Theory, Methods, Evidence
This is a framework of archaeology popular in the 19th c. – 1960s that emphasizes defining and describing cultures. It defines "culture" as a normative model of behavior, emphasizing typologies and seriation and often falling into the infamous "pots = people" paradigm.
What is Culture-Historical Archaeology?
This term was coined by the scholar William MacDonald to describe the connected system of passage architecture, public spaces, and monumental buildings that organized life in Roman cities. Major elements include the cardo and decumanus, the forum, baths, temples, and basilicas.
What is an urban armature?
This site was the new city of the Faliscans after they were ravaged by the Romans in 241 BCE and displaced from their original home city.
What is Falerii Novi?
This is a military procession that would be awarded to a general after a major military victory, portrayed in monuments such as the Arch of Titus. In Rome, members of this procession would march through the Campus Martius around Palatine, through Forum, up to temple of Jupiter on Capitoline.
What is a triumph?
This term describes the process of benefaction where private donors built monuments for their own home cities.
What is Euergetism?
This is a sub-discipline of archaeology that focuses on understanding regions in their spatial context, particularly using methods such as pedestrian survey, GIS, LiDAR, and other forms of remote sensing.
What is Landscape Archaeology?
This was a method of land division that distributed equally sized lots to Roman citizens, often veterans. To survey these plots of land, they often used tools such as gromae, though it's uncertain how precisely they were employed.
What is centuriation?
This is a military camp in Britain famous for its preservation of wood, leather shoes, and tablets with extensive writing. The writing uncovered at this camp give us extensive insight into daily life on the Roman frontiers.
What is Vindolanda?
This refers to a newly planted settlement of Roman citizens—often military veterans—in conquered territory which would often grow to be its own city veteran settlement.
What are colonia?
This is black stone under Comitium in the Roman Forum with an archaic Latin inscription that famously includes the word rex ("king").
What is the lapis niger?
These are ceramic vessels used for studying long-distance exchange in the Roman economy. In Monte Testaccio in Rome, fragments of these vessels are so numerous that they form an artificial mountain.
What are amphorae?
This term refers to a country estate that was focused primarily on farming, often containing evidence for large-scale agricultural production and storage such as dolia and wine/olive presses. One of the most famous of these resides outside Pompeii, known as the Villa della Pisanella.
What is a villa rustica?
First built by Trajan, this imperial villa was famously visited by Marcus Aurelius in his childhood, where he learned to become a "proper Roman citizen" by engaging with "agricultural" work. This site famously had a theatrical seating are where people could come and watch slaves do agricultural chores.
What is Villa Magna?
Stretching for more than 70 miles, this is a famous constructed fortification in Roman Britain. Often thought to be a military defensive construction, it's actually not clear what it was for—well-organized enemies would have easily been able to scale it.
What is Hadrian's Wall?
This building appears in the text of authors such as Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus as a major landmark in Early Rome. Infamously, archaeologist Andrea Carandini excavated "atrium houses" on the Palatine and overenthusiastically interpreted them as being related to this building.
What is the House of the Tarquins?
This is a framework of archaeology popular in the 1960s-1990s which sees "culture" as the behavioral outcome of a population's adaptation to specific environmental conditions. It emphasizes the use of scientific methods to find general laws of human behavior.
What is Processual Archaeology?
With construction beginning in 312 BCE, this is the name of the first road in the Roman road network running from Rome to Brindisi.
What is the Via Appia?
This famous port city is known for its horrea, massive warehouse buildings used for the storage of import and export goods. In the center of the site next to the theater is the famous "Plaza of the Guilds," which had mosaics at each stall depicting the trade of each merchant's stall.
What is Ostia?
The second-highest class of Roman nobility, these people had enough wealth to supply the military with horses through levies.
What are equestrians?
These burial markers in one of the Roman provinces show images of the deceased blending Roman and non-Roman names alongside hybrid Roman and indigenous portraits. They are a key piece of evidence for understanding the contentious phenomenon of "Romanization."
What are the Pannonian funerary reliefs?
This is an author famous for his writings on the history of Rome, especially for his descriptions of episodes in the early history of Rome such as the founding of Rome and the Rape of the Sabine Women. However, he lived in the 1st century BCE–1st century CE, and so was separated from the actual events he described in early Rome by up to 700 years.
Who is Livy?
This site is an exemplar of a highly planned city with a hyper-rigid grid system. A military colony in modern day Algeria, it was planted by the emperor Trajan.
What is Timgad?
The birthplace of Emperor Septimius Severus, this city in modern Libya is known for its distinctive urban armature. At a central juncture of the city stands the famous Tetrapylon (or sometimes "Arch") of Septimius Severus, built by the local elites of the city.
What is Leptis Magna?
This group in the military was made up of non-citizens recruited from conquered territories.
What are the auxilia?
In the Roman province of Dacia, this monument is considered to be the counterpart to Column of Trajan. It depicts the defeat of Dacians defeated in battle in a local indigenous style, suggesting perhaps that local artists were commissioned to erect this monument to their own demise.
What is the Tropeum Traiani in Adamklissi?