Romans In The Middle And Lower Danube Valley 1st Century Bc 5th Century Ad

This volume contains 11 articles that spring from the conference 'Bridging the Danube: Roman Occupation and Interaction in the Middle and Lower Danube Valley, 1st-5th c. AD' (Timişoara, 2014). The papers present current research by East European scholars at sites such as Novae, Viminacium and Drobeta. The volume is, in part, intended to stimulate awareness amongst western scholars of the importance of the provinces of Moesia, Dacia and Thracia in the history of the Roman Empire and the research potential in the region. Topics include the effect of the Romans on native settlements and defensive systems, the integration of modern technology and historical maps in archaeological surveys, the food supply of the Roman army, Roman defensive systems, funerary practices, demographic issues concerning Roman soldiers and settlers in the Danubian provinces, and imperial portraiture.

Over the past few decades, there has been a significant amount of research on the Roman Lower Danube frontier by international teams focusing on individual forts or broader landscape survey work; collectively, this volume represents the best of this collaboration with the aim of elevating the Lower Danube within broader Roman frontier scholarship.

Which ancient army boasted the largest fortifications, and how did the competitive build-up of military capabilities shape world history? Few realise that imperial Rome had a serious competitor in Late Antiquity. Late Roman legionary bases, normally no larger than 5ha, were dwarfed by Sasanian fortresses, often covering 40ha, sometimes even 125-175ha. The latter did not necessarily house permanent garrisons but sheltered large armies temporarily – perhaps numbering 10-50,000 men each. Even Roman camps and fortresses of the Early and High Empire did not reach the dimensions of their later Persian counterparts. The longest fort-lined wall of the late antique world was also Persian. Persia built up, between the fourth and sixth centuries AD, the most massive military infrastructure of any ancient or medieval Near Eastern empire – if not the ancient and medieval world. Much of the known defensive network was directed against Persia’s powerful neighbours in the north rather than the west. This may reflect differences in archaeological visibility more than troop numbers. Urban garrisons in the Romano-Persian frontier zone are much harder to identify than vast geometric compounds in marginal northern lands. Recent excavations in Iran have enabled us to precision-date two of the largest fortresses of Southwest Asia, both larger than any in the Roman world. Excavations in a Gorgan Wall fort have shed much new light on frontier life, and we have unearthed a massive bridge nearby. A sonar survey has traced the terminal of the Tammisheh Wall, now submerged under the waters of the Caspian Sea. Further work has focused on a vast city and settlements in the hinterland. Persia’s Imperial Power, our previous project, had already shed much light on the Great Wall of Gorgan, but it was our recent fieldwork that has thrown the sheer magnitude of Sasanian military infrastructure into sharp relief.

In Pannonia and Upper Moesia, first published 1974, András Mócsy surveys the Middle Danube Provinces from the latest pre-Roman Iron Age up to the beginning of the Great Migrations. His primary concern is to develop a general synthesis of the archaeological and historical researches in the Danube Basin, which lead to a more detailed knowledge of the Roman culture of the area. The economic and social development, town and country life, culture and religion in the Provinces are all investigated, and the local background of the so-called Illyrian Predominance during the third century crisis of the Roman Empire is explained, as is the eventual breakdown of Danubian Romanisation. This volume will appeal to students and teachers of archaeology alike, as well as to those interested in the Roman Empire – not only the history of Rome itself, but also of the far-flung areas which together comprised the Empire’s frontier for centuries.

During the two centuries before the birth of Christ, all the lands around the Mediterranean came under the control of the Romans. Their power extended into Europe as far as the Rhine and the Danube and into Asia as far as the Euphrates. Some use was made of coined money over the whole of that area before the Romans came; there were diverse currencies, based on a number of different systems. By the middle of the first century A.D. Roman gold and silver had taken the place of almost all other value currencies, and in much of the area Roman bronze and copper had taken the place of other kinds of small change. So much is clear, but much else remains far from clear. What purposes had the Roman government, and other authorities, in mind in deciding whether and when to issue currency, and in what quantities and denominations? Was Roman currency deliberately imposed, other currencies being deliberately suppressed? Was there an increase in demand for coined money during this period, whether as a result of Roman conquest or for other reasons? Was demand satisfied? Was currency being exported from the Roman world in sufficiently large quantities to cause a shortage already in the first half of the first century A.D.? -- pg. [1].

The proceedings of the Sixth International Congress on Black Sea Antiquities (Constanţa, 2017) is dedicated to the 90th birthday of Prof. Sir John Boardman, President of the Congress since its inception. The central theme returns to that considered 20 years earlier: the importance of the Pontic Region for the Graeco-Roman World.

The Danube River Basin is shared by 19 countries and there is no river basin in the world shared by so many nations. Europe’s second largest river basin with a total 2 area of about 800,000 km is also home to 83 million people of different cultures, languages and historical backgrounds. Management of common water sources and overcoming dif?culties caused by droughts and ?oods requires co-operation between the countries. In 1971 these c- mon interests stimulated the hydrologists of – at that time – eight Danube countries to begin regional co- operation in the framework of the International Hydrological Decade of UNESCO. The result of this research was The Hydrological Monograph of the Danube and its Catchment, which was published in 1986. Since 1975 this co-operation has continued under the umbrella of the International Hydrological Programme (IHP) of UNESCO. In the past 20 years political turbulence has caused an increase in the number of countries, making the co-operation dif?cult at times.