Meet and greet: Squares in Secondary Agglomerations of the Northwestern Roman Provinces - Resubmission

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The proposed bi-national research project is dedicated to public squares within the smaller centres of the Rhine provinces and Raetia. While fora in large towns are comparatively well studied, their equivalents in so-called secondary agglomerations are relatively little understood. Small-town settlements contain squares that would have served a number of comparable functions. However, any attempt to attribute the term “forum” to these squares reveals a research deficit, which this project aims to address by adopting an interdisciplinary approach that combines methods from archaeology, computational archaeology, archaeological sciences and ancient history. This approach aims to thoroughly investigate the use, functions and defining characteristics of squares in the north-western provinces and neighbouring regions from a multi-scalar perspective. The Archaeology of the Roman provinces will look into and define the architectural and chronological characteristics of squares in secondary agglomerations and will attempt to illuminate their multiple functions (administrative, ritual, commercial) in comparison to the fora of the cities. An evaluation of architectural and chronological specifications will enable integrative case studies of significant key sites. In this manner, indicators of any kind of self-administration of those polities can also be identified. Adopting although the Ancient History perspective the Archaeology of the Roman Provinces will furthermore examine textual evidence on the role and importance of open public spaces in secondary agglomerations as well as the integration of these settlements into wider socio-cultural processes within their provinces. Such evidence will eventually help determine the degree to which political events are reflected in the transformation of the squares and settlements under examination. Computational methods (Archaeoinformatics) will be used to study socio-symbolic aspects of the squares, especially those pertaining to visibility and movement in space. Furthermore, they will explore human interactions at a regional scale that could offer further insights into the economic and administrative functions of squares in secondary agglomerations. Finally, archaeozoological and geoarchaeological investigations by the project partner in Basel promise to shed new light into the changing uses and functions of squares. The former could enhance our knowledge about the everyday life of past people via the examination of food waste and remains of ritual performance. Furthermore, the majority of barely consolidated public squares display a significant accumulation of environmental influences, so that micromorphological analysis can specify the biography of those sites. The project will use an integrative approach to examine squares in secondary agglomerations as expressions of distinct polities and identify their evident characteristics at multiple scales.