Riverine relationships: A journey along the Po between the 3d and the 5th century AD

Abstract

Rivers represent a vital means of communication, transport, and interaction between extensive landscapes. They are often complex fluvial environments where anthropogenic activities and environmental forces are inextricably linked. Since the origins of humanity rivers provided their surrounding communities with subsistence resources, and with many of the first civilisations developing beside river courses, these rivers evolved into a political, economic, and cultural highways connecting disparate landscapes, from lake-strewn mountains to promontory forelands, down to an extensive floodplains and coastal lagoons and converging into vast oceans. Over the last few thousand years many rivers, such as the Nile, Thames, and the Tiber, have developed a unique symbiotic relationship with their fluvial communities, but this relationship is often overlooked or heavily understudied. Especially in archaeological studies, rivers are often seen as simple and natural features of an extensive terrestrial landscape, whereby its inhabitants were not defined from a riverine perspective but from a terrestrial one. As rivers are complex products of geology, environment, anthropogenic interactions, and the unfolding of history, it is necessary to study these rivers as exactly these products. Only by doing so can a better understanding of the river be created as well as its many riverine communities and traditions. Hence, this thesis aims to develop a multidisciplinary approach that enables a holistic narrative of the symbiotic relationship between rivers and their fluvial communities. To do so, this thesis will use the Po from the 3rd to 5th century AD as an example and highlight how this river and its symbiotic relationship during the Roman Empire developed. This will be achieved by geologically reconstructing the Po during the researched period, geolocating the archaeology around it, and assessing the various Greek and Latin accounts that discuss this unique riverine landscape. This process will not only refine our understanding of the relationship between the Po and its fluvial communities but also define a novel approach that can be applied to any river across the globe.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Fraser Sturt: orcid.org/0000-0002-3010-990X

ORCID for Stephanie Blankshein: orcid.org/0000-0002-4622-9180

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