24.06.2024 | Philosophische Fakultät, Seminar für Alte Geschichte, Institut für Klassische Archäologie

Urban Dimensions: Materiality, Society, and Discourses of the Ancient City

International Early Career Workshop

A city – what is it basically? What makes a city a city? Is it its settlement size and number of inhabitants? Its building density and architecture? Its legal status? Its administration and infrastructure? Its political, economic, cultural, or religious significance for the surrounding area?

The ancient city in particular is a multifaceted and elusive phenomenon which can only be appropriately considered in an interdisciplinary dialogue. This workshop aims to grasp the phenomenon in its complexity and develop an interdisciplinary definition of the ancient city taking all its facets into account.
To this end, three dimensions of the ancient city will be examined in more detail, encircling its essential characteristics: first, materiality, the built environment of urban settlements, creates the urban space through its texture and reflects social structures as well as cultural patterns. Second, human actors associating in urban communities shape the urban space through their actions and institutionalised practices. Third, the city in antiquity becomes the subject of contemporary reflections, which are expressed in literary discourses on its characteristics and symbolic meaning.

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