Sabine Panzram

This project sets out to describe and analyse the collapse of the Roman Empire – an Empire that, at the peak of its power in AD 117, stretched from the Scottish Highlands to the Sahara and from the Atlantic to the Hindu Kush. Rome’s power rested upon cities that were independent, autonomous and hierarchical in their structure. It is commonly understood that external factors such as military threats lay at the heart of the fall of the Roman Empire. This project highlights, for the first time, that in the long term the fall of the Roman Empire was attributable to its organisational structure: alongside towns and cities that had an important legal status were others just as significant due to their traditional relevance as trading outposts or religious centres, at both regional and supraregional level. Rivalries and violent conflicts were, as a result, almost inevitable.

CPCity evaluates cities based upon their geographical location and pre-Roman history, irrespective of their legal system. It focuses its attention on southern Spain and northern Africa, and reconstructs the histories of towns and cities (case-studies) from the time of their foundation to the Moorish Invasion (approx. 3 BC to 7 AD). The evaluation and analysis of the written testimonies, following an interdisciplinary approach, will be crucial. This will include epigraphic and numismatic evidence, regional surveys and archaeological research, and will cover a 1000-year timespan.

Employing a unique methodology which visualises results as a combination of subdivided maps, step-by-step plans and network diagrams, the project sets new standards to enable access to data for analytical purposes.