Department of Classics and Archaeology

This research looks to present a reinterpretation of medieval forests, the least well understood landscapes of medieval Western Europe. The thesis focuses on the Forest of High Peak and Sherwood Forest and seeks to address several key themes, including the diversity of forest landscapes, the long-term impact of Forest Law, and evidence for power-relations and social dynamics within the forests. A wide variety of sources are utilised within this research, including map analysis and regression techniques, analysis of material culture, documentary sources, place names, church architecture, and funerary monuments.
Evidence is found for forests having had a dynamic landscape character, including not only woodland, but also moorland, farmland, industrial areas, and urban areas, as well as a range of human activities that included mining, glass and charcoal manufacture, ironworking, leatherworking, carpentry, construction, and intensive arable and pastoral farming. Far from being universally oppressive, it emerges that through its protection of woodland Forest Law also preserved common rights and areas of royal demesne, the impact of which was a high degree of peasant agency during the medieval period.

"On Celtiberian urbanism there are two discourses: on the one hand, the prehistorical discourse regarding pre-Roman Celtiberia an urban society. On the other, the historical discourse explaining how the Romans created the urban society of the Celtiberians, as the latter people Romanized. This master thesis focuses on this incongruence. Therefore, the main question is: What is the relation between Romanization and urbanization in Celtiberia?
                Firstly, a short overview of the Romanization discourse is given to understand the different models proposed by Curchin (2004). Moreover, the relation between Romanization and urbanization is taken in account to understand the idea of the causal relation between these two ‘-zations’. Thereafter, the discourse on ancient urbanism is taken in account to understand what is regarded as urban. The urban theory of the consumer city, by Weber (1922) and Finley (1977), is taken in account. Furthermore, the central place theory proposed by Christaller (1930) is combined with this consumer city model.
              The urbanization of the Celtiberians is treated in four phases. The first three have been proposed by Almagro-Gorbea (1994) for the Celtic peoples of the Iberian Peninsula. This treats the rise of urban settlements from the very humble beginnings of the first permanent settlements to the large urban oppida. I have added a fourth phase to this urbanization as I believe this is the final phase. In this phase the Celtiberian urban society is reorganized by the Romans to fit the Roman Empire. It is this change that had the historians to believe that the Celtiberian city was a Roman construct. Each phase is treated taking in account its archaeological, epigraphic, numismatic and written sources in order to understand the social changes that led to the development Celtiberian urban society.

Por lo que respecta al tema del urbanismo celtíbero, tenemos que diferenciar dos discursos. Por un lado, tenemos el discurso prehistórico considerando Celtibéria prerromana como una sociedad urbana. Por otro lado, tenemos el discurso histórico, explicando la manera en que los romanos habrían creado la sociedad urbana de los celtíberos, es decir la Romanización de los Celtíberos. Esta tesina de maestría se enfoque en esta incongruencia. Por lo tanto, la pregunta principal es: ¿Qué es la relación entre Romanización y urbanización en Celtibéria?
Primero, esta tesina presenta una reseña del discurso sobre el tema de  Romanización, con el fin de entender los distintos modelos que introduce Curchin (2004). Además, este informe trata el tema de la relación entre Romanización y urbanización, para que se entienda la idea de la relación causal entre los dos ‘–zaciónes’. A continuación, se discuta el discurso del tema del urbanismo anciano, para entender lo que se considera como ‘urbano’. Además, este informe explica el modelo de la ciudad de consumo, de Weber (1922) y Finley (1977). Después, se conjuga este modelo con la teoría de los lugares centrales, introducido por Christaller (1930).
La urbanización de los celtíberos podemos dividir en cuatro fases. Almagro-Gorbea (1994) introdujo las tres primeras etapas para el pueblo céltico en la Península Ibérica. Esta división trata el desarrollo de los asentamientos urbanos desde el inicio humilde de los asentamientos permanentes hasta las grandes oppida urbanas. He añadido una cuarta fase al desarrollo de urbanización, ya que parto de la idea de que el discurso necesita una fase final. En esta fase, la sociedad urbana celtibérica está reorganizada por los romanos para adaptarse al Imperio Romano. Es este cambio por lo que los históricos parten de la idea de que la ciudad celtibérica era una construcción romana. La tesina discuta cada fase considerando sus fuentes arqueológicas, epigráficas, numismáticas y escritas, para que se entienda los cambios sociales que habían llevado al surgimiento de la sociedad celtibérica urbana.
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Presented by: M. S. Hobson

Authors: M. S. Hobson, D. Donev, P.H.A. Houten, P. Kloeg, K. Pazmany, F. Pellegrino, C. Tzanetea and R. Willet

This paper offers a critique of current attempts to understand the processes behind the formation of the Roman Empire’s urban network. The sheer number of urban centres within the Empire has always been a major obstacle to formulating broad explanatory models tackling this subject directly. Current literature focusing on ancient urbanism at the macro level falls into two categories. The first, making up the vast majority of studies, employs quantitative or abstract methods of analysis, reducing the problem of urban development to a limited number of factors (such as city area, population, degree of connectivity, etc.), which can then be managed more easily and analysed statistically, often missing certain qualitative nuances present within the data (Bekker-Nielsen 1989; Bowman and Wilson 2011). In recent times these works have been increasingly concerned with the issues of demography, the performance of the economy, urbanization rates, and so on (Scheidel et al. 2007). The second group attempts to understand the social processes involved in the construction of the urban landscape (Laurence et al. 2011; Revell 2009), but is often overwhelmed by the complexity and individuality of different regional case studies. Our ERC-funded project, An Empire of 2000 Cities: urban networks and economic integration in the Roman Empire, starts from the conviction that a team effort, completing a systematic study of the huge amount of historical and archaeological data accumulated over the past fifty years, can produce more satisfactory explanatory models at the Empire-wide level of analysis.

Pliny gives us the census of the free people of the three conventus which now make up the north of Portugal and the northwest of Spain. Throughout history this area has been known to have a relatively low urbanization and population rate. Nonetheless these population numbers have led to wild speculations and extrapolations for reconstructions of the urban population of Hispania as a whole. In this paper the focus will be solely on the population of Galicia and two cities as case studies, instead of the entire peninsula, in order to obtain a more feasible urbanization and population rate.
Firstly, the reliability of the numbers given by Pliny will be analysed: where did Pliny get his data, how have these been delivered to us and is there evidence for more census numbers? Pliny is one of the most important sources for the cities and peoples of Hispania, but other ancient sources will be regarded to complete the historical picture of Galicia.
Secondly, the article by Carreras Monfort using these census numbers in order to calculate the entire population of Hispania will be criticized. The credibility of estimations on population density and city size put to task and moreover, the extrapolation to the entire peninsula from one area with specifically low population density will be questioned.
Lastly, the census numbers will be tested against archaeological data from the same period to reconstruct the Roman Galician demographic situation. Moreover, archaeological and demographic data on the cities in this region for the medieval and modern period will help to understand the relation between these two fields of study and provide a better picture of the demographic developments in Galicia on the long term. Hereby the true significance of these Augustan census numbers for the demography of Roman Galicia can be extracted.

RESUMEN: El objetivo de este artículo es investigar la relación entre monumentalidad y conectividad de las ciudades en la Península Ibérica durante el alto imperio ro‐ mano, aplicando los análisis espaciales y de redes sociales. En primer lugar, la pre‐ sencia de los monumentos investigados (anfiteatro, circo y teatro) será tratada en un análisis crítico de diferentes fuentes. En segundo lugar, un análisis de redes será utilizado para iluminar la relación entre la Centralidad y el nivel de la monumenta‐ lidad de las ciudades. Naturalmente, la historia de las ciudades individuales puede explicar su propia situación. No obstante, los patrones largos no se pueden entender a travès de los estudios individuales de las ciudades.

ABSTRACT: The aim of this paper is to examine the relation between monumentality and connectivity of the cities on the Iberian Peninsula during the High Empire, using spatial and social network analyses. Firstly, the presence of the monuments under scrutiny (amphitheatre, circus and theatre) will be treated by a critical analysis of the different sources. Secondly, a social network analysis will be used to illuminate the role of Centrality in relation to the monumentality of cities. Naturally, the history of specific cities can explain their individual situation. However, large patterns cannot be understood by the individual study of cities.

http://www.unav.edu/publicaciones/revistas/index.php/cuadernos-de-arqueologia/article/view/3952

In 1873 Detlef DETLEFSEN recognised within the accounts of Plinio and Ptolomeo the different levels of urbanization in Hispania Citerioris. He argued that the civitates do not obey the static formula: urbs et territorium. The presentation will go into the by Detlefsen called ländliche civitas or as in this presentation: dispersed civitas. Interestingly his theory of a civitas without an urban centre has not been picked up by Spanish scholars, but has been developed separately by different Spanish scholars in the last twenty years. These older and newer insights will be combined into a new interpretation of this category of civitas.