Between reuse and innovation: understanding microregional settlement strategies in late antiquity on the eastern Adriatic – Re:Set (IP- 2024-05-6792)
The broadly understood late antique period was one of significant political, economic, fiscal, and environmental changes. Though still debated, they led to a general instability, in response to which, large- and small-scale innovations were introduced as coping strategies, bringing about extensive social, religious, and cultural transformations. These processes are reflected in the landscape through several globally recognised, strongly regionalised, and often contrasting phenomena, such as changes in existing urban and rural settlements, the emergence of new, often fortified sites, and newly formed territorial organisation. The ways and timeframes in which the eastern Adriatic participated in this wave of transformations and shifting are still poorly understood in the nuances of their occurrence and their social implications. Therefore, understanding societal responses of eastern Adriatic communities to the manyfold challenges posed by late antique global and more regional processes needs to be reassessed by collecting and analysing diverse new datasets at a microregional level. Through interdisciplinary archaeological research aimed at detailed documenting of stratigraphic sequences and collecting new and varied data that will be comprehensively analysed and well dated, this research will set out to recognise innovations and transformations in settling in both rural and urban contexts, within two different areas of Roman Dalmatia: northern Liburnia (Kvarner, Northern Croatian littoral) and the central coastal part of the eastern Adriatic. The selected case studies (the island of Rab and Danilo – Roman Rider) will allow us to compare sites with different development trajectories, environmental and landscape features, and fill in the gaps in current knowledge on the relationship between urban, rural, and fortified sites of late antique Dalmatia, collecting new data necessary to include the eastern Adriatic into wider discussions on late antiquity.
Web page: under construction
Project duration: December 16th, 2024 – December 15th, 2027
PI: Ana Konestra (Institute of Archaeology)
Members of the research group: Goranka Lipovac Vrkljan (Institute of Archaeology), Fabian Welc (Institute of Archaeology, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw), Kamil Rabiega (Institute of Archaeology, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw), Małgorzata Zaremba Institute of Archaeology, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw), Agnese Kukela (University of Latvia), Anita Dugonjić (Archaeological museum in Zagreb), Toni Brajković (Šibenik Town Museum), Paula Androić Gračanin (Doctoral school of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw), Bartosz Nowacki (Doctoral school of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw, Faculty of Artes Liberales, University of Warsaw)
