Ivaylo Lozanov
Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski", Archaeology, Faculty Member
- Archaeology, Ancient History, Urbanism (Archaeology), Greek Archaeology, Archeologia, Historical Geography, and 20 moreAncient Greek Numismatics, History of Ancient Macedonia, Thracian Archaeology, Fortifications, Ancient Numismatics, Hellenistic and Roman Fortifications, Ancient Greece, History of ancient Thrace, Classics, Late Antiquity, Roman History, Byzantine Studies, Balkan Studies, Roman Religion, Greek History, Roman Army, Greek Epigraphy, Roman Epigraphy, Greek Religion, and Late Roman and early Byzantine fortificationsedit
Revisiting the old debate on the nature of Byzantion's relations with the two major protagonists of the so called Mithridatic Wars.
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A concise introduction to the formation of Roman Thracia with special references to Tacitus, comtaining blind entries on the Odrysae, Dii, Coelaletae, and Dinis.
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Abstract Despite longstanding archaeological research in Nicopolis ad Nestum in Roman Thracia, the site still has not yielded any conclusive evidence on its foundation date. Instead, the debate has long been focused on scanty numismatic... more
Abstract
Despite longstanding archaeological research in Nicopolis ad Nestum in Roman Thracia, the site still has not yielded any conclusive evidence on its foundation date. Instead, the debate has long been focused on scanty numismatic and ancient literary sources, pointing largely to city’s Trajanic origins. Latest attempts to re-evaluate the situation in favour of an earlier enterprise taken by the triumvir Mark Antony in the last years of the Roman Republic are much disputable. Along with many arguments denying Nicopolis’s Antonian foundation, the present paper discusses several neglected documents – military diplomas, issued to veteran-sailors from the Ravenna fleet in the summer of AD 142 after 26 years of service. Three copies speak of “Nicopolis ex Bessia” as sailors’ home, which is to be identified with Nicopolis ad Nestum. Peculiar expression “ex Bessia” is not be understood strictly formulaic as “city ex province” (i.e. “ex Thracia”), as is the case with the majority of later documents, but rather as a residual practice from the 1st century in designating the tribal home of the veterans. In a larger sense it is the territory (or at least part of it) of the Thracian Bessi. The evidence is met by Pliny (NH 4.11.40), and his “Bessorumque multa nomina” inhabiting the Middle Mesta (Nestus) region. Thus “Nicopolis ex Bessia” has entered military records upon soldiers’ recruitment in AD 116, marking a new-born civic foundation and the still incipient phase of organizing the urban territory within the larger tribal area of the Bessi. Therefore, the discharge documents in question can only confirm the information from other sources and in the same time to narrow the foundation date of Nicopolis ad Nestum under Trajan somewhere between AD 107, after the Dacian wars, and the emperor’s Parthian campaign of 116.
Despite longstanding archaeological research in Nicopolis ad Nestum in Roman Thracia, the site still has not yielded any conclusive evidence on its foundation date. Instead, the debate has long been focused on scanty numismatic and ancient literary sources, pointing largely to city’s Trajanic origins. Latest attempts to re-evaluate the situation in favour of an earlier enterprise taken by the triumvir Mark Antony in the last years of the Roman Republic are much disputable. Along with many arguments denying Nicopolis’s Antonian foundation, the present paper discusses several neglected documents – military diplomas, issued to veteran-sailors from the Ravenna fleet in the summer of AD 142 after 26 years of service. Three copies speak of “Nicopolis ex Bessia” as sailors’ home, which is to be identified with Nicopolis ad Nestum. Peculiar expression “ex Bessia” is not be understood strictly formulaic as “city ex province” (i.e. “ex Thracia”), as is the case with the majority of later documents, but rather as a residual practice from the 1st century in designating the tribal home of the veterans. In a larger sense it is the territory (or at least part of it) of the Thracian Bessi. The evidence is met by Pliny (NH 4.11.40), and his “Bessorumque multa nomina” inhabiting the Middle Mesta (Nestus) region. Thus “Nicopolis ex Bessia” has entered military records upon soldiers’ recruitment in AD 116, marking a new-born civic foundation and the still incipient phase of organizing the urban territory within the larger tribal area of the Bessi. Therefore, the discharge documents in question can only confirm the information from other sources and in the same time to narrow the foundation date of Nicopolis ad Nestum under Trajan somewhere between AD 107, after the Dacian wars, and the emperor’s Parthian campaign of 116.
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The present paper has no ambitions to be exhaustive. We will try to present some of the main trends, respectively problems in the development, in the last fifteen years, of the archaeology of the Thracian lands from the end of the... more
The present paper has no ambitions to be exhaustive. We will try to present some of the main trends, respectively problems in the development, in the last fifteen years, of the archaeology of the Thracian lands from the end of the Prehistoric period up to the Late Antiquity. Due to objective reasons, the text has some essayistic elements, at the expense of listing facts and statistics. The latter could be found in the bibliographic references of our professional editions. Many of the trends and phenomena considered below are largely the same as those regarding the archaeological investigations of prehistoric and medieval sites, as in many cases the investigations of complex multilayered sites and the respective publications are interconnected and inseparable in terms of general history and modern institutions. While the Prehistory would consider 15 years only a twinkling, in Classical times such a period is longer than it took Alexander the Great to defeat and conquer Persia, to create an empire that comprised half of the Old World, and to lay the foundations of a new political and cultural era, the Hellenistic Period. Standing at the limits of this period – the last 15 years – we lack the distance that is necessary for to make an adequate evaluation. However, as we know the importance of what we, being professionals (at least we hope we are), are going to do in the coming decisive and crucial years, we decided it was worth it to answer several fundamental (groups of) questions: I. What did the transition predefine and change in Bulgarian archaeologists' mentality and research conduct? II. What was left behind, what was preserved, and what new appeared in the conditions of work? III. Which approaches and methods should we preserve and what should we change, regarding the modern development and the realization of the professional community, as well as the sites that should be investigated and socialized? The answers of these groups of questions are intertwined with prognoses about future perspectives. In various ways and at various levels they pertain to several problems: the attitude to the subject of study; the educational level and the intellectual conditions that exist for the work and development of the professional community; the organization (institutional) and self-organization of the Bulgarian archaeologists; the ways the process of research is financed – from investigations on the terrain to final publications; the financing and the
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The study is an attempt to present a new understanding of the complex interactions between protagonists of different political, social and cultural order (local kings and dynasts, polis communities, great imperial powers) following the... more
The study is an attempt to present a new understanding of the complex interactions between protagonists of different political, social and cultural order (local kings and dynasts, polis communities, great imperial powers) following the reduction of Macedonian monarchy into a Roman province (148 BC) to the annexation of the last Thracian kingdom and its inclusion into the Roman provincial system (AD 45/46). Along with (re)constructing continuous narrative of major historical episodes, the author focuses on the role of emerging or transforming urban centres and tribal communities within regional and micro-regional environment in SE Thrace. This period is marked by the creation of new cities, the rise of new powers, important settlement and demographic shifts, and the reorganization, consolidation, or destruction of existing settlements and the changing economic exploitation of the regions. An archaeological exploration of the urban space and the civic territories of individual cities adds to the main framework of the study.