Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Eastern Provinces of the Roman Empire, Archaeology of the

  • Reference work entry
Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology

  • 258 Accesses

Introduction

The eastern provinces of the Roman Empire were those situated in the regions of Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine, Northwest Arabia, and Egypt. This large swathe of territory had long been contested by past empires (Egyptian, Neo-Babylonian, Neo-Assyrian, Hittite, Persian, Macedonian) and fragmented into a number of rival kingdoms during the Hellenistic period. The Roman East is a study in diversity; the landscapes, ethnicities, cultural norms, and historical traditions vary widely. Much recent work in Roman archaeology explores the interaction between Rome and her subject populations, measuring how Roman power and culture were experienced and expressed in local contexts. Given its multicultural and multiethnic composition, the eastern provinces offer a number of compelling case studies relevant not only to the study of Roman archaeology but archaeology as a global discipline.

Definition

Description of the Provinces

The boundaries and administrative designations...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 5,499.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Abu el-Haj, Nadia. 2001. Facts on the ground: archaeological practice and territorial self-fashioning in Israeli society. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bagnall, R. & B. Frier. 1994. The demography of Roman Egypt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ball, W. 2000. Rome in the East: the transformation of an empire. London; New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barker, G., D. Gilbertson & D.J. Mattingly. 2007. Archaeology and desertification: the Wadi Faynan landscape survey, southern Jordan (Wadi Faynan series 2). Oxford: Council for British Research in the Levant: Oxbow Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brodie, N., C. Luke, M. Kersel & K.W. Tubb. (ed.) 2006. Archaeology, cultural heritage, and the antiquities trade. Gainesville (FL): University Press of Florida.

    Google Scholar 

  • Browning, I. 1979. Palmyra. Park Ridge (NJ): Noyes Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chi, J.Y. & S. Heath. (ed.) 2011. Edge of empires: Pagans, Jews, and Christians at Roman Dura-Europos. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • De Vries, B. 2010. Archaeology, in C.A. Rubenberg (ed.) Encyclopedia of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Boulder: Lynne Rienner.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dever, W. 1990. Recent archaeological discoveries and biblical research. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • - 1993. What remains of the house that Albright built? The Biblical Archaeologist 56.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dirven, L. 1999. The Palmyrenes of Dura-Europos: a study of religious interaction in Roman Syria (Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 138). Leiden; Boston: E.J. Brill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Elon, A. 1997. Politics and archaeology, in N.A. Silberman & D.B. Small (ed.) The archaeology of Israel: constructing the past, interpreting the present: 34-47. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Finkelstein, I. 2007. The quest for the historical Israel: debating archeology and the history of early Israel. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.

    Google Scholar 

  • Freeman, P.W. 1996. The annexation of Arabia and imperial grand strategy, in D. Kennedy (ed.) The Roman army in the East (Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary series 18): 91-118. Ann Arbor: Cushing-Malloy, Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Greene, K. 1986. The archaeology of the Roman economy. London: B.T. Batsford.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gruen, E.S. (ed.) 2011. Cultural identity in the ancient Mediterranean. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heyn, M.K. 2010. Gesture and identity in the funerary art of Palmyra. American Journal of Archaeology 114: 631-61.

    Google Scholar 

  • Joukowsky, M.S. 2009. Surprises at Petra Great Temple: a retrospective. Studies In The History and Archaeology of Jordan 10: 291-310.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kennedy, D. 2004. The Roman army in Jordan (British Academy Monographs in Archaeology). London: Council for British Research in the Levant.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mckenzie, J. 1990. The architecture of Petra (British Academy Monographs in Archaeology). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • - 2007. The architecture of Alexandria and Egypt, c. 300 B.C. to A.D. 700 (Yale University Press Pelican History of Art). New Haven (CT): Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Magness, J. 2005. Heaven on earth: Helios and the Zodiac Cycle in ancient Palestinian synagogues. Dumbarton Oaks Papers 59: 1-52.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meskell, L. (ed.) 1998. Archaeology under fire: nationalism, politics, and heritage in the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. London; New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Millar, F. 1987. Empire, community and culture in the Roman Near East: Greeks, Syrians, Jews and Arabs. Journal of Jewish Studies 38: 143-64.

    Google Scholar 

  • Netzer, E. & R. Laureys-Chachy. 2008. The architecture of Herod, the Great Builder. Grand Rapids (MI): Baker Academic.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parker, S.T. 1987. The Roman Limes in Jordan. Studies in the History and Archaeology of Jordan 3: 151-64.

    Google Scholar 

  • - 1999. An empire's new Holy Land: the Byzantine period. Near Eastern Archaeology 62: 134-80.

    Google Scholar 

  • Riggs, C. 2002. Facing the dead: recent research on the funerary art of Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. American Journal of Archaeology 106: 85-101.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sartre, M. 2005. The Middle East under Rome. Translated by C. Porter & E. Rawlings. Cambridge (MA): The Belknap Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Said, E.W. 1978. Orientalism (1st edition). New York: Pantheon Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Segal, A. 1997. From function to monument: urban landscapes of Roman Palestine, Syria, and Provincia Arabia (Oxbow Monographs 66). Oxford: Oxbow Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sipilä, J. 2009. The reorganisation of provincial territories in light of the imperial decision-making process: later Roman Arabia and Tres Palaestinae as case studies (Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum 126). Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, A.M. 2010. Wadi Araba in classical and late Antiquity: an historical geography (BAR international series 2173). Oxford: Archaeopress.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, R.R.R. 1987. The imperial reliefs from the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias. The Journal of Roman Studies 77: 88-138.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thompson, T.L. 1974. The historicity of the patriarchal narratives. Berlin: de Gruyter

    Google Scholar 

  • Weber, T. & R. Wenning. (ed.) 1997. Petra: antike Felsstadt zwischen arabischer Tradition und griechischer Norm. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern.

    Google Scholar 

  • Webster, J. 2001. Creolizing the Roman provinces. American Journal of Archaeology 105: 209-25.

    Google Scholar 

  • Woolf, G. 1998. Becoming Roman: the origins of provincial civilization in Gaul. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

Further Reading

  • Ball, W. 1994. Syria: a historical and architectural guide. Essex: Scorpion Publishing House and MCS.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burns, R. 1992. Monuments of Syria: a historical guide. New York: New York University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Butcher, K. 2003. Roman Syria and the Near East. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chancey, M. & A. Porter. The archaeology of Roman Palestine. Near Eastern Archaeology 64: 164-203.

    Google Scholar 

  • Elsner, J. 2003. Archaeologies and agendas: reflections on late ancient Jewish art and early Christian art. Journal of Roman Studies 93: 114-28.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fine, S. 2005. Art and Judaism in the Greco-Roman world: toward a new Jewish archaeology. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Greatrex, G. 2007. Roman frontiers and foreign policy in the East, in R. Alston & S. Lieu (ed.) Aspects of the Roman East: papers in honour of Professor Fergus Millar FBA: 103-73. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols.

    Google Scholar 

  • Isaac, B.H. 1990. The limits of empire: the Roman army in the East. Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jones, A.H.M. 1937. The cities of the eastern Roman provinces. Oxford: Clarendon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kennedy, D.L. 1996. The Roman army in the East (Journal of Roman Archaeology. Supplementary series 18). Ann Arbor: Journal of Roman Archaeology.

    Google Scholar 

  • - 2007. Gerasa and the decapolis: a 'virtual island' in northwest Jordan. London: Duckworth.

    Google Scholar 

  • Koester, H. (ed.) 2008. Ephesos, metropolis of Asia: an interdisciplinary approach to its archaeology, religion, and culture. Cambridge (MA): Harvard Divinity School.

    Google Scholar 

  • Luttwak, E. 1976. The grand strategy of the Roman empire from the first century A.D. to the third. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • - 2009. The grand strategy of the Byzantine empire. Cambridge (MA): Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Millar, F. 1993. The Roman Near East: 31 BC - AD 337. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Raja, R. 2012. Urban development and regional identity in the eastern Roman provinces, 50 BC - AD 250: Aphrodisias, Ephesos, Athens, Gerasa. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schmid, S.G. 2001. The Nabataeans: travellers between lifestyles, in B. Macdonald, R. Adams & P. Bienkowski (ed.) The archaeology of Jordan: 367-426. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Woolf, G. 1994. Becoming Roman, staying Greek: culture, identity, and the civilizing process in the Roman East. Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 40:116-43.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Art and Art History, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

    Björn Anderson

Authors
  1. Björn Anderson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Björn Anderson .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Archaeology, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia

    Claire Smith

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York

About this entry

Cite this entry

Anderson, B. (2014). Eastern Provinces of the Roman Empire, Archaeology of the. In: Smith, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_1439

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_1439

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-0426-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-0465-2

  • eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation