Sergio España-Chamorro
Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Departamento de Prehistoria, Historia Antigua y Arqueología, Post-Doc
Sovraintendenza ai Beni Culturali del Comune di Roma, U.O. Musei Archeologici e Polo Grande Campidoglio, Assistant
sergio.espana@ucm.es
Before becoming a Ramón y Cajal Researcher in Ancient History at UCM, I was a "Marie Curie Fellow" (2022-2024) at Sapienza Università di Roma, a postdoctoral researcher under the "Atracción de Talento de Investigación Internacional en Madrid" (2022) and the "Juan de la Cierva Incorporation" program (2021-2022) at UCM, and a postdoctoral researcher for IdEx (2019-2021) at the Institut Ausonius, Université Bordeaux-Montaigne, as well as at the Spanish School of History and Archaeology in Rome (EEHAR-CSIC).
Currently, I am an Associate Member of the Institut Ausonius de Bordeaux (UMR 5607) and have been part of the Consolidated Research Group "African Archaeology" (UCM-971713) since 2018.
I have completed research stays at the University of Southampton (Arch. Computer Research Group), the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL) at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro, the University of Seville, and Université Paris-Sorbonne - Orient et Méditerranée (UMR 8167).
My current research focuses on:
* Epigraphy and territory: milestones, termini, and rural epigraphy.
* Epigraphy, archives, and colonialism in North Africa (Tunisia and Algeria).
* Epigraphy of spectacles in the Roman world: theatre, amphitheatre, and circus.
I am a member of several professional organizations: the European Association of Archaeologists (since 2013, EAA ID: 54938), the Association Internationale d’Épigraphie Grecque et Latine (AIEGL) (since 2020, Lifetime member nº: 407), the Epigraphy.info network (2020-2024), the Société Française d'études Épigraphiques sur Rome et le Monde Romain (SFER) (since 2022), the Scuola Archeologica Italiana di Cartagine (SAIC) (2022-2024), and the Libyan Epigraphy Research Network (LERN) (since 2023).
Supervisors: SPAIN -José María Luzón Nogué (PhD), SPAIN - Mª Cruz Cardete del Olmo (PhD), FRANCE - Milagros Navarro-Caballero (Posdoc), SPAIN - Fabiola Salcedo Garcés (Posdoc), UK - Simon Keay (Short Stay), GERMANY - Manfred Schmidt (Short Stay), SPAIN - Concepción Fernandez Martínez (Short Stay), ITALY - Gian Luca Gregori (Posdoc), UK - Alex Mullen (Posdoc), and GREECE - Sophia Zoumbaki (Posdoc)
Address: Departamento de Prehistoria, Historia Antigua y Arqueología
Facultad de Geografía e Historia, Edificio B
C/ Profesor Aranguren s/n, 28040, Madrid
https://www.ucm.es/preharq/
Before becoming a Ramón y Cajal Researcher in Ancient History at UCM, I was a "Marie Curie Fellow" (2022-2024) at Sapienza Università di Roma, a postdoctoral researcher under the "Atracción de Talento de Investigación Internacional en Madrid" (2022) and the "Juan de la Cierva Incorporation" program (2021-2022) at UCM, and a postdoctoral researcher for IdEx (2019-2021) at the Institut Ausonius, Université Bordeaux-Montaigne, as well as at the Spanish School of History and Archaeology in Rome (EEHAR-CSIC).
Currently, I am an Associate Member of the Institut Ausonius de Bordeaux (UMR 5607) and have been part of the Consolidated Research Group "African Archaeology" (UCM-971713) since 2018.
I have completed research stays at the University of Southampton (Arch. Computer Research Group), the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL) at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro, the University of Seville, and Université Paris-Sorbonne - Orient et Méditerranée (UMR 8167).
My current research focuses on:
* Epigraphy and territory: milestones, termini, and rural epigraphy.
* Epigraphy, archives, and colonialism in North Africa (Tunisia and Algeria).
* Epigraphy of spectacles in the Roman world: theatre, amphitheatre, and circus.
I am a member of several professional organizations: the European Association of Archaeologists (since 2013, EAA ID: 54938), the Association Internationale d’Épigraphie Grecque et Latine (AIEGL) (since 2020, Lifetime member nº: 407), the Epigraphy.info network (2020-2024), the Société Française d'études Épigraphiques sur Rome et le Monde Romain (SFER) (since 2022), the Scuola Archeologica Italiana di Cartagine (SAIC) (2022-2024), and the Libyan Epigraphy Research Network (LERN) (since 2023).
Supervisors: SPAIN -José María Luzón Nogué (PhD), SPAIN - Mª Cruz Cardete del Olmo (PhD), FRANCE - Milagros Navarro-Caballero (Posdoc), SPAIN - Fabiola Salcedo Garcés (Posdoc), UK - Simon Keay (Short Stay), GERMANY - Manfred Schmidt (Short Stay), SPAIN - Concepción Fernandez Martínez (Short Stay), ITALY - Gian Luca Gregori (Posdoc), UK - Alex Mullen (Posdoc), and GREECE - Sophia Zoumbaki (Posdoc)
Address: Departamento de Prehistoria, Historia Antigua y Arqueología
Facultad de Geografía e Historia, Edificio B
C/ Profesor Aranguren s/n, 28040, Madrid
https://www.ucm.es/preharq/
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Papers (Book chapters) by Sergio España-Chamorro
A specific aspect of Roman roads was the use of milestones. During the Republic, milestones were erected mainly in Italy, with little evidence at the provincial level: eastern Hispania, southern Gaul and Greece. Augustus was the first ruler to promote the expansion of those milestones in the newly reorganised Empire. It is from Augustus onwards that we begin to find milestones
in some regions and Africa Proconsularis is one of them. In this work, the transformations of the Roman roads in the Julio-Claudian period will be presented, analysing mainly the epigraphic testimonies, from the first Augustan milestones found in Africa and their chronological and geographical development during the Julio-Claudian emperors in order to see the development of this epigraphic practice.
of epigraphy, they are also the sole poetic genre with a continuous attestation for over 1,000 years, from across the Roman Empire. Frequently produced by and for members of the lower social classes, they raise numerous questions regarding their production and reception, especially in relation to their prose counterparts. Since most of them are of a funerary nature (more than 80%), they are closely related to death and its contexts, being a popular option to commemorate the death of a loved one with a last farewell full of values and sentiment.
and the new reading of another one already published.
All these texts come from the territory of the Roman
Municipium ad Sava (Mauretania Caesariensis), now Bougaa
(Algeria). The information has been found at the Institut
National d’Histoire de l’Art (Paris), thanks to the consultation
and digitalisation of the “Fond Pierre Salama”.
Philological Archaeology proposed a systematic reconstruction that related both Classical sources and Epigraphy. However, not only new epigraphical finds but also archaeological evidences have revealed that this approach to Classical sources must be made critically. The particular case of the territorium of Augusta Emerita, the capital of the province of Lusitania, is very interesting in several ways: for example, some geographical issues highlighted by archaeological research do not match with the information Classical sources provided; they have also revealed the complexity of fixing boundaries between two provinces. This paper will explore an alternative approach to the circumstances of this boundary and the influence of this border in the social sphere.
colony and the army was licensed as citizens of this new city. This new situation developed in some problems that finally were solved by a new process of delimitation of the so-called territorium Musulamiorum. That situation is known by an important ensemble of landmarks with a formulaic epigraphic text. Their characteristics convert these inscriptions in the imposing element of Roman power and the language used (Latin) evidences no intentions of communications with the others non-Romans, the Musulami in this case.
This paper reviews the history of Musulami from all sources available. After that, I incise in some parallel processes of delimitation in Roman Africa in order to stress concomitances and differences of this specific case: the case of the N ybgenii and the tacapitani, the case of Nicibes and Subures Regiani, and the last one, Suppenses and Vocifrenses. This kind of process is produced when the stability and the status quo break down and it is a good opportunity to explore this as a social factor. It has been also necessary to deep in the figure of the praefectus gentium. It allows me to discuss their role in the cultural change of the Musulami. Praefecti were intermediaries between Rome and several indigenous populations and it was the key of its integration
in the romanitas.
In conclusion, I examine the process of deterritorialising in Roman Africa. This important vision shows the role of landscape and indigenous population in the conception of the Roman frontier. Territorium Musulamiorum was a hinge between the idea of province and the limes of the Roman oikoumene. Processes of otherness were a fundamental part in the relationship between both entities. The reterritorialization of these lands can be understood with this conflict and it is an effective way to evaluate the social impact of the Roman conquest within the lands that once belonged to indigenous tribes. Moreover, the so-called territorium Musulamiorum was a way to fill in the gap in the geographical concept of province and Empire and this mental process is a psychological way to overpass the fear to the emptiness and to avoid dystopic environments. All these clues change
our idea of administration of the new conquest Roman territories and their conversion into a province and they include the social factor and the tribal problems that have not left any trace in most of these cases.
traditional models that have been always studied separated. Notwithstanding, the review of the corpus milliariorum of the territory of the former Roman province of Baetica give us divergences of these evidences and it shows us a different approach of this propaganda in a spread territorial view from Augustus to Hadrian. It can be linked with historic moments and the model of Roman administration in that area.
Memory is an element of historical construction and this is materialised in monuments, texts and commemorations. Memory is a construction of the past and it links the past with the agent in the present. At the end, memory could be considered as a way of identity, but identity is not always memory.
In this theoretical framework, it is very remarkable to analyse how memory could have an expression in the city of Pompeii. It is also interesting to explore the so-called ‘mnemonic devices’. In public spaces, memory is probably best expressed in religious spaces.
Throughout the time, these spaces were transformed and adapted to the new sociopolitical environment. It shows different aspects to preserve and it constitutes the memory of the city, so it cannot be considered only
as religion. Some spots can talk about the specific history, such as the sacred space assigned to the temple of Apollo, that was fossilized in its shape, keeping the former inscriptions in Oscan language, despite all the changes in urbanism. Another good example of this is the temple of the triangular forum. This temple was also one of the first sacred area that maintained their space and adapted its configuration to the new changes
of urban network, in spite of its decadence.
In the familiar sphere, we can find many proofs of the importance that familiar memories had and of how it can be searched in the archaeological finds. In this line, we can see many objects that can be understood as familiar memories. For example, some families keep burying their deceased in the same cemeteries and parts of the city
regardless of the epigraphic changes which reveal cultural changes from Oscan to Latin language. We can also observe some scenes, spaces and peak moments of the city of Pompeii which were important enough to
be painted on the walls of many domus, in order to remember special moments or emotions and to keep the familiar memory alive.
Pompeii is a unique place to explore these specific social processes such as memory places in the urban topography. Due to its good preservation state and the scarce alteration of the archaeological remains, we have in Pompeii more clues than in other archaeological sites. Even though this short paper is only a sketch, I aim to show the possibilities that Pompeii could have in this field.
is always the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. In the best way, Oplontis could be added to this list but mainly, it is the most overlooked.
Even the declaration of the World Heritage site, UNESCO (With the
official name: Archaeological Areas of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Torre
Annunziata” (Ref. Nº 829) 1-6 December 1997), only affects the
archaeological sites of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Torre Annunziata
(Oplontis) while Stabiae is no longer considered today.
In the case of Stabiae, its chronology goes back to the VII century BC. Its
history is older than other settlements as Pompeii and Herculaneum and
it brings us very useful archaeological information of the protohistoric
situation in the Sarno plain. Previous investigations to the Borbonic
excavations were carried through Tommasso Milante. He was interested
in the area on account of the archaeological remains appeared in the hills
of Varano and Gragnano. He pointed out the identification of this area
with the ancient city of Stabiae. But the start date of the Borbonic
excavation was a couple of years later. In 1749, Roque Joaquin de
Alcubierre, a Spanish military engineer, directed the labours of digging
and swiftly discovered important archaeological remains. This Borbonic
excavation in the ancient Stabiae happened through phases of interest and
abandonment (around 30 years). After the death of Alcubierre in 1780 the
excavation was abandoned until 1950. In this time, in around 1881, only
Michele Ruggiero was interested in the history of excavation at Stabiae
in a documentary way.
Between 1950 and 1862, Libero D’Orsi took the baton of the Stabiae
archaeological history. He worked to bring the Stabian village to light.
After him, an abandonment period occurred again (excluding any
occasional intervention). In 1998 until present, the RAS project initiated
a new period for Stabiae focusing on academic research and touristic
promotion.
Compared to that, the history of Oplontis is more much limited. If Stabiae
was a city, the Oplontis archaeological site is just a three (documented)
village. Just two of them have been excavated. The so-called village A
was discovered in the XVI century but it was not partially excavated until
XIX century. In XX century, village A and B were more sternly
excavated. Currently, this settlement is involved in a recovery project
named the “Oplontis Project”. It started in 2006 and is developing new
documental and archaeological researches of the villae.