The Ruins of ancient Thamugadi in modern day Libya. Photo: Dan Sloan via flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

A new article by former ROOTS member Nicolas Lamare published in the international peer-reviewed journal "Libyan Studies" draws on the notion of collective memory to address the experience of urban space in antiquity. Lamare focuses on the Roman city Colonia Marciana Ulpia Traiana Thamugadi (today: Timgad in modern day Algeria) in the Severan period as a case study. The author mainly engages with the city plan and its streets, the public buildings that lined them, and their honorific inscriptions. He highlights how the built landscape was staged to create a memory of the urban space and its development. His study also reveals how the inhabitants themselves were able to contribute to fostering this memory through everyday urban practices. The article was partly written at Kiel University with funding from the Cluster of Excellence ROOTS.

Reference:
Lamare, N. (2022). Memory and the urban environment: Experiencing the streets of Severan Timgad. Libyan Studies 53, https://doi.org/10.1017/lis.2022.12