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4 - The Connective Evidence for Early Roman Urbanism

Terracottas and Architectural Accretion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 March 2022

By
John Hopkins
Edited by
Charlotte R. Potts
Charlotte R. Potts
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Summary

This chapter analyses architectural terracottas as proxies for buildings and thus as valuable signs of construction in the city of Rome during the fifth and fourth centuries BC. In doing so, it challenges the neglect of these centuries in many histories of Roman architecture and argues that this was far from a period of architectural stagnation. Here terracottas function as temporal connectors, linking buildings across centuries in the eyes of their builders and users, and as evidence that Rome remained in touch with wider trends in building and decoration in a time that has too often been read as a rupture between a highly networked archaic world and one increasingly in thrall to Greece. Promoting the study of this era supports the view of Etrusco-Italic and Roman architecture as closely related fields of study and encourages broader recognition of terracottas as evidence not just for roofs but for buildings now lost from the archaeological record.

Keywords

Roman architecturecentral Italic architecturearchitectural terracottasbuilding proxiesArchaic networksRoman republicrepublican architecture
Type
Chapter
Information
Architecture in Ancient Central Italy
Connections in Etruscan and Early Roman Building
 , pp. 95 - 124
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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