booklet of abstracts - Oxford University Byzantine Society

Session ten2:00 | Saturday 5 March 2011 | Rees Davies RoomChairJesse SimonUniversity CollegeJerusalem, Jerash, andCaesarea: late antique urbancontexts in the LevantMorgan DirodiSt. Cross College, OxfordThe late antique cities of the EasternMediterranean were flourishing centres ofwealth and culture. Nowhere is this more truethan in the case of Jerusalem, a city that wastransformed, almost overnight, from a minorprovincial city to a centre of major religious,economic and cultural importance thanks tothe actions of Constantine and his successors.The objective of this paper will be to contextualisethe process of urban developmentby means of a comparison with two othermajor urban centres of the region: CaesareaMaritima and Jerash.It is my intention to show how the processesthat affected Jerusalem have parallelsin these other two cities. In particular, Iwill concentrate on exploring and comparingthe alterations in the urban contexts ofthese three cities. It is my belief that theseprocesses are results of the economic andideological pressures resulting from therise of Jerusalem as a religious and pilgrimagepowerhouse of global proportions. Thisresulted in a transformation of the localeconomy and also in the way that urbanspace was viewed in Jerusalem. As a resultof these changes, the cities of the regionexperienced similar transformations of theirtopography for economic (Caesarea) or religious( Jerash) reasons.Morgan Dirodi is doing a DPhil inHistory on urban development in the easternmediterranean from the fourth to the seventhcentury. His research interests are, inparticular, the impact that Christianity andChristianisation had on the urban environment,the transformation of street plans andurban topography, and the transition betweenByzantine and early Umayyad cities.Across the Desert Sands: TheShifting Routes of SouthernPalestine and Transjordan inLate AntiquityMarlena WhitingLincoln College, OxfordThe region of Southern Palestine andTransjordan reflects the confluence of differentsocial and political phenomena – themilitary, trade and pilgrimage – that all hadan impact on the shape of the road networkin this region, which took on a differentappearance from the fourth through seventhcenturies. This paper will examine,through a mixture of archaeological andtextual evidence, the changes wrought onthe road system of Southern Palestine andTransjordan, from the fragmentation of thesecond century Via Nova Traiana and theimpact of long distance and local trade tothe increase in traffic through central Sinai asa result of the desire of pilgrims to visit theholy places.Marlena Whiting graduated with aBA from Wellesley College and an MPhil inByzantine Studies from Oxford. She is currentlyworking on a DPhil entitled Traveland Accommodation in the Late Antique EastMediterranean.28 | Between Constantines