University of Kent

Research

Investigating the Mediterranean City in Late Antiquity (AD 300-650)

In 2008-2010, Luke will jointly direct a programme of work at Ostia, the port of Rome, with Axel Gering of the Humboldt University in Berlin. He has been asked to join in refining previous work on the street system of the city in the 4th and early 5th c. A.D. At Ostia we are dealing with a large urban area excavated by clearance, that holds one major advantage over other classical sites: there are a series of universal changes in the level of the city, in the 3rd, mid 4th and early 5th c. A.D., which make changes in the urban fabric uniquely easy to date and interpret. Here small-scale excavation and repair survey will be used to try to develop a comprehensive methodology for re-surveying old clearance excavations, such as are now becoming accessible in Algeria and Libya. The primary focus at Ostia will be on understanding the street system, which Luke has recently studied at a synthetic level across the empire as a whole. The size of the site provides a unique chance to view late antique changes across the urban fabric in a systemic rather than anecdotal fashion. The `project will be open to students who have already some excavation experience.

Click here to visit the web site and blog of the Berlin-Kent Ostia excavations, 2008

Bringing late antique cities back to life

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 travelling 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.