two ends of the timeline, the site is expected to contain remains from all of the intermediate phases, such as Archaic and Republican structures as well as residues from Late Antiquity and the medieval period. In other words, the site shows the urban development of Rome, the transformation of the site from the setting of part of a burial ground of the smaller habitation units in the area during the Recent Bronze Age and Early Iron Age to its incorporation within the growing settlement in the 8th century BCE, if not already during the course of the 9th century BCE. The location of the site in what was always the centre of Rome (Fig. 1) makes it possible to explore the establishment and development of the city from its beginning through modern times. 2. The birth of Rome

In the present context, we wish to focus on a specific period within the Italian Iron Age, that is, the period from the 9th to the 7th century BCE. The period in question is characterised by rapid evolving cultural and social processes, not only in the region of Latium Vetus, where Rome is located, but throughout Italy. Starting with Rome itself, the city is said to have been founded by Romulus in 753 BCE. Although this date is of mythical character, it is clear from the archaeological record that an increasing urbanisation was taking place in the 8th century BCE, transforming Rome from scattered villages into an urban centre. This transformation was not unique to Rome, but took place throughout Latium Vetus, as has been documented at, for example, the settlements of Gabii and Crustumerium. At the Forum of Caesar, remains from 8th- and 7th-century habitation contexts have been brought to light together with an infant burial (Tomb 9), which can be dated to the middle of the 8th century BCE. The above-mentioned necropolis is believed to have gone 36

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out of use during the 9th century BCE, and the area was subsequently transformed into being part of the settlement. The 8th-century infant burial is thus part of the well-known custom of Latium Vetus of burying infants and young children within the settlement area, beneath and around the houses. It will be most interesting to uncover more of these settlement phases in the upcoming excavations, not only because of the size of the excavations field, which, as stated above, will be one of the largest coherent areas from this period to be excavated in modern times but also because of the possibility of applying the broad range of scientific analyses now available. Accordingly, the excavations will offer rare insights into the development of early Rome and, moreover, in this particular context, the transformation of an area from a land of the dead to a city of the living. The geographical location of Rome was important, just as its interaction, cultural exchange and trade relations with other Italic and foreign peoples were pivotal for the city’s development during the Iron Age. The hinterlands of Rome were indeed a cultural melting pot. In the area, three important indigenous tribes – the Etruscans, the Sabines and the Latins – were present within a radius of 40 km. Additionally, the indigenous people had trade connections with Phoenician and Greek groups. Pithekoussai, traditionally regarded as the earliest Greek settlement in the western Mediterranean, was established on the island of Ischia in the Bay of Naples during the first half of the 8th century BCE. According to ancient written sources, the settlement was founded by colonists from Eretria and Chalcis. During the same period, Euboeans appear to have frequented the south-Italian Ionian coastline and, to some degree, to have settled at the site of Timpone della Motta, near present day Francavilla Marittima on the northern Ionian coast, as well as at Canale Ianchina further south (Jacobsen, Saxkjær & Mittica 2017: 169-190). At the former site, recent extensive Danish excavations made possible by the support of the Carlsberg Foundation have allowed us to define a detailed understanding of the cultural assimilation between indigenous people and Greeks in the period between c. 800 and 610 BCE. Taking a diachronic view, sites, such as Francavilla Marittima as well as other south-Italian localities with evidence for Greek–indigenous encounters, will form an informative base for comparing the cultural complexity in Rome and Latium Vetus to a wider area. Hence, the upcoming excavations and the uncovering of the Iron Age phases of Caesar’s Forum will provide additional data and new insights to our understanding of this central phase in the establishment and development of Rome as well as add new aspects to our current knowledge of the cultural processes that took place throughout Italy during this period. 3. Acknowledgements

The project is a collaboration between the Danish Institute in Rome and the Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali, and it is scientifically anchored in Centre for Urban Network Evolutions at Aarhus University. The excavations are generously funded by the Carlsberg Foundation. This work was also supported by the Danish National Research Foundation under the grant DNRF119 – Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet). Caesar’s Forum: Excavating Italian Iron Age

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4. Bibliography De Santis, A., Mieli, G., Rosa, C., Matteucci, R., Celant, A., Minniti, C., Catalano, P., De Angelis, F., Di Giannanto‑ nio, S., Giardino, C. & Giannini, P. (2010). Le fasi di occupazione nell’area centrale di Roma in età protostorica: nuovi dati dagli scavi nel Foro di Cesare. Scienze dell’Antichita, 16, 259‑284. Delfino, A. (2014). FORUM IULIUM: L’area del Foro di Cesare alla luce delle campagne di scavo 2005‑2008 Le fasi arcaica, repubblicana e cesariano‑augustea. British Archaeological Reports International Series, 2607. Oxford: Archaeopress. Jacobsen, J.K., Saxkjær, S.G. & Mittica, G.P. (2017). Observations on Euboean Koinai in Southern Italy. In: Hand‑ berg, S. & Gadolou, A. (eds.). Material Koinai in the Greek Early Iron Age and Archaic Period. Acts of an Inter‑ national Conference at the Danish Institute at Athens, 30 January – 1 February 2015. Monographs of the Danish Institute at Athens, 22. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, pp. 169‑190. Meneghini, R. (2009). I fori imperiali e i mercati di Traiano. Rome: Palombi.

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NIKOLINE SAUER PETERSEN

The Archaic period on the Forum of Caesar: The urbanisation of early Rome 1. Introduction

As a city continuously inhabited for more than 3000 years, Rome is like a layer cake of the past. This is particularly evident in the area of the Forum of Julius Caesar, which covers a continuous and undisturbed archaeological stratigraphy of three millennia. The stratigraphy stretches from 1300 BCE to 1932 CE: from the Late Bronze Age to the year of the construction of Mussolini’s processional road Via dei Fori Imperiali. Thus, the forthcoming excavation in the northeastern part of the Forum, connected with the project ‘Excavation of Julius Caesar’s Forum in Rome’, makes it possible to investigate the extent of Rome’s history within the same area and the long-term urban development of the ancient city (Fig. 1). In order to obtain a more detailed perspective on the long-term urban development, the project is doing synchronic studies. One of them is the study of the Archaic period on the area of the Forum. 2. The Archaic period of Rome

In terms of research within the field of Roman archaeology, the Archaic period spans approximately from the 7th to the 5th century BCE. The Archaic period of Rome corresponds, overall, to the Archaic period of Greece (700-480 BCE) and the Regal period of Rome (753-509 BCE). The knowledge of Archaic Rome is based on literary and archaeological sources. However, in recent decades there has been a scholarly debate regarding the accuracy and usefulness of the literary sources in the study of early Rome. Our existing literary sources of knowledge concerning the Archaic period are primarily based on myths, legends, and altogether secondary sources. The works of the Roman historian Livy (Ab urbe condita) and the Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Antiquitates Romanae), which are the two most important narrative sources of this period, are extensive. However, their literary documentation stems from the 1st century BCE. Within the last decades, a debate has arisen regarding the coherence between archaeology and the literary texts. A case in point is Livy who, in his monumental history of Rome, mentions an increase in the

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Fig. 1. View of the forthcoming excavation area of the northeastern part of the Forum of Julius Caesar

(photo: N.S. Petersen).

Roman population in the middle of the 7th century BCE during the reign of the third Roman king, Tullus Hostilius (672‑642 BCE): Rome, meanwhile, was increased by Alba’s downfall. The number of citizens was doubled, the Caelian Hill was added to the City, and, that it might be more thickly settled, Tullus chose it for the site of the king’s house and from that time onwards resided there (Livy, Ab urbe condita 1.30, translation by R.M. Ogilvie, 1988).

The archaeological research agrees on an overall increase in population in the 7th century BCE, when Tullus Hostilius was assumed to be king. Further, the archaeological stud‑ ies elucidate how Rome in the Archaic period underwent a vast urban development. In this period, the city grew in size, organisation, wealth, and population. However, even if in this case the archaeological evidence supports the text, the literary sources of Archaic Rome are secondary sources. Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus relied mainly on the work of earlier historians and annalistic tradition that went back to the 2nd century BCE (Cornell 1995: 1‑23). Thus, it is difficult to assess whether other parts of Livy’s work, or other literary sources for that matter, reflected the reality of the Archaic 40

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The foundations of the Archaic temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline Hill. Visible

Fig. 2.

in the Capitoline Museum in Rome (photo: N.S. Petersen).

history of Rome. This makes archaeology a vital source and the only primary source in the understanding of, as well as adding new knowledge to, the early history of Rome. 3. The archaeological sources of Archaic Rome

It is not within the scope of this text to mention all the contributors to the excavations and archaeological studies of early Rome through the last centuries. Yet, one pioneer on the subject has to be mentioned. Einer Gjerstad, a Swedish archaeologist, worked for over two decades on a comprehensive synthesis in six volumes of all the archaeo‑ logical evidence from the excavations in Rome since 1870 and until the middle of the 20th century (Gjerstad 1953‑1973). By doing so, he formed a basis for later studies on Archaic Rome. Some archaeological remains of the Archaic period are in some measure still visible in Rome. The most noteworthy structures are: the foundation of the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline Hill (Fig. 2); the temples found near present‑ day Sant’Omobono on the slope of the Capitoline Hill; Forum Romanum including the Comitium; Cloaca Maxima and Via Sacra, the main street of ancient Rome. The monumentalisation, the organisation of civic, religious, and political activities, and the city planning imply that Rome was already at a relatively high level of urbanisation by the 7th century BCE. Part of the explanation for the urban development in this period may lie in a strengthening of the economic system and a more stable and defined aris‑ The Archaic period on the Forum of Caesar: The urbanisation of early Rome

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tocracy, which possibly gave rise to more trade, a collection of resources, and stronger local and foreign exchange networks. The area of and close to Caesar’s Forum was considered one of the main residential areas in Archaic Rome. Remains from this Archaic settlement were found in earlier excavations conducted in the area of the Forum. For instance, recent excavations, carried out from 2005 to 2008 and lead by Alessandro Delfino in the southeastern area of the Forum of Caesar, revealed significant remains of the Archaic settlement in addition to numerous Archaic finds. Most notable are a road and the remains of two high-status domestic houses from the 6th century BCE. The houses were oriented NW–SE and built in a friable, ash-grey cappellaccio-tufa (Delfino 2014: 64-92). It seems likely that the future excavation will uncover more of these architectural remains, either as a direct continuation of the two structures or in the form of the occurrence of contemporary but independent buildings. Consequently, the forthcoming excavation in the northeastern part of the Forum may unearth significant stratigraphy from the Archaic period below the remaining structures from later periods. In this way, the upcoming excavation, in combination with earlier excavation reports and archaeological material from the previous excavations, is expected to contribute to an extensive and detailed depiction of the Archaic period on the Forum of Julius Caesar. 4. Prospects of the research

The undisturbed archaeological stratigraphy and the Archaic structures and finds found earlier on the area of the Forum predict that parts of an Archaic settlement will be found in the forthcoming excavation. The archaeological remains of a settlement will be of great value to the research of Archaic Rome since many earlier studies have focused merely on graves, sanctuaries, and grave goods. The investigation of an settlement in central Rome would shed light on the urbanisation of Archaic Rome. The urban development and socio-economic transformation in the Archaic period found expression in permanent stone-built houses with tiled roofs and larger and more nucleated settlements (Cornell 1995: 81-241; Smith 1996: 72-230). Hence, a reading of the buildings from the Archaic phase on the Forum of Caesar could address the physical form of the settlement and the ways in which it transformed and developed in order to illuminate the urban development that occurred during the period. In relation to this, a comparison of the settlement with other Archaic sites within and outside Rome is essential in order to estimate to what extent the Archaic settlement on the Forum is representative of the whole of Rome and Latium Vetus. In addition, a variety of information could be extracted from careful examinations of the smaller Archaic remains found in the settlement, such as pottery, tiles, slag, metal, bones, and loom weights. Detailed recordings and examinations of these finds within and in the proximity of the Archaic structures may allow us to trace the development of the houses in a temporal perspective and to obtain information on the spatial organisation, demographic patterns, and social stratification of the society. The pottery, as the main component of the archaeological assemblages on Caesar’s 42

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The Capitoline Museum in

Fig. 3.

Rome exhibits the Archaic pottery found at excavations on the Capitoline Hill (photo: N.S. Petersen).

Forum, is one of the focal objects. Pottery is a principal tool in the determination of cultural contacts and in the definition of social, cultural, and economical developments. Moreover, it has the added advantage that it can be used in the dating of stratigraphy and structures. In the Archaic period in Rome, the pottery was mainly impasto pottery, wheel-made local pottery, and imported pottery. Large quantities of Archaic pottery have been found in earlier excavations of the Forum (Delfino 2014: 74-75) and the adjacent area, such as the Capitoline Hill (Fig. 3). Classification and typology of the pottery will form the basis for the examinations, but archaeometrical methods on the pottery will also be used. Analysis of the contents of the vessels may give insights into the daily life, diet, and consumption of the inhabitants of early Rome, whereas clay analysis can be used to define the origin of the pottery and, hence, determine the cultural contacts and urban networks of the Archaic society. Methods from the natural sciences have been considered of paramount potential in the conducting of new research on Archaic Rome. Therefore, geoarchaeological and archaeometrical methods will be used on the objects, individual contexts, and stratigraphic sequences in order to yield new knowledge on the occupation and the formation processes on the site and to adjust the existing chronology of the Archaic period. For instance, controlled scientific analysis of zoological and floral remains of the settlement could be used to present a detailed account of the subsistence economy of the Archaic society, while radiocarbon analysis could be used to illustrate the activity on the site and to adjust the existing chronological sequence of Archaic Rome. The Archaic period on the Forum of Caesar: The urbanisation of early Rome

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5. Acknowledgements

The project is funded by the Carlsberg Foundation. This work was also supported by the Danish National Research Foundation under the grant DNRF119 – Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet). 6. Bibliography Delfino, A. (2014). FORUM IULIUM: L’area del Foro di Cesare alla luce delle campagne di scavo 2005‑2008 Le fasi arcaica, repubblicana e cesariano‑augustea. British Archaeological Reports International Series, 2607. Oxford: Archaeopress. Cornell, T. (1995). The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000‑264 BC). New York: Routledge. Gjerstad, E. (1953‑1973). Early Rome, I‑VI. Lund: Svenska instituttet i Rom. Smith, C. (1996). Early Rome and Latium. Economy and Society c. 1000 to 500 BC. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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LINE EGELUND

A space for Caesar: The heart of Rome and urban development 1. Introduction

The forum was the heart of a Roman city, the place where people would gather for social, political, and religious events. It was the area where information was exchanged, trade was made, and the daily life was led, and thus this space was in many respects the focal point of urban development and of the urban agenda. Rome itself was no exception. During the Late Roman Republic, Rome prospered and the population flourished. The early forum, Forum Romanum, eventually proved too small. Julius Caesar seized the opportunity to expand the space and built his forum, Forum Iulium (modern-day Caesar’s Forum) (Figs. 1-2). This became the first and was followed by four imperial fora built by the later emperors Augustus, Nerva, Vespasian, and Trajan. On the whole, they were all influenced by each other and were interconnected public spaces, but differences are visible nevertheless – differences driven by urban development, for example, in the architecture connected to the political and religious situation. Therefore, the imperial fora changed alongside the city. By the medieval period, the imperial fora had been abandoned, and their functions had changed completely. The fora have been subject to much research, but the focus has largely been on the Roman Imperial period (27 BCE to 476 CE) and the architectural and sculptural programme. Little has been done on the area in the periods before and after the construction of the Forum Iulium and on the spatial use and development thereof. Therefore, the upcoming Caesar’s Forum Excavations provide a unique opportunity to examine these periods and the development of the spatial use through 3000 years, from the earliest burials in the Middle Bronze Age, through the construction and use of the Forum Iulium in the Roman period, and the change in use of the imperial fora in Late Antiquity and medieval times. Furthermore, the upcoming excavations also provide an ideal opportunity to reassess the urban development of Rome through high-definition archaeology in context since the upcoming excavations will unearth a continuous archaeological stratigraphy from the Middle Bronze Age until the constructions of the new road Via dell’Impero (modern-day Via dei Fori Imperiali) under Mussolini in the 1920s and 1930s. Material from the construction of the forum and into the medieval period will shed light on the long-term urban development of Rome, and probably provide a clear understanding of the urban networks within the different periods. However, the period of focus A space for Caesar: The heart of Rome and urban development

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Fig. 1.

Forum Iulium as it looks today (photo: L. Egelund).

for examining the use of public spaces in Rome spans from the Late Republic to the medieval period (see also Delfino 2014). To address key issues, it is relevant to list some recent studies of urban development and spatial analysis of Rome. These include the excavations and studies of Crypta Balbi and the ongoing research of the cityscape of the Forum Romanum by the Topoi Excel‑ lence Cluster (Manacorda 2013: 8‑13; Muth 2014: 285‑323). 2. Forum Iulium in an urban context

The previous excavations of Forum Iulium have provided a good overview of the forum, and the entire length of the forum has been uncovered. Still, a large area in the northeastern part of the forum remains uncovered. Until now, studies have focused primarily on the architectural and sculptural programme, that is, the planning and architecture of the forum and the sculptures, reliefs, and other decorations in order to understand the meaning and ideas behind these and the forum. Furthermore, the focus has been on the ideologies behind the forum as well as on the Venus Genetrix Temple, rather than on the space itself and how this developed alongside the city. The forum was consciously planned, most likely in order to influence the spectators and users of this public space. In turn, this might have led to the fact that the layout and 46

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Outline of Forum Iulium’s main features (sketch: O. Hejlskov & L. Egelund, based on the reconstruc- Fig. 2. tion by Meneghini & Santangeli Valenzani 2007: 35, Fig. 19 combined with Google Maps).

sculptural programme of Forum Iulium was partially repeated and mirrored in the later imperial fora, although they were indeed different and individual fora (Delfino 2014: 241‑256; Nielsen 2015: 45‑56). The construction of Forum Iulium followed a building tradition of the Late Re‑ public: Great men of political power and wealth built large architectural complexes in order to win the favour of the gods and to demonstrate, celebrate, and legitimise their power, for example through divine ancestry as seen in the Temple of Venus Genet‑ rix. This tradition also became a means of competing with political opponents. Thus, Forum Iulium had several purposes beginning with its construction; furthermore, the extension of Rome’s forum was a way of winning the goodwill of the people. Forum Iulium was intended to be a new area that could relieve Forum Romanum of public pressure; as the city prospered and the population grew during the Late Republic new public space was needed (Nielsen 2015: 45‑62). Forum Iulium became an area of equal significance to the Forum Romanum, and also, as Forum Romanum, a public space of political and religious importance. The new forum, as well as the later imperial fora were largely inspired by the Late‑Republican manner of combining public spaces with the promotion of the emperors responsible therefore, their successes, and their claim to power, although they also had to follow the trends of their period. At the same time, they were quite different and individual, in layout as well as architecture. Each impe‑ A space for Caesar: The heart of Rome and urban development

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rial forum reflected the trends, development, and society of the time they were built, and thus reflect urban development. The imperial fora were constructed with specific intentions in mind, but their purpose of use changed over time. Even Forum Iulium was renovated and rebuilt during the rule of the later emperors as a result of the urban development of the city. Still, all the fora were as public spaces that were deeply en‑ tangled with each other. This indicates that the Forum Iulium remained a significant public space even after the construction of new public spaces, for example, in the form of additional fora and theatres. The previous excavations of the Forum Iulium and the imperial fora have revealed that the imperial fora remained significant areas in central Rome during Late An‑ tiquity, even when the Roman power had moved to Constantinople. However, their functions had changed along with the city, and, during Late Antiquity, the fora had become areas for exhibiting and remembering the previous Roman emperors. This can be seen through reconstructions, rebuilt remains, and the replacing of statues in the areas during this period (Meneghini 2017: 11‑12). However, the political and religious changes of Late Antiquity also meant a change in the functions of public spaces in Rome. The imperial fora were protected by law, to ensure that they were not subject to spoliation. This law was a means of ensuring the cultural identity of the city and preserving the previous image of power, which was under decline after the power had moved. Despite this – the steps taken during Late Antiquity to protect the public spaces – the imperial fora went out of use over time and were stripped of their building material (Alto Bauer 1996: 137‑141). From the 6th century CE onwards, the area of the imperial fora was used for everything from burials to domestic and farming purposes (Meneghini 2017: 15‑27). Accordingly, the imperial fora, through their central location in Rome, bear witness to the urban development that took place through the entire course of Rome’s history. 3. Prospects of the research

The new excavations in the heart of Rome will allow for a contextual examination of all the phases of use within Forum Iulium – an examination that, as already mentioned, has not been incorporated into previous studies of the imperial fora. By including the newly excavated material from Forum Iulium and comparing it with previously excavated material from both Forum Iulium and the later imperial fora, it becomes possible to analyse the spatial use of the fora, changes that appeared in the function of Forum Iulium over time, and how these changes might reflect general tendencies in the urban development of Rome. The focus will be on the long‑term development from the period of Forum Iulium’s construction, the Late Republic, through the political and religious changes of Late Antiquity, to the less densely populated city of Rome during the medieval period. This will allow analyses of the public space in order to examine the intended use and the actual use of the imperial fora. These analyses will provide a baseline for reassessing the imperial fora, and, through thorough contextual and spatial analyses of the excavated material form Forum Iulium, it is possible to gain a better and 48

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more holistic understanding of the urban development visible in Forum Iulium from the construction period in the Late Republic and into the medieval period. Their central role as civic spaces and their shifting role in society from their construction to their abandonment and spoliation in the medieval period provide a frame within which this development can be understood. It is therefore also important to reassess the intended use and the actual use of the imperial fora: Are there differences between these? Who used these public places? Was it mainly political, religious, or everyday activities that took place in the fora? Or was it a combination of these activities? There might not be any simple answers to these questions. It is important to remember, when examining spatial use, that spaces are dynamic; they reflect the society they are built in and they mirror societal and urban development (Muth 2014: 292‑294). This means that although the answers to the questions might be various, through the examination of spatial use of important civic spaces in Rome, it becomes possible to shed new light on Rome’s urban development throughout the centuries. Studies of public spaces and urban development are being conducted in Rome as well as in other ancient cities, such as Pompeii and Ostia Antica, and are based on the archaeological and historical evidence combined with disciplines in the natural, computer, and/or social sciences in order to gain a high‑definition picture of the urban situations of the past. In Rome, the most recent studies of the public spaces are from Forum Romanum, where the studies include digital reconstruction, used to examine, for example, the movement within the forum, and from Crypta Balbi, where the long‑term development has been one of the focuses (Manacorda 2013: 8‑13; Muth 2014: 268‑283). However, much more work is needed in Rome. Thus, the new excavations of Caesar’s Forum provide a unique opportunity to use high‑definition archaeology in context and understand the long‑term urban development of Rome through Forum Iulium. It will allow for a reassessment of our understanding of Rome and will provide new perspectives through the analyses of the use of space in Forum Iulium and the imperial fora in Rome. 4. Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Carlsberg Foundation and the Danish National Re‑ search Foundation under the grant DNRF119 – Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet). 5. Bibliography Alto Bauer, F. (1996). Stadt, Platz und Denkmal in der Spätantike. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern. Delfino, A. (2014). Forum Iulium: L’area del Foro di Cesare alla luce delle campagne di scavo 2005‑2008. Le fasi arcaica, repubblicana e cesarianoaugustea. Oxford: Archaeopress. Manacorda, D. (2013). Il Museo della Crypta Balbi a Roma: Permessa e Scelete di una esposizione. Forma Urbis, 18 (2), 8‑13.

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Meneghini, R. (2017). Roma medioevale e i Fori Imperiali. In: Nernacchio, N. & Meneghini, R. (eds.). I Fori dopo i Fori. Roma: Gangemi Editore SpA International, pp. 11‑30. Meneghini, R. & Santangeli Valenzani, S. (2007). I Fori Imperiali: Gli Scavi del Comune di Roma (1991‑2007). Roma: Viviani editore. Muth, S. (2014). Historische Dimensionen des gebauten Raumes – Das Forum Romanum als Fallbeispiel. In: Dally, O., Hölscher, T., Muth, S. & Schneider, R. (eds.). Medien der Geschichte – Antikes Griechenland und Rom. Berlin: De Gryter, pp. 285‑329. Nielsen, I. (2015). Creating Imperial Architecture. In: Ulrich, R.B. & Quenemoen, C.K. (eds.). A Companion to Roman Architecture. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, pp. 45‑62.

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TRINE ARLUND HASS

Caesars, shepherds and cities 1. Introduction

Gajus Julius Caesar (100‑44 BCE) is one of the best‑known figures of Classical Antiq‑ uity. He was himself conscious of establishing his fame and fashioning himself as the natural centre of the new, political paradigm he promoted. As part of his legitimising self‑fashioning he explored and changed the city space by, for example, strategically placing statues of himself, building the temple to Venus Genetrix and developing new city spaces. Even today, Caesar is inextricably linked to the general conception of Rome. By studying Caesar’s reception in Danish culture from the Middle Ages to our own time, we can come to a better understanding of Caesar’s power to inspire cultural products and, particularly, how Denmark has formed relationships with his person, works and deeds through time. In this way, a study of the reception of Caesar is also an explora‑ tion of Denmark’s use of and relationship to Classical Antiquity through time. In the bucolic work that I consider below, Caesar is an attractive parallel for a Danish king, and the city, with Rome as ideal model, is the goal both literally and metaphorically. 2. A riddle about a city and its kings

The Danish theologian and humanist Erasmus Laetus (1526‑1582) published Bucolica, an ambitious work of Neo‑Latin poetry in the bucolic genre, in Wittenberg in 1560. The work consists of seven poems, eclogues, about shepherds and idyllic landscapes that are most probably allegorical stories about Danish academia, history and politics (Friis‑Jensen & Skafte Jensen 1984). As it was understood at the time, this genre required that the poems be constructed as riddles that the reader had to decipher through his knowledge of the learned references used, his wit and, very often, his familiarity with the community of which he and the author were part. Sometimes these works are accompanied by meta‑texts that dissolve the allegories and thus invite the reader into the deeper layers of the text, but in other cases we are largely on our own. Laetus’s Bucolica is in the latter category: Many of its allegories are still unsolved. However, in his last two poems, the titles disclose the general direction of the allegories by stating that eclogue 6 is mourning Danish King Christian III, called Daphnis in the poem, and that eclogue 7 celebrates the coronation of his son, Frederik II, under the name of Faustus. Research into the use of intertextu‑ ality, especially allusions to Virgil’s Eclogues, and conventions in the bucolic tradition Caesars, shepherds and cities

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has led some scholars to suggest that in these poems, Laetus is equating Christian III with Julius Caesar, Frederik II with Augustus, and Copenhagen with Rome (Hass 2013; Skafte Jensen 2004: 29 and 66; Zeeberg 2010: 845). Laetus highlights what he needs in his models and ignores what does not fit his pur‑ pose: It is fitting that Caesar is the father and Augustus the (adoptive) son, and Caesar’s ascendancy to power parallels Christian’s ascendancy to the Danish throne at the con‑ clusion of a civil war. However, the transfer of power from Christian III to Frederik II did not result in a new war as Caesar’s death and the transfer of power to Augustus did. 3. Constructing a bucolic Caesar

Anyone who was able to read Latin in Laetus’s time would know that celebrating a deceased king under the name of Daphnis was a reference to Virgil’s eclogue 5 wherein shepherds lament the death of a pastoral master singer by this name. Similarly, as any reader would know that Virgil’s eclogue 5 had since Antiquity been interpreted by many as an allegorical lament of Julius Caesar’s death in 44 BCE and a celebration of his deification, he would understand that Laetus in eclogue 6 is parallelising Julius Caesar and Christian III. There are other points, too, at which Virgil’s description of Daphnis can be under‑ stood as a parallel to Julius Caesar, the most striking being that the shepherds sing about how Daphnis is shining bright while standing at the entrance to Olympus looking down at stars and clouds (Virgil, eclogue 5.56‑57). Four months after Caesar’s death, a comet was visible in the sky. According to, among others, Suetonius, it shone for seven days and was conceived of as the soul of Caesar and a sign of his apotheosis (Divus Julius 88). 4. The city as metaphoric ambition

In the Renaissance, poetry was shaped on Classical models. Authors attempted to mimic Classical genres, language and phrasing, but they ultimately constructed something new by incorporating content from their own worlds. The bucolic genre became more popular among the Renaissance humanists than it ever was in Antiquity. Much of the appeal lies in the convention of considering the poems of Virgil, the primary model, as allegorical. Furthermore, the authoritative interpretations of Virgil, the late antique commentaries, characterise his eclogues as poetry in the low style pertaining to the beginning of his career. They also link them to his progression to the more advanced genres of didactic poetry (The Georgics – considered poetry in the middle style) and heroic epic (The Aeneid – considered poetry in the high style). By composing bucolic poetry, a Renaissance poet would be able to signal an ambition of progression to more advanced levels, and due to the convention of allegory, his ambition might be related to things beyond poetry. It became a topos to display an awareness of this career progression, and it is often described as a journey from the rural environment of pastoral and the simple bucolic style towards the city and more advanced, urbane genres. In Francesco Petrarca’s Bucoli52

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First page of Laetus’s eclogue 6, Daphnis

Fig. 1.

(Glad, Rasmus, C. Erasmi Michaelii Læti Bucolica, cum dedicatoria Philippi Melanthonis Præfatione, 1560, Reel position: LN 664 8° copy 1, The Royal Library (Copenhagen), E3v. Image published with permission of ProQuest. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission).

cum Carmen (1357), a formative work in the humanist tradition, there is both a physical movement from France towards Italy and Rome and a progression in the poetic ambi‑ tion of Petrarch’s poetic persona from bucolic poetry towards heroic epic (Carrai 2009). Rome embodies this ambition, as the city becomes a metaphor for poetic urbanitas: refined, urbane poetry, and the summit of Classical culture. Laetus displays similar ambition and allusions to the Virgilian career. He links sty‑ listic advancement within the work to the development of his own poetic persona. As mentioned above, the last two poems of his work stand out from the rest by disclosing their allegorical framework in the titles. They are also significantly longer than the rest: These two poems consist of 1,607 verses in total, the same as the sum of the first five poems combined (1,608, for these observations cf. Skafte Jensen 2004: 30). Both the lengths and themes can be understood as indicating that they are more advanced than the preceding five poems. It is also here, in what can thus be designated the second, more advanced part of the work, that we meet the poet in bucolic disguise. Laetus made himself a protagonist of the work, but he was not actually present until this point. In the first poem, his absence is lamented, but the shepherds take consolation in knowing that Laetus (called Phaedrius, cf. Zeeberg 2010: 839‑846) has gone abroad to improve his poetic skills – just as Laetus had gone to the University of Wittenberg to upgrade his academic skills – and will return to put all of his talents to use. Throughout the first Caesars, shepherds and cities

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part of the work, Phaedrius is discussed, and, finally in eclogue 7, he appears as one of the speakers (his name is changed to Phaedrus). In eclogue 6, ‘Daphnis’, Laetus has been identified neither as speaker nor as a referent. Although this makes eclogue 6 a hiatus in the fictional representation of Laetus, the poem connects to Laetus’s person via the allegorical layer because Laetus gave a funeral oration at the burial of Christian III. This may be the occasion on which Frederik discovered Laetus’s potential and decided to support him. It is very possible that by absenting his poetic persona in eclogue 6, Laetus is playing with the reader’s expectations and giving more impetus to the appear‑ ance of Phaedrus in eclogue 7. Eclogue 7 draws on other Virgilian models, particularly eclogue 1 (Hass 2011: 193‑194). Virgil’s eclogue 1 is understood as an allegory of Virgil praising Octavian for returning his country estate to him after it had been confiscated in connection with the civil war following Caesar’s death. Octavian is presented as a god who resides in Rome, and the encounter of Virgil’s poetic persona with the city as well as its god is presented as shift‑ ing both his world view and the particular circumstance of his life. Although the first poem in Virgil’s collection, chronologically, it is considered the last, since the remaining poems are understood as the reason for Octavian’s change of mind making eclogue 1 a kind of added conclusion. 5. Copenhagen as Rome

At the beginning of Laetus’s eclogue 7, we find a translatio musarum: Phaedrus invokes the muses and encourages them to move from Greece via Italy to Denmark where he invites them to make a new home on Valby Bakke, the setting of the poem, just out‑ side Copenhagen. This translatio musarum is to be interpreted as a transfer of Classical learning and culture. That it is pronounced by Laetus’s poetic persona and coincides with his return must mean that it is Laetus that brings the muses to Denmark: Laetus has completed his studies in Wittenberg, the intellectual centre of protestant academia and is about to take the chair of Theology at the University of Copenhagen, the finest position at the university at this time. He thereby declares that he is skilled enough to raise Danish academia to an international standard. Locating the muses and the poem on the hilltop in Valby is significant. The shep‑ herds declare they will enter the city the following day where the coronation of Frederik will take place, but they do not leave Valby in the actual work. Consequently, in the course of his work, Laetus strives towards the city while at the same time establishing a clear distinction between city and countryside. The city is where he can unfold his full potential, just as the visit to Rome became the pivotal moment for Virgil’s career in his eclogue 1. The length, themes and, in part, style hint at more advanced, urbane genres, but the literal entry into the urban space is presented as a concrete possibility: Laetus promises more urbane poetry promoting king and country, if Frederik is ready to support him and promote his fame as Octavian promoted Virgil’s. The city is both a metaphor for, and holds the key to, Laetus’s ambition: constructing a Danish Rome – and becoming a Danish Virgil. 54

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Laetus’s proposing of Denmark and Copenhagen as a possible parallel of Classical Rome is very much dependent on eclogue 6. Faustus, Frederik’s mask and the title of eclogue 7, has no connection to Octavian in the bucolic tradition. It is the title, Daphnis, of eclogue 6 that effectively marks a change in the course of the work and signposts, to the contemporary reader, an unmissable link between Christian III and Julius Caesar. 6. Acknowledgements

The project is generously funded by The Carlsberg Foundation. It is also affiliated with Centre of Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet) under the Danish National Research Foundation, grant DNRF119. 7. Bibliography Carrai, S. (2009). Pastoral as Personal Mythology in History (Bucolicum Carmen). In: Kirkham, V. & Maggi, K. (eds.). Petrarch. A Critical Guide to the Complete Works. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, pp. 165‑178. Friis‑Jensen, K. & Skafte Jensen, M. (1984). Latindigtningens spejl. In: Kaspersen, S. et al. (eds.). Dansk litteraturhistorie 2, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, pp. 368‑438. Hass, T.A. (2011). Me quoque fer Latii ruris habere locum. Neo-Latin Bucolic Poetry from Italy to Denmark 14th-16th Century. Unpublished doctoral thesis, Aarhus University. Hass, T.A. (2013). Erasmus Lætus and Virgil’s Eclogue 7: Two Cases of Intertextuality. Neulateinisches Jahrbuch, 15, 11‑26. Skafte Jensen, M. (2004). Latin Bucolic Poetry in Sixteenth‑Century Denmark. In: Pade, M., Skovgaard‑Petersen, K. & Zeeberg, P. (eds.). Friendship and Poetry. Renæssancestudier, 12. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, pp. 27‑36. Zeeberg, P. (2010). The Bucolica (1560) of Erasmus Laetus. In: Schnur, R. et al. (eds.). Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Budapestinensis: Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies (Budapest 2006). Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, pp. 839‑845.

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MICHAEL BLÖMER

Doliche and the exploration of Graeco-Roman urbanism in ancient Greater Syria 1. Introduction

The Near East is frequently referred to as a key region for the understanding of important trajectories of ancient urbanism. Yet, our knowledge of the cities of Greater Syria and their biographies in the Graeco-Roman period is in fact quite limited (Blömer & Raja forthcoming). Few attempts have been made to explore urban sites comprehensively and holistically. Previous research at urban sites has primarily focused on singular aspects of the urban landscape, like monumental architecture, elite housing, or singular genres of material culture. Contextual approaches to urbanity have been rare. For this reason, the new urban excavation project in Doliche constitutes a great opportunity to improve our knowledge of urbanism in ancient Syria and to challenge preexisting notions of urban development based on inferences from literary sources. A high-definition approach plays a central role in the project. This implies the application of a strictly contextual approach, new scientific methods, and a comparative perspective in order to increase the amount and quality of the data that we can infer from the archaeological evidence. 2. The city of Doliche

Doliche is located at the northern fringe of the city of Gaziantep in southeastern Turkey. The settlement spreads over a shallow hill, which is called Keber Tepe, at the edge of a fertile, high plateau (Fig. 1). In the Roman Imperial period, this region was part of Commagene, the northernmost district of the province of Syria. Since civil war prevents archaeological reconnaissance work in modern Syria, Doliche is one of the few sites that offers the opportunity to explore a city of ancient Greater Syria. Moreover, no modern occupation occludes the city area. In the Middle Islamic period, the inhabitants abandoned the site and moved to an adjacent area of the ancient necropolis, where rock cut tombs were transformed into dwellings and stables. The site has attracted surprisingly little scholarly attention in the past. This is mainly because Doliche was not an important city in Antiquity. Accordingly, it does not figure prominently in ancient written sources. Not much is known of the city’s history in the Graeco-Roman period apart from the fact that Doliche was the home of Jupiter DoliDoliche and the exploration of Graeco-Roman urbanism in ancient Greater Syria

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Fig. 1.

View of the Dülük Baba Mountain (left) and the city area of Doliche (photo: M. Blömer).

chenus. His main sanctuary, however, was located outside of the city (Winter 2017). The cult of Jupiter Dolichenus became popular in large parts of the Roman Empire in the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE and has been the object of a large array of studies (Blömer 2012). Nevertheless, the popularity of Doliche’s main god did not spark any interest in the town itself, either in Antiquity or in modern times. We are only somewhat more informed regarding the later history of Doliche. The city became the seat of a bishop in the 4th century and apparently thrived in the early Byzantine period. During that period, church and clergy largely replaced the former civic elites and played an important role in the administration of cities. In 962 CE, however, Muslim Arabs conquered the region and turned Doliche into a border fortress. After the Byzantine re-conquest in 962 CE, the city became the capital of a Byzantine border province. Later, Doliche surfaces in the sources as one of the strongholds of the crusader county of Edessa in the first half of the 12th century. After Nur ad-Din sacked the city in 1156, the neighbouring fortress of Ayntab (modern Gaziantep) replaced Doliche as the main regional centre. The Arab geographer ‘Izz al-Dīn ibn Šaddād reports that the city was in ruins in the later 13th century, but a fortified castle, an aqueduct bridge, and remains of large stone buildings were still visible. Today, however, the absence of any remains of architecture on the ground is a striking feature of the site. The surface is densely scattered with pottery fragments, tiles, and other archaeological materials, but in situ traces of buildings are extremely rare. It is not even possible to trace any remains of fortification walls, which presumably surrounded the city, at least in the Byzantine and Islamic periods. This lack of visible remains of the ancient city poses a significant challenge to the new Doliche urban excavation project. It severely limits the comprehension of the spatial organisation of the site, even though the city was of rather small size and encompassed 58

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a territory of little more than 0.5 km2 only. To identify promising starting points for archaeological investigations, multiple methods had to be applied. Geophysical prospection proved to be efficient even though the resolution of the mapping was lower than expected due to unfavourable soil properties. However, the agricultural use of the area precluded prospection on a large scale. The generation and analysis of a high-resolution digital terrain model is another way to explore the layout of the ancient city, but modern interventions like terracing and large-scale levelling of the slopes have substantially altered the topography of the Keber Tepe. The amount of information that could be inferred from the data was therefore limited. Because of the above limitations, the local villagers were a crucial source of information. They often have precise knowledge of the archaeological remains below the ground, based either on firsthand experience or on hearsay. However, the most effective and reliable method of gaining insight into the layout of the settlement is the intensive survey of the city area. The study of the find material and its distribution, as well as the statistical analysis of the results, provide the best image of both the spatial arrangement and the historical development of the site. 3. First campaign, first results

The initial stages of the fieldwork proceeded like most major fieldwork projects. Based on the knowledge of the site gained in two reconnaissance campaigns in 2015 and 2016, the first large-scale campaign took place in 2017. Three goals were pursued during this campaign. First, an intensive survey to continue exploring the city area. As stated above, the survey results are crucial to comprehend the structure of the ancient city in a diachronic perspective. The second focus was on the development of the city in Late Antiquity (4th-7th century CE). Test trenches, which had been dug on the southwestern slope of the Keber Tepe in 2015, indicated that this part of the city was densely occupied in the early Byzantine period. This was confirmed by the results of the 2017 campaign. The most important finding so far was the discovery of a large Christian basilica (Fig. 2). Based on the analysis of the mosaics that cover the church floor, the original construction dates to the late 4th century. However, various subsequent building- and restoration phases can be distinguished. Some of the later alterations, like the construction of a bema and an altar screen, imply changes in ritual practice. The bema is an elevated platform for the clergy and a distinctive feature of churches from the 4th through the 6th century CE in North Syria (Loosely 2012). So far, however, the bema has been observed mainly in rural contexts, rather than in cities. Moreover, few churches of the region offer the opportunity to trace the development of liturgical installations like the bema from a diachronic perspective. A detailed study of the building history of the newly discovered church in Doliche will therefore help us comprehend religious trajectories in the formative period of Byzantine North Syria. In general, the contextual analysis of the architecture, its decoration, and the associated finds will be important for the understanding of urban religion at that time. It is at this stage of the project that a high-definition approach has come into focus. It Doliche and the exploration of Graeco-Roman urbanism in ancient Greater Syria

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Fig. 2. Excavated part of the church on the southern slope of the city hill (photo: M. Blömer).

is not clear yet, for example, when exactly the church fell out of use. Crude repair work of the mosaic floor indicates that a disastrous event did major damage to the building. It seems, however, that the church was in use until an earthquake wrought havoc and prompted the final abandonment. This is clearly corroborated by the in situ debris of the collapsed northern wall and the northern colonnade. The material evidence, mostly ceramics, suggests that this fatal event took place sometime in the 7th century. However, if we want to determine whether the abandonment of the church after the earthquake was possibly related to the historical events of that century, such as the Persian Wars and the Arab conquest, it is crucial to establish a high-definition chronology of events. The time of the destruction needs to be narrowed down. In order to achieve this goal, the analysis of a 7 m deep pea-shaped cistern in the northern aisle of the church is of great importance. The cistern was not part of the original layout of the church. It was carved in the bedrock after a massive ashlar wall was built to separate the northern aisle from the main nave (Fig. 3). The purpose of this intervention is not clear yet, but obviously, the church was at that point reduced in size. When the earthquake destroyed the whole complex, the debris sealed off the cistern. Accordingly, it was empty when it was rediscovered during the excavation, but the floor was covered by a large amount of pottery sherds. Since cisterns have been regularly cleaned to avoid pollution of the water, the finds must date to a very narrow period contemporary with or immediately after the last phase of use of the complex. Thus, the study of the pottery in combination with scientific methods like radiocarbon dating of the mortar lining the cistern’s walls and organic material found in the cistern promise to provide a more precise date for the 60

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Northern aisle of the church with cistern (photo: M. Blömer).

Fig. 3.

destruction of the church. The radiocarbon analysis of mortar has been refined in recent years and offers a wide range of exciting possibilities for high-definition archaeology (Lichtenberger et al. 2015). The establishment of a refined chronology for the church is not only relevant for the understanding of the urban development in Doliche. It will also provide the rare opportunity to refine the chronology of the locally produced pottery of early Byzantine/Early Islamic North Syria. The third focus of the 2017 campaign was on a large area in the eastern part of the city, which had previously been identified as part of the administrative and public centre of Doliche. Based on the results of the geophysical prospection, test trenches were opened and yielded exciting first results. On the one hand, the campaign discovered a large building complex that can be interpreted as a bath building of the Roman Imperial period (Fig. 4). Most intriguing was the partial excavation of a swimming pool that was once surrounded by a colonnade. A mosaic floor that flanks the pool dates the complex to the Roman Imperial period. Since only a few Roman bath complexes have been excavated in Syria so far, this discovery is of great importance and will considerably improve the understanding of urban life in Doliche. The building was apparently abandoned, at the latest, in the late 4th century. At that time, all stone material had been removed; even the foundation walls were robbed. Only the massive mortar beds and floors have survived. So far, no traces of later occupation of this area have been observed. It is intriguing that the pillaging of this part of the city occurred roughly contemporary with the construction of the lavish church complex at the southern slope. Therefore, we must not mistake the abandonment of a large and prominent area of the city Doliche and the exploration of Graeco-Roman urbanism in ancient Greater Syria

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Fig. 4. Partly excavated Roman bath complex (photo: M. Blömer).

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Michael Blömer

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Clay seals from the Doliche archive (Forschungsstelle Asia Minor).

Fig. 5.

for a sign of urban decay, rather this points to changes in the urban fabric and spatial distribution of activities. The systematic spoliation of the bath building must then be considered as an example of civic resource management and a sign of the continued vitality of urbanism in Doliche. However, a precise chronology of events needs to be determined in order to understand the local trajectories in a wider historical framework. This is another example of how high-definition approaches on a micro-level will further the understanding of historical processes on a macro-level. Adjacent to the bath complex, massive foundations of a large Roman building were excavated. Previous illegal excavations have disturbed this area massively. Nonetheless, some important discoveries have been made. Most notable was the finding of more than one thousand seal impressions in clay, which were retrieved from mixed layers of infill (Fig. 5). These were used to seal documents written on parchment and papyrus. Some of them are likely the official seals of the city due to their size, frequent occurrence, and, in some cases, their inscriptions. The study of the seal impressions will give us a unique opportunity to study the city’s administration and its entanglement in regional networks. In general, this find indicates that the city archive of Doliche was located nearby; hopefully the archive itself can be identified and studied soon. 4. Future prospects

The continuation of the excavations in collaboration with the Centre for Urban Network Evolutions promises to massively increase our understanding of Doliche’s urban Doliche and the exploration of Graeco-Roman urbanism in ancient Greater Syria

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fabric and layout. The strategies and methods advanced by the centre are crucial to the development and continuous refinement of research questions. Moreover, the Doliche excavations are important for testing the potential of scientific methods to achieve more precise data about the chronological development, use of space, and provenance of ma‑ terials. Yet, as indicated above, the project will not constrain itself to the study of the built environment. It seeks to disentangle the complex interplay between commercial, religious, and political networks and urban resilience in a longue durée perspective. Special attention will be paid to the study of daily life, domestic practices, and the city dwellers’ responses to the changing tides of time. By integrating contextual archaeol‑ ogy and scientific techniques, the Doliche excavations will not only test and challenge the urban history of Doliche, they will also yield new conjectures about urbanism and urban networks in the Near East. 5. Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Danish National Research Foundation under the grant DNRF119 – Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet). Fieldwork in Doliche is funded by the German Research Foundation. 6. Bibliography Blömer, M. (2012). Iuppiter Dolichenus zwischen lokalem Kult und reichsweiter Verehrung. In: Blömer, M. & Winter, E. (eds.). Iuppiter Dolichenus. Vom Lokalkult zur Reichsreligion. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, pp. 39‑98. Blömer, M. & Raja, R. (forthcoming). The History of Urban Archaeology in Greater Syria. Turnhout: Brepols. Lichtenberger, A., Lindroos A., Raja, R. & Heinemeier, J. (2015). Radiocarbon analysis of mortar from Roman and Byzantine water management installations in the Northwest Quarter of Jerash, Jordan, Journal of Archaelogical Science: Reports, 2, 114‑127. Loosely, E. (2012). The Architecture and Liturgy of the Bema in Fourth- to-Sixth-Century Syrian Churches. Leiden: Brill. Winter, E. (2017). Vom eisenzeitlichen Heiligtum zum christlichen Kloster. Neue Forschungen auf dem Dülük Baba Tepesi, Dolichener und Kommagenische Forschungen, 9. Bonn: Habelt.

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CHRISTOPHER DICKENSON

Public spaces and urban networks in the Roman Empire: Messene in the Peloponnese as an example of an approach 1. Public spaces as a hallmark of urbanism

Population size, population density, political hierarchy, walls, monumental architecture, writing, craft specialisation, trade connections – scholars have struggled for the better part of a century to agree on a checklist by which a pre-industrial settlement might qualify as a city. Because most of these criteria present us not with the question of presence or absence but rather with a question of the extent to which they are present, the attempt to arrive at a universally accepted definition of ‘the city’ has ultimately proved fruitless. A prominent trend in recent scholarship is to view the phenomenon of urbanism not as a patchwork of discrete, large and complex settlements but rather as a web in which such settlements were connected with one another, with smaller sites, with the countryside, with close neighbours and far-flung trading partners in cultural, political and commercial networks (see e.g., Raja & Sindbæk forthcoming). Public space has featured surprisingly rarely in traditional checklists of what exactly constituted a city but it is one that deserves renewed archaeological attention because it has the potential to cast new light not only on life within ‘cities’ but also on these urban networks. Public spaces are perhaps most usefully thought of as those spaces where people find themselves rubbing shoulders with strangers, whether members of their own society or foreign visitors. The inherent tensions in interactions in market squares, political assembly spaces, public buildings and thoroughfares – both between individuals and subgroups within the local population and between locals and outsiders – make public spaces worth studying. Public spaces offer windows through which we can glimpse the heart of daily life in past societies, while, at the same time, they can be thought of as key nodes through which settlements were attached to larger networks. Across the Roman Empire, countless public spaces have been excavated, but considerations of the nature of ‘publicness’ itself have been hampered by adherence to top-down perspectives that interpret local transformations almost exclusively in terms of political or cultural influence emanating from the imperial centre. Furthermore, archaeology has, Public spaces and urban networks in the Roman Empire

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up to now, struggled to find ways of investigating uses of public space that go beyond drawing inferences from the layout and appearance of buildings. This article sets out an agenda for a new approach to investigating public space in the Roman Empire that takes the inherent tension between the local and the supra-local into account, using the extensively excavated city of Messene in the southwest Peloponnese as a case study. There are three intertwined layers of influence to which we might look, and which this article discusses, in analysing the changing use and appearance of Messene’s public spaces: outside influence from the overarching power structure of the Roman Empire, interactions between members of the local community and interactions between Messene and other parts of the ancient world. The article concludes with some remarks on expanding the approach to look at public space throughout the Roman Empire. 2. Imperial interventions

Messene was founded in 369 BCE as a new capital for the region of Messenia in the southwestern part of the Peloponnese, which the Thebans had just liberated from Spartan rule. The fortuitous circumstances of medieval abandonment of the site and lack of later reoccupation mean that the site is exceptionally well preserved and excavations (still ongoing) have revealed a city that clearly thrived in Hellenistic (3rd-1st centuries BCE) and Roman Imperial times (1st-5th centuries CE) (Themelis 2015 and Fig. 1). Monumental public complexes including the agora, a market building, the gymnasium, the theatre and several sanctuaries have all been exposed. The increasing architectural splendour of Messene under Roman rule is certainly in tune with the development of cities throughout the eastern half of the Roman Empire. There has been a tendency in much modern scholarship to interpret such monumentalisation, somewhat paradoxically, as a symptom of civic decline – an expression of a new attunement to urban aesthetics emanating from Rome and, often, a dependence on funding by imperial largesse that signalled the end of that age-old Greek ideal of civic freedom. Elsewhere I have challenged the idea that the grandeur of public architecture can be so easily read as a sign of political decline, even for a city like Athens where the benefactions of emperors are fairly well attested (Dickenson 2017a). At Messene, this simplistic interpretation would be even more inadequate. No evidence has yet been discovered that emperors or other Roman officials were directly involved in any of the major building projects that took place under the empire suggesting that the city pursued its own course of architectural aggrandisement. Statues of emperors were visible on the public stage – clustered in distinct dynastic groups in the theatre and on the agora (Fig. 2) – serving to remind the population of their city’s distant rulers (Dickenson 2017b). Yet such statues were notably absent from one of the major venues of public interaction, the gymnasium, where young men passed through their training to become citizens and the whole community gathered during festivals. Explaining the way that the Messenians experienced and used their public spaces solely in terms of power relations with Rome would therefore be one-sided and would miss a great deal. 66

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View overlooking the site from the north (photo: C. Dickenson).

Fig. 1.

Row of bases for statues of the Flavian dynasty in the North Stoa (photo: C. Dickenson).

Fig. 2.

Public spaces and urban networks in the Roman Empire

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Fig. 3. The monumental tomb at the end of the stadium (photo: C. Dickenson).

3. A space for local interaction

Two of the groups of emperor statues at Messene were set up by local, elite families. As such, these statues advertised the importance of these families within the commu‑ nity and arguably, thereby played a more important role in determining relations of power at the local level than they did between the city and Rome (Dickenson 2017b: 137‑139). The gymnasium, just mentioned, was dominated by the family mausoleum of one of these families (see Fig. 3) and honorific and votive statues of them and other members of the local elite jostled for position in the agora and sanctuaries of the city. These contests for local pre‑eminence were arguably far more important in shaping the Messenians’ perceptions of public space than any notions they held about their distant imperial rulers. But the public spaces of the city were not shaped solely by architecture and monu‑ ments. More important still were the day‑to‑day activities of the Messenians as they bartered in the marketplace, ran in the stadium, attended meetings in the theatre or sacrificed to their gods. Although these aspects of daily life have not been subject to the same degree of systematic attention as buildings and sculpture unearthed at the site, the archaeology does offer evidence for such quotidian behaviour: in the measur‑ ing tables found within the North Stoa of the agora (Fig. 4), in terracotta figurines left as votives at a sanctuary of Artemis and in the pottery and small finds scattered all over the site. In my previous work on the changing use of the Greek agora in 68

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Measuring tables or sekomata found in situ in the North Stoa (photo: C. Dickenson).

Fig. 4.

post-Classical times, I have argued that by focusing solely on the top-down influence of outside rulers on public spaces scholars have failed to recognise that the poleis of Greece continued to exist as vibrant urban communities throughout the period of Roman rule (Dickenson 2017a). Here it was possible to draw on a previously untapped abundance of literary sources for daily life, but for other parts of the Empire, and for individual sites such as Messene, this material is lacking. There is, however, significant potential to use archaeological evidence to investigate the crucially important – and too often overlooked – aspect of ancient public space: the way that it was used and experienced by people in daily life. 4. A space for broader interactions

Looking at local interactions, however, is only one part of countering the unhelpful emphasis on top-down models to explain the use and appearance of public spaces that has characterised so much previous scholarship. It is also important to think about the ways in which public spaces integrated cities into the larger urban networks of which they were a part. At Messene, inscribed monuments on the agora commemorated diplomatic exchanges between the city and other Greek poleis; statues in the gymnasium celebrated victories of local athletes in foreign athletic festivals; literary evidence provides clues as to the ways in Public spaces and urban networks in the Roman Empire

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which old statues and paintings at Messene were reinterpreted in Roman times as focal points for communal memories of a time when the city had enjoyed a greater regional importance than it did under the Empire (for all this, see Themelis 2012). In Messene’s buildings, too, we see evidence for connections to other Greek cities: The grand stoa that lined the northern side of the agora had been built in the 4th century BCE and closely resembled one in the same position on the agora of Megalopolis, a city in the central Peloponnese that was founded at the same time as Messene. Curiously, the two buildings underwent parallel developments in their later imperial history with the addition of Roman-style speakers’ platforms and an explicit connection to the Flavian emperors with an inscription recording a repair of the building at Megalopolis by Domitian as well as statues for all the Flavian emperors that were set up in the stoa at Messene. These parallels surely suggest a spirit of emulation, or perhaps competition, between these two urban settlements that persisted for over half a millennium. An inscription on a gateway in the gymnasium records a Roman period gift of oil to the city by a Spartan, a powerful statement of an improvement in the relationship between Messene and the city that had, for most of its history, been its enemy (Themelis 2015: 109-111). This evidence concerns Messene’s relations to poleis within Greece, but the city’s public spaces also bear witness to farther flung connections: A monumental sanctuary of the Egyptian goddess Isis stood in the centre of the city, and inscriptions attest to the presence of Egyptian artists working there on cult statues (Themelis 2011). The fact that the Egyptian connection seems to have been particularly strong in the period of the early Empire – when memory of the war between Rome and Cleopatra was fresh and in Rome itself things Egyptian were viewed with suspicion – hints at ways in which a city like Messene could be free to pursue its own course and was tied into currents of change that did not all emanate from the imperial capital. Messene’s complex string of connections to the outside world would have only fully made sense in the context of the comings and goings of visiting foreigners who would have seen its buildings, monuments and cult places. Again, to fully account for the steady flow of traders, diplomats and other travellers who surely passed through Messene’s public spaces requires that we move beyond a focus on buildings and monuments in order to find new ways of using other archaeological evidence. 5. Conclusion

The question of how public spaces were used and experienced is of the utmost importance for understanding past urban settlements – in terms of the workings of their societies and cultures but also in terms of how they existed as parts of larger networks, whether political, cultural or economic. To fully explore the types of issues tentatively considered here for the site of Messene requires developing new archaeological methods and approaches. Firstly, it will be useful to find new ways of systematically comparing how different types of users would have moved through – and would have seen – different areas of public space in different cities. Secondly, a more fine-grained approach to distributions of small find material and new ways of drawing on the tools that geo70

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science is now making available to archaeology should allow, to a much greater degree than previously possible, an assessment of the presence of different types of users in different areas. To develop and test these methodologies it will be useful to investigate selected case studies from parts of the Empire where the evidence in terms of the original appearance of cities and preservation conditions is very different. Asia Minor, with its abundant wealth of monumental architecture, sculpture and pottery, but where conditions for the preservation of organic materials are poor, and provinces of northwest Europe where, put crudely, the situation is reversed, seem to be promising areas from which to select sites for comparison. It is to be hoped that by asking more theoretically informed questions and developing new research methods, it will be possible to move beyond discussing the public spaces of past societies almost exclusively in terms of monuments and buildings. 6. Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Danish National Research Foundation under the grant DNRF119 – Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet). 7. Bibliography Dickenson, C.P. (2017a). On the Agora – The Evolution of a Public Space in Hellenistic and Roman Greece (c. 323 BC – 267 AD). Leiden: Brill. Dickenson, C.P. (2017b). Public Statues as a Strategy of Remembering in Early Imperial Messene. In: Dijkstra, T.M., Kuin, I.N.I., Moser, M. & Weidgenannt, D. (eds.). Strategies of Remembering in Greece under Rome (100 BC – 100 AD), Publications of the Netherlands Institute in Athens VI. Leiden: Sidestone Press, pp. 125‑142. Raja, R. & Sindbæk, S. (forthcoming). Urban networks and Networks and High Definition Narratives. Rethinking the Archaeology of Urbanism. In: Raja, R. & Sindbæk, S. (eds.). Biographies of Place. Themelis, P. (2011). The Cult of Isis at Ancient Messene. In: Bricault, L. & Veymiers, R. (eds.). Bibliotheca Isiaca II. Bordeaux: Éditions Ausonius, pp. 97‑109. Themelis, P. (2012). The Agora of Messene. In: Chankowski, V. & Karvonis, P. (eds.). Tout vendre, tout acheter. Struc‑ tures et équipments des marchés antiques. Actes du colloque d’Athènes, 16‑19 juin 2009. Paris: De Boccard, pp. 37‑47. Themelis, P. (2015). Ancient Messene. Athens: Ministry of Culture and Sports‑Archaeological Receipts Fund.

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PALMYRA: THE URBAN DESERT

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RUBINA RAJA

Urbanizing the desert: Investigating the diversity of urban networks through the images of deceased Palmyrenes 1. Introduction

Palmyra, ancient Tadmor, in the Syrian Desert located halfway between the Euphrates and the Mediterranean coast, was an oasis city situated in a landscape that was harsh and uninviting. We know that the site under the name Tadmor existed by the 2nd millennium BCE, when it was mentioned in ancient sources discovered in the Mari Archives in Tell Hariri on the Euphrates, near the present border between Syria and Iraq. However, archaeologically the city only becomes truly graspable to us in the early Roman period with the monumentalization of the cityscape, which took place from around the turn of the 1st millennium. In particular, the first three centuries CE present us with an abundance of material that testifies to a vivid urban life as it unfolded in the steppe desert. This was provided by the perennial Efqa spring and the communication and infrastructural advantage that this location had within the region. In turn, these two factors turned Palmyra into a node for caravan trade and communication from East to West, a stop on the Silk Road and a location where camel caravans coming from the east were reloaded, and goods transferred to donkey caravans that could pass the more mountainous regions west of the city. Even today, the city holds an infrastructural importance in the region as recent battles of the Syrian war have, unfortunately, underlined. Although some parts of the ancient city have been explored, far from all quarters have been investigated. The archaeological research undertaken thus far has focused mainly on the public and religious spaces of the city centre as well as the funeral monuments scattered around the city centre. Very little, in fact, is known about daily life in Palmyra in comparison to what is known about the public aspects of the city’s life. While the archaeological record is skewed in this respect, scholars have often underestimated what the rich group of funerary portraiture coming from graves that were constructed over a period of almost three hundred years can tell us about urban life in Palmyra during the Roman period. Since 2012, the Palmyra Portrait Project has collected all known funerary portraiture from Palmyra in order to explore this material, the largest corpus of representations of Urbanizing the desert

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Fig. 1. View of grave towers in Palmyra (copyright: R. Raja).

individuals from one place in the Roman world. The project has compiled a database comprising all known Palmyrene portraits, which, today, are scattered across the world, and the database currently comprises more than 3,400 Palmyrene portraits, the vast majority of which stem from the graves in Palmyra. This material opens new methods of enquiry into urban networks, be it within Palmyrene families (Raja 2017a) or outside Palmyra through investigating genealogies and the development of visual representations over time. 2. Urbanization processes and the funerary sphere

While the sedentarization and urbanization processes of Palmyra are not yet fully understood, it is clear that around the 1st century BCE a gradual monumentalization of the area, which later became the monumental city centre visible to us today, took place. It remains unknown, however, whether remains from the earlier Hellenistic period are present as well. While it is difficult to imagine that the city grew out of nothing, the situation seen in Palmyra is in many ways parallel to what is seen across the region, namely that substantial urban remains from the Hellenistic period remain limited (Blömer, Lichtenberger & Raja 2015). Given the Roman impact on the region, which was truly cemented by the conquest of Pompey the Great in the 60s BCE, stability – after a long period of wars between the successors of Alexander the Great, who had divided the region between them – was reintroduced. Particularly in the wake of the Battle at Actium in 31 BCE, when Octavian (later Emperor Augustus) won the war against Marcus Antonius 76

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Banqueting relief representing a Palmyrene priest and his wife (copyright: the Palmyra Portrait

Fig. 2.

Project, courtesy of Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen).

and Cleopatra and established Roman rule in the region, urban expansions began to flourish widely, and Palmyra was no exception. On the one hand, the urban landscape of Palmyra offers us insights into a society that was a global player in the first three centuries CE. This is reflected strongly in the material culture through colonnaded streets and large Greco-Roman style monuments, which reflected the knowledge that Palmyrene elites had of the Greco-Roman cultural spheres. On the other hand, the funerary sphere allows us insights into another aspect of the local Palmyrene society and its networks. The grave monuments, consisting of massive tower tombs, underground grave complexes (hypogea) and so-called house and temple tombs, were filled with portraits of deceased Palmyrenes and their family members (Fig. 1). From the beginning of the introduction of the grave towers, the earliest monumentalized grave monuments in Palmyra, the portrait habit seems to have been introduced, and thus it seems to have been an integral part of the monuments’ layout and conceptualization (Raja 2017a). The urban landscape and the funerary sphere were connected environments, occupied and used by the same people, and the prominent location of, in particular, house and temple tombs as well as the grave towers meant that these funerary monuments were visible to all inhabitants and visitors. The grave sphere was not one that was detached from the urban sphere. Therefore, it is even more noteworthy that distinct parallel cultures and networks were communicated within these spheres. While the public sphere in Palmyra was bilingual, which is visible in the official inscriptions set up in the public space (Yon 2002) among others, the funerary sphere was almost exclusively Urbanizing the desert

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Fig. 3. So-called banqueting tesserae depicting a Palmyrene priest on a banqueting couch (copyright: R.

Raja, courtesy of Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen).

focused on the local Palmyrene dialect of Aramaic. This is one example of the way in which Palmyrene society’s elite chose to communicate that they were operating within a world of diverse and varied networks and that they made conscious choices about these networks. The networks communicated in the public sphere focused on honorific and civic offices, particularly of Palmyrene men, and their relations to the world outside Palmyra. In the funerary sphere, the networks that were emphasized pertained almost exclusively to those of the great families of Palmyra and their relations, through marriage, to each other. In this way, the public and funerary spheres complemented each other and brought out two fundamentally crucial networks within Palmyrene society, important to the survival of the community as such: namely the intra-urban networks and the networks that extended far beyond Palmyra itself. While this is not surprising, what makes Palmyra unique is that the patterns – which we can investigate through the material collected in the Palmyra Portrait Project – show that this situation was indeed the case and thereby substantiates hypotheses that were brought forward previously. The portraiture in, respectively, the public and private spheres underlines this situation to a large extent. While portraits in the public sphere also included imported marble pieces, local limestone sculpture was used in the graves. Furthermore, the style in which the portraits set up in the graves were made also emphasizes that the Palmyrenes preferred 78

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a local style that focused on communicating the rich dress codes of the elite of Palmyra and status symbols such as jewellery and priesthood costumes. 3. Counting the dead

Counting the dead in Palmyra is somewhat of a tedious matter. Many grave contexts are often disturbed, and much has been looted and spoiled over the centuries. As a consequence, a large number of funerary portraits found their way into collections around the world, particularly in Europe in the 19th century and onwards. However, the lesson to be learned from counting the dead is that the funerary representations are the largest group of coherent materials depicting deceased people from one place in the ancient world over the course of almost three centuries (Raja forthcoming). Furthermore, since the material consists of more than 3,400 portraits, it presents us with a good basis of material on which to base statistical analysis. A full quantification approach allows us to give a more coherent (although not completely comprehensive) picture of the development of visual representations in the funerary sphere over the course of these centuries. One surprising observation came, for example, from counting the representations of Palmyrene priests. Palmyrene priests clearly stand out as a significant group as consistently depicted in the funerary portraiture over three hundred years (Fig. 2). These representations amount to approximately 25% of all male representations in the funerary sphere. This is surprising since in comparison to observations made in other parts of the Roman Empire. Furthermore, it can be concluded from the family constellations depicted on sarcophagi in the graves that Palmyrene priests bestowed priesthoods on other male family members, fathers on sons, uncles on nephews (Raja 2017b). From the evidence in the public sphere, we know that Palmyrene priests were active in groups and as individuals in organizing religious meals (banquets) and in this way socially interacted across societal groups as well as priestly groups (Raja 2016) (Fig. 3). Bringing this knowledge together with knowledge of the family networks of priests, the material evidence tells us about a complex inner-urban elite network that was carried on by Palmyrene priests over generations. Furthermore, these Palmyrene male elite members would also have been the individuals who were in charge of the public affairs of the city and involved in the trade organization the city was so famous for. Thus, the city’s families interacted through, among other things, religious organization and these networks, which they carried with them outside of the city, would have been further strengthened. Female representations in the graves inform us about the importance of connections between elite families. Sometimes women were represented in the graves both with their husbands as well as in the graves belonging to their fathers (Krag forthcoming). Therefore, it can be concluded that women from upper class families would marry into other upper class families, strengthening the ties between these families in much the same way that family networks were strengthened through the religious networks.

Urbanizing the desert

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4. Conclusion

While Palmyrene networks outside of Palmyra have been discussed for decades through the available evidence, the newly collected corpus of the Palmyrene funerary portraits offers an opportunity to reasses both internal and external networks through a large corpus of quantified and analyzed material and, therefore, to gain new insights into the ways in which Palmyrene networks can be understood and explored. These networks, based on the family structure in Palmyra, were strong over centuries and illustrate the different ways in which societies in deserts were organized as compared to those in more heavily urbanized areas, where networks were dependent on other kinds of connectivity. 5. Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Carlsberg Foundation and the Danish National Re‑ search Foundation under the grant DNRF119 – Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet). 6. Bibliography Blömer, M., Lichtenberger, A. & Raja, R. (2015). Religious identities in the Levant from Alexander to Muhammad, Contextualizing the Sacred 4. Turnhout: Brepols. Krag, S. (forthcoming). Funerary Representations of Palmyrene Women from the First Century BC to the Third Century AD. Turnhout: Brepols. Raja, R. (2016). In and Out of Contexts: Explaining Religious Complexity through the Banqueting Tesserae from Palmyra. Religion in the Roman Empire 2 (3), 340‑371. DOI 10.1628/219944616X14770583541445. Raja, R. (2017a). Powerful images of the deceased. Palmyrene funerary portrait culture between local, Greek and Roman representations. In: Boschung, D. & Queyrel, F. (eds.). Bilder der Macht: Das griechische Porträt und seine Verwendung in der antiken Welt. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, pp. 319‑348. Raja, R. (2017b). Networking beyond Death: Priests and their family networks in Palmyra explored through the funerary sculpture. In: Teigen, H.F. & Seland, E.H. (eds.). Sinews of Empire: Networks in the Roman Near East and Beyond. Oxford: Oxbow, pp. 121‑136. Raja, R. (forthcoming). Palmyrene funerary portraits, collection histories and current research. In: Aruz, J. (ed.). Palmyra. Mirage in the Desert. New York: Metropolitan Museum. Yon, J.‑B. (2002). Les Notables de Palmyre. Beyrouth: Institut français d’archéologie du Proche‑Orient.

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OLYMPIA BOBOU & RIKKE RANDERIS THOMSEN

Behind the scenes: Cataloguing as a tool for exploring urban networks 1. Palmyra, a desert city

One of the most influential scholars of Palmyrene sculpture, Harald Ingholt, wrote: “Of the ruined cities in the near east, Palmyra occupies a unique place, not only by its location surrounded as it is on all sides of extensive desert, but also by its history“(Ingholt 1928: 9). That was as true then as it is now. Located in the Syrian Desert, the city has long been at the crossroads of civilizations and cultures, making it a melting pot as well as a zone of conflict. In the past, Palmyra’s position on the trade route connecting the Near East to the Roman Empire contributed to the city’s rise to prosperity and wealth in the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE. In turn, this led to the famous episode in which Queen Zenobia attempted to establish Palmyra as an empire in its own right, challenging Roman authority, a decision that ultimately led to the subjugation of the city by the Roman emperor Aurelian in 273 CE. Zenobia’s defeat brought the city’s fortunes to an end. With the city ended Palmyra’s most distinctive archaeological legacy: its rich sculptural production that was evident in the urban fabric as well as in the numerous tombs along the main roads leading to Palmyra. Palmyrenes dedicated reliefs to the gods at the temples, placed statues of benefactors and important members of their society along the main street of the city – the Great Colonnade – and commemorated their dead with portraits set up inside the tombs. 2. Palmyra and its archaeological inheritance

The sculpture from Palmyra has given the ancient city a vivid archaeological afterlife. Two British travelers, James Dawkins and Robert Wood, who had embarked on a tour exploring the world of Homer, ‘rediscovered’ Palmyra in 1751. Their drawings of the city’s ruins triggered a renewed interest in its history as well as its last queen whose romantic allure inspired Pasquale Anfossi and Gioachino Rossini to compose operas about her (Zenobia in Palmira [1789], and Aureliano in Palmira [1813] respectively). In the 19th century, interest in Palmyra led to the creation of collections of Palmyrene sculpture in various museums around Europe, with the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek taking Behind the scenes: Cataloguing as a tool for exploring urban networks

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the lead and acquiring the greatest collection of Palmyrene sculpture outside Palmyra itself (Raja 2017b). Harald Ingholt, while a curator at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, studied its collection between 1925 and 1930. His study and his excavations at Palmyra resulted in the publication of a still influential book on Palmyrene sculpture in 1928 (Raja & Sørensen 2015: 12), and his archive, donated to Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, forms the basis for the Palmyra Portrait Project database. The database, funded by the Carlsberg Foundation and created by the IT development department, ARTS IT Campus Emdrup, Aarhus University, contains data on all the portraits studied by Ingholt, as well as portraits discovered in subsequent periods. As of February 2018, it has 3,570 portraits, preserved in 2,587 objects. The database gives us the possibility to study urban networks in several ways, because of its large collection of information and ability to group and create cross-references between the objects. For example, contexts and inscriptions can be linked revealing the role of family networks and helping us visualize the creation of the funerary space in Palmyra (Raja 2017a). 3. Writing the catalogue

The database is also the starting point for the creation of a text catalogue to be published that will accompany the database. The reasoning behind its creation has led to numerous re-evaluations of terminology and choices of attributes and expressions that will be of the greatest use to the reader. Using the categories already present in the database is at the heart of the catalogue’s format. In the database, the information about the object and its description are under the headings of object and portrait. In the catalogue, we keep these headings because they are a valuable means of distinguishing between the information and the descriptive section about an artifact. However, in the catalogue, the main objective is to provide the reader with a visual impression of the portraits without having the actual photograph present. The database descriptions are in separate sections with emphasis on keywords for clothes, attributes and gestures, in order to facilitate search, while in the catalogue these brief descriptions are merged into a single coherent text. For instance, the description of a chlamys in the database provides the general look and arrangement of the garment, while in the catalogue this is elaborated and presented as an integral part of the sculpture (Fig. 1). Whether a catalogue is arranged thematically or chronologically impacts the questions asked of the material. The corpus of sculptures may reveal important aspects of Palmyrene urbanization and Palmyra’s location in a wider network. For this catalogue, the decision was to arrange the material chronologically because this may reveal the scale and pace of many processes connected to urbanization and urban development in Palmyra.

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Example of database entry field and the respective catalogue description (copyright: the Palmyra

Fig. 1.

Portrait Project, Courtesy of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen).

4. The catalogue as a tool

Most of Palmyrene sculpture consists of funerary monuments created in limestone that was sourced from neighboring quarries. We know that the production of funerary portraits had started by 50 BCE, however, the catalogue clearly shows that the majority of the portraits were created in the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE. This heightened production may be connected to the rising economic power of the city: more people were able to afford funerary monuments, which created a culture of display and competition in the funerary commemoration sphere. So, too, the rising demand for these monuments generated work opportunities for people at quarries and sculpture workshops, thus adding to the economic well-being of the city. Arranging the catalogue chronologically also shows how the growing economy of Palmyra had an effect at the micro-level as well. The earlier monuments are relatively simple in typology (stelai and loculus reliefs). In the 2nd century CE, we see the introduction of sarcophagi, or reliefs depicting sarcophagi, in the family tombs, a type that is more elaborate and allows for multi-figural representations. The portrayal of women also changes. Two objects from the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek serve as examples of this change: a stele with a woman and girl (IN 1085) and the famous ‘Beauty of Palmyra’ (IN 2795). The stele, dated to the first half of the 1st century CE, depicts a woman wearing earrings and two necklaces. In this period, the amount of jewelry worn by women in funerary portraits decreases. In comparison, ‘The Beauty of Palmyra’, dated to the 3rd century CE, wears 20 pieces of jewelry: four head ornaments, earrings, a brooch, seven necklaces, three bracelets, and four rings. The ‘Beauty of Palmyra’ is representative of the 3rd century trend for women to be depicted wearing an increasing amount of jewelry. The catalogue is useful in giving detailed descriptions of different jewelry, presented in chronological order, thereby making available a large corpus of Palmyrene jewelry for further study (see Krag 2017: 36 for previous research). Additionally, the number of these elaborated portraits also increases in the same period Behind the scenes: Cataloguing as a tool for exploring urban networks

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(Krag 2017: 37). These examples show how the city’s prosperity affected individual choices about representation. The tribal structure of Palmyra is another aspect of the intra-urban network that can be explored through the catalogue. Palmyra was organized according to loose family groups, that is, tribes. Including inscriptions in the catalogue allows for the study of genealogies. For example, the inscriptions on loculus reliefs from the hypogeum founded by two men, Sassan and Mattai, offer the possibility of creating an extended genealogy of their respective families. The family constellations can be traced for six generations thanks to the inscriptions, and, along with the iconography used, it may offer insights into the interconnection and interaction between families and tribes, and how – or if – they used material culture to mark their identity. Several members of the Sassans and Mattai families hold the same attributes, while one member is depicted as a priest and another holds a cup (skyphos). These images mark the differences and similarities of family members through the use of iconography. Another aspect of identity formation is that of a person’s standing – both professional and social (Long & Sørensen 2017). Palmyrenes chose to depict themselves with objects related to their profession, e.g., as caravan leaders or traders (Fig. 2). This particular loculus relief from Ny Carlsbeg Glyptotek (IN 2833) can be compared to other artifacts wherein trade with camels is referenced. Furthermore, the catalogue allows us to explore representational choices of Palmyrenes that reflect social status in the public and private sphere. For example, in the public sphere both textual evidence and iconography show participation in religious and social activities such as banquets, but in the funerary sphere this is only evident through iconography, for example, a priestly hat (Raja 2017c: 325-327). Palmyra was situated between two of the great empires of the ancient world, the Roman and the Parthian. The catalogued material allows for the exploration of Roman and Parthian iconographic trends, and how they were incorporated and adapted by the Palmyrenes in their own sculptural traditions. An example of choice and adaptation is the use of the so-called Parthian dress, a dress inspired by Parthian fashion trends. Multi-figural scenes, as on the sarcophagus from Palmyra Museum (2677B/8983), in which members of the same family group or even the same person, appear wearing clothes that reflect different traditions (Palmyrene, Roman, and Parthian), reveal the conscious choice behind the use of specific costumes. 5. Conclusions

Having a catalogue also allows for the quantification of the material and will form the basis for further investigations of Palmyrene sculpture. It will provide scholars with an opportunity to form research ideas, including approaches to the material through scientific methods. For example, providing researchers with all the information on portraits with remains of pigments can be useful when considering the provenance of colors (i.e. mineral or plant-based) and can facilitate study of the objects.

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Loculus relief depicting a male,

Fig. 2.

150‑160 CE, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, IN 2833 (copyright: the Palmyra Portrait Project, Courtesy of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen).

The conscious choices behind the creation of a catalogue are linked to academic concerns about the usability and accessibility of the material to scholars, but also to members of the wider public. As the database and the catalogue will be available to all, they can inform future research and continued interest in Palmyrene culture. Palmyra can contribute to research about urban networks in the ancient world by its special place and population. The location of the city allows for larger explorations of urban networks, for example, trade. However, it also offers the unique possibility to study intra-urban structures through its material culture. Due to the history of Palmyra, the city has become a time capsule that provides us with secure contexts for numerous objects. Together with the choices of representation mentioned above, Palmyra may reveal social processes and structures that make up the intra-urban network of the city within a specific timeframe, adding to a high-definition understanding of the city. For a non-scholarly audience, however, the preservation of Palmyra has made it a symbol of past power and glory, and it has further added to the romantic idea of Queen Zenobia, camel trading, and life in the oasis. Yet, the symbolic power of Palmyra has also made it subject to recent conflicts in the area, which caused the destruction of several of its iconic monuments in recent history. Cataloguing the remains of its material culture will hopefully help preserve interest in, and possibilities of, the unique desert city that is Palmyra – both for scholars and the broader public.

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6. Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Carlsberg Foundation and the Danish National Re‑ search Foundation under the grant DNRF119 – Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet). 7. Bibliography Ingholt, H. (1928). Studier over Palmyrensk Skulptur. Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel. Krag, S. (2017). Changing Identities, Changing Positions: Jewellery in Palmyrene Female Portraits. In: Long, T. & Sørensen, A.H. (eds.). Positions and Professions in Palmyra, Palmyrene Studies, 2. Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, pp. 36‑51. Raja, R. (2017a). Networking beyond Death: Priests and their family networks in Palmyra explored through the funerary sculpture. In: Teigen, H.F. & Seland, E.H. (eds.) Sinews of Empire: Networks in the Roman Near East and Beyond. Oxford: Oxbow, pp. 121‑136. Raja, R. (2017b). Palmyra: Pearl of the Desert. In: Raja, R, (ed.). Palmyra: Pearl of the Desert. Aarhus: Aarhus Uni‑ versity, pp. 11‑20. Raja, R. (2017c). Powerful images of the deceased: Palmyrene funerary portrait culture between local, Greek and Roman representations. In: Boschung, D. & Queyrel, F. (eds.). Bilder der Macht: Das griechische Porträt und seine Verwendung in der antiken Welt. Morphomata 34. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, pp. 319‑348. Raja, R. & Sørensen, A.H. (2015). Harald Ingholt & Palmyra. Aarhus: Fællestrykkeriet Aarhus Universitet. Long, T. & Sørensen, A.H. (eds.). (2017). Positions and Professions in Palmyra, Palmyrene Studies, 2. Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab.

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JULIA STEDING

Producing funerary portraits: An urban tradition in the Syrian Desert 1. Introduction

The ancient city of Palmyra, also known as Tadmur in Antiquity, is located in the middle of the Syrian Desert. The prosperity of the city in the Roman period is reflected in, among other things, the rich material from the funerary sphere. Tower tombs, temple or house tombs and hypogea, underground tombs that are not visible on the surface, appeared in the desert surrounding the city mainly during the Roman period. All of these tombs contained funerary representations of deceased Palmyrene inhabitants. While the archaeological investigations of funerary portraiture often focus on aspects such as identity and status, the production of the portraits has rarely been studied on a large scale, either in Palmyra or elsewhere. However, questions regarding the production economy of Palmyrene funerary portraiture, which is closely connected to the development of Palmyra as an urban centre in the province of ancient Syria, have arisen. As the demand for funerary portraits increased in Palmyra during the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, the workshops producing these portraits had to increase and adjust their production to the consumers’ requests. Because no workshops have been discovered in Palmyra, it is only possible to address questions related to the lines of production by studying the portraits themselves. The most common funerary representations were the loculus reliefs. These are plaques made of local limestone and meant to close off shelves in the walls of funerary buildings that contained the body of one or more deceased individuals. On these plaques, depictions of single or of multiple individuals were carved. Males and females are depicted in an extended bust format, while children are shown as smaller figures standing behind the shoulder of an adult or held on the arm of a female. The second largest group of depictions are banqueting scenes. These were either used as slabs that closed off niches in the walls, or as sarcophagus lids. In these scenes, a larger group of people was depicted in a banquet setting. These can be understood as representations of family groups, with the scenes most frequently including a reclining male, a sitting female at the foot of the kline and smaller individuals standing behind the reclining male; these latter figures are often identified as children. On the sarcophagus boxes, busts are the most common de-

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piction. In many cases, inscriptions stating the names of the deceased and their family relations were also added. 2. The evidence from Palmyra

Due to recent destruction of Palmyra in 2015 and 2017 in the course of the civil war in Syria, many objects from the city have recently appeared at auctions all over the world. The Palmyra Portrait Project at Aarhus University, funded by the Carlsberg Foundation since 2012, is collecting all known portraits in a large database. The database will include all known funerary depictions from the city, dating between the 1st and the 3rd centuries CE. The corpus so far consists of more than 3,200 portraits and allows us to examine the production of these portraits. So far, the production of portraiture is still a poorly understood topic that has yet to be fully investigated within classical archaeology, in either the Near East or other regions. The material evidence from Palmyra, which represents the largest group of funerary portraiture outside of Rome, provides the opportunity to broaden our understanding of this important topic. This enables us to answer various questions relating to the identity of Palmyrenes as well as to the production of the large corpus of funerary representations. 3. Queries of production

With the available corpus of Palmyrene funerary portraiture, it is possible to discuss key issues related to the making of portraits. One question is what materials the carvers used to produce the impressive amount of funerary portraiture. This can be answered easily: all portraiture related to the funerary context is made from local limestone that was quarried in the vicinity of the city (Schmidt-Colinet 2017). Even though the portraiture from the public and religious spheres is less well preserved, marble sculptures are known from these contexts. Marble cannot be found in the region and such sculptures prove, therefore, the existence of a network with regions that could supply Palmyra with this raw material. Here, a distinction between the funerary and the public sphere becomes clear: While the easier accessible limestone was used for private commemorations, marble was purchased for purposes of representation in public settings. Still, this imported material accounts for only a small percentage of surviving sculpture compared to the rich evidence of limestone reliefs. Another question is how the production was organized once the carver was provided with the stone. The enormous output of carved stone objects found in the city – whether for tombs or public buildings – must have been well coordinated, and it was able to meet the increasing demands of the local elite families during the four centuries of production. Stone must have been distributed across the city, either to the cemeteries surrounding the city or to the city center, and carved according to the requirements of the customers, and it is this large network of specialists working in and around the city that enabled Palmyra to become an important urban centre in ancient Syria.

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4. Tool traces on loculus reliefs

One other question relating to the production economy concerns the process of carving the portraits. While marble is quite a hard stone, limestone can be found in different degrees of hardness. This influences the way the stones are carved and the tools that are used. Basically, a standard set of tools exists and this has been used from the early beginnings of stone carving to the present day (Rockwell 1993; The Art of Making). Still, preferences and changes can be detected, both chronologically and regionally. To trace all the tools used and the various processes the portraits went through, a detailed study of the surfaces of the stone is necessary. In his book on the art of Palmyra, Malcom A.R. Colledge included investigations of the tools used in Palmyra and the traces they left in stone. He discovered that, for example, the tooth chisel was most notably used in the 1st century and the first half of the 2nd century CE (Colledge 1976: 111). In the second half of the 2nd century and during the 3rd century CE, the traces of the tooth chisel disappear on the funerary portraits from the city. One explanation might be that a change in the carving process occurred in the middle of the 2nd century CE. The carvers seem to have skipped the tooth chisel, moving directly from the point to the flat chisel. When carving marble, the use of such a chisel is necessary in order to progress as quickly as possible when carving the rough form because of the hardness of the stone. Limestone, in contrast, is a rather soft stone and was thus easier to carve, making the use of the tooth chisel more or less redundant (Colledge 1976: 111). Recent research, namely the close examination of about one hundred loculus reliefs, might confirm this change in the carving of limestone. To illustrate this in more detail, we will turn to two different loculus reliefs now in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen. The first loculus relief depicts a veiled female placed within a wreath (Fig. 1.). The plaque is decorated with an additional frame running along the edge of the plaque. The inscription dates this portrait to 125 CE. When looking at the background and other less visible places on the relief, the multiple parallel grooves that are characteristic of the tooth chisel are easily detectable; the carver obviously used this tool to deepen the background and carve the rough form of the bust and wreath. On the body and the face, such traces have been removed with a flat chisel during the fine shaping at a later stage. That the tooth chisel was used for the bust as well is also confirmed by traces that can be found at certain places where the carver did not make the effort to remove them with a flat chisel. This would probably have saved some time in the production process. The more visible parts of the bust show not only a smoother surface carved by a flat chisel but also multiple details added to the relief, such as individual hair strands, incised eyebrows, eyelids, irises and pupils as well as details on the wreath and, of course, the inscription. When comparing this first portrait to a relief depicting a male and a female from the rd 3 century CE, differences in carving are clear (Fig. 2). The surface of the stone looks rather different and no traces of a tooth chisel can be detected, either on the background or on the bust. Thus, this tool was probably not used at all. Instead, the flat chisel was used for both the rough and fine shaping. Another difference can be observed when Producing funerary portraits: An urban tradition in the Syrian Desert

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examining the eyes, where fewer details were carved: only the upper eyelids are incised. Even though no traces of colour are left on this example, the details must have been added by paint, indicating the irises and pupils. This can be illustrated by other examples with preserved colour. The most famous example is the ‘Beauty of Palmyra’, also now in Copenhagen (Ploug 1995: 188‑192, no. 77), but many other portraits also contain traces of colour, especially around the eyes, in the inscriptions and on the jewellery. 5. The importance of tool traces

Coming back to the question of why it is important to study and understand changes in carving methods, one needs to connect the visible traces of tools and processes to broader questions concerning production. The traces of tools can be seen as an indicator of choices that carvers and customers made, well illustrated by the first of the two reliefs discussed above (Fig. 1). While the tools and their use were typical of the earlier period, this piece is unique in terms of the decoration of the background. Among all known loculus reliefs, this is the only piece with a bust depicted within a wreath. This reflects the influence that a customer could have had on the carver in asking for a specific kind of depiction that differed from other pieces. While we can find many parallels in style and forms of representations, the variety in the portraiture is striking in terms of the combination of, for example, the jewellery worn by women. This variety raises such questions as: Why was a portrait decorated with a specific type of jewellery or different types of attributes? Why was an inscription added in some cases and not in others? Who chose the mode of depiction, and how was this influenced by the skills and peculiari‑ ties of the carver commissioned for the order? How much time and work did a carver put into an object, and how was this connected to value and status? Were some tools preferred to create special forms, like the undercut, and how was this connected to the individualized working process of a carver? All of this was further influenced by the economic issues connected to the work‑ shops, such as the popularity of a specific kind of depiction, the supply of raw materials and the general demand of portraits. The disappearance of the tooth chisel during the second half of the 2nd century CE could be connected to the increase in production of funerary portraits in Palmyra. By leaving out the tooth chisel and proceeding with the flat chisel directly, the carver saved time and was thus able to produce portraits at a faster pace. Limestone does not necessarily need to be roughed out with a tooth chisel, so the question is whether it was rising demand that forced the carvers to change their carving process to enable the production of more portraits. The two loculus reliefs discussed here show that the study of traces on the stone surface can be a first step for archaeologists when looking at production processes. This not only provides more information about the steps of carving and the organization of the workshops but also about the development of the city as an urban center – a center that had to ensure the production of building material as well as portraiture in an interplay with the availability of imported and local stone.

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Loculus relief depicting a

Fig. 1.

female, 1st century CE, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, IN 1155 (copyright: the Palmyra Portrait Project, Courtesy of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen).

Close-up of a loculus relief

Fig. 2.

depicting a male and a female, 3rd century CE, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, IN 1153 (copyright: the Palmyra Portrait Project, Courtesy of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen). Producing funerary portraits: An urban tradition in the Syrian Desert

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6. Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Carlsberg Foundation and the Danish National Research Foundation under the grant DNRF119 – Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet). 7. Bibliography Colledge, M.A.R. (1976). The Art of Palmyra. London: Thames & Hudson. Ploug, G. (1995). Catalogue of the Palmyrene Sculptures, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. Copenhagen: Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. Rockwell, P. (1993). The art of Stoneworking. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schmidt-Colinet, A. (2017). Die antiken Steinbrüche von Palmyra. Ein Vorbericht. Mitteilungen der Deutschen OrientGesellschaft zu Berlin, 149, 159-196. The Art of Making. http://www.artofmaking.ac.uk [accessed February 12, 2018].

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SIGNE KRAG

The urbanization of Palmyra: The dynamics of the family cemeteries 1. Introduction

Scholars have for centuries pursued a more thorough understanding of the unique urban community that was Palmyra: How did the Palmyrenes relate to and understand religion? What are the implications of their funerary portraits? How did they interact with the surrounding regions? For example, their plentiful funerary portraits have caught the interest of numerous scholars, such as Malcolm A.R. Colledge, Michał Gawlikowski, Maura K. Heyn, Harald Ingholt, Klaus Parlasca, Rubina Raja and Anna Sadurska. These scholars have made invaluable contributions to our understanding of these portraits providing insights into the dynamics of identity and status expressed therein. Since 2012, the Palmyra Portrait Project has compiled all known Palmyrene portraits into a large online database that will provide a more complete corpus of the portraits and thus enable scholars to provide a broader understanding of them. This contribution seeks to briefly explore the networks and dynamics of families in Palmyra and their family funerary buildings by closely examining two tombs from the cemeteries in the city. Additionally, this will yield insights into the organization of the cemeteries and the organization and use of the funerary space (Henning 2013; Krag forthcoming). An understanding of the complexities of the funerary space allows for a more nuanced understanding of the portraiture displayed within such a space. To do this, several different approaches can be used. This article is to use a contextual method that involves analyzing funerary buildings and material preserved only in situ. How were the cemeteries surrounding the city organized? How was the funerary space organized within the buildings? Who decided in which part of the tomb deceased family members were to be buried? Which relatives conducted and participated in the funerary rituals? 2. Palmyra and its funerary monuments

Palmyra was especially urbanized from the late 1st century BCE until the 3rd century CE, and the largest increase in building activities occurred during the 2nd century CE. Between the late 1st century BCE and the 3rd century CE, four large cemeteries developed in the surrounding territory of the city. As the population inhabiting the city grew, so The urbanization of Palmyra: The dynamics of the family cemeteries

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Fig. 1. Funerary loculus relief de‑

picting a woman wearing a veil, turban, headband and jewellery, 200‑273 CE. Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, Massachusetts, inv. 1932.4.C.O.II (courtesy of the Palmyra Portrait Project, Ingholt Archive, PS 673).

did their need tobury deceased relatives and maintain the tombs of their ancestors. Families erected funerary buildings in the cemeteries for themselves and their relatives. In the cemeteries, nearly 500 funerary buildings are documented (Gawlikowski 1970; Schnädelbach 2010; Henning 2013). Thus, from Palmyra there is abundant evidence of the organization of certain families in the cemeteries and inside the funerary buildings located in these cemeteries. Such buildings have especially been explored in the southeastern cemetery where many underground tombs (hypogea) are well documented (there are also a northern, a western and a southwestern cemetery). The other types of funerary buildings constructed in the city are temple or house tombs and tower tombs. Inside these buildings, the inhumed corpses of the deceased were placed, either in loculi, which are oblong shelves cut in the walls or under the floor of the tombs, or in sarcophagus boxes. These graves were sealed with portraits of the deceased (Fig. 1). Portraits were frequently accompanied by inscriptions (or inscriptions might be added on the walls of the funerary buildings next to the stone portraits) naming the deceased individual and his or her genealogy.

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3. The dynamics of the Palmyrene cemeteries

Examinations of the funerary buildings in the cemeteries reveal that a large number of different factors played significant roles in the funerary space. As previously mentioned, close to 500 funerary buildings are found in the four cemeteries surrounding the city. It is plausible that the founder of a funerary building would have to purchase land in one of the cemeteries where a building could be erected; this land was likely owned by the city. In general, the locations of the funerary buildings in the four cemeteries are relatively systematized, suggesting a certain organization of these areas (and perhaps also respect for funerary buildings belonging to other families). Frequently, the buildings are located in clusters, which may consist of buildings that belonged to relatives constructing their funerary buildings close to each other. The erection of funerary buildings enabled certain families to distinguish themselves through the monumentality of such buildings in the landscape: that their families were able to build and own such buildings was clearly communicated to spectators (Yon 1999). Furthermore, the families came to control a space in which several generations of family members were buried. In general, the material provided by temple or house tombs and tower tombs was robbed in Antiquity and is consequently rather fragmented. However, the underground hypogea have often suffered less destruction because their underground locations have protected them from such harm. Thus, they provide a more detailed overview of how the Palmyrenes constructed and used funerary buildings. In the better-preserved funerary buildings, it is clear that the funerary space was structured in terms of ownership, space management (recorded in inscriptions) and the funerary rituals taking place inside the buildings (these appear to have followed certain patterns). In several of the funerary buildings, it can often be observed that the founding family used the main gallery while the galleries added on the sides were sold to other families. These other families came to share the funerary space, which was still strictly organized and divided between the families (Gawlikowski 1970). The interments were sometimes accompanied by burial goods; however, these are not abundant in Palmyra. In the tombs, various material remains from funerary rituals are documented, such as remains of pottery, lamps and incense burners, altars and so forth. From these, it can be deduced that certain rituals were carried out and that these rituals were relatively regular across the different tombs. 4. The tower tomb of Nebôzabad Neshâ and the hypogeum of Taîbbôl

The networks and dynamics of families in Palmyra is exemplified by two funerary structures from the city. The first, tower tomb no. 83a, located in the western cemetery and built into a later city wall, was founded by a certain Nebôzabad Neshâ (Henning 2013: 28-29, Taf. 65-67). The structure is located southwest of the sanctuary of Allat and close to an entrance to the city (Fig. 2). This was a very prominent position. The entrance to the tomb was located on the southern side of the tomb, and a thoroughfare leading to the city likely passed this side of the building. The inscriptions (Greek and Palmyrene-Aramaic) naming the founder (Nebôzabad Neshâ) and the year it was founded (120 CE) are located on the lintel of the entrance. Moreover, above the enThe urbanization of Palmyra: The dynamics of the family cemeteries

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Fig. 2. Western cemetery, city wall with tower tomb no. 83a, 84 and temple tomb no. 84a (illustration:

S. Krag, after Schnädelbach 2010).

trance of the tomb, Nebôzabad Neshâ had a pediment carved which carried a portrait of a Palmyrene priest surrounded by vines. This is likely a portrait of himself. Thus, in the depiction of himself as the founder he included his priestly position. The fact that both a Greek and a Palmyrene-Aramaic inscription mention the founder reveals that this information was to be communicated not only to the Palmyrenes, but also to visitors who had not mastered the local dialect. Across from tower tomb no. 83a are two further tombs; another tower tomb (no. 84) and a temple tomb (no. 84a). Little is preserved of either building, and it is unknown whether the families were related to each other and to Nebôzabad Neshâ. The interiors of the three tombs addressed above are poorly preserved, but hypogea in general offer a more ‘complete’ picture of the organization inside tombs. A standard, representative hypogeum is represented by that of Taîbbôl (Saito 2007). The hypogeum was entered by a dromos with a staircase leading to a small room with a large limestone door (Fig. 3). The inscription mentioning the founder of the tomb, Taîbbôl, was located here, but no portrait of the founder was chosen for this tomb. The door opened towards an entrance room from which access to the galleries with burials could be reached. These galleries form a T-shape, which is fairly common in the hypogea found in the city (further sections could also be added). Inside the hypogeum, loculi were dug into the walls of the main gallery and the south gallery. These were divided into smaller compartments by large limestone plaques. The deceased were placed in such compartments, which were sealed with funerary portraits. Furthermore, three sarcophagi are located in an exedra in the main gallery on the northern side. The sarcophagus lids carry portraits of multiple family members – depicted as participating in banquets – emphasizing the family group in the funerary display.

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Hypogeum of Taîbbôl, south-

Fig. 3.

eastern cemetery (illustration: S. Krag, after Saito 2007, Fig. 10).

5. Conclusion

The funerary buildings offer varied material that in turn reveals how the Palmyrenes acted upon and processed death, both in society and in individual families. Thus, these two funerary buildings provide an insight into the complexity of the organization of the cemeteries in the city of Palmyra as well as the use of the funerary space and how this was organized. It can be observed that families constructed buildings to be used for their family over many generations – they placed portraits and inhumed bodies of the deceased in the buildings next to each other. Consequently, the buildings came to function as places to gather the entire family. This strongly suggests that family was of the utmost importance in the city, and the urbanization of the immediate surroundings of the city did, in fact, come to revolve around this theme as expressed in the nearly

The urbanization of Palmyra: The dynamics of the family cemeteries

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500 funerary buildings found in Palmyra. In these cemeteries, family networks played a central role and were continued throughout centuries as manifested in funerary ar‑ chitecture and portraiture. 6. Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Carlsberg Foundation and the Danish National Re‑ search Foundation under the grant DNRF119 – Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet). 7. Bibliography Gawlikowski, M. (1970). Monuments funéraires de Palmyre. Warsaw: Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. Henning, A. (2013). Die Turmgräber von Palmyra. Eine lokale Bauform im kaiserzeitlichen Syrien als Ausdruck kultureller Identität. Rahden: Verlag Marie Leidorf. Krag, S. (forthcoming). Funerary Representations of Palmyrene Women. From the First Century BC to the Third Century AD. Brepols: Turnhout. Saito, K. (2007). Sheep Bone Accompanying the Dead from an Underground Tomb in Palmyra. al-Rafidan, 27, 83‑94. Schnädelbach, K. (2010). Topographia Palmyrena, I: Topography. Damascus: Documents d’archeologie Syrienne. Yon, J.‑B. (1999). La prédence des notables dans l’espace périurbain à Palmyre. In: C. Petitfrère (ed.). Construction, reproduction et representations des patriciats urbains de l’Antiquitè au XXe siècle. Tours: Centre d’histoire de la ville moderne et contemporaine, pp. 387‑395.

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JERASH: FROM ROMAN TO ISLAMIC CITY

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ACHIM LICHTENBERGER & RUBINA RAJA

Urban networks and dynamics seen through urban peripheries: The case of Gerasa on the golden river 1. Introduction

While ancient cities of the Roman Empire have been the subject of research for centuries, and their fabrics have been studied by archaeologists and ancient historians alike, the material manifestations, which could be detected as explanations of rises and falls in urban settings, have most often been interpreted at face value. This means that the larger a city was, and the more monuments it contained, the greater the economic prosperity and wealth of the site must have been and, in turn, the more important the city seemed to have been both locally and for the empire on a broader scale (Jones 1971). Scholars have seldom attempted to look at certain, and limited, areas of a city and to apply a high-definition approach to questions arising from the archaeological material in order to understand how such examinations in fact contribute to broader discussions about the dynamics and networks that made up the core of the Roman, and later the Byzantine and Early Islamic, empires. On the one hand, such approaches have only become available in the last few decades through the development and integration of natural-science methods into Classical Archaeology. On the other hand, such approaches should by now have been used more frequently, but they have not received much attention since there has to date been little support for investigating non-urban core, archaeological sites. Through the work done within the framework of the Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter Project, a systematic research programme has been pursued in order to unlock some of the mechanisms that are detectable in the archaeological material when high-definition methods are applied in order to examine urban developments as well as flows, networks and dynamics (Lichtenberger & Raja 2017). 2. Gerasa: A Decapolis city on the golden river and its Northwest Quarter

The Decapolis city Gerasa, located in modern Northwest Jordan, flourished from the Early Roman period into the middle of the 8th century CE when a devastating earthquake hit the region and destroyed many localities to such an extent that they never Urban networks and dynamics seen through urban peripheries

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Fig. 1. Plan of Gerasa with the Northwest Quarter marked (after Lepaon).

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fully recovered. Gerasa was located on the river Chrysorrhoas, the golden river, which cut through the city and literally divided it into two halves: an eastern half and a western one (Fig. 1). While Gerasa has been the object of archaeological exploration for more than a century (Kraeling 1938), the archaeology that has been undertaken at the site has focused on the large monuments of the city, such as its sanctuaries and temples, the churches and theatres, the hippodrome and the central column-lined streets. Gerasa, later called Jerash, was a mid-sized city covering an area of about 80 hectares with Roman-period city walls of more than four kilometres in length. While central parts of the city have been explored, the areas located at the periphery of the city (closer to the city walls) have not been investigated to any significant extent leaving us with a somewhat skewed impression of how the ancient city really looked and what its fabric in these areas might tell us about the nature of the urban development and the dynamics which unfolded in various parts of the city. Therefore, the Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter Project was initiated in 2011 to explore the highest area within the walled city, covering approximately four hectares, and to investigate in which ways it might be possible to relate urban peripheral areas to the core regions of a city and make meaningful conclusions about the urban development and the urban networks in general. 3. Connecting the urban periphery: The margin that matters

While urban archaeology is often contrasted with hinterland studies, truly meaningful studies emerge when connections are made between the two – between centre and so-called backwater. Urban peripheries were often zones in which no monumental architecture was located (apart from the city walls and city gates) and are therefore areas that have not interested classical archaeologists. These areas were, in Antiquity, often areas that connected the urban core with the suburban and hinterland regions, which, indeed, provided the most important zones of these urban systems. These peripheral areas were the areas in which the connections between central zones – urban cores as well as hinterlands – were made. Ancient people (dead and alive), animals and goods passed through the city gates and moved or were moved along the streets and paths leading to their destinations, money was exchanged (see Birch & Orfanou, this volume) and waste was processed. The Northwest Quarter in Gerasa, with its seemingly unimpressive archaeological remains, have revealed substantial insights into the crucial urban versus non-urban contact zones. Investigations into the street networks of the Northwest Quarter, for example, have shown that the streets in this area was paved much differently than the central parts of the city. The streets were, however, maintained over time, and the organisation to which they testify is not insignificant. Streets in the Northwest Quarter were paved with stamped earth as well as, in some sections, with waste material – specifically, ceramic fragments were sometimes used as fill layers for streets (Fig. 2). Ceramic served as an ideal drainage material in an area of the city where it would have been important to lead away any excess water, due to the lack of any major sewUrban networks and dynamics seen through urban peripheries

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Fig. 2. Section of trench N. Ceramic fill

layers and paving (copyright: The Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter Project).

ages. While such streets and their underlay may be considered less monumental and impressive than the colonnaded streets of the city centre, they point to an organisation of urban matters that tells us about the levels to which even the distribution of waste (used and un-used ceramics) were controlled within an urban environment. While not giving us direct insight into the civic organisation, such situations indeed underlined the degree to which such matters must have been regulated in detail. Encountering such situations in the urban core areas is often more rare because these areas were usually embellished to a greater degree and therefore do not leave many traces of the reuse and variety of usages within a narrow time span (a few centuries). Such central areas testify to the much broader developments, driven by civic and political organisations, and indicate the process of changes, which took place over centuries, such as the transition from Graeco-Roman Antiquity to the Byzantine period and later the Early Islamic period. Consequently, such areas can leave us with the impression that such changes often happened more or less instantaneously, while in fact they were products of slow and often – at least to the contemporary society – invisible processes. Therefore, the urban peripheries present central areas of enquiry when conducting urban studies.

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4. Understanding network dynamics in high definition

Through the programme instigated by the Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter Project, it has been possible to investigate, among other things, the ways in which water supply changed over centuries and modified the urban setting. Studies have shown that a large cistern on the southern slope of the Northwest Quarter was installed in the area much earlier than thought – the largest known cistern within the city walls (approx. 40 × 18 m) – and that water pipe systems were also in place much earlier than usually claimed, by the late 1st or early 2nd century CE (Lichtenberger et al. 2015) (Fig. 3). In later periods, that is, the Early Islamic period, water installations seem to have become much more of a privately regulated – or at least controlled – matter wherein cisterns were situated in the houses themselves. In turn, this tells us something about the organisation of the civic society at a given point in time (Lichtenberger & Raja 2016). Such studies, which show the development as traced over a fairly small habitational area over a long period of time, from the late 1st century CE until the mid-8th century CE, indicate that societal changes do take place, but that they are often only traceable in the archaeology, which remains invisible to most of us. Another example is the slow change in the material culture and particularly in the pottery. New investigations in the securely dated earthquake evidence of collapsed domestic contexts in the Northwest Quarter (Lichtenberger & Raja 2016) have shown that changes in the pottery were often slow and that household pottery did not change rapidly after the Arab conquest of the region. It is now obvious that pottery types were one of the categories of materials which were, indeed, adaptable, even if these changes progressed slowly. Held together with studies of the faunal material, such conclusions make sense because only a very slow change in the consumption habits in domestic contexts is traceable (Bangsgaard, Lichtenberger & Raja 2017). A last example concerns the glass from Gerasa. It is now clear that while Roman and Late Roman glass in Gerasa was imported and often reused (remelted and reshaped), Byzantine and Early Islamic glass was reused to an even further extent (Barfod et al. forthcoming). While this in itself is not surprising, it is noteworthy that the glass industry continued throughout the Early Islamic period and that glass was reused intensively and remelted in order to fit local needs and behaviours. While the intensification of reuse is significant, it is also worth noting that the fuel used to remelt the glass changed between the Late Byzantine period and the Early Islamic period. While fuel in the earlier period was supplied by wood, in the later period olive pits became the main source of fuel. While such an adjustment in fuel source might indicate decline in urban supply to some, it can just as well be read as a means of optimising resources while meeting urban demands. While these three examples only tell us about the inner-city-wall behaviour of the urban society of Gerasa/Jerash over a period of 800 years and only on the basis of limited evidence, they still highlight the importance of studying material evidence in a high-definition context. While city walls and the use or reuse of materials might have told us one story, the high-definition narratives tell us another, namely the story that cultural and societal changes did not always parallel changes in political and religious Urban networks and dynamics seen through urban peripheries

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Fig. 3. View of the large cistern and its mortar layers (copyright: The Danish-German Jerash Northwest

Quarter Project).

power. This is a narrative that cannot be ignored. These high-definition narratives tell us that materials hold their own stories and can be unlocked as well as culturally contextualised and put into historical perspective. 5. Conclusion

While the nature of urban networks and dynamics remains a conundrum that deserves further attention, high-definition approaches have shown that we may indeed approach these conundrums in a more contextualised manner by applying high-definition methods to archaeological questions. While this is not a new suggestion, it remains a challenge to archaeologists to do so in a firmly contextualised framework and to frame the questions in such a way that they matter to the broader humanities community. The Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter Project has, in the course of its campaigns, shown that by approaching small-scale case studies in a high-definition perspective we can gain much new knowledge about urban networks and their organisation and nature. 6. Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Danish National Research Foundation under the grant DNRF119 – Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), the Carlsberg Foundation, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Deutscher Palästina-Verein, 106

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the EliteForsk initiative of the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science and H.P. Hjerl Hansens Mindefondet for Dansk Palæstinaforskning. 7. Bibliography Bangsgaard, P., Lichtenberger, A. & Raja, R. (2017). Animal bones from the North-West Quarter. In: Lichtenberger, A. & Raja, R. (eds.). Gerasa/Jerash – From the urban periphery. Aarhus: Fællestrykkeriet AUTRYK, pp. 106-113. Barfod, G., Freestone, I., Lichtenberger, A., Raja, R. & Schwarzer, H. (forthcoming). Typology, provenance and recycling of Byzantine and Early Islamic glass from Jerash, Jordan. Geoarchaeology. Jones, A.H.M. (1971). The cities of the eastern Roman provinces, 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kraeling, C.H. (1938). Gerasa: City of the Decapolis. New Haven, CT: American Schools of Oriental Studies. Lichtenberger, A., Lindroos, A., Raja, R. & Heinemeier, J. (2015). Radiocarbon analysis of mortar from Roman and Byzantine water management installations in the Northwest Quarter of Jerash, Jordan. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2, 114-127. Doi: http:/dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2015.01.001. Lichtenberger, A. & Raja, R. (2016). A Newly Excavated Private House in Jerash: Reconsidering Aspects of Continuity and Change in Material Culture from Late Antiquity to the Early Islamic Period. Antiquité Tardive, 24, 317-359. Lichtenberger, A. & Raja, R. (eds.). (2017). Gerasa/Jerash – From the urban periphery. Aarhus: Fællestrykkeriet AUTRYK.

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KRISTINE DAMGAARD THOMSEN

Mortar and plaster production in Jerash: Changing perspective from macro to micro 1. Introduction

Through the combination of classical archaeology and geochemistry, it is possible today to explore ancient mortar and plaster from new innovative angles. By studying these in a high-resolution perspective, we gain insight into the production and ‘recipe’, the provenance of raw materials and the chemical composition of mortar and plaster. For a long time, scholars overlooked mortar and plaster, but these building materials appear everywhere and are, as of yet, a largely untapped source of knowledge. The many qualities of and recipes for mortar and plaster have been known for thousands of years and were especially apparent through the architecture of the Roman Empire. Ancient mortars and plasters are carriers of diverse archaeological and environmental records and can yield information about the dynamics and flows in urban environments over time. In the Danish-German excavations in Jerash, Jordan, vast amounts of mortar and plaster fragments have been collected from buildings and monuments ranging from the Roman period to medieval times. The application of methods from the natural sciences has made it possible to clarify little-known aspects of locally produced building materials and has allowed us to contribute with new information to discussions of production and technological knowledge. However, there was not only plain plaster used for covering ashlar stone blocks, there was also elaborately painted plaster in different colours and patterns. A large amount of painted plaster from the Northwest Quarter excavations has shown that the colours used for decorating the buildings ranged from red, yellow, purple and brown to green and blue, and, while these are aesthetically appealing, they are also remnants of a bygone era designed by past cultures. Ancient urban spaces were often plastered and painted, and the mortar beneath held the urban infrastructure together and maintained urban life.

Mortar and plaster production in Jerash

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2. Investigating mortar and new strategies

Although mortar studies have been conducted in Jordan since the 1970s, they have so far been primarily descriptive, and there has usually been a clear distinction between wall and floor plasters and mortars. In the case of the Northwest Quarter, we have the opportunity to thoroughly study and analyse mortar from water installations and mosaic bedding concurrently with wall and floor plaster in a diachronic perspective. In this way, we can now visualise the technical developments over several cultural periods. Only a few studies have been undertaken in Jerash itself: Hamarneh and Abu-Jaber (2015) have analysed mortar used for mosaic bedding in Jerash in the Byzantine period; Lichtenberger, Lindroos and Raja (2015) used radiocarbon dating to date mortar from a Roman-Byzantine installation in Jerash; and BanyYaseen et al. (2013) used petrography and mineralogy to study Roman mortars from a selection of buildings in Jerash. Beyond these, several studies have been conducted in Petra, South Jordan, proving that there were two types of mortar used at the same time but with different functions. A lime-based mortar was used as hydraulic mortar, whereas a gypsum mortar was used for the façades of the monuments. Despite the various studies from both north and south Jordan, scholars have yet to examine mortar-production techniques over time. Since the function of the wall and floor mortar, mosaic bedding and hydraulic mortar differ substantially, it is to be expected that these different types would have different compositional and textual characteristics. But how can we identify the differences and correlate the development over a long time span in order to discuss the influence that these changes had on urban dynamics and infrastructures? The gaps in our knowledge of this important construction material can be studied by applying innovative analytical methodologies based on integrated thin-section micromorphology, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) analyses in order to, potentially, see contrasts in elemental compositions. These analyses permit the identification of the materials that contributed to mortar recipes. They also help to show how the mortar was constructed and applied. The variances should be explained within archaeological and environmental contexts. Thus, this work demonstrates that integrating analytical methods from geosciences yields new insights into important aspects of urban life in Jerash. The methods used on the material from Jerash can also be applied to other sites giving future researchers the possibility of using these rather simple-looking mortars and plasters in more than a descriptive way. 3. The Northwest Quarter mortar

Preliminary results have confirmed that the mortar from a large Late Roman cistern was a strong and durable hydraulic mortar that mainly consisted of limestone (Kalaitzoglou et al. forthcoming). The limestone was available both in the Ajloun Highlands in northern Jordan as well as in the Northwest Quarter itself, which had been used as a stone quarry before the later habitation phases. The ground-mass seemed to be coarsegrained, suggesting less milling of the mortar mix. A high concentration of silica was also detected in addition to high quantities of crushed ceramics. All of these features 110

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Mortar sample from the Northwest Quarter after preparation (copyright: The Danish-German

Fig. 1.

Jerash Northwest Quarter Project).

point to a cocciopesto recipe, or opus signium, a widely used and well-known mix for cisterns and floors in Roman times (Fig. 1). Cocciopesto was the term applied to mortar made of crushed terracotta; it often contains pozzolana, a volcanic ash, as well. The addition of crushed brick or terracotta created a hydraulic mortar similar to the pozzolana-lime mortar. The technique is described in Vitruvius’ (De Architectura 7.1.3) and Plinius’ accounts (Naturalis historia 35.46), both of whom recommend mixing crushed terracotta with mortar to make it stronger. Clay is rich in silica and produces a soluble silica component when fired. The hydraulic properties increased with the firing temperatures, so terracotta pieces, such as roof tiles, fired at higher temperatures create an effective hydraulic mortar. Due to the less porous terracotta, the chemical reaction is slower than that of mortar made with volcanic ash, and the crushed terracotta mortar needs to remain in contact with water for a longer period of time so that the hardening process can continue and eventually develop a high degree of resistance (Lancaster 2005: 58). The volcanic ash, pozzolana, was not available in Jordan. Although several studies have shown that the Herodian harbour complexes at Caesarea Maritima had imported pozzolana from the Bay of Naples, Italy, this seems not Mortar and plaster production in Jerash

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Fig. 2. Burnt and unburnt organic debris in a mortar sample under microscopic light (copyright: The

Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter Project).

to have been the case in Jerash because the city was not a coastal site and not connected to the Mediterranean trading network. Jerash did, however, produce a large amount of pottery and consequently had easy access to crushed terracotta, which supports the findings in the mortar samples from the Northwest Quarter. Some relicts of burnt and unburnt bone and other organic debris were also present in the mortar samples, again testifying to a product that used easily accessible materials (Fig. 2). 4. The Northwest Quarter paintings

Wall paintings convey an impression of the trends, tastes and attitudes of a certain period, allowing us some insight into the decoration of houses. In the Near East, wall paintings were widespread. The paintings from Herod the Great’s palaces, especially, have received much attention and provided much information to the discussion of how wall decoration appeared and developed in Roman Judaea. However, the decoration of buildings in the Near East differed greatly depending on the previous cultures, and the history and development of decorative categories and the appearance of similar motifs and techniques can shed light on cultural and regional connections (Rozenberg 2014: 120). The wall decorations in Gerasa not only provide insights into the appearance of the architecture, they also allow us to understand what trends were present in which cultural periods. 112

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Overview of fragments of painted wall plaster in different colours (copyright: The Danish-German

Fig. 3.

Jerash Northwest Quarter Project).

A large part of the fragments comes from trenches A and S, a Late Roman monumental construction with a cistern, and trenches P and V, an Umayyad house. Such fragments showed that the wall surfaces were decorated with paintings. The painted plaster showed an array of different colours, dominated by red, green and pink tones, which appear in both lighter and darker versions. Most of the fragments are painted in single colours indicating that large surface areas were painted a single colour (Fig. 3), and this tendency continued from the Late Roman to the Umayyad period. Notably, several fragments from trenches A and S have a circular pattern on top of a lighter coloured background, suggesting that the painted panels on the walls alternated between single-coloured geometric patterns and panels with circular patterns. In the case of the Northwest Quarter, there are no animal or human figures. The fragments showing the circular motifs, wherein the background is pale or light red, and the pattern on top has a dark red/brownish colour, are most likely imitations of a different types of stone. It was common to paint some blocks so as to imitate, for instance, marble or alabaster as is seen both in Pompeian and Herodian wall paintings (Fig. 4). However, the imitation from the Northwest Quarter is not a particularly good representation, and it is likely that the painters had not actually seen these types of stones themselves but were, instead, merely imitating an imitation. In the Umayyad house, trenches P and V, the colour scheme and patterns from Mortar and plaster production in Jerash

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Fig. 4. Fragment of painted wall plaster showing the imitation of a different stone type (copyright: The

Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter Project).

the Late Roman period mainly stay the same. The changes are subtle, but some of the more noticeable changes include more unpainted space on the walls, less bright colours and fewer traces of inscriptions. There is a clear continuity in style in the Northwest Quarter from the Late Roman style to the Umayyad; this is especially supported when we study other Umayyad complexes wherein the painting style is quite different. Here, we see decorated walls with elaborate displays of human and faunal depictions, yet in the same colour scheme seen in the Northwest Quarter. While focusing on the painted plaster fragments, it has become obvious that we can add some interesting data to the discussion about the development of wall paintings in the Near East. The development is not well known, but, by studying the paintings and patterns, we can begin to tie the city of Jerash into a much broader picture. 5. Conclusion

It is necessary to use multiple analytical approaches to understand the development of building materials in Gerasa and the implications for continuity and change in technological and cultural processes. Integrating methods from geoscience with archaeological 114

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cultural understanding makes this possible and has, so far, given us some very interesting results, such as the fact that the mortar mixture from the Northwest Quarter shows no signs of having used pozzolana ash. Instead, crushed ceramics and organic debris, which were easily accessible, were used. This also places the Northwest Quarter within a long-term chronological and cultural development of the city of Jerash. The wall paintings in Jerash provide another important contribution to the understanding of the development of the wall painting tradition in Jordan in general. In Jerash, we see a repertoire in the tradition of Herodian wall paintings, yet made differently and with its own distinct development and pattern combinations. The preliminary results have so far shown that Jerash was self-sufficient when constructing monumental buildings and houses, and maintained strong ties to previous periods in the cultural habitation history. 6. Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Danish National Research Foundation under the grant DNRF119 – Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), the Carlsberg Foundation, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Deutscher Palästina-Verein, the EliteForsk initiative of the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science and H.P. Hjerl Hansens Mindefondet for Dansk Palæstinaforskning. 7. Bibliography Bany Yaseen, I., Al-Amoush, H., Al-Farajat, M. & Mayyas, A. (2013). Petrography and mineralogy of Roman mortars from buildings of the ancient city of Jerash, Jordan. Construction and Building Materials, 38, 465-471. Hamarneh, C. & Abu-Jaber, N. (2017). Mosaic pavement mortar production in Gerasa in the Byzantine period. Archaeological Research in Asia, 9, 22-33. Kalaitzoglou, G., Lichtenberger, A., Möller, H. & Raja, R. (forthcoming). Preliminary report of the sixth season of the Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter Project 2016. Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan. Lancaster, L. (2005). Concrete Vaulted Construction in Imperial Rome: Innovations in Context. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Lichtenberger, A., Lindroos, A. & Raja, R. (2015). Radiocarbon analysis of mortar from Roman and Byzantine water management installations in the Northwest Quarter of Jerash, Jordan. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2, 114-127. Rozenberg, S. (2014). Wall Paintings in Herodian Judea. Near Eastern Archaeology 77 (2), Special Issue: Herod the Great, 120-128.

Mortar and plaster production in Jerash

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THOMAS BIRCH & VANA ORFANOU

Small change in big cities: Characterising the development of everyday coinage in Jerash 1. Introduction

Just under 800 copper-based coins were recovered from the 2012-2016 excavations in Jerash, Jordan, as part of the Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter Project. A small number of these were found in a hoard (Lichtenberger & Raja 2015). The coins from Jerash’s Northwest Quarter were studied in detail by numismatists Ingrid and Wolfgang Schulze (Schulze & Schulze forthcoming), who have dated most of the coins to the Roman through to the early Islamic period. This assemblage represents a unique opportunity to further our understanding of coinage in the Near East at a time of dramatic change, that is, from the Roman to Islamic period. Changes in metal technology can inform us about some of the wider socio-economic changes taking place as for example scarcity of resources during times of hardship that most likely affected metal technology as well. Additionally, changes in microstructure and composition reflect changes in the technology and raw materials being used. Sixty-nine coins were selected for sampling based on their chronology (around 9% of the total number of coins excavated). These were prepared as standard metallographic specimens and analysed for their metal composition at the Aarhus Geochemistry and Isotope Research (AGIR) Platform (Aarhus University). As part of the diachronic study of coin compositions, three main chronological groups of coinage were targeted for sampling and analysis, namely the Roman (up until the 5th century CE), Byzantine (nominal end of the Western Roman Empire 476 CE to the battle of Yarmouk in 636 CE) and Umayyad periods (661-750 CE). The bulk composition of the coins was determined using a Bruker M4 Tornado Micro-XRF, and their microstructure was analysed using reflected light microscopy. Some of the general findings are highlighted here, with detailed results to be published elsewhere. 2. Coinage in context

Over the last decade, more and more scholars have approached the study of coins following methodologies used more widely in the study of artefacts in general, deviating from strictly numismatic approaches. Thus, traditional numismatic approaches have, Small change in big cities

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increasingly, been complemented with archaeological methods of enquiry and scientific analysis. Whilst coin weights, die studies and coin distributions have been and still are essential to our understanding of past economies, there has been a growing realisation that coins should be understood in their wider socio-economic context. It is within this framework of material culture studies in archaeology that the coins from Jerash are being studied, as artefacts in context (see Kemmers & Myberg 2011). One of the main aims of the investigation into the copper-alloy coins from Jerash is to improve our general understanding of everyday coinage. 3. The Roman/Byzantine nummus minimus

The largest portion of the coins recovered from the Northwest Quarter are small copper-alloy nummi, often referred to as minimi owing to their small size. These small coins often weigh around 1 gram or less and are characteristic of the Late Roman and Byzantine periods, small change exchanged at the city gate. Whilst nummi have been studied from other Roman cities in the western part of the Roman and Byzantine Empires (Canovaro, Calliari, Asolati, Grazzi, & Scherillo 2013), very few analytical studies have been conducted on their eastern counterparts (see al-Sa’ad, Affaneh, & Hatamleh 2000). This study into the minimi of Jerash, therefore, was deemed a necessary and much needed contribution to our understanding of the composition and technology of coinage from the eastern part of the Roman and Byzantine world. Fifty-six minimi were selected and sampled for analysis, spanning the Roman and Byzantine periods. An example of a Late Roman minimus can be seen in Fig. 1. 4. The Umayyad fals

Previous analytical studies of early Islamic coinage from the first caliphate have almost exclusively focussed on the precious metal coinage denominations, namely the gold dinars and silver dirhams. By comparison, very little is known about the copper based small change used for everyday transactions, namely the copper fals (see al-Sa’ad & Goussous 1997). Derived from the earlier Roman and Byzantine follis, the fals was issued under the first Islamic caliphates. The earliest forms were imitations of Byzantine coins, often referred to as pre-reform coinage, while during the Umayyad Dynasty Islamic coinage was reformed between AH 74 and AH 79 (693-700 CE). The coinage from Jerash includes both pre- and post-reform fulus (plural of fals), from which 13 coins have been analysed (see Fig. 1 for examples). The results confirm that the coinage reforms during the reign of Caliph Abd al-Malik (685-705 CE) manifested in the choice of metal(s) and technology used for minting the fals. Similar to the previous investigation, outlined above, into Roman and Byzantine minimi, this study adds significantly to our current state of knowledge of copper-based coinage from this region during the first caliphate.

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Examples of a minimus (top), a pre-reform Umayyad fals imitating Byzantine coinage (bottom left)

Fig. 1.

and a post-reform Umayyad fals with epigraphy (bottom right). Scale in cm (illustration: T. Birch).

5. Debasing copper with lead

The compositional analysis confirms, unsurprisingly, that the bulk of the metal content in the coins consists of copper. However, the varying amounts of tin also detected suggest that it was unlikely that pure copper was used originally. Instead, it is more likely that tin-bronze scrap was used as the base metal for coinage, to which lead could be added. If we use an arbitrary threshold of 5 wt% (weight percent) lead to distinguish between leaded and low/unleaded copper-alloy, the majority of the coins analysed can be identified as leaded, most far-exceeding 10 wt% lead (highly leaded). Examples of highly leaded and low/unleaded Roman minimi can be seen in the chemical mapping of the coin cross-sections shown in Fig. 2. When the relative abundance of low versus highly leaded coins are plotted by period, several observations can be made (see the barplot in Fig. 3). In the 4th century CE, only around 20% of the minimi analysed are leaded. This rises sharply in the 5th century CE, when all the minimi are highly leaded, revealing that minimi were being debased during this time. The following period might be interpreted as a recovery in copper-based coinage. The reappearance of low leaded metal accounts for around 30% of the minimi analysed at Jerash during the Byzantine period. This use of unleaded copper-based coinage increases further still into the period of early Islamic coinage, where the pre-reform Umayyad fulus can all be classified as low lead or unleaded copper-alloy. However, this changes sharply for the post-reform Umayyad coinage, where just over 80% of the fulus in circulation are heavily leaded. Small change in big cities

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Fig. 2. Chemical mapping of a heavily leaded minimus

(lower) and an unleaded copper-alloy minimus (top); blue represents the distribution of lead (Pb) and red represents the distribution of copper (Cu). White scale bar = 5 mm (illustration: T. Birch).

Fig. 3. Stacked barplot of the chronology of the relative proportion of heavily leaded (>5 weight % Pb)

to low/unleaded ( 4.5%), and chemical elements such as iron, copper and zinc – to mention but a few. The dark, brown soil type, instead, is widely found in tributary valley bottoms and contains much lower amounts of organic matter (LOI 1.6%) – almost half the amount recorded in the red, sandy soil. In terms of chemical properties, the dark brown soil type had lower chemical concentrations than the red soil type but yielded slightly richer amounts of some metallic elements, such as cobalt, manganese and barium. Compared with the regional soils, archaeological sediments generally had very low contents of organic matter and most chemical elements but for enrichment in some salts, metals and rare earth elements (Fig. 4). The sediments found in the floors yielded higher contents of organic matter (LOI > 2%) and specific elements including, for example, aluminium, antimony, barium, potassium, nickel, sodium, vanadium and some rare earth elements (e.g., cerium, lanthanum). Sediments from other occupation surfaces, adjoining to the floors and provisionally attributed to external areas, yielded generally depleted or range concentrations of most elements. In apparent contrast to the floors, these spaces were enriched in barium, cobalt, potassium, sodium and lead and contained much depleted concentrations of rare earth elements. Surprisingly, most of the key chemical elements traditionally considered as anthropic markers in archaeology (e.g., calcium, phosphorus, manganese) were virtually absent in our archaeological sediments. 3.2 Indoor spaces

The floors investigated are composed of red sands and contain variable amounts of daub fragments. The main constituent of such building material is a bright red sand, similar to the lateritic red, sandy soils and sediments recorded in the area and analysed for chemical properties. Enhanced levels of elements such as aluminium, caesium and zirconium in the floors may well reflect the background chemistry of red lateritic sandy material used for making the daub. However, enrichment of other elements found in the floors, such as barium, iron, potassium, sodium, strontium, nickel, antimony, vanadium and rare earth elements (cerium, lanthanum, samarium) cannot be explained in the same way. Most of these elements can concentrate where organic matter is deposited and/ or used and are relatively stable and resistant once they reach the soil. They have been found concentrated in archaeological sites, but sources of input may be quite different, ranging from wood, bone ash and dung to sea-related resources such as seaweed, fish and shells. Some metallic elements (e.g., antimony), instead, must be related to the presence and/or processing of metal-bearing resources, such as lead, iron or even pigments. Rare earth elements (e.g., cerium, lanthanum, samarium) are quite special in that they can be released in soils/sediments through what is generally called ‘human detritus’: that is, residues of skin, hair and nails. Defining space in house contexts: Chemical mapping at Unguja Ukuu, Zanzibar

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Fig. 4. Selected chemical element concentrations detected in the house trench (Zanzibar Urban Transitions

Project).

The floor’s chemical signature may thus derive from a combination of things. People spending time indoors may explain concentrations of rare earth elements, possibly using (eating?) marine resources, which would release elements such as potassium, sodium and vanadium. Iron and nickel may be associated with the presence or use of animal dung (e.g., as fuel or building material). 3.3 Outdoor areas

In contrast with the floors, sandy occupation surfaces yielded a very different chemical signature: Most elements were found in much depleted contents. Such a pattern suggests that these surfaces were associated with unroofed spaces, kept relatively clean of 268

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waste and possibly less intensively used by people. Enrichment of metallic elements in these spaces would point to the presence and use of metal-bearing resources and wood ash (e.g., barium, cobalt, potassium, lead). However, in contexts where metalworking debris and wood charcoal have been recorded, these elements are found in much lower concentrations. Another potentially important source of metallic elements are pigments. It is not unreasonable to consider that inhabitants may have used these spaces for activities involving the use of pigments. 4. Conclusions

The type of chemical enrichment usually linked to anthropogenic impact on archaeological deposits appears hardly visible in the house investigated at Unguja Ukuu. This may be due to local environmental conditions contemporary to the occupation but also to post-abandonment processes. However, when a wider suite of elements is considered, we can detect important chemical patterns of spatial organisation. During the excavation, the division between indoor and outdoor space was sometime impossible to record given the very nature of house deposits, with standing architecture and floors being made of the same red, lateritic sandy materials. The determination of the physical and chemical properties of the sediments spread across the various archaeological contexts enables the detection of differences between spaces. Rare earth element enrichment seems to mark the division between different spaces: enhanced levels in the indoor floors; depleted levels in sandy surfaces outdoors. The floor chemistry appears to reflect the input of lateritic sands used as building material, the presence of people and possibly the use of sea-related resources. Outdoor surfaces, instead, may have functioned as patio-like spaces where specialised activities may have taken place. In sum, a tight sampling resolution and the analysis of a wide range of elements were key for detecting different sediment types and associated spaces within the house. Highresolution chemical mapping was instrumental in establishing chemical concentrations that may be associated with specific activities. However, elements traditionally used in archaeological research as anthropogenic markers were not particularly informative in our house contexts. Had we not expanded the suite of elements to be measured and developed a cluster-based approach (rather than a single-element one) in the interpretation, we would not have been able to decode the record of uses, conditions and activities taking place in the house. Clusters of elements, including trace and rare earth elements, in fact, proved to be particularly sensitive to picking up differences between roofed/unroofed spaces, intensity of space use and types of activities. 5. Acknowledgements

The research presented here was supported by funds from the Danish National Research Foundation under the grant DNRF119 – Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet). We are grateful to Rubina Raja and Søren Sindbæk for their support. Additional funding was provided by the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, UpDefining space in house contexts: Chemical mapping at Unguja Ukuu, Zanzibar

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psala; the British Academy; and the School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University. Excavations and sample export were conducted under permits from the Department of Antiquities, Zanzibar, and in collaboration with Abdallah K. Ali, Director of Antiquities. We are especially grateful to the field team and close project collaborators (Abdallah K. Ali, Ema Baužytė, Wolfgang Alders, Thomas Fitton and Søren M. Kristiansen) and our assistants and hosts in Unguja Ukuu for making us welcome and for providing invaluable information and support. 6. Bibliography Crowther, A., Faulkner P., Prendergast, M.E., Quintana Morales, E.M., Horton, M., Wilmsen, E., Kotarba-Morley, A.M., Christie, A., Petek, N., Tibesasa, R., Douka, K., Picornell-Gelabert, L., Carah, X. & Boivin, N. (2016). Coastal Subsistence, Maritime Trade, and the Colonization of Small Offshore Islands in Eastern African Prehistory. The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, 11 (2), 211-237. Fitton, F. & Wynne-Jones, S. (2017). Understanding the layout of early coastal settlement at Unguja Ukuu, Zanzibar. Antiquity, 91 (359), 1268-1284. French, C. (2015). A handbook of geoarchaeological approaches for investigating landscapes and settlement sites. Oxford: Oxbow. Horton, M.C. & Clark, C.M. (1985). The Zanzibar Survey 1984‑5. Zanzibar: Ministry of Information Culture and Sports. Juma, A. (2004). Unguja Ukuu on Zanzibar: An archaeological study of early urbanism. Uppsala: Uppsala University. Oonk, S., Slomp, C.P. & Huisman D.J. (2009). Geochemistry as an aid in archaeological prospection and site interpretation: Current issues and research directions. Archaeological Prospection, 16, 35-51.

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EMA BAUŽYT Ė

Iron production technologies and trade networks in Swahili East Africa 1. Research questions and setting

The East African coast is home to a cultural entity called the Swahili. The Swahili inhabit the islands and mainland shores from Somalia, through Kenya, to Tanzania and Mozambique, and almost universally speak Kiswahili and practice Islam. The early settlements associated with the Swahili tradition date to the second half of the 1st millennium CE and are characterized by wattle and daub houses, by finds marking emerging trade links with the Persian Gulf and the wider Indian Ocean world and by local crafts including production of ceramics, iron, textile and shell beads. Most Swahili settlements reached the height of their economic prosperity in the first half of the 2nd millennium CE and are defined in this period by coral stone house architecture, evidence of adoption of Islam, and by intensified long distance trade (Horton & Middleton 2000; LaViolette & Wynne Jones 2018). The Swahili history post-1500 is eventful in its own right, with periods of Portuguese and Omani colonialism and eventual reclamation of independence in the second half of the 20th century. The present study focuses on the thousand years of Swahili history spanning from 500 to 1500 CE as it relates to iron production along the coast. During this period, Swahili settlements developed from small villages into urban centers, and many sites were abandoned and moved or resettled. The settlements grew and refined their trade networks, with their hinterlands and the Indian Ocean trade system providing a complex framework for interpretations. The archaeological materials retrieved from eight archaeological sites scattered along the East African coast and islands (Fig. 1) offer many approaches to analyze this transition. One field of study that can yield great insights is the development of Swahili iron working technologies and their influence on urban development and trade networks. Evidence of iron working is found at the vast majority of Swahili sites, ranging from small scale smithing to the industrial scale smelting of iron ores. This craft was extremely important for local use and likely for long distance trade. However, very limited research has been carried out to investigate iron production technologies on the coast and their co-evolution with urban growth and trade. A range of technological and conceptual questions relating to iron production along the coast remain to be answered through high-definition studies that combine detailed laboratory-based methods with Iron production technologies and trade networks in Swahili East Africa

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Fig. 1. Map of sites selected for the

study (graphics: L. Hilmar, Grafisk Tegnestue, Moesgaard Museum).

archaeological context. Firstly, we need to identify which sites produced raw iron by extracting it from ores, and which focused on the secondary production of iron including smithing and forging – or if these technologies coexisted at a given site. Secondly, it is necessary to reconstruct the raw materials and technological and thermodynamic processes involved in iron smelting and smithing. Elemental and petrographic analyses are needed in order to determine the nature of the materials used and whether they have the potential to be obtained locally or needed to be imported from elsewhere. The acquired results will help evaluate the expertise of local craftsmen and determine whether there is evidence of standardized production. In this way, it will be possible to assess whether the raw materials used, and the technologies employed, are comparable across sites, indicating common material sources and/or sharing of technological knowhow. Iron production sites on the Swahili coast cover a broad range of settlements that vary in size, status and chronological focus. Different sites present different challenges and pose individual questions that the study has set out to answer. Below, I introduce two cases – among several currently being studied – that illustrate the range of contexts and challenges encountered. 272

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Iron slag eroding from a red earth outcrop onto the Kilwa Nguruni shore, 2016 (photo: T. Fitton).

Fig. 2.

2. Kilwa Kisiwani

The Kilwa site is situated on an island of the coast of southern Tanzania and was one of the earliest and most prominent settlements along the coast. The island is approximately 6 km long and 4 km wide at its wider northern end. It dates back to at least the 8th century CE and reached its greatest influence and prosperity at around 1200 CE (Chittick 1974). Historical records and imported archaeological materials suggest that the site may have largely monopolized maritime trade along the present day southern Tanzanian coast, and the economic power accumulated by Kilwa traders was used, in part, to build monumental structures, which further elevate and exhibit the status of the site. This resulted in some of the most astounding coral stone architecture found along the coast, and, furthermore, it demonstrates an amount of wealth that is rarely seen elsewhere in the region. Therefore, it is not surprising that Kilwa Kisiwani is one of the most extensively surveyed and excavated sites along the coast. Research into iron production at the site, however, has been limited to Mapunda and Chami’s excavations at Kilwa Nguruni, an area of the island situated along the coast to the east of the main site. The area extends about 1 km, and ironworking debris is found throughout (Fig. 2). The excavated iron slag undoubtedly evidences smelting practices, although excavations did not reveal any furnace remains. Regardless, it is clear that iron was being produced on a huge scale, making Nguruni a major production center for the material. Mapunda and Chami (2006) connected such extensive iron production to an early site occupation period that has not been identified by other researchers. Iron production technologies and trade networks in Swahili East Africa

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However, a significant part of the investigated area was subject to extensive erosion complicating the stratigraphy, and some of the early dates have been based on typology of ceramic finds that could be assigned to later traditions as well. If Mapunda and Chami’s suggestions are correct, this may mean that iron production predated any significant development on site and even potentially acted as a catalyst for the accumulation of wealth. However, due to most slag material being present in secondary deposition heaps or eroded onto the coastline, it is currently not possible to establish highly reliable contexts and stratigraphy in the case of Kilwa. As part of the present author’s research, an experimental method has been designed to date the slag directly using the radiocarbon method. This may enable direct dating of the smelting events and enable us to position them in the chronological framework of Kilwa Kisiwani’s development. Addressing the question of when iron production began in Kilwa and when it was the most intense opens other avenues of inquiry. We can then start asking to what extent iron production was important to the financial prosperity of Kilwa and its urban expansion. Was this only one of the many trade commodities or did it in fact play a more fundamental role in establishing and maintaining long distance trade links? If so, was this because of the distinct quality of the iron produced here, or because of sheer quantities making the metal relatively cheap and ensuring a steady supply of iron tools? It is apparent that at Kilwa, iron production was a major undertaking spatially separated from the domestic quarters of the site. What will need to be shown is whether such separation was merely physical, and whether the impact of iron production on the prosperity and urban growth of the site was in fact far more considerable than previously thought. 3. Dakawa

The site of Dakawa in Tanzania presents a striking contrast to that of Kilwa Kisiwani. Dakawa is located approximately 200 km inland in the Morogoro region, south of the Uluguru Mountains, on the Wami River that flows into the Indian Ocean directly across from the Zanzibar Island. Dakawa is a relatively small site spanning about 100 m northsouth and 140 m east-west. The settlement was dated, using ceramics and radiocarbon evidence, to 600-1000 CE. The finds associated with the later occupation are limited to ceramics, daub, animal bone and artefacts related to iron production, such as slag (see Fig. 3), tuyéres, iron ore and grinding stones (Haaland & Msuya 2000). Little to no evidence has been found to substantiate the hypothesis of a permanent settlement, and it may well be that Dakawa was a seasonal smelting site. Even if this is not the case, it is clear that the site is drastically different from other sites included in the research project and cannot be considered to be a Swahili site, not least due to its geographic position. Interestingly, however, archaeological excavations have uncovered extensive assemblages of ceramic ware fragments synonymous with those found along the coast. This presents strong evidence of contact with coastal settlers. Therefore, the site has been selected for research aiming to compare iron slag with coastal materials and search for direct evidence as to whether iron smelted in Dakawa was traded to the coast. The 274

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Smelting slag excavated at Dakawa as found at Museum of Bergen storage facilities, 2016

Fig. 3.

(photo: E. Baužytė).

quantitative elemental data and petrographic analysis of slag can be used to compare sites and search for tangible evidence of trade connections with the hinterland. It is commonly accepted that the coastal settlements were highly reliant on mainland sites for materials and commodities to be further traded with merchants from the Arab world and Asia. While such long distance trade networks are evident from numerous imported materials found along the coast, their connections with the mainland sites are far less visible in the archaeological record. Studying Dakawa is therefore all the more important, as it accounts for this underrepresented part of the Swahili trade network and illustrates the multitude of resources on which urban centers rely. 4. Discussion

Dakawa and Kilwa Kisiwani fall at different ends of the spectrum of urban development and present an interesting case for comparison. While Kilwa is a paradigm of early urban centers, an entrepôt with monumental structures, religious institutions and political autonomy, Dakawa has little evidence to suggest that the site was settled on a permanent basis – it had no structural remains and limited evidence of sustainable Iron production technologies and trade networks in Swahili East Africa

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means of subsistence. Iron working is one of the very few aspects that these sites have in common. It is evident that both relied highly on their production, yet Dakawa was abandoned in the 2nd millennium while Kilwa Kisiwani reached the height of its prosperity around this time. Further research is needed to understand iron production at these sites and whether the focus on the craft accelerated urban growth, development of trade networks and accumulation of wealth or inhibited the sites’ long-term sustainability as resource availability and market demands fluctuated. Furthermore, the detailed analytical approach that the study is taking allows for an evaluation of resource availability, identification of the stages of chaîne operatoire taking place at a given site, their dependency on imported iron and, subsequently, enables the author to suggest directions of material flows. In other words, comparing material from Dakawa with finds from coastal sites may point to where iron from hinterland was moved. Similarly, comparing iron slag from coastal sites may reveal regional networks of goods and knowledge transfer suggesting that common raw materials and common methods for iron extraction were used, or that some sites may have depended on others within the vicinity to support their needs for iron. The material provides a focused way to understand how settlements were interconnected and to what extent they were self-sustainable. Dakawa and Kilwa Kisiwani present only two examples of the impact of iron production in the settlement development. A number of other sites remain to reveal the numerous roles that iron production played in Swahili urban environments, and to elucidate the complex and multifaceted ways in which iron production transformed Swahili economic and urban landscapes. 5. Acknowledgements

This work is generously supported by the Danish National Research Foundation under the grant DNRF 119 – Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet). 6. Bibliography Chittick, N. (1974). Kilwa: an Islamic trading city on the East African coast. Nairobi: The British Institute in East Africa. Haaland, R. & Msuya, C.S. (2000). Pottery production, iron working, and trade in the Early Iron Age: The case of Dakawa, east-central Tanzania. AZANIA: Journal of the British Institute in Eastern Africa, 35 (1), 75-106. Horton, M. & Middleton, J. (2000). The Swahili: The social landscape of a mercantile society. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. LaViolette, A. & Wynne-Jones, S. (2017). The Swahili World. In: Wynne-Jones, S. & LaViolette, A. (eds.). The Swahili World. London-New York: Routledge, pp. 1-14. Mapunda, B.B. & Chami, F. (2006). Analysis report of metallurgical materials from Nguruni Site, Kilwa Kisiwani, southern Tanzania. In: Kinahan, J. & Kinahan, J. (eds.). The African Archaeology Network: Research in Progress. Dar es Salaam: Dar es Salaam University Press, pp. 151-166.

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STEPHANIE WYNNE-JONES, MARK HORTON, JEFFREY FLEISHER & JESPER OLSEN

Dating Kilwa Kisiwani: A thousand years of East African history in an urban stratigraphy 1. Introduction

This chapter discusses excavations and sampling for a high-definition dating campaign at Kilwa Kisiwani, on the southern coast of Tanzania. Kilwa Kisiwani occupies an island in a drowned estuary, part of a small archipelago that includes the islands of Sanje ya Kati and Songo Mnara (Fig. 1). From around the 9th century onwards, these islands hosted a remarkable urban configuration made up of a series of stonetowns across the archipelago, now listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Of these, Kilwa Kisiwani is the largest and the longest-lived, having had a fluctuating urban occupation over a millennium from around 800 CE until the late 18th century. The town was extensively excavated in the 1960s (Chittick 1974) with smaller campaigns since then (Chami 2006), but only three radiocarbon dates were attempted, two of which were dismissed as stratigraphically impossible (Chittick 1974: 48-49). As one of the most enduring Swahili stonetowns, the Kilwa sequence provides a framework around which the archaeology of the coast has been shaped, and a detailed sequence of absolute dates is long overdue. The research reported here comprised a single large exposure (4 m x 4 m) in an area of known potential immediately south of the Great Mosque. Excavations were designed explicitly to gather information for radiocarbon analyses and the quantification of artefacts: the first detailed radiocarbon chronology for any urban stratigraphy on the eastern African coast. Excavation was undertaken as a fully stratigraphic project using the single context system, with total sieving of all the deposits together with extensive flotation to recover carbonised seeds and organic materials. The radiocarbon dating is currently underway at the Centre for Urban Network Evolutions. 2. Kilwa in global history

Kilwa is first mentioned on a Fatimid-period map of the East African coast, probably dating to the 1060s (Rapoport & Savage-Smith 2014). It rose to prominence during the peak in international maritime trade between the 13th and 15th centuries CE. This was Dating Kilwa Kisiwani

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Fig. 1. Kilwa archipelago, showing

islands of Sanje ya Kati and Songo Mnara (figure: S. WynneJones).

the period when the ‘Islamic world system’ in the Indian Ocean was well established and as yet untroubled by direct incursion from European naval powers. It is widely believed that the town’s prosperity derived largely from its control of the gold trade with southern Africa, and specifically, with the African state centred on Great Zimbabwe. The Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta visited the Swahili coast in 1331 and reported on a select few of the major towns of that time: Mogadishu, Mombasa, and Kilwa. At Kilwa, he was impressed by the beauty of the architecture, the wealth and the Islamic piety of the people, and by the strength and generosity of Kilwa’s sultan, al-Hasan bin Sulaiman (Freeman-Grenville 1962: 40). When the Portuguese arrived on the coast, having rounded the Cape in 1498, they gave similarly glowing impressions of the town of Kilwa, even as they set about subduing it with the construction of a fort and the redirection of much of the southern African gold trade by which the town had grown rich. Portuguese travellers were also the first to transcribe the Kilwa Chronicle, a local history relating the dynastic succession of the town and giving an account of its chronology through the lens of its rulers (Freeman-Grenville 1962: 27-32). This is the earliest written version of an indigenous history for the coast, although it is complemented by 278

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The audience court of the palace of Husuni Kubwa, one of Kilwa’s unique architectural gems

Fig. 2.

(photo: S. Wynne-Jones).

two further versions transcribed in later centuries from an oral tradition that clearly remained in circulation. These traditions relate the founding of seven towns along the eastern African coast by settlers from Shiraz (now in modern Iran). The story of the foundation of Kilwa refers to an Ali, who bought the island with cloth from a local chief and converted the population to Islam. Although the so-called ‘Shirazi myths’ are common along the coast, retold in multiple locations as part of the origin stories for Swahili towns, they are now recognised as figurative rather than literal and do not imply the actual settlement of Persians (Pouwels 1984). Eastern African coastal towns have long been Islamic, through the conversion of their inhabitants, and the connections with the Gulf for trade are as old as the settlement of the littoral. The Kilwa Chronicle does more than document the Shirazi dynasty that ‘founded’ Kilwa; it goes on to report on a line of rulers, and a dynastic shift to a Mahdali clan in later centuries. These histories gave the framework for the investment of significant archaeological effort into excavations at Kilwa during the 1960s, sponsored by the British Academy and what was to become the British Institute in Eastern Africa (Chittick 1974). These were seen at the time as providing confirming detail for the historical framework and for the idea that Swahili/coastal settlement was descended from Arab/Persian settler communities on the coast. Excavations focused on the largest stone monuments, which at Kilwa are extraordinary: the Great Mosque, the 14th-century palace of Husuni Kubwa (Fig. 2), and some of the larger houses and community mosques. Here, amongst Dating Kilwa Kisiwani

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the grandeur of Kilwa’s architectural legacy, the excavators found imported goods that testified to trade with the wider Islamic world, as well as a local production of silver and copper coinage that repeated some of the names in the Kilwa Chronicle. 3. Dates and implications

The original excavations at Kilwa were thus complicated by a flawed starting hypothesis, which looked to external sources for the origins and culture of the town. This has chronological implications as Chittick dated the archaeological phases by crossreferencing between the histories and the record of imported goods. Using a combination of imported sherds, archaeological indicators (like coins with named sultans), and architectural shifts thought to relate to new arrivals from the Islamic world, Chittick (1974: 18-19) ascribed the archaeology of Kilwa to seven phases (Table 1). The earliest levels were always poorly resolved in this scheme, with the first occupation of the site thought to relate to the 9th century CE but with a lack of direct dating evidence. Three charcoal samples submitted for radiocarbon dating seem not to have offered much assistance, dating a burnt layer at the start of the sequence to the 2nd (1825± 110 years BP) and the 7th (1370 ± 110 years BP) centuries respectively. Since the 1960s, the idea that Swahili towns were founded by immigrants, or that they might have made up the majority of the population, has been widely demonstrated as false through a series of studies that have focused on urban origins and evolution elsewhere on the coast (Horton 1996). These studies have also challenged some of the dates assigned on the basis of imported ceramics and coins from the Kilwa mint (Horton, Oddy, & Brown 1986), and have consistently pushed back the chronology of the East African coast to encompass an earlier occupation from the 7th century CE at some coastal locations. Although the effects on Kilwa’s chronology might be inferred (Chami 2006), the sequence devised by Chittick has never been directly tested. 4. The 2016 excavations

Fieldwork in 2016 set out to do just that. Under the aegis of the Songo Mnara Urban Landscape Project, which is exploring urban life in the Kilwa archipelago, we excavated a 4 m x 4 m trench to the south of Kilwa’s Great Mosque. The trench was located directly next to Chittick’s Trench ZLL, which was never backfilled and was visible as a massive slumped hole. This trench contained a more than 3 metre stratigraphy with features such as a lime kiln and other pits, with a full range of stratigraphic levels. The 2016 trench, KK001, was adjacent to ZLL, immediately to the south. The aim was to relocate the stratigraphy described by Chittick; this was one of the few places that he encountered levels dating to the earliest periods of the site. We conducted a single context, stratigraphic excavation. All sediments were both dry sieved (2 mm mesh) and wet sieved (0.5 mm mesh) to recover all artefacts and faunal material. Samples from all contexts were floated for carbonised plant remains. The excavations revealed a sequence of structures apparently covering the entire pre280

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Chittick’s Periods

1a c. 800–1000

1b 1000‑ 1150/1200

2 1200–290

3a c. 1290–1400

Archaeological indicators

Histories

Trench ZLL

Strat 8/9: white sand, scatter of human bone, water hole, overlying grey midden. Above, born soils, ashy levels, pits and slots. Early Tana Tradition pottery, Plain ware.

Early Gulf ceramics (white glazed wares, Turquoise Glazed Wares) Timber buildings

Trench KK001

Possible revised dates

1

73‑77, 80: grey brown sandy layers 30 cm, fish bones, ash spreads, small pits, Early Tana Tradition, 1 x white glaze import

2

60–72: multiple floor ash spreads, daub walls and post holes, at least 850–1000 6 buildings, 85 cm. Plain wares, white glaze, SI, Siraf jars

1000–1050

800–850

Sgraffiato pottery, timber and daub architecture

Earliest reference to Kilwa c. 1060. Kilwa letters – Ibadhi presence c. 1115?

Strat 5/6/7: multiple red earth and ash spreads, post holes and slots suggesting 2 x rectangular buildings. Pottery mostly Plain wares

3

52, 54, 56–9: construction of tower, associated daub spread 20 cm. Hatched sgraffiato. Single silver coin.

Later sgraffiato pottery. Earliest coins and stone buildings

Shirazi dynasty The Matam‑ andalin interregnum

Strat 2/3/4: construction of 4 phases of super‑ imposed lime kilns, 1022– 1329 cal AD. Miniature 5 coins of Ali in flue. Green sgraffiato, Qingbai and white wares

36–42: infill of space around kiln/tower with rubbish, ash and daub spreads, lots of fish bones. Later sgraff pottery, Qingbai, early celadon.

1150–1200

Madhali dynasty, visit of Ibn Battuta in 1331

Strat 1: upper layer of midden. Husuni modelled wares, celadon. Plaster floor of c. 1300, cut by pits and coins of Sulaiman al‑Hasan and al‑Hasan b. Sulaiman. Construction of Gt House

6

17–38: construction of enclosure wall, using porites blocks, early levels late scraff/ Qingbai. Use of area includes dumps and spreads with pits, with BY / celadon (post 1250) against wall.

1200–1350

7

6‑16: plaster floor level with mofa oven ash spreads, large pits. Associated with Gt House. Green and Blue Monochromes, celadons etc.

1350–1500

Later sgraffiato/ BY pottery Mahdali coins, Husunis and Gt Mosque extension. Husuni modelled wares, celadons

3b c. 1400–1500

Monochrome pottery, wheeled wares, Blue on white. Large scale coral houses

The ‘New Rain’ period of Amirs and disputed sultans

4 1500–1700

General period of decline, although little changes in material culture

Portuguese occupation 1498/ 1505–1513

5 1700–1800

Generally late 18th century, rebuilding associated with the revival of the slave trade

Omani occupation, c. 1700; French treaty 1776

Deposits removed or never present.

Table 1.

Chittick’s chronology, with finds from KK001 cross-referenced. Dating Kilwa Kisiwani

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Fig. 3. Section drawing of KK001, showing multiple phases (figure: M. Horton).

colonial chronology of the site (Table 1 & Fig. 3). The upper layers relate to coral-built structures of the 14th to 15th centuries. These were built above the foundations of an enigmatic circular structure in porites, coral blocks that had been reduced down to the foundations. A preliminary interpretation of this foundation might be that it represents an earlier minaret, destroyed during a change of sectarian allegiance. The 14th-century mosques of Kilwa do not possess minarets. Beneath this configuration of stones lay a sequence of packed-earth floors relating to wattle and daub structures. In general, the artefact record confirms some patterns known from elsewhere, yet Kilwa has some unique aspects. As in Chittick’s excavations, the imported pottery recovered provides a general chronological estimate: The post-1100 CE period is indicated by Persian late sgraffiato and blue/green monochrome pottery, and Chinese Qingbai and celadon pottery; the pre-1100 CE period is indicated by Persian pottery types: hatched sgraffiato, white glaze, and Sasanian Islamic pottery. At Kilwa, only low levels of imported ceramics are found before the 11th century. Chittick noted this and linked it to the arrival of the Shirazi at that time. Although we might now disagree with this line of argument, it is notable that Kilwa was not part of the early flourishing of trade seen at sites elsewhere from the 7th century. Instead, it had only few imported ceramics until the second millennium. The exact moment at which Kilwa was incorporated into significant trading relationships will be calibrated by dating this sequence; there is a marked upswing in import ratio (Fig. 4) in what we take to be the late 12th century CE. This will need explanation. Otherwise, we can see a more familiar pattern of shifting subsistence priorities from a diet rich in fish to one rich in non-fish protein sources 282

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Import ratio as % of all ceramics 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Period (KK001)

Imported sherd ratios (as % of ceramic assemblage) over time at Kilwa (figure: M. Horton).

Fig. 4.

500 450 400 350 300 250 200

fish weight (g) non-fish weight (g)

150 100 50

KK01003

KK01006

KK01011

KK01015

KK01019

KK01022

KK01026

KK01030

KK01033

KK01039

KK01044

KK01048

KK01054

KK01056

KK01059

KK01062

KK01065

KK01070

KK01073

KK01076

0

Excavated contexts, earliest to latest

Ratios of fish to non-fish bones in contexts recovered from KK001 (figure: M. Horton). Dating Kilwa Kisiwani

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Fig. 5.

283

250

200

150

100

Glass beads Shell beads

KK01013

KK01017

KK01019

KK01020

KK01022

KK01023

KK01026

KK01030

KK01031

KK01033

KK01036

KK01039

KK01042

KK01045

KK01051

KK01055

KK01057

KK01060

KK01062

KK01064

KK01066

KK01069

KK01070

0 KK01071

KK01076

KK01073-WS

50

Excavated contexts, earliest to latest

Fig. 6. Quantities of shell and glass beads in contexts recovered from KK001 (figure: M. Horton).

as the town grew in size and wealth (Fig. 5). A clear transition from the abundance of shell beads to a similar abundance of (imported) glass beads can be seen through the sequence (Fig. 6). These are trends that can be seen at a coastal scale; here we can for the first time assign them a precise chronology. 5. High-definition dating at Kilwa

Samples have been chosen from across the range of contexts excavated in KK001. These are all tightly controlled archaeological strata, representing sealed deposits such as pit fills, foundation and destruction levels. We have targeted key moments in the sequence that we see, such as the strata where we see the first instances of particular import types, the silver coin, as well as several samples from the earliest layers. We will begin with a series of ten dates from the unit, with the possibility of as many as forty radiocarbon determinations if the results justify it. This will be not only the best-dated urban sequence in Africa, but also a unique experiment in exploring possibilities for a high-definition urban chronology. All contexts were also chosen such that they offered paired samples of marine and terrestrial carbon sources, such as fish vs. animal bone. This will also allow us to calibrate the marine reservoir effect for this region, where there is almost no information on this crucial factor affecting carbon dating in coastal contexts. 284

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The questions that can be approached through this dating programme are of both regional and global importance. At an eastern African scale, this will offer answers to key questions about the origins and timing of coastal urban development; in combination with the data from Unguja Ukuu it will allow insights into regional variation as well. At an Indian Ocean scale, the chronological resolution will enable us to explore object flows, comparing eastern African coastal trajectories to those of the trading societies with which they were in contact. More generally, this will be the first experiment in high-resolution radiocarbon dating in a tropical, sub-Saharan African context, and will provide an important methodological case study for global archaeologies. The ability to add precision to calibration of the marine reservoir effect for the western Indian Ocean will also ensure that the work has a broad application. Kilwa’s urban story thus has the opportunity once more to act on a global stage. 6. Acknowledgements

Fieldwork at Kilwa Kisiwani was funded as part of the Songo Mnara Urban Landscape Project, supported by the National Science Foundation (USA) under BCS 1123091; the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) under AH/J502716/1. The Songo Mnara Urban Landscape Project is carried out in collaboration with the Antiquities Division, Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism, Tanzania, under excavation permit 14/2015/2016; ERV No. 757058. 7. Bibliography Chami, F. (2006). The Archaeology of Pre-Islamic Kilwa Kisiwani (Island). In: Kinahan, J. and Kinahan, J. (eds). The African Archaeology Network: Research in Progress. Dar es Salaam: Dar es Salaam University Press, pp. 119-150. Chittick, H.N. (1974). Kilwa: an Islamic trading city on the East African coast. Nairobi and London: British Institute in Eastern Africa. Freeman-Grenville, G.S.P. (1962). The East African Coast. Select Documents from the First to the Earlier Nineteenth Centuries. London: Clarendon Press. Horton, M.C. (1996). Shanga: The archaeology of a Muslim trading community on the coast of East Africa. Nairobi: British Institute in Eastern Africa. Horton, M.C., Oddy, W.A. & Brown, H. (1986). The Mtambwe Hoard. Azania XXI, 115-123. Pouwels, R. (1984). Oral Historiography and the Shirazi of the East African Coast. History in Africa, 11, 237-267. Rapoport, Y. & Savage-Smith, E. (eds.). (2014). Kitāb Gharāʾib al-funūn wa-mulaḥ al-ʿuyūn.

Dating Kilwa Kisiwani

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285

BETWEEN URBAN WORLDS

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RUBINA RAJA & SØREN M. SINDBÆK

Through the looking glass: Glass, high-definition archaeology and urban networks in the 8th century CE from North to South ‘It seems very pretty,’ she said when she had finished it, ‘but it’s RATHER hard to understand! … Somehow it seemed to fill my head with ideas’ Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There

1. Introduction

Glass is not only a pretty and thoroughly useful material. It is also privileged as an archaeological index of connectivity for at least three reasons. First, it was unquestionably exchanged widely in ancient and medieval times. Combined with, secondly, its proverbial liability to break beyond repair, and, thirdly, a favourable preservation compared to many other materials, this makes it essential as a record of past networks. Yet even so, it can indeed be hard to understand. While ancient and medieval glass has been investigated for decades, it has often been studied for its luxury qualities or merely as objects of prestige. Geochemical studies have complemented archaeology to distinguish the general composition of glasses and their components. However, the more recent development of techniques for studying detailed trace elements and isotopic signatures has truly transformed the study of the production and distribution mechanisms of glass ‘from kaleidoscope to crystal ball’ (Rehren & Freestone 2015). Together with the high-definition investigation of production sites and other contexts, these have begun to reveal patterns of circulation, and, with these, the pivotal role often played by urban networks. Glass was invented in the Middle East several millennia BCE, and it was a desirable commodity that spread across the Mediterranean region from an early point in time. While glass blowing was only invented in Classical Antiquity and expanded the variety of ways in which glass could be used, glass had already long been moulded into objects for usage as well. In recent years, through the growing focus on the integration of natural science methods with archaeological questions, one major line of enquiry Through the looking glass

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289

has been to investigate the provenance of raw glass on the one hand and, on the other, glass objects made in a variety of locations. Raw glass was produced in Egypt and later at several places on the Levantine coast. The glass was exported from there in large chunks to locations across the ancient world. While it is clear to us where raw glass production places were located, it is much more difficult to grasp which were the centres of production of glass items. Through the discovery of ancient shipwrecks loaded with cargo, it has also become clear that broken glass could be collected, sorted into colours and moved around the Mediterranean for later recycling. It has become clear through recent research that glass was often recycled on site as well (Barfod et al. in press). We may thus conclude that glass was moved around in its raw state, as prefabricated objects, and in a broken and recycled state in order to be reused yet again. While these observations might not be surprising, they do give us the opportunity to examine networks of urban societies and flows of material. In recent years, research on glass production, recycling and trade in the 8th century CE has taken centre stage in research conducted at the Centre for Urban Network Evolutions within the framework of the Northern Emporium project as well as the Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter Project. 2. Trade objects and production techniques

Jerash was, in large part, devastated in the middle of the 8th century CE, more exactly on 18 January 749 CE, when an earthquake hit the region. The Northwest Quarter was left desolate after this event. In the period between 2014 and 2016, a set of domestic structures, all of which belong to the Umayyad period, 661-750 CE, were excavated there (Lichtenberger & Raja 2016 and 2017). One of the houses contained glass vessels that had come from Egypt and Mesopotamia (Fig. 1). It is seldom that such import vessels are found in domestic contexts from this time, but these finds show that exchange networks including items of prestige were still in place during this period, which is often said to have been one of contraction and isolation in the Umayyad reigned regions, since the dynasty was going through a crisis. Such a crisis, however, was not reflected in the material found in the so-called House of the Scroll in Jerash. In shops excavated by the Italian mission in Jerash, situated along the main street, hoards of broken glass items have been found (Baldoni forthcoming). These seem to have been prepared for recycling and reuse for the production of new items for the local society. While the Roman period items seem to have been imported from outside the city, an intensification in local recycling took place from the Late Antique period onwards (4th century CE). While this could be interpreted as a decline in access to resources, it might also be understood as an optimisation of the resources already available within the walls of the city. This does not necessarily mean that Jerash was less wealthy than earlier but that resources could be focused in other areas than glass imports. Another area in which changes in the urban network cycles can be traced is the construction and use of monumental buildings, such as sanctuaries, theatres and the bath buildings. Such monumental buildings partly fell out of use, and building materials for 290

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Vessels from the so-called House of the Scroll (trench K) in Jerash. Left: find no. J14-Kh-3-22x

Fig. 1.

(G186). Right: find no. J14-Kg-3-11x (G144) (copyright: The Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter Project).

the construction of new buildings such as the churches and the mosque could be taken from such abandoned monuments. Although we might view this process of spoliation as one of decline and fall, there is quite another side to it, which indicates a constant wish for renewal through the recycling of resources at hand – resources which, in order to be reworked, demanded craftsmen and their skills. The early Islamic city in Jerash seems to have been one of innovation and resilience. Although not yet proven, the glass in the shops on the main street might, for example, have come from such abandoned buildings and their mosaics, that is, the baths and temples. 3. The recirculation economy

In another part of the world, other glass workshops were newly in business when the earthquake brought activities in Jerash to a close in 749 CE. Ribe was one of a small group of trading towns or emporia that emerged around the North Sea and the Baltic from the 7th to the 9th centuries CE. Besides its role as a node of emerging long-distance maritime trade, Ribe also grew as a centre of specialised craft production. In the middle of the 8th century, it was home to a remarkable set of workshops, which have left the most prolific evidence of glass working yet discovered from this period in Northern Europe. Glass workers in Ribe focused on producing multicoloured beads for which they relied on a broad range of materials and, apparently, a network of long-distance conThrough the looking glass

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291

Fig. 2. Glass beads and workshop waste from 8th-century Ribe (copyright: Museum of Southwest Jutland).

nectivity (Fig. 2). Quantities of mosaic glass tiles or tesserae in many colours, clearly Mediterranean products, were procured as raw materials. Dark blue glass, used as the base for most beads, was apparently brought to Ribe in a different way, in the form of lumps or ‘cakes’ from which many splinters were left. Multicoloured glass fused from rods of blue, red, white and yellow opaque glass was used to decorate beads with trails or patterns (Andersen & Sode 2010). At first glance, all this material could suggest a world of vibrant connectivity in which glass was obtained from a variety of sources as far away as the Mediterranean and possibly beyond. This might seem like a situation where developments at Ribe were not so distantly related to those in Jerash, and a tessera found at either site might have come from the same source. Yet a closer analysis reveals a very different pattern. Although new tesserae were still being produced in quantity in Mediterranean sites in the 8th century – those used to adorn the Great Mosque of Damascus, completed in 715 CE, are a famous example – the tesserae found at Ribe were almost certainly all centuries old: analysis has shown them to be recycled Roman soda-lime glass products from the early centuries CE. The blue glass chips are similarly old roman glass, with abundant impurities, which testify to repeated recirculation. These chips most likely consist of batches of blue tesserae that had been reheated to make the opaque texture more translucent – hence the occurrence as lumps rather than individual tiles. The bright 292

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yellow glass seen on some beads testifies even more plainly to an economy of recircula‑ tion: being composed of old glass with the addition of as much as 40% lead oxide and up to 5% tin oxide, they were a cheap substitute for new glass (Henderson 2000: 72‑74). Glass composition analyses thus transform the context of Ribe’s incipient urban network. The ultimate origin of the materials worked in the North Sea emporium lay in the Mediterranean world; but by the time the North Sea emporium was active in the 8th century, these were expired links that had no relevance for their active context. Tesserae had been used in abundance in the early centuries CE in monumental buildings and even rural villas in the northern provinces of the Roman Empire. These included the middle Rhine region, to which Ribe’s connections are amply indicated by finds of pottery and other imports. Given the lack of any other discernible Mediterranean imports, it is highly probable that Ribe’s effective source of glass was the recirculation of Roman materials that had been in Northern Europe for centuries. As in Jerash, the early urban network of the North Sea thus emerges as part of a much more regionally embedded circuit than might be assumed. 4. Reuse and recycling as urban phenomena

The reuse and recycling of glass objects in Byzantine and early Islamic Jerash has proven to be much more extensive than previously thought. Glass was collected over centuries, re‑melted, moulded and blown into new objects (Fig. 3). This practice has been observed both in the work done within the Danish‑German Jerash Northwest Quarter Project as well as by other missions (Baldoni forthcoming). While this might not be surprising, what has brought completely new evidence to light are the investigations done through isotopic analysis. These have shown that Jerash changed its raw glass production import centre in Late Antiquity, and that local glass production went from being fuelled by wood to being fuelled by olive pits (Barfod et al. in press). These results are significant for our understanding of the urban networks of Jerash in Late Antiquity and the early Islamic period, as well as for insights into the state of urban resources, which might have implications for climatic changes and changes in the cultivation of the surround‑ ing landscape of the city. The workshops in Ribe show, similarly, a world in which the recirculation of existing materials is carried out systematically. At the same time, we find this work being carried out in an unprecedented location: in a maritime trading point far beyond the former boundaries of the Roman Empire. This testifies to a network that evolved both cultur‑ ally and economically to accommodate new circumstances. 8th‑century Ribe and Jerash both show surviving, even reviving, economies based very literally on the inheritance of Roman material culture and technology, and each is defined in their regional circuit. The glass analyses help to define the real scope of their urban network and the potential dynamics behind their trajectories.

Through the looking glass

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293

Fig. 3. Recycled glass from Jerash. Left: find no. J13-Db-13-1x. Right: find no. J13-Fa-9-1 (copyright: The

Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter Project).

5. Urban flows and networks

Glass, as the examples above show, was much more than the material of mere prestige objects. Glass was a commodity that was used and exploited to its fullest and around which techniques and production cycles developed. Albeit admittedly hard to understand, evidence from contextualised, high-definition analyses of glass is essential to inform our ideas about the evolution of urban networks. The variety of uses and the recycling of glass, as well as on-going imports from other regions, show that networks both inside and between urban societies were evolving in the 8th century CE. This system of reuse of glass further shows that the view that glass offers us of urban flows and dynamics is one that promises to bring new insights into urban societies and their networks in the ancient and medieval world. 6. Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Danish National Research Foundation under the grant DNRF119 – Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), the Carlsberg Foundation Semper Ardens grant CF16-0008, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Deutscher Palästina-Verein, the EliteForsk initiative of the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science and H.P. Hjerl Hansens Mindefondet for Dansk Palæstinaforskning. 294

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7. Bibliography Andersen, J.H. & Sode, T. (2010). The Glass Bead Material, Ribe Excavations 1970‑76. Aarhus: Aahus University Press. Baldoni, D. (forthcoming). A Byzantine Thermopolium on the Main Colonnaded Street in Gerasa. In: Lichtenberger, A. & Raja, R. (eds.). 110 years of excavations in Jerash. Jerash Papers 1. Turnhout: Brepols. Barfod, G., Freestone, I., Lichtenberger, A., Raja, R. & Schwarzer, H. (in press). Typology, provenance and recycling of Byzantine and Early Islamic glass from Jerash, Jordan. Geoarchaeology. Henderson, J. (2000). The science and archaeology of materials. An investigation of inorganic materials. New York: Routledge. Lichtenberger, A. & Raja, R. (2016). A Newly Excavated Private House in Jerash: Reconsidering Aspects of Continuity and Change in Material Culture from Late Antiquity to the Early Islamic Period. Antiquité Tardive, 24, 317‑359. Lichtenberger, A. & Raja, R. (2017). Mosaicists at work: the organisation of mosaic production in Early Islamic Jerash. Antiquity, 91 (358), 998‑1010. Rehren, T. & Freestone, I. C. (2015). Ancient glass: from kaleidoscope to crystal ball. Journal of Archaeological Science, 56, 233‑241.

Through the looking glass

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About the authors

Baužytė, Ema

PhD student Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgaard Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Ema Baužytė graduated as an archaeologist from the University of York in 2013 and got her international MSc degree in archaeological science in 2015. Her research interests are landscape archaeology and archaeological metals. She is currently working on a PhD project that focuses on East African iron-production technologies. Email: [email protected] Birch, Thomas

Assistant professor Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Aarhus Geochemistry and Isotope Research (AGIR) Platform, Aarhus University, HøeghGuldbergs Gade 2, 1670-1675, DK-8000 Aarhus C. Thomas Birch is an archaeologist with a special focus on technology and analysis of archaeological materials for improving our understanding of past cultures and societies. His role at UrbNet is to foster and facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration within projects. He is currently working on metal artefacts and metallurgical remains from two of UrbNet’s principle projects with the aim of answering key research questions pertaining to the centre’s agenda. Email: [email protected] Blömer, Michael

Assistant Professor Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Department of History and Classical Studies, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Jens Chr. Skous Vej 5, 1461, 3rd floor, DK-8000 Aarhus C. Michael Blömer is assistant professor at UrbNet and co-director of the Urban Excavations in Doliche. His research focuses on the material culture of the Roman Near East, ancient urbanism and religion. Email: [email protected] About the authors

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Bobou, Olympia

Research assistant Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Olympia has a DPhil in Classical Archaeology from the University of Oxford, where she wrote her thesis on statues of children in the Hellenistic period. She is working on the preparation of the catalogue of the Palmyrene funerary portraits. Email: [email protected] Brandt, Luise Ørsted

Assistant professor Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgaard Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Luise Ørsted Brandt is a prehistoric archaeologist, focusing on the analysis of DNA and proteins from archaeological textiles and skins. She is particularly interested in how the natural sciences can be applied to archaeological questions. Email: [email protected] Brughmans, Tom

Research fellow Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford, 36 Beaumont St, Oxford, OX1 2PG, UK. Tom Brughmans is an archaeologist specialising in the study of the Roman economy through ceramic data analysis, computational simulation modelling and network science. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford’s School of Archaeology where he leads the Leverhulme-funded project MERCURY, affiliated with the Oxford Roman Economy Project. Email: [email protected] Croix, Sarah

Assistant professor Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Sarah Croix, PhD, is an assistant professor at UrbNet and specialises in Viking-Age and early medieval archaeology in Northwestern Europe. She has worked extensively with the emergence of early Ribe and is currently preparing the publication of Ribe’s earliest cemetery. She is now involved in the Northern Emporium excavations project, focusing on stratigraphic 3D documentation and analysis. Email: [email protected] Fleisher, Jeffrey

Associate Professor Department of Anthropology, Rice University. Jeffrey Fleisher is the co-director (along with Stephanie Wynne-Jones) of the Songo 298

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Mnara Urban Landscape Project. He has worked on the archaeology of coastal East Africa for twenty years. His research interests include the role of rural and non-elite populations in the political economy of small-scale complex societies and the way that people use material culture and space in the establishment and maintenance of social inequality and power. Email: [email protected] Dahlström, Hanna

PhD student Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Museum of Copenhagen, Vesterbrogade 59, DK-1620 København V. Hanna Dahlström is a PhD student at UrbNet. She is also affiliated with the Museum of Copenhagen, where she headed the large Metro Cityring excavation at Rådhuspladsen in 2011-2012, which is the focus of her research. Hanna’s PhD project is part of the research and public dissemination project ‘Urban Encounters: Mobility, Migration and Networks in Premodern Scandinavia’, funded by the Velux Foundations. Email: [email protected] Dickenson, Christopher

Assistant professor Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Department of History and Classical Studies, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Jens Chr. Skous Vej 5, 1461, 3rd floor, DK-8000 Aarhus C. Christopher Dickenson is a Classical archaeologist. His research explores the archaeology and history of public spaces in the Roman Empire. His previous research has focused on the agoras and public monuments of Roman Greece. At UrbNet, he is now expanding his focus to look at other parts of the Empire with the aim of finding new ways of using archaeology to approach public space. Email: [email protected] Egelund, Line

PhD student Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Department of History and Classical Studies, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Jens Chr. Skous Vej 5, 1461, 3rd floor, DK-8000 Aarhus C. Line Egelund is a PhD student at UrbNet. Her PhD project is a part of the new excavations at Caesar’s Forum and will focus on the Forum Iulium and the later imperial fora. Through contextual and spatial analyses, the project aims to reassess the long-term urban development of Rome through these public spaces. Email: [email protected] About the authors

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Gundersen, Olav Elias

PhD student Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Department of History and Classical Studies, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Jens Chr. Skous Vej 5, 1461, 3rd floor, DK-8000 Aarhus C. Olav Elias Gundersen is a PhD student at UrbNet working with urbanisation, commercialisation and money in medieval Denmark and Norway. Other research interests include the general medieval economic and political history, the history of water in Scandinavia and numismatics. Email: [email protected] Haase, Kirstine

PhD student Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Odense City Museums, Overgade 48, 5000 Odense. Kirstine Haase majored in Medieval and Renaissance Archaeology and has primarily worked with urban archaeology over the past ten years. Since 2013 she has been employed at Odense City Museums. Kirstine Haase is currently a PhD scholar at UrbNet with a project based primarily on results from the recent excavations in Odense. The title is ‘An Urban Way of Life – practices, networks and identities in medieval Odense, 1100-1500 CE’. Email: [email protected] Hass, Trine Arlund

Postdoc Department of History and Classical Studies, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Jens Chr. Skous Vej 5, 1461, 3rd floor, DK-8000 Aarhus C. The Danish Institute in Rome, Via Omero 18, IT-00197 Roma. Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Trine Hass studies receptions of Gaius Julius Caesar, arguably one of the most famous Romans of all times, in Danish culture from the Middle Ages to now. Project findings are expected to shed new light on how Denmark has established relationships with Classical culture through time. Email: [email protected] Hammers, Neeke M.

PhD student Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, DK-8270 Højbjerg. 300

About the authors

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Neeke M. Hammers is a PhD student with a background in Palaeoecology and Environmental Archaeology, specialising in Archaeobotany. At UrbNet, she researches economic changes and urban network dynamics in medieval cities by integrating archaeobotanical data with isotopic analyses. Email: [email protected] Horton, Mark

Professor Department of Archaeology, University of Bristol. Mark Horton has worked on the Swahili coast for over thirty years, directing multiple projects in Kenya, Tanzania, Zanzibar, the Comores and Madagascar. He has a particular interest in the archaeology of Islam, and the history of interaction between the eastern African coast and the Islamic world. Horton is best know for his excavations at Shanga on the Kenyan coast. On the Songo Mnara project, he has been excavating a sample of the mosques across the site. He supervised the project excavation on Kilwa Kisiwani. Email: [email protected] Hrnjic, Mahir

PhD student Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Mahir Hrnjic holds a graduate degree in Archaeological Materials Science received from the European Master program ARCHMAT. His research focuses were mainly directed towards studying historical metals. Since September 2017, Mahir has been a PhD student at UrbNet. His PhD project aims to understand the provenance of Viking-Age silver coins and rings through the application of geochemical techniques, such as lead-isotope and trace-element analysis. Email: [email protected] Jørgensen, Christian Svejgård Lunde

PhD student Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Department of History and Classical Studies, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Jens Chr. Skous Vej 5, 1461, 3rd floor, DK-8000 Aarhus C. Christian Svejgård Lunde Jørgensen’s PhD project entitled ‘Urban Life/Urban Disaster’ will revolve around the subject of archaeoseismology. His project focuses on the archaeological site of Jerash where a devastating earthquake struck in 749 CE. Email: [email protected]

About the authors

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Jacobsen, Jan Kindberg

Project director The Danish Institute in Rome, Via Omero 18, IT-00197 Roma. Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Jan Kindberg Jacobsen is an associated researcher at UrbNet and curator of ancient art at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen. He is directing the Danish research group involved in the excavations on the Forum of Caesar. Email: [email protected] Krag, Signe

Assistant professor Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Department of History and Classical Studies, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Jens Chr. Skous Vej 5, 1461, 3rd floor, DK-8000 Aarhus C. Signe Krag is employed in the Palmyra Portrait Project, a project linked to UrbNet and funded by the Carlsberg Foundation. Her main research area is the funerary portraiture originating from funerary buildings located in the surroundings of the city of Palmyra in Syria. Here, she especially examines the dynamics observed in portrayals of women and in the family structures in the period during which Palmyra was urbanised. Email: [email protected] Kristiansen, Søren M.

Associate professor Department of Geoscience, Aarhus University, Høegh-Guldbergs Gade 2, 1670-1675, DK-8000 Aarhus C. Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgaard Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Søren M. Kristiansen’s work revolves around soils, and he works across a wide range of scientific and professional fields, including geoarchaeology, soil science, groundwater chemistry, medical geology, soil chemistry and geomorphology. Email: [email protected] Larsen, Johan Sandvang

PhD student Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Johan Sandvang Larsen finished his Master’s degree in Medieval and Renaissance Archaeology at Aarhus University in June 2017, where he investigated the role of European commercialisation in the medieval colonisation of Greenland. He began working at 302

About the authors

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UrbNet in August the same year, first as a research assistant and later as a PhD student. His PhD project revolves around the development and spread of archaeological methods in town archaeology. Email: [email protected] Lichtenberger, Achim

Professor Institut für Klassische Archäologie und Christliche Archäologie / Archäologisches Museum, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Domplatz 20-22, D-48143 Münster. Achim Lichtenberger is professor of Classical Archaeology and director of the Archaeological Museum at Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. His research focuses on Hellenistic and Roman cities and numismatics. Since 2011, he has, together with Rubina Raja, directed the Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter Project. Email: [email protected] Mittica, Gloria Paola

Postdoc The Danish Institute in Rome, Via Omero 18, IT-00197 Roma. Gloria Paola Mittica is senior archaeologist within the excavations on the Forum of Caesar, and furthermore she is directing the Danish excavations on Timpone della Motta (Calabria). Her research focuses on the period from the Iron Age to the Archaic phase in central and southern Italy. Email: [email protected] Mortensen, Eva

Research assistant Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Department of History and Classical Studies, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Jens Chr. Skous Vej 5, 1461, 3rd floor, DK-8000 Aarhus C. Eva Mortensen has a PhD in Classical Archaeology and works as a research assistant primarily with historiography. More specifically her focus areas are 19th-century travellers to the ancient site of Jerash, early travellers and explorers in the Levant in general, and Danish contributions to urban archaeology in the Levant in the 20th century. Email: [email protected] Olsen, Jesper

Associate professor, director of AMS 14C Dating Centre Aarhus AMS Centre, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University. Ny Munkegade 120, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark. Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Jesper Olsen’s research focuses on radiocarbon and stable isotopes. He specialises in About the authors

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a number of statistical methods used in earth/archaeological sciences, including 14C analysis, and he is director of the Aarhus AMS 14C Dating Centre (AARAMS). Email: [email protected] Orfanou, Vana

Postdoc Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Aarhus Geochemistry and Isotope Research (AGIR) Platform, Aarhus University, HøeghGuldbergs Gade 2, 1670-1675, DK-8000 Aarhus C. Department of Geoscience, Aarhus University, Høegh-Guldbergs Gade 2, 1670-1675, DK-8000 Aarhus C. Vana Orfanou is an archaeologist with a special focus on technology and analysis of archaeological materials for improving our understanding of past cultures and societies. Her role at UrbNet is to foster and facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration within projects. She is currently working on metal artefacts and metallurgical remains from two of UrbNet’s principle projects with the aim of answering key research questions pertaining to the centre’s agenda. Email: [email protected] Petersen, Nikoline Sauer

PhD student Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Department of History and Classical Studies, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Jens Chr. Skous Vej 5, 1461, 3rd floor, DK-8000 Aarhus C. Nikoline Sauer Petersen is a PhD student of Classical Archaeology at UrbNet. Her project is part of the project ‘Excavation of Julius Caesar’s Forum in Rome’, and her work focuses specifically on the Archaic period of the area of the Forum and on the urban development of early Rome. Email: [email protected] Petersen, Nora M.

PhD student Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Department of History and Classical Studies, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Jens Chr. Skous Vej 5, 1461, 3rd floor, DK-8000 Aarhus C. Nora M. Petersen’s PhD project is part of the excavation project in the Forum of Caesar in Rome. Her dissertation deals with the tombs from the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age situated under the Forum of Caesar in Rome. The focus will be on the ritual practice, social implications and connectivity in pre-urban Rome. Email: [email protected] 304

About the authors

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Peterson, Alex

PhD student Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Department of History and Classical Studies, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Jens Chr. Skous Vej 5, 1461, 3rd floor, DK-8000 Aarhus C. As part of the ‘Ceramics in Context’ project, Alex Peterson’s research aims to better understand the ceramics of the Middle Islamic period in the Northwest Quarter of Jerash, Jordan. Email: [email protected] Philippsen, Bente

Postdoc Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Aarhus AMS Centre, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade 120, DK-8000 Aarhus C. Bente Philippsen measures annual tree rings to produce more precise calibration curves for radiocarbon dating. She will apply the calibration curves to make age models, incorporating archaeological/historical information of cities such as Ribe or Jerash. With this approach (‘Bayesian modelling’), she will be able to date different events with much greater precision than with single radiocarbon dates. Email: [email protected] Poulsen, Bjørn

Professor Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Department of History and Classical Studies, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Jens Chr. Skous Vej 5, 1461, 3rd floor, DK-8000 Aarhus C. Bjørn Poulsen’s work evolves around Viking-Age and medieval Denmark/Northern Europe with respect to cultural, social and economic history. He specialises in towns, trade networks, town-country relations and agriculture. Email: [email protected] Raja, Rubina

Professor, director of Centre for Urban Network Evolutions Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Department of History and Classical Studies, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Jens Chr. Skous Vej 5, 1461, 3rd floor, DK-8000 Aarhus C. Rubina Raja’s research focuses on urban societies and their manifestation in material

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and written culture, particularly in the eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. She takes a special interest in regional and interregional patterns from the Hellenistic to the early medieval period. Email: [email protected] Romanowska, Iza

Senior researcher Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Nexus II – Plante 3 C, Jordi Girona, 29, Barcelona 08034. Originally an archaeologist by training, Iza Romanowska graduated with a PhD in Complex Systems Simulation from the University of Southampton, UK. Her thesis focused on evolutionary dynamics between climate change, hominin population dynamics and migration. In 2017, she joined the Barcelona Supercomputing Center to work on data analysis and modelling for the Roman EPNet project investigating trade in foodstuffs in the Roman Empire. Email: [email protected] Saxkjær, Sine Grove

Postdoc The Danish Institute in Rome, Via Omero 18, IT-00197 Roma. Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Sine Grove Saxkjær is part of the excavations on the Forum of Caesar, where she is responsible for the material handling and processing within the Danish Institute in Rome. Her research focuses on the Early Iron Age and the Orientalising period in central and southern Italy. Email: [email protected] Schou, Mikkel Fristrup

Research assistant Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Aarhus AMS Centre, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade 120, DK-8000 Aarhus C. Mikkel Fristrup Schou works with Bente Philippsen and Jesper Olsen in assembling an annual or biannual calibration curve dedicated to the Ribe and Jerash excavations. Furthermore, he assists in operating the Isotopic Ratio Mass Spectrometer (IRMS) and contributes to the development of an automated pretreatment system primarily for charcoal but also for shells, etc. Email: [email protected]

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About the authors

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Sindbæk, Søren M.

Professor MSO, deputy director of Centre for Urban Network Evolutions Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Søren M. Sindbæk’s research focuses on early urbanism and urban archaeology in VikingAge Scandinavia and early medieval Europe. He has a special interest in early medieval communication and social networks. Email: [email protected] Steding, Julia

PhD student Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Department of History and Classical Studies, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Jens Chr. Skous Vej 5, 1461, 3rd floor, DK-8000 Aarhus C. Julia Steding is a PhD student at UrbNet and Classical Studies at Aarhus University. Her PhD project is part of the Palmyra Portrait Project and focuses on the production of portraits from the funerary context in Palmyra in connection with questions on the development of workshops in the urban sphere of the city. Email: [email protected] Sulas, Federica

Assistant professor Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Moesgard Alle 20, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Federica Sulas’ research deals with the responses of people and landscapes to environmental and social change over time, interpreting the impact of such processes on past urban dynamics and system resilience and exploring how this knowledge may inform on present and future challenges. Email: [email protected] Thomsen, Kristine Damgaard

PhD student Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Department of History and Classical Studies, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Jens Chr. Skous Vej 5, 1461, 3rd floor, DK-8000 Aarhus C. Through the project ‘Urban Life: Development of Mortar and Plaster from a Diachronic

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Perspective’, Kristine Damgaard Thomsen ties together research from humanities and natural sciences in a truly interdisciplinary project. She is a PhD student and MA in Classical Archaeology, and her PhD project combines her great passion for ancient architecture, the invention of new methods for studying these and how to bridge research disciplines. Email: [email protected] Thomsen, Rikke Randeris

Research assistant Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Department of History and Classical Studies, School of Culture and society, Aarhus University, Jens Chr. Skous Vej 5, 1461, 3rd floor, DK-8000 Aarhus C. Rikke Randris Thomsen is a classical archaeologist specialised in digital archaeology and architecture. She holds a Master’s degree from Lund University, where she wrote her MA thesis on a Hellenistic heroon in Kalydon, Greece. She is working on the preparation of the catalogue of the Palmyrene funerary portraits. Email: [email protected] Trant, Pernille Lærke Krantz

PhD student Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgaard Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Department of Geoscience, Aarhus University, Høegh-Guldbergs Gade 2, 1670-1675, DK-8000 Aarhus C. As a geologist, Pernille Lærke Krantz Trant specialises in geochemistry and radiocarbon dating. She is primarily working with methods developed for soil analysis. She uses this geochemical approach to investigate early urban spaces in Denmark and seeks to develop new and faster methods that can be used when studying past activities with a large amount of samples and big datasets. Email: [email protected] Wouters, Barbora

Postdoc Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg, Denmark. Research Foundation Flanders (FWO). Barbora Wouters is a geoarchaeologist and micromorphologist specialising in towns of the 1st millennium CE. Her primary interest is the emergence and development of early medieval towns, such as emporia, in Northwest Europe. Email: [email protected]

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Wynne-Jones, Stephanie

Lecturer Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 4230, 2nd floor, DK-8270 Højbjerg. Department of Archaeology, University of York, King’s Manor, York, YO1 7EP, UK. Stephanie Wynne-Jones specialises in material culture and its relationship with practice. Her research focuses on craft and production for trade as well as daily life and the use of space at Songo Mnara where she uses scientific techniques to create a high-resolution picture of life in the town. Email: [email protected]

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