Overview
Although there have been numerous studies of individual cities or groups of cities, there has never been a study of the urbanism of the Roman world as a whole, meaning that we have been poorly informed not only about the number of cities and how they were distributed and changed over time, but also about their sizes and populations, monumentality, and civic status. This book provides a new account of the urbanism of the Roman world between 100 BC and AD 300. To do so, it draws on a combination of textual sources and archaeological material to provide a new catalogue of cities, calculates new estimates of their areas and uses a range of population densities to estimate their populations, and brings together available information about their monumentality and civic status for the first time. This evidence demonstrates that, although there were relatively few cities, many had considerable sizes and populations, substantial amounts of monumentality, and held various kinds of civic status. This indicates that there was significant economic growth in this period, including both extensive and intensive economic growth, which resulted from an influx of wealth through conquest and the intrinsic changes that came with Roman rule (including the expansion of urbanism). This evidence also suggests that there was a system that was characterized by areas of intense urban demand, which was met through an efficient system for the extraction of necessity and luxury goods from immediate hinterlands and an effective system for bringing these items from further afield. The disruption of these links seems to have put this system under considerable strain towards the end of this period and may have been sufficient to cause its ultimate collapse. This appears to have been in marked contrast to the medieval and early modern periods, when urbanism was more able to respond to changes in supply and demand.
Full Product Details
Author: J. W. Hanson
Publisher: Archaeopress
Imprint: Archaeopress Archaeology
Volume: 18
Dimensions:
Width: 20.50cm
, Height: 4.00cm
, Length: 29.00cm
Weight: 2.834kg
ISBN: 9781784914721
ISBN 10: 178491472
Pages: 826
Publication Date: 07 November 2016
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
In view of the prominence of ancient urbanism in the scholarly literature during the last couple of decades, Hanson's study is both highly relevant and well timed. --Damjan Donev & Rinse Willet
In view of the prominence of ancient urbanism in the scholarly literature during the last couple of decades, Hanson's study is both highly relevant and well timed. --Damjan Donev & Rinse Willet American Journal Of Archaeology
