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Experiencing towns means feeling atmospheres. This impact made by urban spaces depends largely on their architecture and its decorative and visual features – including its design. In this sense, this volume is about aesthetic, semantic, and functional design strategies in ancient Pompeii and the impact they had on urban actors.

The book examines the decorative principles taking effect in the houses of Pompeii between the end of the 2nd century BC and the early Imperial period. For the first time, individual decor phenomena are not only considered in isolation, but also in terms of their spatial and social relationship.

Past Landscapes' presents theoretical and practical attempts of scholars and scientists, who were and are active within the Kiel Graduate School ?Human Development in Landscapes? (GSHDL), in order to disentangle a wide scope of research efforts on past landscapes. Landscapes are understood as products of human-environmental interaction. At the same time, they are arenas, in which societal and cultural activities as well as receptions of environments and human developments take place. Thus, environmental processes are interwoven into human constraints and advances.0This book presents theories, concepts, approaches and case studies dealing with human development in landscapes. On the one hand, it becomes evident that only an interdisciplinary approach can cover the manifold aspects of the topic. On the other hand, this also implies that the very different approaches cannot be reduced to a simplistic uniform definition of landscape. This shortcoming proves nevertheless to be an important strength. The umbrella term ?landscape? proves to be highly stimulating for a large variety of different approaches.0The first part of our book deals with a number of theories and concepts, the second part is concerned with approaches to landscapes, whereas the third part introduces case studies for human development in landscapes. As intended by the GSHDL, the reader might follow our approach to delve into the multi-faceted theories, concepts and practices on past landscapes: from events, processes and structures in environmental and produced spaces to theories, concepts and practices concerning past societies

Material is the substance of the world of things. Literary sources suggest that materiality was part of aesthetic perception, loaded with meaning and bound to function even in antiquity. To date, this complex reading of material has not been adequately represented in archaeological research. The present volume addresses this oversight by examining the decorative use of material in Roman Italy between the Late Republic and Early Imperial period.

Studies on ancient urbanity either concerns individual buildings or the city as a whole. This volume, instead, addresses a meso-scale of urbanity: the socio-spatial organisation of ancient cities. Its temporal focus is on Late Republican and Imperial Italy, and more specifically the cities of Pompeii and Ostia. Referring to a praxeological and phenomenological perspective, it looks at neighbourhoods and city quarters as basic categories of design and experience. With the terms 'neighbourhood and 'city quarter' the volume proposes two different methodological approaches: Neighbourhood here refers to the face-to-face relation between people living next to each other – thus the small-scale environment centred around a house and an individual. Neighbourhoods thus do not constitute a (collectively defined) urban territory with clear borders, but are rather constituted by individual experiences. In contrast, city quarters are understood as areas that share certain characteristics

Frontmatter -- Preface -- Contents -- 1. Introduction -- 2. From Nature to Topography -- 3. Fountains and the Ancient City -- 4. Water, Social Space and Architecture at Selinous: the Case of the Urban Sanctuary -- 5. Fountains and Basins in Greek Sanctuaries -- 6. Water in Early Christian Ritual: Baptism and Baptisteries in Corinth -- 7. Aquatic Pasts & the Watery Present: Water and Memory in the Fora of Rome -- 8. Water and Decentring Urbanism in the Roman Period: Urban Materiality, Post-Humanism and Identity -- 9. Water and Urban Structures in the Narrative Worlds of Courtly Novels − Aesthetic and Symbolic Functions -- 10. Syracusan Water Networks in Antiquity -- 11. Meeting Water Needs as a Major Challenge in an Urban Context -- 12. Ice Jams and their Impact on Urban Communities from a Long-term Perspective (Middle Ages to the 19th Century) -- 13. Medieval and Post-Medieval Urban Water Supply and Sanitation -- 14. Harbourscapes -- 15. Human Impact on Hydrology -- 16. Water as an Economic Resource and as an Environmental Challenge Within the Urbanisation Process of the Rhine Valley in the 13th Century -- List of Contributors