Thinking about Space

The incorporation of new provinces in the Roman Empire, both in the East and the West, coincides with marked changes in urban infrastructure and layout, and in rural settlement patterns, as is attested by numerous excavations and surveys.

While scholars agree on the quantitative and qualitative transformation of cities and their territories, such as an increase in the number of monumental buildings and rural sites, a significantly higher degree of urbanization, a more sophisticated lifestyle etc., little research has been devoted to the ways in which these structures and sites, and their internal components, were organized spatially.

The eleven papers presented in this volume result from workshops organized by the
international, interdisciplinary ROCT-network (Roman Crafts and Trade).
From a heterogeneous chronological and geographical background, the peer-reviewed
collection of papers focuses on one central issue: the use of space in the Roman world.
Space, on all sorts of levels, shapes human life, now as in the past. The edited volume
contrasts two dimensions of space: the macro-scale at regional level and the micro-scale
at local level. Moreover, the selected papers are written against a variety of
methodological backgrounds and practices, including excavation and surveying strategies,
contextual analysis and material culture studies. The variety of content, approaches and
interpretation results from the conscious deliberation that this is the only possible way
to think about space in the Roman world. The contributions cover the Roman world with its
provinces, throughout the long period in history which can be considered Roman in each of
the study areas.

Frank Vermeulen is professor of Roman archaeology and of archaeological method at Ghent University. His research interests cover settlement history and landscape development in the western Mediterranean during Antiquity.

Raymond Brulet est Professeur d'Archéologie nationale à l'Université catholique de Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve). Il est spécialisé dans la période de l'Antiquité tardive et dans le domaine de l'Archéométrie.

Hannelore Vanhaverbeke is a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO-Belgium); she is the field director of the annual rural surveys near Sagalassos and teaches at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium).

Jeroen Poblome is a research professor at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. He studies artisanal production organization and exchange patterns and mechanisms in the ancient eastern Mediterranean, with fieldwork in Boeotia, Pisidia and Cilicia.