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... Show moreThe 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. Show less
This monograph investigates the development of urbanism in the North-Western Roman provinces (i.e. nowadays France, Britain, Belgium, and Netherlands), the main foci being on the nature,... Show moreThis monograph investigates the development of urbanism in the North-Western Roman provinces (i.e. nowadays France, Britain, Belgium, and Netherlands), the main foci being on the nature, characteristics, and shapes that settlement systems took during the first 250 years of the imperial period. The scope of the research undertaken in this book extends beyond the study of the “official” Roman cities (i.e. centres which enjoyed some level of self-governance and which are known from ancient literary and epigraphic sources), comprising all settlements which have yielded evidence of monumental architecture and/or of extensive non-agricultural activities. Show less
