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"Rivers Rome History."
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Rivers and the power of ancient Rome
Figuring in myth, religion, law, the military, commerce, and transportation, rivers were at the heart of Rome's increasing exploitation of the environment of the Mediterranean world. In Rivers and the Power of Ancient Rome, Brian Campbell explores the role and influence of rivers and their surrounding landscape on the society and culture of the Roman Empire.
Examining artistic representations of rivers, related architecture, and the work of ancient geographers and topographers, as well as writers who describe rivers, Campbell reveals how Romans defined the geographical areas they conquered and how geography and natural surroundings related to their society and activities. In addition, he illuminates the prominence and value of rivers in the control and expansion of the Roman Empire — through the legal regulation of riverine activities, the exploitation of rivers in military tactics, and the use of rivers as routes of communication and movement. Campbell shows how a technological understanding of — and even mastery over — the forces of the river helped Rome rise to its central place in the ancient world.
eBook
Lead in ancient Rome’s city waters
It is now universally accepted that utilization of lead for domestic purposes and water distribution presents a major health hazard. The ancient Roman world was unaware of these risks. How far the gigantic network of lead pipes used in ancient Rome compromised public health in the city is unknown. Lead isotopes in sediments from the harbor of Imperial Rome register the presence of a strong anthropogenic component during the beginning of the Common Era and the Early Middle Ages. They demonstrate that the lead pipes of the water distribution system increased Pb contents in drinking water of the capital city by up to two orders of magnitude over the natural background. The Pb isotope record shows that the discontinuities in the pollution of the Tiber by lead are intimately entwined with the major issues affecting Late Antique Rome and its water distribution system.
Journal Article
Floods of the Tiber in ancient Rome
He discusses the strategies the Romans employed to alleviate or prevent flooding, their social and religious attitudes toward floods, and how the threat of inundation influenced the development of the city's physical and economic landscapes.
eBook
The seven hills of Rome
From humble beginnings, Rome became perhaps the greatest
intercontinental power in the world. Why did this historic city
become so much more influential than its neighbor, nearby Latium,
which was peopled by more or less the same stock? Over the years,
historians, political analysts, and sociologists have discussed
this question ad infinitum, without considering one
underlying factor that led to the rise of Rome--the geology now
hidden by the modern city.
This book demonstrates the important link between the history of
Rome and its geologic setting in a lively, fact-filled narrative
sure to interest geology and history buffs and travelers alike. The
authors point out that Rome possessed many geographic advantages
over surrounding areas: proximity to a major river with access to
the sea, plateaus for protection, nearby sources of building
materials, and most significantly, clean drinking water from
springs in the Apennines. Even the resiliency of Rome's
architecture and the stability of life on its hills are underscored
by the city's geologic framework.
If carried along with a good city map, this book will expand the
understanding of travelers who explore the eternal city's streets.
Chapters are arranged geographically, based on each of the seven
hills, the Tiber floodplain, ancient creeks that dissected the
plateau, and ridges that rise above the right bank. As an added
bonus, the last chapter consists of three field trips around the
center of Rome, which can be enjoyed on foot or by using public
transportation.
eBook
Rome’s urban history inferred from Pb-contaminated waters trapped in its ancient harbor basins
Heavy metals from urban runoff preserved in sedimentary deposits record long-term economic and industrial development via the expansion and contraction of a city’s infrastructure. Lead concentrations and isotopic compositions measured in the sediments of the harbor of Ostia—Rome’s first harbor—show that lead pipes used in the water supply networks of Rome and Ostia were the only source of radiogenic Pb, which, in geologically young central Italy, is the hallmark of urban pollution. High-resolution geochemical, isotopic, and 14C analyses of a sedimentary core from Ostia harbor have allowed us to date the commissioning of Rome’s lead pipe water distribution system to around the second century BC, considerably later than Rome’s first aqueduct built in the late fourth century BC. Even more significantly, the isotopic record of Pb pollution proves to be an unparalleled proxy for tracking the urban development of ancient Rome over more than a millennium, providing a semiquantitative record of the water system’s initial expansion, its later neglect, probably during the civil wars of the first century BC, and its peaking in extent during the relative stability of the early high Imperial period. This core record fills the gap in the system’s history before the appearance of more detailed literary and inscriptional evidence from the late first century BC onward. It also preserves evidence of the changes in the dynamics of the Tiber River that accompanied the construction of Rome’s artificial port, Portus, during the first and second centuries AD.
Journal Article
Engineering the Eternal City : infrastructure, topography, and the culture of knowledge in late sixteenth-century Rome
Between the catastrophic flood of the Tiber River in 1557 and the death of the \"engineering pope\" Sixtus V in 1590, the city of Rome was transformed by intense activity involving building construction and engineering projects of all kinds. Using hundreds of archival documents and primary sources, Engineering the Eternal City explores the processes and people involved in these infrastructure projects—sewers, bridge repair, flood prevention, aqueduct construction, the building of new, straight streets, and even the relocation of immensely heavy ancient Egyptian obelisks that Roman emperors had carried to the city centuries before.
This portrait of an early modern Rome examines the many conflicts, failures, and successes that shaped the city, as decision-makers tried to control not only Rome's structures and infrastructures but also the people who lived there. Taking up visual images of the city created during the same period—most importantly in maps and urban representations, this book shows how in a time before the development of modern professionalism and modern bureaucracies, there was far more wide-ranging conversation among people of various backgrounds on issues of engineering and infrastructure than there is in our own times. Physicians, civic leaders, jurists, cardinals, popes, and clerics engaged with painters, sculptors, architects, printers, and other practitioners as they discussed, argued, and completed the projects that remade Rome.
eBook
The Aggradational Successions of the Aniene River Valley in Rome: Age Constraints to Early Neanderthal Presence in Europe
We revise the chronostratigraphy of several sedimentary successions cropping out along a 5 km-long tract of the Aniene River Valley in Rome (Italy), which yielded six hominin remains previously attributed to proto- or archaic Neanderthal individuals, as well as a large number of lithic artefacts showing intermediate characteristics somewhere between the local Acheulean and Mousterian cultures. Through a method of correlation of aggradational successions with post-glacial sea-level rises, relying on a large set of published 40Ar/39Ar ages of interbedded volcanic deposits, we demonstrate that deposition of the sediments hosting the human remains spans the interval 295-220 ka. This is consistent with other well constrained ages for lithic industries recovered in England, displaying transitional features from Lower to Middle Paleolithic, suggesting the appearance of Mode 3 during the MIS 9-MIS 8 transition. Moreover, the six human bone fragments recovered in the Aniene Valley should be regarded as the most precisely dated and oldest hominin remains ascribable to Neanderthal-type individuals in Europe, discovered to date. The chronostratigraphic study presented here constitutes the groundwork for addressing re-analysis of these remains and of their associated lithic industries, in the light of their well-constrained chronological picture.
Journal Article
Hadrian in Germany and the Construction of the Limes Palisade in A.D. 120
Germania Inferior and Germania Superior, along the Rhine, and neighbouring Raetia were provinces inherited by Hadrian which lacked major external threats and had the potential to become flourishing parts of the Roman Empire. Relying on his personal knowledge of the regional situation he strengthened civilian self-government by gradually reducing the role of the military. Apart from the legions, all other units were stationed in a small defined cordon at the edge of Roman territory. Together with the now well-dated building of the palisade as a continuous running barrier, Hadrian’s initiatives might be seen as an imperial gift to the provincials.
Journal Article
Roman Turdetania
This book provides an updated state of knowledge about the socio-cultural interaction processes and the subsequent romanisation of the populations in the southern Iberian Peninsula from the 4th to the 1st centuries from a postcolonial point of view.
eBook