scholarly journals Changing Protagonists: Managing Economic Activities in Late Antique Lusitania

2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 197-220
Author(s):  
André Carneiro

The Roman province of Lusitania went through a sequence of processes from the end of the 4th century onwards that resulted in the end of the classical landscape. The Christian Church gradually replaced private entrepreneurship in the management of the main economic activities and the organization of the daily activities. This process is difficult to characterize, but some archaeological evidence, from specific sites and from the analysis of the rural settlement patterns, emerges. Some considerations will be presented here, trying to contextualize certain mechanisms of change.

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Chavarría ◽  
Tamara Lewit ◽  
Adam Izdebski

Abstract This paper outlines some key transformations in rural society and settlement patterns in the 4th to 7th c. western Mediterranean, as revealed by archaeological evidence. An overview of discernible trends and current debates about their socio-political contexts is illustrated with examples of well-investigated sites. From this data, two contrasting patterns emerge: intensive, and partly state-stimulated, cultivation of land; systematic animal breeding and specialised production up to the end of the 4th c.; and much more varied patterns of exploiting the landscape, including changes in animal husbandry, changes in land use and crops, and increasing use of uncultivated areas, in the 5th–7th c. This overview is intended to provide a broader framework for the detailed examination of environmental evidence which follows in this volume.


Roman Seas ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 25-68
Author(s):  
Justin Leidwanger

This chapter provides the key parameters for modeling the Roman and Late Antique maritime movement and economic activities at the center of this study. It first explores the local marine environment, particularly the topography, currents, winds, and other natural factors most directly relevant to ancient seafaring. Following a brief overview of the archaeological evidence and allied iconographic and textual sources for Roman and Late Antique seafaring, the discussion turns to ship construction and types, sizes of vessels and cargos, and rigging and outfitting, as well as sailing speeds, capabilities, and journey conditions in the study area.


2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-245
Author(s):  
Klaus Davidowicz ◽  
Armin Lange

A comparison with Jewish magic as well as Jewish and non-Jewish amulets shows that the exclusive use of Deut 6:4 in the Halbturn amulet for apotropaic purposes points to its Jewish origin. A Jewish oil lamp found in Carnutum, the capital of the Roman province of Pannonia Superior, demonstrates that Jews lived not far away from Halbturn and poses the question of whether the amulet was produced in Carnuntum. While the magician who produced the Halbturn amulet was most probably a Jew, the archaeological evidence of the grave in which the Halbturn amulet was found is inconclusive with regard to the background of the child buried in it. The Carnuntum oil lamp, however, points to the possibility of a Jewish grave.


Author(s):  
Cornelia Römer

The church fathers were appalled in particular by the Gnostics' condemnation of creation. But the fact that much of their teaching was in many respects not so far from Christian dogma must have disturbed the advocates of the “real” Christian church. In some of these Gnostic systems, Christ was the main savior figure; in others, it was the forefathers of the Old Testament who guaranteed salvation; in Manichaeism, it was the new Messenger of Light, the apostle Mani, who, coming after Christ, would finally give the right revelation to the people and excel Christ in doing so. This article deals with religious groups such as these as they existed in Egypt in the Roman and late antique periods. Papyrology has played a decisive role in our understanding of the religious movements of the first centuries ce in Egypt and elsewhere in the Mediterranean.


Starinar ◽  
2013 ◽  
pp. 269-286
Author(s):  
Perica Spehar ◽  
Natasa Miladinovic-Radmilovic ◽  
Sonja Stamenkovic

In 2012, in the village Davidovac situated in south Serbia, 9.5 km south-west from Vranje, archaeological investigations were conducted on the site Crkviste. The remains of the smaller bronze-age settlement were discovered, above which a late antique horizon was later formed. Apart from modest remains of a bronze-age house and pits, a late antique necropolis was also excavated, of which two vaulted tombs and nine graves were inspected during this campaign. During the excavation of the northern sector of the site Davidovac-Crkviste the north-eastern periphery of the necropolis is detected. Graves 1-3, 5 and 6 are situated on the north?eastern borderline of necropolis, while the position of the tombs and the remaining four graves (4, 7-9) in their vicinity point that the necropolis was further spreading to the west and to the south?west, occupying the mount on which the church of St. George and modern graveyard are situated nowadays. All graves are oriented in the direction SW-NE, with the deviance between 3? and 17?, in four cases toward the south and in seven cases toward the north, while the largest part of those deviations is between 3? and 8?. Few small finds from the layer above the graves can in some way enable the determination of their dating. Those are two roman coins, one from the reign of emperor Valens (364-378), as well as the fibula of the type Viminacium-Novae which is chronologically tied to a longer period from the middle of the 5th to the middle of the 6th century, although there are some geographically close analogies dated to the end of the 4th or the beginning of the 5th century. Analogies for the tombs from Davidovac can be found on numerous sites, like in Sirmium as well as in Macvanska Mitrovica, where they are dated to the 4th-5th century. Similar situation was detected in Viminacium, former capital of the roman province of Upper Moesia. In ancient Naissus, on the site of Jagodin Mala, simple rectangular tombs were distributed in rows, while the complex painted tombs with Christian motifs were also found and dated by the coins to the period from the 4th to the 6th century. Also, in Kolovrat near Prijepolje simple vaulted tombs with walled dromos were excavated. During the excavations on the nearby site Davidovac-Gradiste, 39 graves of type Mala Kopasnica-Sase dated to the 2nd-3rd century were found, as well as 67 cist graves, which were dated by the coins of Constantius II, jewellery and buckles to the second half of the 4th or the first half of the 5th century. Based on all above mentioned it can be concluded that during the period from the 2nd to the 6th century in this area existed a roman and late antique settlement and several necropolises, formed along an important ancient road Via militaris, traced at the length of over 130 m in the direction NE-SW. Data gained with the anthropological analyses of 10 skeletons from the site Davidovac-Crkviste don't give enough information for a conclusion about the paleo-demographical structure of the population that lived here during late antiquity. Important results about the paleo-pathological changes, which do not occur often on archaeological sites, as well as the clearer picture about this population in total, will be acquired after the osteological material from the site Davidovac-Gradiste is statistically analysed.


Author(s):  
Judith Herrin

This chapter discusses the place of icons in worship, their character, and the way they came to symbolize the holy and mediate between earth and heaven. In particular, as icons became a vivid focus of devotion, they began to embody human relations with God the Creator and Ruler of the entire Christian world. It is argued that women played a notable part in this developing cult of icons. The chapter concentrates on some features of Late Antique Mediterranean culture, shared by Jews and Gentiles, pagan and Christian alike. These provided a common social experience within which the artistic evolution of the Christian church took place. In particular, the first part of this chapter is devoted to a discussion of funerary art, for this represents one of the most striking ways whereby Christians transmitted pagan rituals and artistic forms to their new faith. The second part examines some of the reasons for the preservation of these forms, once assimilated to a Christian mode, when they came under attack in the East. It asks how much that response informs us about the role of women in the cult of icons.


Author(s):  
Saskia T. Roselaar

Chapter 3 discusses economic change in Italy. It investigates economic activities carried out by the Italians independently from Roman interference. Many Italians were quick to take advantage of the possibilities offered by their association with Rome, such as the opening up of new markets for Italian products and safer sailing because of Roman control of the Mediterranean. These economic activities had important consequences for economic developments in Italy itself: many far-reaching changes took place in the third to first centuries, such as changes in settlement patterns and an increase in the scale of agricultural production. Nevertheless, not every change that occurred after the Roman conquest should be ascribed to the conquest itself. The second part of chapter 3 investigates the economic and cultural developments that occurred in four sample areas, in order to trace the level of economic integration as a result of macroeconomic developments in Italy.


Land ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 523
Author(s):  
Andrzej Rosner ◽  
Monika Wesołowska

Since the Second World War, Poland has been undergoing an intensive process of transformation of the economic structure of rural areas, manifested, among other things, in the change in the occupational make-up of its inhabitants. The development of non-agricultural methods of management in rural areas has led to the emergence of multifunctional rural areas, where the role of agriculture as a source of income for the inhabitants is decreasing. There is a process of deagrarianisation of the economic structure, which has been indicated by many researchers as an unavoidable process, connected with the changes taking place in rural areas. One of the effects of this process are changes in rural settlement patterns. The aim of this article is to present the spatial effects of the deagrarianisation process in the Polish countryside, expressed in the changes in the rural settlement network. The authors used the statistical database of the Central Statistical Office (over 41 thousand records) to draw up the classification of rural areas by the nature of changes in population numbers in the period 1950–2011, which was compared with the research carried out as part of the Monitoring of Rural Development in Poland. The study confirmed that the factor behind the evolution of the rural settlement network is the process of decreasing agricultural demand for labour. As a consequence, there is a polarisation of localities into multifunctional rural localities, mainly headquarter villages and local government offices, and those with a predominantly agricultural function. On a supra-local scale, a process of polarisation of rural areas between a growing suburban population and a reducing peripheral location around large and medium-sized towns has been observed.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document