Devi Taelman
Devi Taelman obtained his Master's degree in Archaeology at Ghent University in 2007. During this time, he specialised in Roman urbanism in Lusitania at the University of Coimbra (Portugal). In 2012, he completed his PhD at Ghent University entitled The provenance, supply and use of stone material at the Roman town of Ammaia (Portugal). Between 2012 and 2021, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Archaeology of Ghent University. Since 2021, he is a postdoctoral researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium).
His main areas of interest are the economic history of the Roman world, archaeometry, human-environment interactions in Roman Antiquity, Roman settlement archaeology, landscape archaeology and the application of geoarchaeological approaches to ancient Mediterranean landscapes. He applies these approaches to the study of agriculture, landscape use, and climate change in the Roman Mediterranean, as well as studies of the trade in marble in Antiquity.
Address: Department of Archaeology
Ghent University
Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 35 - UFO
9000 Gent
Belgium
His main areas of interest are the economic history of the Roman world, archaeometry, human-environment interactions in Roman Antiquity, Roman settlement archaeology, landscape archaeology and the application of geoarchaeological approaches to ancient Mediterranean landscapes. He applies these approaches to the study of agriculture, landscape use, and climate change in the Roman Mediterranean, as well as studies of the trade in marble in Antiquity.
Address: Department of Archaeology
Ghent University
Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 35 - UFO
9000 Gent
Belgium
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The reference collection focuses on pottery and stone found at archaeological sites and in historic buildings in Flanders, dating from prehistory to the pre-industrial era. The aim is to collect and give access to diagnostic reference material from archaeological and geological contexts whose provenance is known with certainty. This includes pottery from pottery production contexts and clay and stone from quarries or natural outcrops.
In this way, FLEPOSTORE makes the identification and provenance determination of these geo-materials accessible and aims to bridge the gap between education, research and society in an interdisciplinary way. Flepostore is therefore intended for all stakeholders: students, researchers, heritage professionals and anyone interested in geo-materials in an archaeological and historical context.
The materials are made accessible online by means of high-quality macro and microscopic photographs, detailed descriptions and geographical information. All samples are archived offline in a physical collection. The collection is not static and therefore, in the future, efforts will be made to expand and further improve the documentation.
The project was funded by an FWO-Hercules project for Medium-Scale Research Infrastructure. The reference collection could only be created thanks to the numerous contributions of many different partners & colleagues. We would therefore like to thank them for their contribution.
Six types of stone were used for the architectural decoration at Ammaia: white marble, pink–purple limestone, grey– white marble, two marble breccias and granite. Granite was the most widely used building stone and was used for the production of columns and capitals. Previous studies have established a local source for the Ammaia granite (Taelman et alii in press). The provenance of the remaining ornamental stones is primarily regional (the southern part of the Iberian Peninsula). Only the two marble breccia varieties were imported from the Mediterranean: africano from Teos (Turkey) and breccia di Sciro from the island of Skyros also (Greece). The predominant use of regionally available stones is observed in other Roman towns located in the interior of the Iberian Peninsula, such as Emerita Augusta, Asturica Augusta and Munigua, and results mainly from the geographic location of the sites, remote from any seaport and/or navigable river.
The reference collection focuses on pottery and stone found at archaeological sites and in historic buildings in Flanders, dating from prehistory to the pre-industrial era. The aim is to collect and give access to diagnostic reference material from archaeological and geological contexts whose provenance is known with certainty. This includes pottery from pottery production contexts and clay and stone from quarries or natural outcrops.
In this way, FLEPOSTORE makes the identification and provenance determination of these geo-materials accessible and aims to bridge the gap between education, research and society in an interdisciplinary way. Flepostore is therefore intended for all stakeholders: students, researchers, heritage professionals and anyone interested in geo-materials in an archaeological and historical context.
The materials are made accessible online by means of high-quality macro and microscopic photographs, detailed descriptions and geographical information. All samples are archived offline in a physical collection. The collection is not static and therefore, in the future, efforts will be made to expand and further improve the documentation.
The project was funded by an FWO-Hercules project for Medium-Scale Research Infrastructure. The reference collection could only be created thanks to the numerous contributions of many different partners & colleagues. We would therefore like to thank them for their contribution.
Six types of stone were used for the architectural decoration at Ammaia: white marble, pink–purple limestone, grey– white marble, two marble breccias and granite. Granite was the most widely used building stone and was used for the production of columns and capitals. Previous studies have established a local source for the Ammaia granite (Taelman et alii in press). The provenance of the remaining ornamental stones is primarily regional (the southern part of the Iberian Peninsula). Only the two marble breccia varieties were imported from the Mediterranean: africano from Teos (Turkey) and breccia di Sciro from the island of Skyros also (Greece). The predominant use of regionally available stones is observed in other Roman towns located in the interior of the Iberian Peninsula, such as Emerita Augusta, Asturica Augusta and Munigua, and results mainly from the geographic location of the sites, remote from any seaport and/or navigable river.
One important motivation for this habit seems to have been a still prospering local wine and oil/olive business. Indeed, some of our archaeological evidence in the Marche region indicates the functioning of grape and olive processing installations on several urban and rural sites in the 3RD-5TH century AD. To this regard, one may recall the mentioning of Picenian wine in Diocletian’s price Edict on Maximum Prices in AD 301 and the presence of the Hadrianum – a wine from southern Picenum – in three Egyptian papyri in the 3RD century AD. And let’s not forget the wide appreciation of the excellent Picenian table olives, famous for their taste among the Roman elite and commemorated on numerous occasions by authors such as Martial, Silius Italicus and Ausonius. These large green olives – which were often gently pressed in order to release some of their juice and flavour – are known to have been exported as far as north-eastern Gaul until the 3RD-4TH century AD.
This paper would like to highlight the interaction of the local stone industry and the region’s grape and olive trade in this period by illustrating how processes of urban and rural transformation could be integrated with changes in economic mentality.
The pdf version of the book is now available at Springer:
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-06281-0#about-this-book
pressure on the land. Strategies of resource exploitation and conservation were thus essential in dealing successfully with the limited availability of these resources in the medium or long term, and to ensure the sustainability of the Roman exploitation model. This volume deals with the various ways in which natural resources were exploited and managed in the Roman world. It focuses on if, when, where and how the Romans pursued a harmonious balance between the limited availability of a particular resource and the law of supply and demand. The case studies in this volume cover various key areas of the Western Roman world – from Italy and the island of Elba, over coastal Croatia to Central-Eastern Gaul and the Pannonian limes – and discuss in particular the fi sh industry, iron smelting, deforestation and forest management, the stone trade and the exploitation of thermo-mineral resources.
After this period of military anarchy, interrupted by a brief phase of prosperity with the accession to the imperial throne of Septimius Severus and his successors, there followed a period of economic stability that determined a new political and institutional empire. The time of Diocletian’s reforms, however, culminated in a serious crisis after the death of Constantine the Great (337 AD). The lands bordering the Adriatic were disputed by the heirs of the Emperor, starting a period of economic and cultural changes that manifested themselves initially as a diffuse form of recession in the dynamics of occupation of the territory. Urban and rural settlements show signs of abandonment and crisis. In the following decades, waves of peoples from northern and eastern Europe disrupted the political unity of the Empire even more. The Empire was only partially rebalanced after the Gothic War, due to the devastation of many urban centers and a drop in the number of sites in the area caused by continuing military clashes.
As was demonstrated at the last conference in Ravenna (Economia e Territorio, 28 February-1 March 2014), now being published, in recent years field research has revealed new evidence that allows us to draw a more complete picture of this important historical period which has been the focus of debate in recent decades. The research area discussed in Ravenna was mainly restricted to the central Adriatic, although there was communication with some eastern Adriatic areas.
This time the focus will extend to the basin defined as Adriatic Europe, according to geographical and cultural rather than political patterns, thus considering all territories facing the Adriatic Sea. These areas are affected by similar phenomena of transformations (barbarian conquest (crossings of the territory), the formation of barbaric countries, Justinian's Reconquest), at least until the Lombard invasion of Italy and Istria in the second half of the 6th century. After this point, they follow different trajectories that are still poorly understood. Such close relations between the two sides have always suggested direct cultural influences. The handicraft productions and forms of settlement in many ways tend to follow 2 common lines, but the progress of field investigations have not been sufficiently compared, especially with regard to the Early Middle Ages.
This new meeting will analyze these transformative phenomena in the areas research has neglected, including the time span between the 2nd and 8th centuries, especially on the Eastern Adriatic coast, from the short period before the establishment of the Severan dynasty up to the end of the Carolingian period.
We thank all participants for the interest shown for Trade conference and the numerous and very compelling themes proposed. Also, we wish everyone a fruitful conference and a pleasant stay in Zadar,
the Organizing commitee
International conference & book project organized and edited by Dimitri Van Limbergen, Devi Taelman & Adeline Hoffelinck
Ghent, November 19–21, 2020
An initiative of MARU, HARG & SDEP at Ghent University
Five sessions revolve around new insights from landscape archaeological projects, developments in the economy, the process of military expansion, processes of centralization and urbanization, and the ritual and religious sphere. A key goal of the conference is to discuss how the Portuguese panorama compares to other areas in the Iberian peninsula, and to foreground its contribution to current debates about Roman expansion and incorporation in the Central and Western Mediterranean.
With a view to assess the potential of integrating best practices in archaeological approaches and methodology, different national and disciplinary research traditions and historical frameworks will be explicitly discussed. As such, the conference aims to explore ways to collaborate more closely between various Mediterranean areas and research projects, and to develop a shared research agenda.
This is an occasion to study the passage from data to knowledge in the many theoretical approaches present nowadays in archaeology. We wish to focus on how visual narratives (i.e. mapping approaches and geovisualisations) can generate archaeological knowledge and historical narratives, in particular related to archaeological survey. Of extraordinary relevance is conception of space, since any human action has a spatial dimension.
Nevertheless, as Hacıgûzeller has pointed recently (Hacıgûzeller, 2012), current archaeological GIS tools are uncritically bonded to epistemological positivism. We can think of distribution maps of pre-and protohistoric cultures or maps of Roman expansionism to visualize of these representations and theoretical background shape our understanding of phenomena.
The session will explore theoretical decisions assumed or latent within cartographical representations and how does these graphical representations of knowledge influence or relate to narratives.
Most major studies on marble pavements are devoted to classification, dating and the evolution of decorative motifs over time, but the materials employed are often addressed only cursorily. The overall quantification of marble types and sizes is rarely, if ever, noted. While these studies do note the correlation between these pavements and certain room types, the full impact of marble placement has not been addressed. The 'Marble and the Vesuvian Cities' project, and by extension this paper, is concerned with the spatial position of marble varieties within insert pavements and how that position relates to each pavement’s specific context, such as the placement of entrances and windows. Moreover, through a careful spatial analysis it is possible to understand how the layout of marble inserts changes based on room function and, consequently, what this can tell us about how these designs functioned both physically and socially.
In order to accomplish these goals, the current authors have utilized a new method for documenting and analysing marble insert pavements. The documentation implements an image-based modelling technique that allows for a fast, effective, low-cost and accurate recording. This technique allows for the generation of geometrically-corrected orthophotographs, which can be used to create detailed plans that cannot be obtained using manual recording techniques. These datasets can then be combined in a spatial database for in-depth statistical analyses of the location and distribution of individual marble types in insert pavements. The results of this method have allowed us to demonstrate that marble placement in Roman insert pavements was not random. The preliminary results of the current project suggest that the intentional placement of marble inserts acted as a guiding element in Roman houses, chosen to suit the varying functions of individual spaces. Overall, this paper further emphasises the importance of marble decoration in Roman society.
increase their power and prestige. Sponsoring the construction and decoration of monumental, public architecture was
one of the most powerful material means for this. Monumental public architecture was often decorated excessively. The
orchestra and scaenae frons of the Roman theatre stand out as the object of benefaction par excellence.
For the architectural decoration of Roman theatres in the Western Mediterranean area, white marble elements (capitals, column bases, cornices, etc.) were generally combined with elements in coloured marbles (column shafts and
wall and floor veneer), thus creating an impressive polychromatic effect. In Southern France and Italy, this effect was
achieved by using marbles imported from Greece, the Aegean Islands, Asia Minor and North Africa. On the Iberian
Peninsula, locally and regionally available marbles (white and coloured) were combined with imported stones. From the
second century AD onwards, valuable marbles from the Eastern Desert in Egypt were imported and incorporated in the
decoration of the theatres in the Western Mediterranean.
With ever increasing ubiquity of digital tools and practices, and applications related to data science in archaeology, the organising committee is expecting a prolific event that critically focuses on the theory and practice of digital and quantitative methods in archaeology.
It is with great pleasure that the organising committee can confirm keynote lectures by Prof. Dr. Mark Gillings (University of Leicester) and Prof. Dr. Gary Lock (University of Oxford), two leading scholars in the field of digital archaeology.
The conference will be preceded by a workshop-day on October 28th. Topics for the hands-on workshops are: agent-based modelling in archaeology, spatial databases in archaeology, archaeological linked data and semantic web, and archaeological spatial data visualisations using R.
Registration
The registration form for both the conference and the workshops can be accessed through this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScZzvYKEnMsMNgjR-UkoTbQRXzVr4lhzUTIdbV_doAFqTSKnA/viewform
Registration for the event is free.
Location
The meeting will take place in the Justus Lipsiuszaal of the Faculty of Arts of the KU Leuven.
Address:
Justus Lipsiuszaal (room: lett. 08.16)
Blijde Inkomststraat 21
3000 Leuven
For further information, see the conference website (http://www.caanlfl.nl/?q=node/69)
We are now accepting paper proposals. More information on www.caanlfl.nl/?q=node/69