A tale of three cities: Ammaia, the ex nihilo colony; and Conimbriga, the adaptation of the Lusitanian oppida

Abstract

When dealing with the analysis of the materiality of urban architecture in the Roman World, in the Imperial Period, seeking to understand the practices of occupation of spaces, both in the city of Rome and in the provinces, we deal with a material culture almost as broad as the Ancient World itself, if thinking of the geographic extent that the Empire has reached. Therefore, it is necessary, for research and didactic purposes, to establish spatial, temporal and material delimitations. It is also necessary to deal, specifically in the case of Lusitania, with the scarcity of available archaeological information. Although the new technologies available lead to advances in research and new challenges, as they raise new questions to be answered by the material culture, it is also necessary that these technologies be effectively applied to the territory of ancient Lusitania so that we can use them. In this work it is intended, through the study of the forums of two Roman provincial cities – Ammaia and Conimbriga (respectively, an ex nihilo foundation and an adaptation of a pre-Roman settlement), chosen to present distinct archaeological and archaeological research histories – try to determine some of the patterns of appropriation of colonial spaces by the Romans in Lusitania. Although the study of Roman Lusitania suffers from the limitation imposed by the scarcity of available and/or published archaeological data, it was possible to observe the existence of a pattern in the urbanization introduced by Rome in Lusitania, which is visible in the fora and other urban elements, pre-existing local urbanism.