Urban Trajectories and the Creation of a New Social Order in Late Roman Central Anatolia

Abstract

This dissertation considers the end of Antiquity through the lens of urban change in the Roman Province of Galatia in Central Anatolia. It is based in part on fieldwork carried out from 2011 to 2014 at Pessinus (150 km west of Ankara), which represents the main case study of this work. The dissertation examines the urban development of Pessinus in the Late Roman Period (4th – 7th centuries CE) and compares it with that of other cities in the same region (Ankara and Amorium), examining both the cities themselves and their rural environs. This regional investigation represents a new trend in scholarship, as traditional studies have tended to focus either on excavation of individual cities or on surveys of their hinterlands, but seldom on both. Additionally, my focus on the development of Late Roman Central Anatolia, a region that has often been neglected by modern studies despite the fact that it became the heartland of the post-7th c. Byzantine Empire, is an important addition to the scholarship on the end of Antiquity. Contrary to the western and eastern coasts of Anatolia, cities in this region developed for the first time at the end of the 1st c. BCE, and thus this study also examines Late Roman urban change in the light of its long-term regional tradition. This research demonstrates that both cities and rural settlements in Galatia experienced their maximum expansion between the 4th-5th centuries and the 7th c. CE; the cities thus represent some of the last flourishing examples of Classical urbanism. Contrary to what has been observed on the better known western and southern coasts of Asia Minor, the unraveling of the Roman settlement pattern in Central Anatolia was more sudden and later, ultimately precipitated by a period of military, demographic, and economic crisis that peaked with Arab invasions after 650 CE. Although the Arabs did not destroy these cities, they destabilized the demographic and economic foundations on which they were based. By the later 7th century, only the central administration had the resources to support large settlements, such as provincial capitals (Amorium and Ankara); among rural communities, only those in the vicinity of important religious centers like Germia or in isolated, mountain sites in northern Pisidia proved capable of maintaining independent existence. Crucial to the continuity of occupation in rural and urban communities into the 7th c. CE was the progressive regional economic independence that began in the 4th-5th centuries CE. This process is well-attested by the production and circulation of Red Slip ware, a common type of high quality tableware. During the Roman Period, Central Anatolia was part of a larger international commercial network, as shown by the presence of imports from the rest of Anatolia and the Mediterranean world. In the Late Roman Period, these commercial ties broke down, and a series of local production centers emerged in order to fill this market. The development of ceramic workshops went hand in hand with an increase in agricultural production, which is well-attested in regional palynological data. By the 6th c. CE, Central Anatolia was the most agriculturally stable and productive region in Anatolia, and was therefore exceptionally well-equipped to support substantial urban life. Eventually, however, even this unusually resilient local network unraveled in the face of continuing instability and repeated invasions in the mid-9th century