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Bringing late antique cities back to life
Principal Investigator: Luke Lavan
Over the next five years Luke will be undertaking a synthetic study of the topography of the late antique city, focusing on the Mediterranean from A.D. 300-650. The ultimate goal of his research is to produce an illustrated monograph on social and political space, telling the story of everyday life in cities at this time. In association with this work Luke is engaged in a five-year project on the Visualisation of the Late Antique City, with Sebastian Rascon of the University of Madrid, who leads a team of virtual reality designers working on heritage projects in Spain. This work tries to reconstruct behaviour and object use within late antique cities, rather than simply architecture; it brings all types of evidence together, whether artefactual, textual, or epigraphic. The project will result in an illustrated catalogue and a traveling exhibition, run by Sebastian. Their intention is to bring the late antique city to a wider audience, who know little of urban life in this period, and its enduring contribution to western civilisation.