La construcción pública de época romana en Hispania y el norte de Áfricaagentes, procesos y costes económicos

Abstract

Since the beginning of the 20th century, Roman public construction in urban areas has been widely analysed from a regional or local point of view and through very specific approaches, such as the formal and stylistic evolution of architectural aspects or, for example, the social and political profile of its financiers, with evergetism acquiring a special relevance. On the other hand, the administrative processes linked to the execution of a construction project have been poorly dealt with. These studies were mainly focused on the different phases that had to be completed during an intervention financed by the local treasury of the provincial towns. This PhD dissertation analyses 365 inscriptions that refer to the explicit intervention of administrative agents or record the cost of a public construction project. Of these, 274 refer to the former, while 116 refer to the latter. They are distributed between the 1st century BC and 284 AD, the first year of Diocletian's reign, and are assigned to the Hispanic -Citerior, Baetica and Lusitania- or North African provinces -Proconsularis, Numidia, Mauretania Caesariensis and Tingitana-. Tituli have been exhaustively analysed, both in terms of their content and the archaeological context in which they were found. The terms recorded in each inscription have been studied in detail to assess their ambiguity and to trace the precise activities of the administrative actors involved. All this has allowed us to define a series of indicators to identify the origin of the initiative and the financing of each project. The data from literary sources and the archaeological remains of the structures referenced in the epigraphy complete the analysis. We have two main objectives. The first is to reconstruct the administrative process involved in achieving a building project in Roman times. To do so, we focus on the projects funded by the local treasury of the provincial cities and analyse the variants motivated by the initiative's and funding's origin, two concepts traditionally treated as synonyms. The degree of involvement of each agent, the possible geographical and chronological variants and the mechanisms of collaboration between the different spheres are also traced. The second objective of this doctoral thesis is to evaluate the economic cost of a public work. To this end, we analysed the context in which the cost of the buildings was recorded and estimated their real scope. We also valued the devaluation of the currency and compared the amount with the remains of the infrastructures identified archaeologically. Finally, we estimate the cost of Temple B of Thugga -Dougga, Tunisia-, known from epigraphy. A methodology in vogue since the end of the 20th century based on the analysis of the preserved archaeological remains was applied. The result obtained coincides with the information provided by the tituli, thus proving to be an excellent tool for approaching the cost of these buildings and contrasting the epigraphic data.