Our current knowledge of Roman aqueducts across the Empire is patchy and uneven. Even if the development of “aqueduct studies” (where engineering, archaeology, architecture, hydraulics, and other disciplines converge) in recent years has improved this situation, one of the aspects which has been generally left aside is the chronology of their late antique phases and of their abandonment. In the Iberian peninsula, there is to date, no general overview of the Roman aqueducts, and all the available information is distributed across various publications, which as expected, hardly mention the late phases. This publication tackles this issue by analysing and reassessing the available evidence for the late phases of the Hispanic aqueducts by looking at a wide range of sources of information, many times derived from the recent interest shown by archaeologists and researchers on late antique urbanism.
SKU (ISBN): 978-1-4632-3915-2
Publication Status: In Print
Publication Date: Feb 10,2020
Interior Color: Black
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Page Count: 335
Languages: English
ISBN: 978-1-4632-3915-2
Our current knowledge of Roman aqueducts across the Empire is patchy and uneven. Even if the development of “aqueduct studies” (where engineering, archaeology, architecture, hydraulics, and other disciplines converge) in recent years has improved this situation, one of the aspects which has been generally left aside is the chronology of their late antique phases and of their abandonment. In the Iberian peninsula, there is to date, no general overview of the Roman aqueducts, and all the available information is distributed across various publications, which as expected, hardly mention the late phases. This publication tackles this issue by analysing and reassessing the available evidence for the late phases of the Hispanic aqueducts by looking at a wide range of sources of information, many times derived from the recent interest shown by archaeologists and researchers on late antique urbanism.
REVIEWS
[The study of late antique aqueducts] has seen limited investigation unless as individual case studies, with virtually no consideration of a global perspective on these edifices’ evolution after the breakdown of the Roman West.
Chapters 4 and 5 are particularly interesting, with Martınez Jimenez situating aqueducts in context and analysing their impact on social and political life, demonstrating that water-supply systems lasted longest at the most important towns, linked, unmistakably, with powerful elites based there.
Certainly it is a valuable book, offering detailed archaeological analysis not only on the demise and collapse of aqueducts, but also the fortunes of public fountains, baths and other urban architectures related to water supply.
-- Extract of review by Pilar Diarte-Blasco, Medieval Archaeology 65.1, p. 196.
