Civitates Hispaniae : urbanisation on the Iberian peninsula during the High Empire

Abstract

The principal aims of this book are to provide a

comprehensive reconstruction of the urban systems of the Iberian Peninsula

during the High Empire and to explain why these systems looked the way they

did. While some chapters focus on settlements that were cities or towns from a juridical point of view, the implications of using a purely functional definition of towns are also explored. Key themes include continuities and discontinuities between pre-Roman and Roman settlement patterns, the geographical distribution of cities belonging to various size brackets, economic relationships between self-governing cities and their territories, and the role of cities as nodes in road systems and maritime networks. In addition, it is argued that a considerable number of self-governing communities in Roman Spain and Portugal were polycentric rather based on a single urban centre.