- Title Information
- Title
- Works in Progress: Regional Trends and Grassroots Developments in the Cities of Roman North Africa
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Dufton, J. Andrew
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- creator
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- van Dommelen, Peter
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- Advisor
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Alcock, Susan
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- Reader
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Conant, Jonathan
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- Reader
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Ellis, Steven
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- Reader
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Fentress, Elizabeth
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- Reader
- Name:
Corporate
- Name Part
- Brown University. Department of Archaeology and the Ancient World
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- sponsor
- Origin Information
- Copyright Date
- 2017
- Physical Description
- Extent
- xxii, 361 p.
- digitalOrigin
- born digital
- Note:
thesis
- Thesis (Ph. D.)--Brown University, 2017
- Genre (aat)
- theses
- Abstract
- North Africa’s densely occupied urban landscape, well-documented sources of historical and archaeological data, and long history of colonial interactions make the region a natural fit for research into the reactions of municipal communities to Roman imperial intervention. Yet an enduring scholarly focus on symbolism, monumental architecture, economy, and civic status relies too heavily on top-down change at the expense of interrogating the ways in which this transformation is both created and mitigated at the local level. Building on a conceptual framework of urban process articulated in modern urban studies, this work examines the physical developments visible in North African cities in the roughly three centuries following the Roman conquest (146 BCE–193 CE) through the lens of four fundamental practices: the creation of new settlements under Rome (foundation); the physical expansion of existing cities (growth); the construction of new monuments (monumentalization); and the ongoing reshaping of the cityscape as a whole (renewal). These processes highlight not the centralized uniformity of a supposedly ‘Roman’ city but the diversity, haphazardness, and improvisation that best characterize urban life in the period of Roman control.
To straddle contradictions between global and local influences, I adopt a mixed methodology of quantitative mapping and qualitative biography. A data set compiled using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) maps city origins, administrative status, and specific types of construction across a varied provincial landscape. I supplement this macro-scale analysis with urban biographies of individual sites — Madauros, Utica, Tiddis, Thuburbo Maius, and Thugga — that consider local reactions to much larger, Mediterranean-wide developments.
The outcome of this work is a simultaneous understanding of both global and local factors that underscores how the North African city under Roman rule was characterized by tensions between top-down projects and bottom-up regeneration, between imperial power and indigenous response. Moreover, this research demonstrates some of the commonalities between ancient and modern cities reacting to global forces of change and thus provides a thematic, process-driven approach for archaeologists looking to understand the scale and diversity of urban experience.
- Subject (fast)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/00812938")
- Topic
- Archaeology
- Subject (fast)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/01204885")
- Topic
- Rome (Empire)
- Subject (fast)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/01239515")
- Topic
- Africa, North
- Subject
- Topic
- Urbanism
- Subject
- Topic
- Roman
- Subject (fast)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/00861748")
- Topic
- Cities and towns
- Language
- Language Term (ISO639-2B)
- English
- Record Information
- Record Content Source (marcorg)
- RPB
- Record Creation Date
(encoding="iso8601")
- 20170616
- Identifier:
DOI
- 10.7301/Z0RJ4GXT
- Access Condition:
rights statement
(href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/")
- In Copyright
- Access Condition:
restriction on access
- Collection is open for research.
- Type of Resource (primo)
- dissertations