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Jacopo Dolci
PhD student, funded by M4C (AHRC),
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Biography
I was educated in Cultural Heritage (BA, 2016) and Archaeology (MA, 2018 and Specialization School, 2020) at the University of Milan, and took part in several archaeological projects in Italy, Tunisia and Morocco. My undergraduate thesis focused on the late Etruscan-early Roman pottery in Tarquinia; during my MA, my academic interests shifted both geographically and temporally, and I became interested in the cities of the Roman Levant and, particularly, in their reuse in Late Antiquity up to the 8th century. I focused on the Jordanian site of Gerasa/Jerash for my MA thesis and on the temple-church conversion in the late antique Levant for my subsequent work at the end of the Specialization School.
Research Summary
My research analyses the 'afterlife' of pagan religious buildings in the late antique cities of the Levant (modern Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria). Through a detailed analysis of… read more
Recent Publications
Current Research
My research analyses the 'afterlife' of pagan religious buildings in the late antique cities of the Levant (modern Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria). Through a detailed analysis of construction, repair, and reuse, it will examine how urban temples and sanctuaries were transformed during late antiquity (4th-8th century). The research aims to comprehensively address the 'afterlife' of pagan religious buildings in the region, providing new insights into late antique urban transformations and civic aesthetics. It will use GIS to perform a comparative multi-scalar analysis of archaeological evidence regarding construction activity, transformation, repair, and abandonment of temples. By incorporating data from contemporary literary and legal sources and by selecting significant case studies (e.g. Gerasa, Caesarea, Palmyra), the collected dataset will ultimately allow me to interpret the changing societal drivers of pagan temples' transformations in the late antique Levantine cities.