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2017, Journal of Roman Archaeology
For the history of the urban development of Rome’s Hispanic provinces, the lists of civic communities in Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia are a crucial starting-point for understanding the political geography of Baetica (NH 3.1.6-2.17), Lusitania (4.21.113-20), and Hispania Citerior / Tarraconensis) (3.3.18-30; 4.20.110-12). These lists owed much to Agrippa’s map (cf. 3.1.8 and 16; 3.2.17; 4.21.118), prepared during Augustus’ re-organization of the Iberian peninsula.1 But Pliny served as financial procurator of Hispania Citerior early in Vespasian’s reign and, as R. Syme argued,2 probably assisted with the census of the province in A.D. 73-74. This allowed him to add some material from his own personal experience to his account of Hispania Citerior: for example, the population figures for three conventus in Asturia and Gallaecia in the northwest of the province (3.3.28), regions in which Pliny took an especial interest because of their precious gold mines (see his detailed description at 33.21.66-78). His lists, however, do not provide a complete inventory of all the civic communities of Hispania. In his discussion of Baetica, for instance, he eschews any mention of the small civitas stipendiaria of Irni, promoted to municipal status under the Flavians, as we now know thanks to the discovery of the immensely important lex Irnitana, the community’s civic statute received after its civic promotion.3 As for Hispania Citerior, the discovery in the mid-16th c. of a statue-base dedicated by the ‘citizens and residents of Labitolosa’ (cives Labitolosani et incolae) to honour M. Clodius Flaccus, IIvir twice and local flamen (CIL II 3008 = 5837), on the Cerro del Calvario, 1.5 km south of La Puebla de Castro (prov. Huesca), revealed the existence of another community omitted by Pliny in the far north of Hispania Citerior, in the Esera valley in the foothills of the Pyrenees: the community of Labitolosa. East of Osca and west of Aeso (both mentioned by Pliny at NH 3.3.23-24), its territory extended to the provincial frontier, where its neighbour to the north was the community of Lugdunum Convenarum in the far south of the province of Aquitania.4
G.P. Brogiolo, N. Gauthier & N. Christie (eds.), Towns and their territories between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, Leiden-Boston-Köln 2000, pp. 3-35
City and Territory in Hispania in Late Antiquity2007 •
2006 •
Annual Meeting of Postgraduates in Ancient History
"Urbi et Orbi. Rethinking the Roman City in Hispania"2023 •
Traditionally, when almost any subject linked to Ancient Rome was analysed, the attention shifted immediately towards the most well-known case study: the city. Roman Iberia is no exception. Through an exhaustive use of epigraphy and, most recently, the data provided by urban archaeology, the urban layout, the social composition, administrative status and religious and political organisation of Roman cities have been thoroughly studied at least since the 15th century. This paper provides with different interpretations of what and how a Roman civitas is for Ancient and modern authors alike, and exposes the different ways in which it has been categorised, that is, what are the parameters used to define what is and isn’t a city. Using archaeological case studies from Hispania Tarraconensis and the contemporary and Ancients talking about them, I put to test several quintessential claims on that subject with the reality presented by Archaeology, and assess whether century-old paradigms are in need of a revision.
2021 •
In a thought-provoking book published in 1976, Charles Ebel suggested that large areas of Hispania—particularly Hispania Citerior—and southern Gaul (Gallia Transalpina, the future Narbonensis) had been militarily, politically and even economically interconnected long before Pompey’s intense activity in Gaul during the Sertorian War. In this chapter I will contend that Ebel’s perceptions of the relevance of regional connectivity in the north-western Mediterranean due to Rome’s military needs are essentially correct, but not entirely for the reasons and for the chronology originally put forward in his celebrated book.
2021 •
The principal aims of Urbanisation in Roman Spain and Portugal: Civitates Hispaniae in the Early Empire are to provide a comprehensive reconstruction of the urban systems of the Iberian Peninsula during the Early Empire and to explain why these systems looked the way they did. While some chapters focus on settlements that were cities or towns from a juridical point of view, the implications of using a purely functional definition of towns are also explored. Key themes include continuities and discontinuities between pre-Roman and Roman settlement patterns, the geographical distribution of cities belonging to various size brackets, economic relationships between self-governing cities and their territories and the role of cities as nodes in road systems and maritime networks. In addition, it is argued that a considerable number of self-governing communities in Roman Spain and Portugal were poly-centric rather than based on a single urban centre. The volume will be of interest to anyone working on Roman urbanism as well as those interested in the Iberian Peninsula in the Roman period. See: https://www.routledge.com/Urbanisation-in-Roman-Spain-and-Portugal-Civitates-Hispaniae-in-the-Early/Houten/p/book/9780367900779
Proceedings of the XV World Congress of the International Union for Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences, Vol. 34, BAR Int. Series, p. 37-45.
(2010) The Proto-historic and Roman settlement of Terronha de Pinhovelo (Macedo de Cavaleiros): new advances on the Romanization of the Zoelae territory2020 •
The Natural History text contains many references to the scientist geographers such as Eudoxus, Pytheas and Eratosthenes. My analysis herein shows that the quotations of Pliny, in particular, point to the strong continuity of Eratosthenes and his conception of the world with that of the Romans under the Flavians. Hence, Pliny’s description seems to come from a synthesis of both an astronomical-climatic conception (of Eratosthenes origin and Posidonius’ elaboration) as well as an astrological-climatic one (which refers to Nigidius Figulus). Then, among Latin sources, Varro seems to have played an important role in the transmission of Greek science and in the creation of a Latin astronomical lexicon, as witnessed by the work of Pliny.
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2018 •
Collectanea Philologica XXV
The Roman Conquest of Hispania Citerior. Strategies and Archaeological evidence in the north-eastern Peninsular Area. (II-I BCE): The examples of Puig Castellar of Biosca and Can Tacó (Catalonia, Spain).2022 •
Journal of Roman Studies 103
Review to: S. Keay and L. Paroli (Eds.), Portus and its hinterland: recent archaeological research2013 •
Landscape Archaeology between Art and Science
1.8. Configuring the landscape: Roman mining in the conventus Asturum (NW Hispania)2012 •
The Numismatic Chronicle
Trade between Minturnae and Hispania in the Late Republic (Part 2)Time of Changes. In the Beginning of the Romanization
Rural Settlement in the Central area and the interior regions of Catalonia in the 1st and 2nd centuries BC2010 •
in A. Díaz Fernández (ed.), Provinces and Provincial Command in Republican Rome: Genesis, Development and Governance, Colección Libera Res Publica 4, Sevilla – Zaragoza, 145-164
Foundations of Provincial Towns as Memorials of imperatores: the Case of Hispania2021 •
Conimbriga
NEW EVIDENCE OF ROMAN GOVERNORS AND OFFICERS ON GLANDES INSCRIPTAE FROM REPUBLICAN HISPANIA2023 •
Pervading Empire Relationality and Diversity in the Roman Provinces
Different Forms of Roman Imperialism. Social and Territorial Changes in Northwestern Iberia from the 2nd. Century BCE to the 2nd Century CE2020 •
In GARCÍA-GASCO VILLARRUBIA, R. GONZÁLEZ SÁNCHEZ, S. / HERNÁNDEZ DE LA FUENTE, D. (2013) - "The Theodosian Age (A.D. 379-455): Power, place, belief and learning at the end of the Western Empire", BAR International Series, 2493, Oxford, pp. 91-98
MARTÍN GONZÁLEZ, S. (2.013) - "The missorium of Theodosius: imperial elites and the Lusitanian countryside in the Later Roman Empire"2013 •
De Fronteras a Provincias Interaccion e Integracion en Occidente
Prag, J.R.W. 2011. Provincia Sicilia: between Roman and local in the third century BC. In E. García Riaza (ed.), De Fronteras a provincias. Interacción e integración en Occidente (ss.III-I aC). Palma de Mallorca: Ediciones Universitat de les Illes Balears. 83-96.2011 •
2020 •