Many ancient writers have left testimonies about the social significance of Roman leisure. Rather than trying to draw an artificial presentation of the tabula lusoria of Late Antiquity, this paper considers the meaning of an Ammianus Marcellinus’ description of the Roman attraction for the alea. The focus here is on the board games played at Rome at the end of Late Antiquity in order to better understand the text. A first step is to analyze relations between urban society, aristocratic values and gaming practice. A second step consists in clarifying the gaming vocabulary of alea and more precisely the use of the word tessera. The guiding hypothesis is that tessera does not mean just “dice” but also “pawn”, and more generally the instrumentum of the gaming board.
As a result, I suggest that Ammianus was not just a malicious observer but a very fine satirist who turned the aristocratic discourse against the nobilitas of Rome.
- Content Type Journal Article
- Category Original
- Pages 257-264
- DOI 10.1484/J.AT.5.101416
- Authors
Provincia Lucania is the name used by sources in Late Antiquity to define the part of ancient regio III which the Diocletianic reforms included as one of the most productive regions of suburbicarian Italy. The heterogeneity of the studies carried out in the past and the treatment of archaeological and philological data together with statistical examples, even extended to non investigated parts, underestimate the exact content of textual, epigraphic and mapping sources about this land as well as the connections which existed between distant but culturally very close localities. The topographic analysis of the provincia also take place together with the surveyors’ texts, in such a way that the evolution of the landscape from the 5th to the 11th centuries emerges by comparing and relating the latter to the reality. The different versions of Tabula Peutingeriana, the itineraria and the so-called Liber Coloniarum or Regionum are here decoded and open up new perspectives to analyze a still largely unknown territory.
- Content Type Journal Article
- Category Original
- Pages 299-311
- DOI 10.1484/J.AT.5.101419
- Authors
The present article focuses on the old bi-apsidal church of Orléansville of AD 324 and attempts to reconstruct the original plan of the church. By examining all existing plans of the church it appears that the two apses did not belong to the original structure. Out of this emerges the question, what did they replace? The columns of the four colonnades are quite equidistant, except the considerably wider distances between the final columns and the following eastern and western transverse walls, although the latter were not provided with antae as is typical in classical and late Roman architecture. Because of this it is suggested that the last columns of the four colonnades were not connected to the transverse walls but were turned to the sides to create a transverse colonnade at both ends. The aisles would thus surround the nave as an ambulatory on all the four sides.
A similar arrangement shows the first phase of the church in the Pachomian monastery of Pbow in Upper Egypt datable to before AD 347. Both churches demonstrate how a multi-aisled church from the pre-Constantinian period could have looked. It was similar to the Roman forum-basilica from which it typologically depends.
- Content Type Journal Article
- Category Original
- Pages 313-320
- DOI 10.1484/J.AT.5.101420
- Authors
During the last decade, interesting perspectives have been developed regarding the rural labour force in Late Antiquity. Notably, Jairus Banaji, in his book Agrarian Change in Late Antiquity. Gold, Labour, and Aristocratic Dominance (Oxford, 2001), insisted upon the importance of salaried people on late Antiquity estates. This article provides additional information on this type of employment, comparing law, papyri and texts. While the legal setting indicates that the labour contract was one type of employment on estates, other sources underscore the limited importance of salaried workers, who were principally employed for a limited number of specific tasks: tending cattle; in specialized agriculture such as viticulture; and on irrigation works. It does not appear that the majority of tenants on these estates were in fact wage earners.
- Content Type Journal Article
- Category Original
- Pages 283-298
- DOI 10.1484/J.AT.5.101418
- Authors
The problem of the christianization of the countryside has been examined since the 18th century, mainly from the institutional point of view; the question was the origin of the organization of the Medieval parish, whose territorial structure was compared with the roman pagus system. In the last few decades a more critical appraisal of the written sources, new approaches to the spatial issues and archaeological discoveries have led to a different perspective, focused not only on the continuity but also on the transformations which took place between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. This paper considers the very beginning of this process; by taking into account both written and archaeological sources it shows that in the 4th-5th centuries there is no evidence of a real programme of christianization of the countryside. The construction of cult buildings which mark the spread of Christianity is due in turn to the personal initiative of landowners, bishops and communities. Their localisation therefore, while corresponding to the different types of settlements in Late Antiquity, do not follow an evident, systematic pattern.
- Content Type Journal Article
- Category Original
- Pages 189-204
- DOI 10.1484/J.AT.5.101411
- Authors
Links between church and settlement in the south of France have lead up to many considerations in view of the centuries immediately following the field of our study. During the 5th-10th centuries, places of worship and housing were closely related to each other, even if they sometimes did not have any straight spatial connection. According to various archaeological sources, it is clear that the setting up of a place of worship was associated with a settlement and even reinforced it; on the other hand, settlement was affected by both stability and mutation in comparison with the former centuries. As the topic of rural communities has been widely studied these last years, it seems important today to reconsider the place of private churches over a large time scale. The question is furthermore linked to that of cemeteries. Even if only partially complete, the evidence for trends during the 5th-10th centuries will certainly change our view of the 11th-12th centuries for which the importance of their legacy is far from being secondary.
- Content Type Journal Article
- Category Original
- Pages 205-215
- DOI 10.1484/J.AT.5.101412
- Authors
Cet article propose une synthèse sur la dynamique du processus de transformation des campagnes dans l’île de Majorque entre la période romaine et la fin de l’Antiquité tardive. Y sont envisagés le phénomène de la réoccupation d’anciens emplacements indigènes, le sort des sites ruraux romains et le rôle des églises chrétiennes – autant de paramètres essentiels pour bien appréhender la configuration du paysage de cette île méditerranéenne entre le ive et le viiie siècle. Les témoignages disponibles montrent qu’à la fin du iie ou au début du iiie siècle, un grand nombre d’emplacements avaient été abandonnés ; cela s’est « inversé » dans la seconde moitié du ve siècle et particulièrement au vie siècle, avec la réoccupation d’une grande partie des sites romains ; parallèlement, de nouveaux signes d’activité sont alors attestés sur de nombreux sites préhistoriques.
- Content Type Journal Article
- Category Original
- Pages 217-232
- DOI 10.1484/J.AT.5.101413
- Authors
- Catalina Mas Florit
- Miguel Ángel Cau
In this paper the relationship between rural and urban areas from the 4th to 7th centuries is discussed. We shall explore its changes first in general terms (mostly in central and northern Italy), and then in the Tuscany. Archaeological evidence highlights the different dynamics acting on North and South. A complex picture emerges, where the role and the fate of the city and its aristocracy are crucial for the interpretation of observed transformations of the rural areas.
The need to supply urban centres, demographic trends, the transformation of the Mediterranean economy and tax system, combined with political and military events, defined new forms of relationship between the cities and the countryside, particularly from the end of the 6th-7th centuries.
By this time the Roman institutional and fiscal links between the city and the countryside were largely replaced by the aristocratic network of land ownership. Villas, often monumentalised in the 4th century (especially in the north of the region), and farms were replaced by villages and a few central places directly linked to the cities, where the new aristocracy also continued to live.
- Content Type Journal Article
- Category Original
- Pages 243-255
- DOI 10.1484/J.AT.5.101415
- Authors
Depuis une vingtaine d’année, l’historiographie de la péninsule Ibérique envisage de plus en plus fortement la continuité des relations entre ville et campagne du iiie au vie siècle, en dépit d’importantes mutations des cultures matérielles. En l’absence de documents écrits, les détails de ces relations et de leurs éventuelles transformations nous échappent, mais l’archéologie a ouvert de nouvelles voies d’investigations qui ont permis de les envisager sous un angle différent. L’article examine ici l’interaction ville / campagne sous trois axes : culturel, politique et économique. Pour chacun de ces axes, un état actuel de la recherche est présenté en parallèle d’une brève discussion sur les possibilités et les limites des nouveaux témoignages archéologiques. De manière générale, ces nouvelles approches amènent à une façon originale et créative de concilier la permanence des relations cité / territoire avec les importants changements dont témoignent les données archéologiques.
- Content Type Journal Article
- Category Original
- Pages 233-241
- DOI 10.1484/J.AT.5.101414
- Authors
L’article aborde la délicate question de l’identification du statut juridique et social des habitants d’établissements ruraux de la Palestine tardo-antique documentés par l’archéologie. Il s’appuie pour cela notamment sur les données architecturales recueillies lors de la fouille d’un site villageois très représentatif du centre de l’actuel état d’Israel, Ḥorvat Zikhrin. Si l’agencement des habitations durant l’Antiquité tardive y est similaire à celui d’autres villages palestiniens contemporains, on y relève aussi certaines caractéristiques bien spécifiques qui incitent d’autant plus à tenter de restituer la structurtation sociale du site.
- Content Type Journal Article
- Category Original
- Pages 149-166
- DOI 10.1484/J.AT.5.101409
- Authors