MAPPING FOOD AND INFRASTRUCTURE IN EARLY MEDIEVAL ROME

A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE FOURTH CENTURY FORUM BOARIUM

Independent Research project | Research Advisor: Gregor Kalas, Associate Professor of Architectural History

Spring 2020 Undergraduate Research Assistantship

ABSTRACT

Amid the many agendas surrounding archaeological discoveries within the city of Rome, the Forum Boarium has been an area of interest and topic of discourse among scholars. Besides being the present-day location of a popular tourist attraction, it is speculated that the annona, a free food initiative first enacted in the early Roman Republic, was active in the Forum Boarium area into the fourth-century CE if not longer given certain inscriptions found in and around the medieval church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin. The research connects the organization of the annona and the infrastructure of the Forum Boarium, seen in the documentation of streets, bridges, and monuments along the Tiber River and extending towards the Forum Holitorium and Circus Maximus. Specifically, maps of the fourth-century Forum Boarium, derived from Mapping Augustan Rome, can be created to show the relationships between the imperial distribution of free food using a market and a portico and the other infrastructure that served such distribution including river ports and warehouses. The research seeks to document the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin through conveying the infrastructure in diagrams, imagery, and writing. Current findings indicate the roads of Vicus Tuscus, Vicus Iugarius, and the Via Ostiensius as main thoroughfares through and about the fourth century Forum Boarium. The research fills in the gaps in our knowledge about Roman topography and the distribution of free food during the fourth century CE, with the main goal of setting the stage for further exploration about the fourth-century infrastructure in the nearby district between the Arcus Constantini and the Circus Maximus.