RAISON D’ÊTRE (HK)

The analysis of space has always been a topic in archaeological research. Since the 1980s the development of computer based analysis has facilitated this kind of research to a great extent. In the last decades a number of new approaches to the analysis of space have become popular, specifically in Mediterranean archaeology: new geophysical methods like high-resolution, shallow seismic reflection survey and new analytical methods like Space Syntax, the analysis of operationalsequences and linguistic landscape studies. Even collective memory studies are used to interpret the public space. At the same time, the more traditional, well established methods are also yielding exiting results.

In this book a combination of new and established methods is used to analyse the urban space of Roman Ostia and Pompeii, namely geophysical analysis, computer based spatial analysis, iconographic analysis, and epigraphic analysis. The book is based on the work of Hanna Stöger, the Leiden scholar who died, much too young, in August 2018. Hanna published her PhD thesis and several articles on the analysis of the urban space in Ostia (see the list of Hanna Stöger's publications at the end of the book) using a technique called Space Syntax (see Jansen in this volume for a discussion of Space Syntax). John Bintliff, her PhD supervisor was the first to suggest that Hanna should use Space Syntax. L. Bouke van der Meer and I were both involved in Dr. Stöger's work as co-supervisors, Bouke as a leading expert in Roman Ostia and I for my specialisation in computer applications in archaeology. Her PhD was published by Leiden University Press in the ASLU (Archaeological Series Leiden University 24) series, received very positive reviews (Cuyler 2012; Kaiser 2014; Monteix 2015; Pavolini 2016) and was the best-selling volume in that series ever.

When Hanna died her work in Ostia was not finished. She was working on a project called “Neighbourhoods of Roman Ostia”. Part of the project was to map unexcavated parts of Ostia with geophysics. This was done in cooperation with scholars from the Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands) and the University of Augsburg (Germany) (Sonnemann et al. 2015).