Skip to content

Rubina Raja

Title: “Making and Breaking Cities: the Historiography of Urban Archaeology in the MENA Region”

Abstract: While the Near East has often been epitomized as the cradle of urbanism, with countless early urban sites, and urbanization in the Bronze and Iron Ages a well-developed field of study, urbanism as an ontological category pertaining to later, especially the Hellenistic and Roman periods is surprisingly limited. While single monuments, religious architecture, public buildings or certain aspects of the elite material culture of Near Eastern cities have been studied in detail, holistic approaches to the life of ancient cities have rarely been undertaken, despite a string of grand narratives about Roman period sites, exactly with an emphasis on their Roman character and more recently with a focus on their non-Roman traits. Publications that address urbanism in the Roman Near East have been primarily concerned with detecting common or comparative features in the often monumental cityscapes. This presentation introduces new research on the historiography of urban archaeology in the MENA region and aims to shed light on the archaeological activities and practices from 1869 to 1946 (the Late Ottoman period until the end of the Mandate period) by re-examining archival and photographic materials along with archaeological and historical publications. The investigation seeks to uncover how current urban archaeological approaches and methodologies have been, often unknowingly, shaped by the paradigms established during this earlier period.

Bio: Rubina Raja is a professor of classical archaeology and art at Aarhus University, Denmark and Director of the Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions. She heads further collaborative research projects focusing on the archaeology and history of Palmyra and the Eastern Mediterranean, including the long-standing Palmyra Portrait Project. Raja is an experienced field archaeologist having headed several large-scale excavation projects in Italy and the Middle East. Raja’s research focuses on societal and urban developments and networks from the Hellenistic to the medieval periods, as well as architecture, iconography, and religious life in Antiquity and Late Antiquity. As a classical archaeologist, she has pioneered work in the fields intersecting archaeology and natural sciences bringing high-definition studies of the past to the forefront in its historical contexts. She has published widely on the Hellenistic to early Medieval periods with a focus on the eastern Mediterranean, and her monographs include Pearl of the Desert. A History of Palmyra (OUP, 2022), Urban Development and Regional Identity in the Eastern Roman Provinces, 50 BC – AD 250: Aphrodisias, Athens, Ephesos, Gerasa (Museum Tusculanum, 2012) as well as Palmyrene Sarcophagi, co-authored with Dr Olympia Bobou (Brepols, 2023).

Affiliation: Professor of classical archaeology and art at Aarhus University, Denmark and Director of the Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions