Landscape and Citizens during the early Roman era in Northern Epirus: Phoinike and the Chaonia region (2nd BC-2nd AD)

• Main Author: Enrico Giorgi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: BraDypUS 2017-12-01
• Series: Groma
• Online Access: http://groma.unibo.it/giorgi_roman_chaonia

For a long time the study of the landscape of Chaonia (northern region of Epirus) under Roman rule has been focused essentially on the territory of Butrint, while the wider studies of this region have often favoured the Hellenistic age. The research of the last few years has opened up new study perspectives that have allowed us to re-evaluate the development of cities such as Phoinike, Bouthrotum, Hadrianopolis and their territories in the Roman age. Similar historical parables can also be seen in other sites nearby. At the beginning of the 1st and 2nd century AD some important developments took place in urban areas and in the surrounding landscape, when it comes to, for example, the viability and the agricultural infrastructures. These dynamics were part of important changes that took place after the end of the Macedonian wars in the 2nd century BC, and possibly even before, when Rome first got interested in this area of peripheral Greece in the last decades of the 3rd century BC.