Bathing culture was one of the pillars of Roman society and bathhouses are one of the largest categories of a particular type of construction excavated in the Roman world. The large number of ...surviving remains and their regional variety make bathhouses vital for the study of the local societies in the Roman-Byzantine period. This book presents the archaeological evidence of close to 200 Roman-style bathhouses from the region of Iudaea/Syria-Palaestina and Provincia Arabia, part of the provinces of the Roman East, constructed from the reign of Herod the Great (second half of the 1st century BCE) to the end of the Umayyad rule (mid-8th century CE). The bathing complexes of the Roman, Byzantine, and the Early Islamic periods, ranging from large public thermae to small bathing suites, are for the first time analyzed as unified data with an unprecedented amount of detail, considering a variety of parameters – from dating and setting, through building techniques and materials, to plans and decorations. Typologies of the bathhouses and their components are supplemented by exploration of the socio-cultural insight provided by this particular type of construction. The historical narrative of the regional bathing facilities is updated in the light of new information. The full raw data used for the study is provided in the expandable open-access online database.
Masons' Marks of Antiochia Hippos Kowalewska, Arleta; Eisenberg, Michael
Tel Aviv (1974),
01/2019, Letnik:
46, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Masons' marks, though often not fully documented, interpreted and researched, are well-attested at sites from the Classical periods. This article presents a complete study of masons' marks from ...Antiochia Hippos of the Decapolis. The survey of the site yielded 374 Roman-period marks: 359 used for accounts and 15 probably used for indication of assembly order. The presence of masons' marks on some of the structures at Hippos and other Roman-period sites in Syria-Palaestina points to details of the organization of work. The marks show chronological dependency, and consequently can be used to indicate relative and even absolute dating.
In the Roman world a wide variety of funerary architecture was erected along the access roads of cities to catch the eye of passersby. In Hippos (Sussita in Aramaic) of the Decapolis, the most ...notable funerary structures stood along the city's main approach within the Saddle Necropolis. The most distinctive elements of the necropolis's architectural remains were a series of 13 large funerary podia – the focus of the 2020 excavations. The Hippos podia are unique in the Roman world, in their dating, their architecture, and their multiplicity. The architectural design of this series of structures may be the first evidence of necropolis planning and erection of funerary monuments by the polis itself within the Roman world. The article describes the freshly exposed Hippos podia, proposes reasoning for the choice of this particular type of construction, and analyzes similar funerary structures throughout the Roman world, with emphasis on the Roman East, where sarcophagi were widespread.
Baths and bathing in Rome and the Roman East Kowalewska, Arleta
Bathhouses in Iudaea, Syria-Palaestina and Provincia Arabia from Herod the Great to the Umayyads,
08/2021
Book Chapter
Bathing tradition was an inherent part of Roman culture. The bathhouses and the practice of visiting them were a standard component of life throughout the Roman Empire. Every city of the Empire had ...at least one public bathhouse, and for most city dwellers, a visit to the bathhouse was part of their daily routine.
The vital place bathhouses held in the Roman culture is easily discerned through archaeological remains. Archaeologists have excavated countless numbers of bathhouses in cities, towns, military camps, villae, and road stations in all the provinces of the Roman Empire. Bathhouses are found more commonly than any
Motivation: Institutions play a significant role in development processes, contributing to understanding the economic backwardness of Sub-Saharan Africa. There is no consensus in the literature on ...the specific set of institutions that significantly influence developmental processes. Furthermore, there is no convincing evidence that institutions create the proper environment for long-term growth or result from increased development due to advances in human capital and investments. Therefore, the article examines overcoming the developmental backwardness of those countries following sustainable development.Aim: The article aims to analyze whether institutions contribute to the development processes of Sub-Saharan African countries. The paper identifies the differences in channels of institutions’ impact on the two development measures, GDP per capita and the Human Development Index (HDI). Regarding the high diversity in the level of development of countries in the region and the differences in their institutional systems, thirty-two countries in Sub-Saharan Africa were grouped regarding HDI level.Results: The heterogeneous panel Autoregressive Distributed Lags (ARDL) models revealed that in the lower developed countries, financial aid in the form of grants or very low-interest loans from the World Bank and OECD is of particular importance. They show that increased use of CO2 is a proxy for driving forces of African economies (production, investments, etc.). Indicators referring to institutions’ measurement like government effectiveness, political stability, economic freedom, or the number of days for establishing a business play important roles in continuing development.
Bathing culture was one of the pillars of the Roman society. Frequenting a bathhouse with halls of gradually changing heat conditions was a daily practice for many people around the Roman Republic ...and later Empire, in Italy and the provinces alike. Bathhouses were one of the buildings that by the 2nd century CE could be found in every Roman city and town, as well as in various private and public settlements.Roman bathhouses are easily recognizable among the archaeological record by the presence of water installations together with the heating system (hypocaustum). They, however, are quite diverse in location, size, layout, water supply system, lavishness and theme of decorations. Their uniformity on the one hand and their diversity on the other make bathing complexes vital for the study of the local societies in the Roman-Byzantine periods.The region of Syria-Palaestina and Arabia boasts finds of almost 200 Roman-style bathhouses. The first of the securely dated bathhouses, found in the palaces of Herod the Great (last third of the 1st century BCE), constitute a special group, which has been analyzed in other works. Similarly, the last of the bathhouses, found in the palaces of Umayyad rulers (first half of the 8th century CE), are a group that should be explored separately with additional scholarship.The bathhouses explored in detail within this dissertation are 150 complexes constructed between the 1st and the 8th century CE. The dissertation collects details about these bathhouses in a database built for that purpose. The database includes various parameters that were included to explore the bathhouses not only from the architectural perspective (concentrating on the buildings and the materials, defining their appearance and the typologies of their different aspects), but also from socio-cultural point of view (understanding the bather and his or her experience). While some of the bathhouses are well-published and their archaeological record is available, allowing full input of their parameters, others are only partly explored, and their parameter fields are in large part left blank. Nevertheless, even some of the least investigated of the bathhouses included some vital details not always noted in other buildings. The information gathered from a wide range of publications (existing catalogs, monographs, articles and preliminary excavation reports) was supplemented by personal observations of multiple buildings and research of the bathhouses of Antiochia Hippos (new additions to the corpus of known bathhouses). The dissertation and accompanying database reappraised and updated the archaeological data, including explanations on buildings that scholars mistakenly interpreted as bathhouses in the past, or buildings that were re-dated. For fuller a picture, information on buildings and bathing known from the written sources supplement the dissertationThe database, with its search and query possibilities, is a tool for viable and efficient analysis. The results of the analysis allowed different directions for conclusions: 1) construction of simple typologies of the buildings and their parts, 2) identification of regional and subregional particularities, 3) interpretation of the bathhouses as a window for looking at the Roman-Byzantine society of Syria-Palaestina and Arabia
There are 181 entries in the database, each representing the remains of one bathhouse. Most sites have only one recorded bathhouse, but some have more. A maximum of eight known bathhouses were ...assigned to two sites (Jerusalem and Nysa-Scythopolis). As a rule, more archaeological fieldwork in a subregion means more bathhouses will be found (Table 3.1) – where salvage excavations are more frequent, more bathhouses have been recorded.
Twelve of the bathhouses are without any information on the scope of their investigation; 20 are known from surveys only; 31 were excavated only to a small degree; 44 were partly excavated; and
