RAC/TRAC Session 27: Investigating public spaces with digital tools

Conference Sessions and Abstracts - Thursday 11 April 2024

27. Investigating public spaces with digital tools

Alexander Braun – Universität zu Köln
Kamil Kopij – Uniwersytet Jagielloński

Public spaces played a pivotal role in the operation of ancient Roman society, functioning as vital hubs for commerce, administration, and religious activities. They served as central meeting places and were integral to the social fabric of daily life, acting as primary avenues of communication both within and without. Moreover, these spaces, in tandem with their built environment, served as the primary venues for representation.

Examining the design of these spaces and considering the desired experiences they sought to create allows for a deeper comprehension of the Roman society itself. The rapid progress in digital tools and computational methods provides exciting prospects to explore and analyze these spaces, along with their functions and interactions with both individuals and their surroundings. These advancements enable the development of new synergies and methodologies for conducting comprehensive investigations into these spaces. The purpose of this session is to discuss and assess various approaches to studying open public spaces and their societal significance through the utilization of digital tools and computational methods. The subjects encompass methods for examining visibility and audibility, reconstruction techniques, network analysis, social interactions, representative culture, environmental studies, as well as the opportunities, challenges, and limitations associated with these approaches.

Session schedule 

Abstracts 

 Space, speaker and audience – acoustic reconstructions of oratorical events in Roman Asia Minor
Peter Scholz – Universität Stuttgart            
Daniel Kah – Universität Stuttgart        
Verena Stappmanns – Universität Stuttgart

Public speeches were an essential element of political decision-making in Graeco-Roman antiquity. Traditionally, these performative acts of communication have been analysed using written sources such as speeches published by ancient orators, accounts of oratorical events, or reflections on rhetorical techniques and vocal training. On the other hand, numerous buildings in Greek and Roman cities were created for oratorical events and associated with political bodies: especially theatres and comitia for the assemblies of the citizenry or bouleuteria, odeia, and curiae for urban councils. Until now, written sources and archaeological findings have mostly been treated separately from each other, and a comprehensive study relating space and speaker has yet to be conducted. The research project at the Department of Ancient History at the University of Stuttgart in cooperation with the Fraunhofer Institute of Acoustics aims to add a new perspective on political decision-making in Classical antiquity. A new important tool is provided by acoustic simulations (auralisation) of virtually reconstructed public spaces, providing not only quantifiable data such as, speech intelligibility or reverberation time, but also audio samples for a more immersive approach. In our contribution, we would like to present and discuss the methods and first results of our research, which is currently focused on buildings with political and oratorical functions in Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor.

 Can you see me? Can you hear me? Investigating speech audibility and speaker visibility during Roman public assemblies
Kamil Kopij – Uniwersytet Jagielloński         Adam Pilch – Akademia Górniczo-Hutnicza    
Monika Drab – Politechnika Wrocławska        Szymon Popławski – Politechnika Wrocławska    
Kaja Głomb – Uniwersytet Jagielloński

For centuries, the Forum Romanum played a pivotal role in shaping the Mediterranean world. During the Republican times, it hosted official elections, popular assemblies for law enactment, and discussions on new legislation. Additionally, it served as the backdrop for eulogies in the funerals of Roman elites and crucial judicial speeches. These events all revolved around the art of rhetoric, encompassing not only spoken words but also the accompanying gestures and facial expressions of speakers. This paper presents findings from an analysis of speech audibility and speaker’s visibility across different speaking platforms located on the Forum Romanum during the Late Roman Republic and Early Empire. Custom 3D virtual reconstructions and acoustic simulations were conducted, considering various background noise levels. The results, represented through Speech Transmission Index (STI) maps, enabled estimates of intelligible audience size using modern crowd behavior observations. Visibility of rhetorical gestures was assessed based on an experiment determining the maximum distance for different-sized gestures. Facial expression visibility analysis drew from the classic Hager and Ekman experiment. The study explores how these findings verify hypotheses concerning changes in the Forum's rhetorical landscape over time, including the impact of spatial geometry on crowd distribution and speaker control.

 Visual Communications on the Roman Fora: The Public Spaces explored with 3D vector visibility analyses
Alexander Braun – Universität zu Köln

The Forum was the central communication nexus of the ancient city: meeting place, centre of administration, public cults, mercantile strife, justice, imperial demonstrations of power, and stage for the elites to compete amongst themselves. In short, it was the place to be and to interact with everyone. The actors responsible for the build environment of a Forum had thus a lot of messages to communicate visually to visitors. The wish and need to communicate and balance these messages of so many different interests created and developed different strategies and semantics on how to achieve that. Computational workflows allow us to investigate these methods by investigating the prominence of different parts inside the complexes and the planned ensemble of buildings and statues. These computational results must in a next step, be interpreted with the help of the knowledge of the build environment and which messages different parts were meant to communicate. This is a way to understand how Roman society, with the intent to communicate certain messages visually, developed their strategies, as well as to approach the question of what they wanted to communicate like that.

 Sense more than senses: new approaches to place using new sensorially informed frameworks and digital technology at Falerii Novi
Nathen Fair – Universiteit Gent

The turn toward human-centred archaeology of landscape and place has raised deep questions about how humans experience place and the role of the senses in experience. These areas of inquiry have been brought into further relief by the emerging and popularisation of new technologies, such as computer visualisation, virtual and extended reality, and remote sensing, as they have been adopted by the field. Research projects which have utilised digital technologies, especially visualisations, have traditionally seen them as additive – either for the dissemination of the research to a wider non-expert audience or as adding value to an already designed research question – rather developing analytical and research methods which place them at their heart. Those projects which have done this have suffered from the problem of the continued dominance of the Aristotelian five senses model, deeply embedded in the Western tradition. This paper responds to these concerns, elaborating an alternative theoretical framework which allows for the rigorous application of digital technology to the archaeology of place through a sensorially informed methodology integrating strands from anthropology, phenomenology, neurology, and physics. This paper then explores how this framework is being applied in an early-stage case study on the Romano-Faliscan site at Falerii Novi.

 Roman Administrative Space from Middle Republic to Late Antiquity Through Activity Space Research
Juhana Heikonen – Helsingin yliopisto

The main objective of this paper is to shed light on the Roman administration’s spatial dimensions and qualities through Activity Space research (AS). This paper studies some spatial aspects of the Roman administration via architectural, epigraphic, and literary evidence through one branch of AS-research, which partially derives from urban planning research, and has later been applied in everything possible from transportation to segregation research. AS is a concept used to measure spatial behavior of individuals in space and time. In this AS-research the individuals are Roman senators. The later evolution of the republican administration and governance goes hand in hand with the expanding nature of Roman urban space. However, even though open space was increased by several new monumental public fora, literary evidence suggests diminishing public administrative activity during the Imperial era, disappearing to Palatium (?). These places of activity are mapped from a wide array of sources by the Spacelaw-project and presented as GIS-maps and radar charts of Rome. The Roman ruling classes built their new power bases from the 2nd century onwards in the outskirts of the city. Spatially the Imperial administration and the new suburban ruling classes had little use of the Imperial, or the Republican fora. Their significance was seemingly restricted into a place of tradition and occasional pomp.

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