Digging Caesar’s forum

[guy]

Recent excavations by a Danish-Italian group have uncovered some interesting finds at Caesar’s Forum in Rome. Studies of glass found at the site, for example, have been traced to the distant sites of the Levant and Egypt. Much of this glass that was used later in antiquity had been recollected and recycled as the supply chain to the city collapsed. 

 

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The history of glass in Rome between late antiquity and the early Middle Ages is still very patchy, but the results obtained with the glass corpus from the Caesar Forum have shed light on the changes in the dynamics of the glass supply during a period of political and economic transition. The identification of the different base glasses and their chronologies traces the main changes of the glass market, which was dominated by a shifting hegemony of the Levant and Egypt as exporters of raw glass. Rome, the capital of the empire, was for centuries one of the most important centres where goods, including glass, from the south of the Mediterranean converged and were redistributed across Europe. From at least the fifth century, fresh glass circulated in Rome alongside recycled compositions, which were probably obtained locally by collecting and recycling the glass from the waste produced in the city. The eight century marks the drastic contraction of these commercial flows and the interruption of imports of raw glass, but this dramatic change did not exclude Rome from the glass economy. Some fresh eastern glass continued to travel along the trade routes crossing the Adriatic, but the volume of these imports was limited. The experience acquired during centuries of glass recycling in the peninsula was certainly fundamental in responding to the sudden shortage of raw glass and in opening the way for a parallel market based on the exploitation of glass as a renewable material.

 

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The results obtained with the glass corpus from the Forum of Caesar have shed light on the changes in the dynamics of the glass supply during a period of political and economic transition. The compositional features of the glass reflect intensification of recycling in the eight century that marks the drastic contraction of these commercial flows and the interruption of raw glass imports. However, this dramatic change did not exclude Rome from the glass economy. Some fresh eastern glass continued to travel along the trade routes crossing the Adriatic, but the volume of these imports was limited.

 

There have been other findings, of course:

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So far, our excavations have unearthed tumbled granite columns from the forum’s eastern portico, as well as statue bases. Drainage channels have also come to light, with one dating to Caesar’s time, while another was installed during Trajan’s reign, providing a sense of how the forum was maintained over a century after its inauguration. Such measures ensured that heavy rain could drain towards the Cloaca Maxima, some 100m to the south.

 

https://the-past.com/feature/digging-caesars-forum-three-thousand-years-of-daily-life-in-rome/

 

https://heritagesciencejournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40494-022-00729-y

 

https://cas.au.dk/en/cfp/news-events/show/artikel/glass-in-rome-during-the-transition-from-late-antiquity-to-the-early-middle-ages-materials-from-the-forum-of-caesar

Edited July 6, 2022 by guy