ABSTRACT
This contribution focuses on a variety of recently excavated spaces in the city of Gerasa and their development throughout the late antique to early Islamic periods. It takes its point of departure in the work published by the Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter and evaluates that by comparing with evidence from other excavations in the city. While the narrative of urban rise in the Roman period followed by a decline in Late Antiquity still is a prevailing narrative in many accounts of urban histories of the Near East, archaeological research from several sites in the region has shown that Late Antiquity rather was a period in which urban settlement was intensified, and new mapping of urban spaces show that urban societies grew and prospered in these centuries. While these new conclusions might in fact not be that surprising, they seldom take centre stage in discussions about urban societies in Late Antiquity. Nonetheless, the urban picture was indeed a different one from that of the high imperial period with its monumental public monuments and the layout of central urban streets. But how exactly do we grasp these differences and, just as important, what do these differences and the changing urban landscape tell us about the nature of urban societies in Late Antiquity in the Near East? This chapter, which draws on case studies from Gerasa, tackles micro-urban histories and situate these into a broader and emerging narrative, which tells a story of urban prosperity in a rapidly changing world, socially, religiously and politically speaking.
