A Geometric Morphometric Approach to Regionalism in Roman Theatre Architecture
When and Where
Speakers
Description
The Archaeology Centre presents:
"A Geometric Morphometric Approach to Regionalism in Roman Theatre Architecture," by Dr. John Sigmier (Psotdoctoral Researcher, University of Toronto)
Friday, April 11 at 3:00 pm in room AP130 at 19 Ursula Franklin St.
Gallo-Roman theatre - a group of buildings constructed between the first century BCE and the fourth century CE in Rome's northwestern provinces - are difficult to typologize because they exhibit numerous non-canonical architectural features. Architectural historians have traditionally relied on qualitative description to characterise these theatres' irregular ground plans, but this method is limiting when drawing comparisons across a large corpus of buildings. Geometric mophometrics, an approach that represents shapes as coordinate scatters for statistical analysis, can overcome some of these limitations. By digitizing a set of plans using geometric morphometrics software and then running a series of statistical tests on the morphometric dataset, I identify several theatre shape clusters that appear to correspond geographically to major watersheds in the Roman Northwest. I argue that these clusters are plausibly explained as products of regional communities of architectural practice that developed around waterways as communicative arteries.
