ABSTRACT
This chapter develops a novel perspective on the history of Roman retail landscapes by analysing them in a more comparative way. It contends that it is essential for our understanding of Roman urban history to develop more and better tools to construct historical narratives on the basis of archaeological evidence from multiple kinds of cities, and it discusses a framework that can be used as a starting point for comparing urban commercial landscapes. The chapter starts by going back to Pompeii and looking what, actually, are the indicators for chronological change that can be found in the Pompeian archaeological record; then, it discusses what a comparative framework could look like. This framework will then be applied to a number of cities from elsewhere in Roman Italy; and it will become apparent that while the developments at Pompeii are certainly indicative of something, they are not to be taken too easily as representative for the leading direction of developments in Roman Italy. Rather, they present the upper side of the urban spectrum, and whereas other Italian cities, particularly in the Apennines, show a different kind of development. The comparative approach is essential to understand development in both contexts.
