#MAREMonday 01

On 11.01.2021 we will launch our new online lecture series with a contribution by

Jose-Oscar Encuentra Bardina
(Centre for Maritime Archaeology, University of Southampton)

THE CONTRIBUTION OF SHIPWRECK EVIDENCE TO OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE MARITIME TRADE CONNECTIONS OF NARBO MARTIUS (1st c. BC to early 3rd. c. AD)

Abstract:

The Mediterranean Sea, the Roman Mare Nostrum enclosed by the provinces of the Empire, was a genuine seascape of maritime ‘Viae’ shaping an extraordinary maritime trade network that connected the ports located all around that Mare Internum. Narbo Martius was, according to Diodorus Siculus and Strabo, one of those Ports and the main commercial harbour of western Mediterranean after Portus. This research aims to identify the Maritime trade connections, during the late Republic and the first half of the Empire, of this important emporium of the Roman Mediterranean and capital of the Provincia Narbonensis.

I am employing a challenging approach: The use of data obtained from shipwrecks as the main source of information for the study of the maritime trade connections of Narbo Martius. This data, added to the information obtained from terrestrial sites, will allow us to obtain the full image of how maritime trade, from and to Narbonne, was organised during the late Republic and the first half of the Roman Empire (1st c. BC to early 3rd c. AD).

The geographic frame of this research includes the Mediterranean coastal areas of the French regions of Occitanie and Région Sud Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, between the Pyrenees and the Alps, which occupy what, in Roman Antiquity, was the province of Narbonensis; also the current Spanish region of Catalunya, which inherit the area of the ancient Conventus Tarraconensis within the Roman province of Tarraconensis. I am also including, in the geographic frame of this research, the waters surrounding the island of Corsica, for being part of the maritime routes connecting, in Roman Antiquity, the provinces of Tarraconensis and Narbonensis with Rome.