The INscribed city: urban structures and interaction in ROME

Project Information

IN-ROME

Grant agreement ID: 101054143

DOI

10.3030/101054143

EC signature date 22 August 2022

Start date 1 December 2022

End date 30 November 2027

Funded under

• European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 2 498 457,00

EU contribution

€ 2 498 457,00

Coordinated by

SCUOLA NORMALE SUPERIORE
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - IN-ROME (The INscribed city: urban structures and interaction in ROME)

Reporting period: 2022-12-01 to 2025-05-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Rome as the first-ever ancient mega-city reaching up to 1 million inhabitants in the 1st cent. BCE remains an enigma regarding the way it organised itself and maintained its size for over three centuries. Already the 1st-cent. BCE author Dionysius of Halicarnassus famously observed that it was impossible to tell where the city actually ended. Having long outgrown the 4th-cent. BCE city walls, the urbanistic structures that developed outside of them, and especially outside the later Aurelian Wall, have never been studied systematically and holistically. Considering that the built environment in any city both shapes and is being shaped by the everyday lives of those inhabiting and using it, we are missing out on some crucial evidence for understanding how Rome’s society worked.
The IN-ROME project seeks to fill this gap. It will offer the first holistic description and analysis of the urban development and use of space of the Roman territory outside the Servian Wall and within an area of c.13 km around it from the late Republic to the 3rd cent. CE.
The project has three main Objectives (O) that will be attained in five Work Packages (WP).
O1/WP1: Enhancing the Epigraphic Database Roma (EDR) and linking all inscriptions with provenance to a newly created WebGIS map.
O2/WP2: Creating a geo-referenced GIS map and Gazetteer Database of historic property names and toponyms that allow the linking of inscriptions (and other data) to their proper place in the Roman topography.
These two new resources will enable the step change that the present project brings to our understanding of Rome’s urban development and organisation.
O3: Characterising the structure and organisation of Rome and its peri-urban surroundings. We will consolidate the widest possible range of activities and their locations, visualising them within topographical, archaeological, geological and environmental maps, and elevation models. The approach will literally map the social history of Rome.
WP3 addresses potential systematic biases in interpreting patterns of inscription mapping.
WP4 comprises four research sub-projects that address the landscape of commercial activities, infrastructure and natural resources; foreigners in Rome; religious cult and worship; and the city’s expansion across the Servian Wall and its gradual transition into a more rural countryside.
WP5 will result in a monograph offering a holistic, synthetic and diachronic view of the structure and organisation of the entire project area.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Achievements so far consist primarily of the gathering of data and the development of infrastructure. This work constitutes significant research advance and has generated substantial insights into the main, historical research questions, for which we are now well-equipped.
Major progress has been made on the input of inscriptions with known provenance into the EDR database.
The Digital Archaeology Laboratory at Sapienza has successfully drafted and implemented an articulated Information System which is able to contain and process most of the data collected by the research team. The official website (https://inrome.sns.it/) has been published.
WP3: Soldovieri has identified and located all manuscripts used by the editors of CIL VI and has reviewed 40 of them. This has been instrumental for quality control.
WP4: All staff for the sub-projects in this WP have been hired and some SPs have already made great progress.
WP5: The PI has used most of her time managing the project, recruiting staff, enhancing the network of collaborators, and supporting all project elements which feed into WP5. She has significantly enhanced with data generated through the IN-ROME project a book manuscript on Christian and Jewish presence in the Roman suburbium.
Other achievements:
Organisation of four international conferences/workshops; 32 presentations at international conferences and on invitation elsewhere; four research publications.
Attracting three PhD students with funding from different sources.
Collaboration agreements with Prof. P. Carafa and M.-Th. D’Alessio (Sapienza University), the Soprintendenza Speciale Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio di Roma, the Istituto Geografico Militare, and the British School at Rome, which significantly facilitate and enhance our research.
Agreement with L’Erma di Bretschneider as the publisher of 8-10 volumes resulting from the project. The first volumes to be submitted in 2025 are the proceedings of our international conference (§1.2.3) and the first monograph of the PI.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The digital infrastructure created for the project is a substantial achievement that advances socio-historical approaches to topographical data significantly beyond the state of the art. Given that it has not been fully implemented yet, it is considered appropriate to postpone its description to the final report.

Aerial view of the Roman suburbium overlayed with a map of the Catasto Gregoriano