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Manufacture in Pannonia

Transit communications are manifested in two basic forms: river transport and transport by established trails and roads, which is closely tied to the history of Classical culture. Roman civilization additionally enhanced riparian communications, and brought specific novelties to other forms of transport. Expansion of the Roman Empire and the large flow of soldiers, armies, civil servants, merchants and others compelled the Romans to build a network of roads (viae), of which there are no similar examples in the ancient world. As Roman authority took root in the newly-acquired regions, so too did their system of roads grow, linking the lands under Roman rule into a single whole. In the coexistence between Roman military camps (castra), later civilian settlements, and indigenous settlements, fast and safe Roman roads brought administrative and spatial order to the provisionally stated, "disorder"of the pre-Roman settlements and their territorial spheres of interest. The creation of a sound road network and establishment of marine and riparian merchant and military fleets faciliated the growth of inland and littoral zones. Siscia, as the vital seat of the province of Pannonia, was also the hub for major routes which passed through it, connecting the banks of the Sava River with the Adriatic coast in the south and with the danubian and barbarian regions in the north. A well-known expert in the field of the rural settlements and the country achitecture, Edith Thomas was the first author to make a list of settlements in the area of Pannonia (including the Croatian part) in her book on Roman villas in Pannonia. She makes a list, at the time, out of a total of 152 villas only six were from Croatia. According to Dénrs Gabler, until 2000 some 600 villas were recorded in Pannonia, as many as 400 in Hungary and only 21 in Croatia. This situation has changed following the year 2000, when a number of protective and rescue excavations and systematic surveys were conducted in advance of the construction of highways and other infrastructural projects. According Leleković the number of rural sites in the Croatian part of Pannonia increased to ca. 250, 53 of which were actually excavated. Remains of larger rural settlements that could represent villages (vici) were found on nine of the excavated sites, as well 21 rural villas, while the true nature of the settlement was impossible to determine on 23 sites. Unclassified sites are evidenced in the vicinity of Siscia. The settlements entered in the itineraries as Praetorium, and the accompanying road station Ad Praetorium on the Siscia – Sirmium road, are good examples of this type of sites. Both are located in the wider area of Hrvatska Dubica southeast of Siscia. Topusko 38 km to the southwest of Siscia, with the finds from Roman period, represented the remains of the Roman settlement or a road station Ad Fines, but more recent finds and studies attribute the finds in Topusko to the road station Qudrata. Remains of masonry, altars and numerous small finds were also found ar Kamensko near Karlovac, not far from the confluence of the Mrežnica and Kupa rivers . We must emphasize that some of the individual finds were discovered in the rivers, two in the Korana and one in the Kupa, and recently individual finds in the Mrežnica suggests that finished sarcophagi were transported by rivers. This area which covers 10 x 20 kilometres and includes 40 sites, so 25 out of these 40 sites are quarries and the rest are sarcophagi used as spolia both in sacral and secular buildings and different individual finds.The shipwreck near Karlovac region suggests that the adjacent territory gravitated towards Siscia. Osekovo east of Roman Siscia, a luxurious villa or centres of latifundia, could actually have been smaller settlements grown along the main roads. This information suggests that the ager of Siscia, according to southern-Pannonian criteria, was densely packed with larger rural settlements. Siscia as a large economic and traffic centre had to have a developed manufacture, workshops that produced goods for the needs of the city but that also sent those goods to the near areas in the inland and all over the Empire.

manufacture; Pannonia; rural settlements; roman villas

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