Living in the Town, Living in the Countryside. Typologies, Models and Transformations of Residential Architecture in Hellenistic and Roman Epirus

The on-field archaeological activities have much accelerated in various areas of Epirus in the last decades, and are producing an important progress of our knowledge of many aspects of the region, such as settlement distribution and land occupation, the definition of the urban landscapes, the organisation of defensive strategies, territory control and fortification, the funerary and religious spheres, etc. Lesser attention, considering the available publications, has been put on the analysis of the residential complexes, and this is not due to the lack of archaeological evidence, which is sometimes quite exceptional. Houses of different typologies, scale and prestige have been excavated and documented in recent years in large, fully urban centres such as Phoinike and Antigonea, and in minor sites such as Çuka e Ajtoit (Cestria). The rural landscape, as well, preserves evidences of small settlements equipped with monumental towers and other fortification elements. These have traditionally been interpreted as fortified farmhouses, underlining their economical function connected to agricultural and pastoral intensive exploitation of the chora. Among these stand out the structures preserved at Malathrea, a Hellenistic tetrapyrgos enlarged in Roman times and those of Mesopotamos near Ephyra in Thesprotia, erroneously interpreted for many years as the famous sanctuary of the Nekyomanteion. Exceptional architectural models, forged and diffused by the Macedonian dynasty are at the base of many of these residences that seem to integrate ‘palatial’ shapes and functions. The workshop aims at offering a discussion table to share new excavation and research results and fostering a fruitful dialog on models, functions, chronologies, transformations and interpretation. It aims at setting the ground for an integrated understanding of the phenomenon of residential architecture in Hellenistic and Roman Epirus.