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The development of monumental street-architecture with special emphasis on Roman Asia Minor.

Williams, CJ; (1979) The development of monumental street-architecture with special emphasis on Roman Asia Minor. Doctoral thesis , University of London. Green open access

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Abstract

The material relevant to the subject of this thesis is presented in two main divisions. - Chapters I-IV provide a descriptive survey and analysis of the treatment accorded streets from the beginning of their architectural elaboration in the Hellenistic period. In Chapter I the literary evidence for colonnaded streets, both primary and secondary, is considered. The argument about the origins and date of such planning is outlined and then the terminology utilized in ancient sources and its importance for an understanding of the history of the development of colonnaded streets is studied. In Chapter II the physical remains of street-architecture from the Hellenistic East and Republican West are dealt with chronologically. Two architectural traditions can be distinguished in this period: the Italic street-side portico which acts as an elaborated porch for the building behind and the Greek stoa, sometimes of great length, set on the edge of the roadway. Chapters III and IV follow the history of street management through the period from Augustus to Justinian, emphasizing the main trends in the types of architecture applied to streets. The Italic tradition is found to continue and, in areas such as North Africa, to take on a monumental appearance approaching the effect of the large-scale projects found in the East. The cities of Roman Syria contain some of the earliest and most extensive examples of monumental street-management. A survey of the known streets reveals that by the Severan period most cities and towns in the eastern Mediterranean exhibit some form of embellishment within the street-system and that the format begins to acquire an identity as a self-contained building type. The descriptive survey presented in Chapters I-IV provides the background against which the archaeological material gathered in Asia Minor can be set and evaluated. The information gathered during field work in the Greco- Roman cities of Turkey is presented in Chapters V and VI. Many of the architectural arrangements dealt with in these chapters are little known and poorly published. Hence the description and analysis of the colonnaded streets of Asia Minor provide a useful addition to the architectural history both of this area and of the building type. Of particular importance are cities such as Pergamon and Perge which contain early examples of comprehensive schemes of extensive street-management and a group of cities in southwestern Turkey in which a specialized colonnaded mall was developed, exploiting the natural topographical conditions. The cities of Asia Minor are grouped into two broad categories according to the nature of the streets chosen for embellishment. In Chapter V the cities exhibiting an extensive use of colonnaded streets are studied. The cities whose townscape features a single decorated thoroughfare are treated in Chapter VI. Such cities include both the extended colonnaded street defining the length or breadth of a town and the more specialized mall-like configurations which are limited to a short section of roadway. - Two appendices contain all colonnaded streets known from ancient or modern literary, sources for which the evidence on the ground is limited or non-existent.

Type: Thesis (Doctoral)
Title: The development of monumental street-architecture with special emphasis on Roman Asia Minor.
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
Language: English
Additional information: Thesis digitised by British Library EThOS. The original pages 449 to 501 have been excluded due to third party copyright. Some images have also been excluded due to third party copyright.
UCL classification: UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Institute of Archaeology
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1349557
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