Colloquium: Current Work in the Roman Archaeology of Southeast Europe
Archaeological Institute of America Annual Meeting in Toronto, January 5-8, 2017
Organizers: Anne Chen (Brown University) and Sarah Craft (Florida State University)
Colloquium Sponsor: Roman Provincial Archaeology Interest Group
In 2016 the Roman Provincial Archaeology Interest Group (RPAIG) organized the first of a series of “current excavation” sessions, building on those organized in past years by the AIA Program Committee. The session was a success this year with topical discussion afterwards and important connections made between researchers working on Roman provincial sites. We are now focusing on providing a forum to discuss different geographic regions whose on-going archaeological work is historically not well-known among North American scholars in an effort to integrate data with well-known provinces (e.g. Britain, Germany). This approach brings a more realistic understanding of the Roman provinces by combining detailed data of regional trends with broader empire-wide phenomena. Southeastern Europe has become a superb area for fresh insight on questions of change in settlement, population groups, and power structures in the period of a growing Roman empire, and how those areas reacted and responded to shifting Mediterranean trends. As an area inaccessible for so long because of modern political issues, researchers from North America are now making connections with those doing work in countries such as Serbia, Croatia, Bulgaria, and Romania. This session brings together a diverse group of European and North American researchers in a collaborative, transnational forum to present the exciting work currently taking place in this region.
While the broad theme of the session is on current work being done in Southeastern Europe, some trends and themes have emerged through the particular combination of speakers and research presented here. The range of methods and approaches highlights the diverse nature of the region’s on-going archaeological work, including excavation, landscape survey, geophysical survey, underwater archaeology, aerial prospection, archaeozoology, archaeobotany, and sophisticated Geographic Information Systems (GIS) applications, many of them in combination. Additionally, a discernible pattern across several papers is the presentation of data pertaining to sites that received imperial patronage in the middle and late empire, including a monument to Trajan’s Dacian victories, imperial palaces at Sirmium, Split, and Felix Romuliana, and a town founded by Justinian. As an important cultural crossroads and in many ways de facto political capital of the late Roman empire, this session will contribute to the growing appreciation and discussion of Southeastern Europe’s prominence in the archaeology of the Roman world’s geographically peripheral – but in no way insignificant – provinces.
Colloquium paper presenters and institutional affiliations:
Croatia
Romania
Serbia
Colloquium Discussant
Elizabeth M. Greene, University of Western Ontario
While the broad theme of the session is on current work being done in Southeastern Europe, some trends and themes have emerged through the particular combination of speakers and research presented here. The range of methods and approaches highlights the diverse nature of the region’s on-going archaeological work, including excavation, landscape survey, geophysical survey, underwater archaeology, aerial prospection, archaeozoology, archaeobotany, and sophisticated Geographic Information Systems (GIS) applications, many of them in combination. Additionally, a discernible pattern across several papers is the presentation of data pertaining to sites that received imperial patronage in the middle and late empire, including a monument to Trajan’s Dacian victories, imperial palaces at Sirmium, Split, and Felix Romuliana, and a town founded by Justinian. As an important cultural crossroads and in many ways de facto political capital of the late Roman empire, this session will contribute to the growing appreciation and discussion of Southeastern Europe’s prominence in the archaeology of the Roman world’s geographically peripheral – but in no way insignificant – provinces.
Colloquium paper presenters and institutional affiliations:
Croatia
- Josko Belamarić, Centre Cvito Fisković, Institute of Art History, “New thoughts about Diocletian's Palace and the Gynaeceum Iovense Aspalathos Dalmatiae”
- Irena Radić-Rossi, University of Zadar, and Katarina Batur, University of Zadar, “Submarine Evidence of Seafaring and Seaborne Trade in Roman Dalmatia”
Romania
- Linda Ellis, San Francisco State University, “Community Archaeology: Surveys and analysis of Roman water management systems in SE Romania (Black Sea region / Scythia Minor) and their continuing impact on public health in the 21st century”
Serbia
- Sarah Craft, Florida State University, “Diachronic Landscape Survey in the Vicinity of Romuliana”
- Vujadin Ivanisević, Archaeological Institute, Belgrade, “Caračin Grad (Justiniana Prima): A New Plan for a Late Antique City”
- Stefan Pop-Lazić, Archaeological Institute, Belgrade, “Results of Recent Research in the NW part of Sirmium Imperial Palace”
Colloquium Discussant
Elizabeth M. Greene, University of Western Ontario