Cityscapes and Monuments of Western Asia Minor

Cityscapes consist of houses, streets, civic buildings, sanctuaries, tombs, monuments and inscriptions created by multiple generations of citizens and foreigners with an interest in the city; they are interpreted and reinterpreted as expressions of past lives, changing relations of power, memories and various identities.The present volume publishes 25 contributions written by scholars specializing in the history and archaeology of western Asia Minor. New and well-known material – literary, epigraphical, numismatic, and archaeological – is presented and analyzed through the twin lenses of memory and identity.The contributions cover more than 1000 years of cultural diversity during changing political systems, from the Lydian and Persian hegemony in the Archaic period through Athenian supremacy and Persian satrapal rule in the Classical period, then autocratic kingship in Hellenistic times until, finally, more than half a millennium of Roman rule. Identities are voiced through several media and visible at many levels of the ancient societies. So are the places of memory – the Lieux de Mémoire – and the studies presented here provide new insights into how human beings chose, deliberately or subconsciously, to commemorate their past and their ancestors, and how identity was displayed and expressed under shifting political rule.

Eva Mortensen is a member of the academic staff at the Centre for Urban Network Evolutions, Aarhus University. She completed her PhD on heroes in Ionian and Carian cities in 2016. Her main research interests are urban societies in the eastern part of the Roman Empire. Birte Poulsen is Associate Professor at the Department of History and Classical Studies (Classical Archaeology), Aarhus University. Her main research interests are art and archaeology of the imperial period and Late Antiquity with special reference to architecture and mosaics.