Proměna měst v pozdní antice
| Title in English | The transformation of cities in late antiquity |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2017 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | Cities have become the cornerstones of not only the Ancient World. The power of the mighty Roman Empire depended almost only on their existence. The cities here formed the backbone of political power, economy, culture, and education. In Late Antiquity (ie, in the 4th-6th centuries AD) something causes of breaking and unnatural twisting of the backbone (th cities), which affects the entire Roman empire. This period is particularly important as the transitional phase between the Ancient and the early Middle Ages, which was not so much dependent on the prosperous city. Nowadays, when more than half of the planet's population lives in the cities, the changes that take place in their late-ancient ancestors are drawing attention to modern science. So how did the cities change in Late Antiquity? What caused these changes? And what followed them? Can something like that happen even today? With the help of archaeological and written sources, I will discuss in this paper three distinctive physical features of the late antique urban development - the shrinking of the inhabited area, the Christianization of the interior and the fortifications. These features highlight some of the possible causes and consequences of ongoing changes in late-ancient cities. I will also describe their individual "phases" in the ancient Roman Empire - a classic city, a late antique city, and then early medieval. In the final part of the paper I will try to compare the situation in the late antiquity with today's urbanized world. |
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