Dr. Luke Lavan
June 2020 - August 2020
Research Project: Provincial Government and Urban Development in Late Antique Africa
My research at the Hamburg DfG RomanIslam Center concerns the impact of provincial administration on urban development in Roman Africa in Late Antiquity, A.D. 284-698. It seeks to map the urban trajectories of cities with and without the status of provincial capital and to account for variations in urban development that are not tied to political development but may reflect local or other factors. As part of this work I will assemble a gazetteer of dated building from the late antique Diocese of Africa, for selected cities including provincial capitals, relating to secular public building, churches, domus, and fortifications. I will also assemble data on urban area expansion / contraction between Principate and Late Antiquity, and relative levels of new public building in the Principate, between different cities. From this evidence I will seek to establish the relative ranking of cities in terms of varied kinds of building work (new and repair), and contrast this to their relative ranking in the Principate. The project has implications for the administrative weight of the Roman state at provincial levels, and for the nature of regional urban culture.
Profile
I am since 2007 Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Kent, where I direct the Centre for Late Antique Archaeology. I am series editor of the annual Late Antique Archaeology, which I have organised, along with a related conference series, since 2001. My forthcoming monograph, Public Space in the Late Antique City (2 vols Brill 2020), looks at the maintenance and everyday use of streets, public squares markets, and shops, alongside socio-political aspects of churches, also making a comprehensive treatment of processions. It includes detailed scrutiny of the primary evidence for public space across the late antique world, from Britain to Arabia, including many site observations of chronology and traces of daily life. I gained my doctorate, on Provincial Capitals in Late Antiquity, from Nottingham in 2001, and undertook 5 years of postdoctoral research in Paris, Ankara, Cologne, and latterly Leuven, where I was a postdoctoral researcher on the Sagalassos Archaeological Project. I have directed excavation on late antique levels at Ostia port of Rome 2008-2012, and at Otford villa, England 2019. I am interested in the city as a human space, as a settlement, and as a community. I work on a large-scale, in the style of settlement archaeology and anthropology, in an interdisciplinary manner.
CV
Selected Publications
Lavan, Luke (2020), Public Space in the Late Antique City, Late Antique Archaeology Supplement 5, 2 vols, Leiden: Brill.
Lavan, Luke (2018), "Chronology in Late Antiquity: A Lesson from the Palaestra", in: N. Laubry, F. Zevi and M. Cébeillac-Gervasoni, eds., Terzo Seminario Ostiense Collection de l’École française de Rome, Rome: Ecole Francaise de Rome. http://books.openedition.org/efr/3814?lang=en.
Lavan L. / Mulryan, M., eds., (2013), Field Methods and Post-Excavation Techniques in Late Antique Archaeology, Leiden: Brill.
Lavan, Luke (2013), “The Agorai of Sagalassos in Late Antiquity. An Interpretive Study”, in: Luke Lavan and M. Mulryan, eds., Field Methods and Post-Excavation Techniques in Late Antique Archaeology. Leiden: Brill, 289-353.
Lavan, Luke (2012a), “From Polis to Emporion? Retail and Regulation in the Late Antique City”, in Cecile Morrisson, ed., Trade and Markets in Byzantium, Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Research Library and Collection, 333-77.
Lavan, Luke (2012b), “Public Space in Late Antique Ostia: Excavation and Survey in 2008-2011”, American Journal of Archaeology, 116, 649-91.
Lavan Luke / Mulryan, M., eds., (2011), The Archaeology of Late Antique Paganism (Late Antique Archaeology 7). Leiden. Brill.
Lavan, Luke / Putzeys T./ Swift E. , eds., (2007), Objects in Context, Objects in Use (Late Antique Archaeology 3.2), Leiden: Brill.
Lavan, Luke (2006), “Fora and Agorai in Mediterranean Cities: Fourth and Fifth Centuries AD”, in: W. Bowden, C. Machado and A. Gutteridge, eds., Social and Political Life in Late Antiquity (Late Antique Archaeology 3), Leiden: Brill, 195-249.
Lavan, Luke, ed., (2001a), Recent Research in Late Antique Urbanism, Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplement 42, Portmouth, Rhode Island: JRA.
Lavan, Luke (2001b) “The Praetoria of Civil Governors in Late Antiquity”, in: Luke Lavan, ed., Recent Research in Late Antique Urbanism (Journal of Roman Archaeology supplement 42), Portmouth, Rhode Island: JRA, 39-56.
