This session presents recent studies of communication with Rome, urbanisation processes, economic and cultural changes in the Balkans.

Epidamnos, later Dyrrachium, at present-day Durrës in Albania, was a significant urban centre throughout Antiquity. Its location between the eastern and western Mediterranean caused complex urban and cultural transformations. Further north, on the Dalmatian coast, the city of Narona experienced economic and cultural growth during the reign of Augustus, symbolised by an over-life size statue of the emperor found in an Imperial shrine. Mosaics uncovered in an area stretching from Narona in the South to Pula in the North emphasise the early impact of Roman culture in Dalmatia.

The ways by which cultural interactions were stimulated by economic activity is an issue of major interest, as different culturally related practices were used concurrently following the inclusion in the Roman world. Cultic iconography is an important source to the hybridization of deities in the creolised landscape of Dalmatia.

Cultural influences depended on communication routes, such as the Via Egnatia, which connected the Adriatic with the Bosphoros. New evidence from the Roman and Early Byzantine periods from the area between Thessalonica and Philippi in Greece shows contacts with Southern Greece, Italy, Asia Minor and North Africa, in addition to important local production.

1. Marina Prusac (University of Oslo)

Introduzione

2. Marina Prusac (University of Oslo)

Hybrid Deities in the South Dalmatia

3. Arja Karivieri (Stockholm University)

Creating Contacts: Trade and Exchange along the Via Egnatia from the Roman to the Early Byzantine Period

4. Sara Santoro (Università degli Studi di Parma)

Epidamnos, Dyrrachium, Dyrrachion: trasformazioni urbanistiche e culturali di un porto fra Oriente e Occidente

5. Kristina Glicksman (University of Oxford)

Cultural Interaction and Economic Ambition in Roman Dalmatia