Urban Centers and Rural Contexts in Late Antiquity

by Burns, Thomas S.

• ISBN13: 9780870135859
• ISBN10: 0870135856
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-05-01
• Publisher: Michigan State Univ Pr

Summary

Recent publications on urbanism and the rural environment in Late Antiquity, most of which explore a single region or narrow chronological niche, have emphasized either textual or archeological evidence. None has attempted the more ambitious task of bringing together the full range of such evidence within a multiregional perspective and around common themes. Urban Centers and Rural Contextsseeks to redress this omission. While ancient literature and the physical remains of cities attest to the power that urban values held over the lives of their inhabitants, the rural areas in which the majority of imperial citizens lived have not been well served by the historical record. Only recently have archeological excavations and integrated field surveys sufficiently enhanced our knowledge of the rural contexts to demonstrate the continuing interdependence of urban centers and rural communities in Late Antiquity. These new data call into question the conventional view that this interdependence progressively declined as a result of governmental crises, invasions, economic dislocation, and the success of Christianization. The essays in this volume require us to abandon the search for a single model of urban and rural chan≥ to reevaluate the cities and towns of the Empire as centers of habitation, rather than archeological museums; and to reconsider the evidence of continuous and pervasive cultural change across the countryside. Deploying a wide range of material as well as literary evidence, the authors provide access not only into the world of lites, but also to the scarcely known lives of those without a voice in the literature, those men and women who worked in the shops, labored in the fields, and humbled themselves before their gods. They bring us closer to the complexity of life in late ancient communities and, in consequence, closer to both urban and rural citizens.

Table of Contents

Editors and Contributors	vii
Preface	ix
Introduction	xi
URBAN CENTERS
Difficillima tempora: Urban Life, Inscriptions, and Mentality in Late Antique Rome	3	(22)
Geza Alfoldy
Autum and the Civitas Aeduorum: Maintaining and Transforming a Regional Identity in Late Antiquity	25	(22)
Bailey K. Young
Alexandria and the Mareotis Region	47	(16)
Christopher Haas
The Case of Late Antique Berytus: Urban Wealth and Rural Sustenance----A Different Economic Dynamic	63	(14)
Linda Jones Hall
Urban Space in Caesarea Maritima, Israel	77	(34)
Joseph Patrich
Byzantine Petra---A Reassessment	111	(24)
Zhigniew T. Fiema
TOWN AND COUNTRY
Women and Horses and Power and War	135	(12)
J. E. Drinkwater
The Interdependence of Town and Country in Late Antique Spain	147	(16)
Michael Kulikowski
Towns, Vici and Villae: Late Roman Military Society on the Frontiers of the Province Valeria	163	(22)
Zsolt Visy
Archaeological Perspectives on Rural Settlement in Late Antiquity in the Rhine and Danube Area	185	(14)
Helmut Bender
Peasants as ``Makeshift Soldiers for the Occasion'': Sixth-Century Settlement Patterns in the Balkans	199	(20)
Florin Curta
Town and Countryside in Roman Arabia during Late Antiquity	219	(22)
David E. Graf
Rural Society and Economy in Late Roman Cyprus	241	(24)
Marcus Rautman
CHRISTIANIZATION
Pastoral Care: Town and Country in Late-Antique Preaching	265	(20)
E. G. Clark
The Continuity of Paganism between the Cities and Countryside of Late Roman Africa	285	(16)
David Riggs
From Pagan to Christian in Cities of Roman Anatolia during the Fourth and Fifth Centuries	301	(22)
Kenneth Harl
``... Nec sedere in villam'': Villa Churches, Rural Piety and the Priscillianist Controversy	323	(26)
Kim Bowes
Christianizing the Syrian Countryside: An Archaeological and Architectural Approach	349
Frank L. Kidner