Ian Haynes, "Rome Transformed: New approaches to the Classical and Late Antique Caelian"

Description: 

Rome Transformed is a five-year, European Research Council-funded project which pursues an interdisciplinary approach to mapping political, military, and religious changes to the eastern Caelian from the first to eighth centuries CE. It brings together archaeologists, engineers, historians, geographers, and topographers to investigate both the mundane and monumental elements of the city fabric in chronological, geographical, and ideological relationship to one another.

To build an integrated picture of the 68-hectare research area a variety of methods are applied. These need to be flexible enough to reappraise the monumental structures that dominate the area even today, such as sections of the Aurelian Wall and Claudio-Neronian aqueduct, while remaining applicable to multiple smaller complexes, including sub-surface excavated remains and spaces where innovative combinations of archaeological geophysics must be applied.

This paper outlines the project’s methodology, reviewing the four pillars of the data capture strategy (structural analysis, geophysical survey, bore hole analysis and archival research) and the experimental systems that are used to integrate them (Three Tier /full data set visualisation, Provocation modelling, and RT 3D). It concludes by outlining the ways in which this approach is enhancing our understanding of this profoundly significant part of the ancient and late Antique city.

Biography: 

Ian Haynes is Chair of Archaeology at the British School at Rome, and Professor of Archaeology at Newcastle University in the UK. He is PI of the ERC Advanced Grant Project ‘Rome Transformed’ and co-director of the Birdoswald Excavation Project on Hadrian’s Wall. Recent books include Blood of the Provinces, the edited volume The Basilica of St John Lateran to 1600 (with L. Bosman and P. Liverani), and A cult centre on Rome’s North-West frontier: excavations at Maryport, Cumbria (with T. Wilmott).

This talk will not be available on zoom and will not be recorded.