Visualizing the Invisible: How Can We Model Roman Religious Processions?

Summary

Religious processions colored the ancient world, filling a city’s streets with a multi-sensorial display of sounds and images. Although the presence of processional activity is acknowledged as a regular occurrence in the Roman world, our understanding of their movement patterns and their effect on the cityscape remains understudied. The record of processions was held primarily in the memories of those who experienced or took part in the festival, only manifesting within the archaeological record as a testament to their occurrence in the form of temples or monumental arches. The nuances of how a procession traversed a city’s streets and its urban impact are not easily revealed. Applying a computer-based approach to the study of processional activity allows new questions to be asked of a well-recognized Roman ritual. This paper considers the role that processions played within the city of Ostia, Rome’s ancient port. The application of a model-based methodology allows for critical analysis of a procession’s movement patterns by studying processions as a dynamic event that engaged both with a city’s inhabitants and the built environment. The use of computer models in combination with archaeological material offers new insight into ritual experiences within Ostia.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Modeling People, Places, and Things: Revisiting Archaeology as Model-Based Science   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16905