Resumen de The reoccupation of spaces for productive activities in 5th century Rome
Late Antiquity was a period of major transformations that affected the whole Empire and prepared the ground for further changes to come. Rome in the 5th century is a privileged observatory of these modifications, where it is possible to detect the evident signs of phenomena of a primarily political and economic nature that are widespread elsewhere, but which here acquire an even more important value because of its status as the founding centre of the Empire. Among the many themes related to the transformation of the city in the late antique period, one of the most interesting is certainly the dispersion of productive activities within the urban fabric, where public and private spaces were often reoccupied by workshops: this phenomenon, previously considered as the result of occasional, uncontrolled scavenging activities, has now begun to be recognised as a more organised operation, in which the central authority sought to preserve urban decorum, while at the same time increasingly tolerating the exploitation of selected places at the hands of powerful individuals who were affluent members of the urban elite, and who promoted the materials recycling industry for their own economic profit. Among these productive activities, metallurgy, in particular, seems to have played a dominant role: this paper thus offers an overview of all the spaces where metalworking took place across the centre of Rome during the 5th century, trying to investigate the main features of this phenomenon and the related implications for its history and economy in a period of such important transformations.
