02-24 Roman Urban Borderlands: Exploring the Fringes of the Roman City
Roman cities are commonly defined by their wall, a fixed and physical border. The city did not end at that wall, however. The area immediately outside the city wall, the urban borderland, also belonged to a city’s domain. It was an area in flux that was characterised and defined by constant negotiations with urban development, Roman law and custom. The urban borderland not only contained suburban villa estates, but also accommodated entities that were banned from the city itself, for example, the dead. This paper explores the outskirts and fringes of Roman cities and in addition addresses the extent in which they helped shaping civic identity.
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Professor Stevens is an Assistant Professor in Ancient History and Classical Civilization at Utrecht University. She holds an MA in Classics from Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, as well as a MSt and Dphil from Oxford
University.
Sponsored by the PhD Program in Classics, the Graduate Center and the Department of Classical and Oriental Studies, Hunter College
