Mechanisms of Urban Transition across Central Adriatic Italy: From Pre-Roman Hilltop Centers to Roman Small Towns (20 min)

Presenters

Frank Vermeulen, Ghent University

Abstract

A substantial majority of cities in Roman Italy can be considered as small towns. Some of them were developed and planned during the republic as smaller Roman colonies, reflecting the larger high status colonial centers that impacted greatly on the newly conquered Italian territories. Others were transformations of indigenous centers that gradually took the appearance of their Roman role models. Particularly in the last three centuries of the republic and during the early Imperial period, however, widespread processes of urbanization and municipalization created a category of cities that were both smaller, and less consistently planned. In many cases their location near the former indigenous centers on hilltops or plateaus responded to the new Roman reality and the shift in communication networks. Many developed along the new road system and were clustered around an Augustan era forum in the center of an agriculturally rich river basin or settlement chamber. The regional economy, elite competition and the needs for administrative organization were some of the main driving forces for their gradual development. This presentation reveals some of the characteristics of this particular urban transition in central-Adriatic Italy, which shows many parallels with provincial contexts in the Roman West. It focuses on the recently investigated network of a series of small towns in the valley of the river Potenza, where urbanism studies and landscape archaeology approaches now allow a more holistic discussion of this phenomenon. Particular attention is given to marked differences between the forced colonial landscape along the Adriatic coast and the more gradual evolution in the inland territories. The research concludes that these differences are most apparent in the choice of new lowland settlement locations, the creation of high-status city defenses, the elaboration of an organic street system, the organization of public and private space, and the shifts in religious foci.