Function and Symbol: The Development of Towns in Roman Dacia

Abstract

The modernising trend in the theory of Roman towns, despite the recent reaffirmation of the parasitic city (Whittaker 1995), is towards the global identification and definition of economic function. In addition to the consumer city, three models are currently prominent the Wacher Leaveau theory of the consumer town which paid for its consumption through trade; the Hopkins model in which city dwellers paid for consumption in cash, in a modernised economy driven by the need to pay taxes in coin to Rome; and the archaeologists' model where a monetised economy developed through demand created by troops and officials paid in coin (Whittaker 1995, 110-1l3). To this list may be added the recent plea for wider inclusion of the social constituents of the ancient city (Laurence 1994, 133). As universal models of the economic framework in which urban growth took place in the early Roman empire, each is limited by its own terms of reference. The consumer city rests heavily on the written evidence of the upper classes, the Hopkins model on taxation and that of the archaeologist by the limited quantity of coin found during excavation.