ABSTRACT
From the later Republican period onwards, and particularly in the imperial period, Roman cities developed dense, vast, and complex borderscapes around their urban cores. This urban fringebelt was urban and rural at the same time, and offered a place for urban activities for which there was no place within the city, such as burials and waste deposits; at the same time, borderscapes were characterized by hybridity in that urban and rural activities could be found next to each other, and they played a fundamental role in the construction of local identities by urban communities and their elites. By consequence, borderscapes were also contested spaces of which the use had to be negotiated, and therefore an area of special attention to the urban authorities. Approaching the urban fringes of Roman cities as ‘borderscapes’ offers a novel perspective on an important aspect of Roman urban history.
