In ad 872–3 a large Viking Army overwintered at Torksey, on the River Trent in Lincolnshire. We have previously published the archaeological evidence for its camp, but in this paper we explore what happened after the Army moved on. We integrate the findings of previous excavations with the outcomes of our fieldwork, including magnetometer and metal-detector surveys, fieldwalking and targeted excavation of a kiln and cemetery enclosure ditch. We provide new evidence for the growth of the important Anglo-Saxon town at Torksey and the development of its pottery industry, and report on the discovery of the first glazed Torksey ware, in an area which has a higher density of Late Saxon kilns than anywhere else in England. Our study of the pottery industry indicates its continental antecedents, while stable isotope analysis of human remains from the associated cemetery indicates that it included non-locals, and we demonstrate artefactual links between the nascent town and the Vikings in the winter camp. We conclude that the Viking Great Army was a catalyst for urban and industrial development in Torksey and suggest the need to reconsider our models for Late Saxon urbanism.

A Mongolian-German project is investigating abandoned early modern military and monastic sites in central Mongolia, including how the ruins of these urban nodes continue to shape cultural memory within nomadic society. Initial excavations have revealed a previously unknown site type, interpreted as garrisons from the period of Manchu rule (AD 1636–1911).

Some human settlements endure for millennia, while others are founded and abandoned within a few decades or centuries. The reasons for variation in the duration of site occupation, however, are rarely addressed. Here, the authors introduce a new approach for the analysis of settlement longevity or persistence. Using seven regional case studies comprising both survey and excavation data, they demonstrate how the median persistence of individual settlements varies widely within and among regions. In turn, this variability is linked to the effects of environmental potential. In seeking to identify the drivers of settlement persistence in the past, it is suggested that archaeologists can contribute to understanding of the sustainability and resilience of contemporary cities.

Recent scholarship on North African cities has done much to dispel earlier assumptions about late antique collapse and demonstrate significant continuity into the Byzantine and medieval periods. Yet urban changes did not affect North Africa evenly. Far less is known about the differing regional trajectories that shaped urban transformation and the extent to which pre-Roman and Roman micro-regions continued to share meaningful characteristics in subsequent periods. This article provides a preliminary exploration of regional change from the fourth to the eleventh century focused on a zone in the Central Medjerda Valley (Tunisia) containing the well-known sites of Bulla Regia and Chimtou. We place these towns in their wider historical and geographical setting and interrogate urban change by looking at investment in public buildings and spaces, religious buildings and housing, and ceramic networks. The process of comparison identifies new commonalities (and differences) between the sites of this stretch of the Medjerda River and provides a framework for understanding the many transformations of North African cities over the long late antiquity.

This article draws on the notion of collective memory to address the experience of urban space in antiquity. Focusing on Timgad in the Severan period as a case study, it mainly engages with the city plan and its streets, the public buildings that lined them, and their honorific inscriptions. Based on top-down and bottom-up processes, it highlights how the built landscape was staged to create a memory of the urban space and its development, but also how the inhabitants themselves were able to contribute to fostering this memory through everyday urban practices.

This article investigates the development of urbanism and architecture at the site of Sala (Chellah), from the end of the first century BC to the latter half of the second century AD. By looking at the transformations in the town's civic centre from the Mauretanian to Roman imperial period, the aim is to assess how the layout and function of public spaces and buildings were reshaped to respond to new ideas of monumentality. A range of research methodologies are applied to address this question, including architectural, archival, and archaeological analyses, as well as the use of 3D digital modelling. The case study of Sala is of particular importance, as it shows how certain pre-Roman monuments were kept in use within new public contexts, and how imperial-style, urban and architectural features were introduced in the town as part of trends that can be recognized across North Africa and the Roman Empire more broadly.

Recently, voices have been raised regarding the challenges of Big Data-driven global approaches, including the realization that exclusively tackling the global scale masks social and historical realities. While multi-scalar analyses have confronted this problem, the effects of global approaches are being felt. We highlight one of these effects: as classical scholarship struggles to decolonize itself, the ancient Mediterranean in global archaeology pivots around the Graeco-Roman world only, marginalizing the non-classical Mediterranean, thus foiling attempts at promoting post-colonial perspectives. In highlighting this, our aim is twofold: first, to invigorate the debate on multi-scalar approaches, proposing to incorporate microhistory into archaeological analysis; second, to use the non-classical Mediterranean to demonstrate that historical depth at a micro level is essential to augment that power in our interpretations.

This article defends the salience of situating Christ worship in the context of urban neighbourhoods and identifies some historical problems in conceptualising belonging at that level of society, akin to similar work on other levels of society such as the household and polis. An ekklēsia or collegium is, like all neighbourhood structures, capable of fostering or delimiting social interactions among neighbours who identify differently. A case study of 1 Cor 14.22–5 illustrates how Paul's model ekklēsia functioned in the context of the neighbourhood, and considers the impact of adding the ekklēsia to the street on which it was located.

Societal debates about climate change have rekindled interest in environmental history approaches. This review article considers three recent books in African environmental history, on the Kruger National Park, the East African Groundnut Scheme, and on infrastructure in postcolonial Dar es Salaam. Why is it important to study the empire–environment nexus? How do African experiences relate to discussions on the Anthropocene? Taking environmental dynamics into account enriches understandings of social, political, and cultural relationships and sheds light on imperialism and its complex legacies. This article makes the case for the importance of environmental history as a category of analysis, encouraging other scholars to think “with” the environment in broader debates concerning power, identity, and social change.

This article examines the urban layout and development of the ancient city of Angamuco (AD 250–1530)—a populated urban center located within the core area of the Purépecha Empire in Michoacán, Mexico—through the lens of its complex road network. Image and network analysis of lidar datasets revealed more than 3,000 roads distributed throughout the site, identified the main patterns of road arrangement, and documented variable accessibility within the city. After presenting a summary of these results, I propose that road networks are fundamental components of urban centers that can help reveal social configurations, local interactions, and models of governance. The study of the road network at the site of Angamuco suggests that this city developed organically without the strong influence of political hierarchy a few centuries prior to the formation of the Purépecha Empire. Angamuco inhabitants organized and negotiated space and settlement within their immediate community and had access to virtually all areas of the city.

Lidar reveals the presence of a precinct at the Classic Maya city of Tikal that probably reproduces the Ciudadela and Temple of the Feathered Serpent at the imperial capital of Teotihuacan.

During the early 1950s the Federative Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia underwent a series of radical politico-economic reforms that created the system of socialist self-management. Although scholars have long acknowledged that these reforms liberalized the field of cultural production, the precise ways in which self-management shaped Yugoslav culture during this period remains under-examined. Drawing from Daniel Immerwahr's concept of “thinking small,” this paper contends that self-management be thought of as an effort to rescale the horizons of socialist modernity. As Yugoslav reformers diverged from the Soviet model of Stalinist high modernism, they descaled state power to local sites of administration. This turn towards “small socialism” was recorded in certain conceptual and methodological trends in the cultural production of this period. This paper explores this recalibration of the scales of socialist culture in three examples from the 1950s: the urban theory of Bogdan Bogdanović, the revival of dialect poetry in Croatia, and the proliferation of domestic travelogues that emphasized the diversity of local cultures. As these examples demonstrate, the ambivalence that many Yugoslav intellectuals felt with regards to the high modernist scales of Stalinism prompted them to redirect the focus of socialist culture towards the marginal, the minor, or the minute.

This article investigates the visibility of public edifices at Lepcis Magna (Lebdah, Libya) and how people in antiquity approached, lived, and experienced them. It engages with the buildings’ layout, architectural and sculptural ornamentation, and epigraphic apparatuses, looking at the transformations of the cityscape from Augustus to the Antonine era. The analysis highlights the importance of private and public patronage and how social status was showcased through the monumentality and visibility of new constructions in an evolving urban environment. Buildings and their ornament drew upon a range of architectural and decorative models: influences from the centre of Empire and the Mediterranean world, long-lasting Hellenistic traditions, as well as North African and locally created, or reinterpreted, motifs that contributed to shaping the Lepcitanian architectural taste.