Steven Ellis, Professor, University of Cincinnati

To give shape to a Roman city – whether by conceptualizing their various activities, plotting the finds and fixtures here and there, or delineating their many structural parts across a map, even excavating them down to bedrock – can be an exercise that is too often limited to two-dimensional constructs. In response, this presentation will aim to positively complicate some of the ways in which we can think about the shaping of urban space, with special attention to what can come from archaeological excavation. Taking the University of Cincinnati excavations at the Punic- Roman city of Tharros as our primary case study, I will look at how the volumetric makeup of a city – at both a micro- and macro-contextual scale – can provide wholly new information on the episodic development of a city over time and space. At the micro-level, we will test the associative relationships between the taphonomic contexts and the objects recovered within them, as well as consider strategies for excavation at scale. At the macro-level, our enquiries shift in focus from archaeological method toward two critical episodes of the ancient past: the first being the obliteration of Tharros’ Punic urbanscape in the Roman period, which might reflect Lisa Fentress’ “coercive urbanism”; the second being some new thoughts (indeed some new dates, being several centuries earlier) on the spatially checquered abandonment of the city.

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