| dc.description.abstract | This master thesis started as an investigation on the City gate Porta Di Ercolano in Pompeii, and the street inside and outside of this city gate. City gates was an important part of the Roman Cities, and in a lot of cases they were built with a simple entrance and as a military structure to defend the city easier. However, some city gates started to change appearance during the early imperial period. One of this city gates was Porta Di Ercolano in Pompeii, which differed from the other city gates in Pompeii as most of the other city gates in Pompeii still were built as a city gate with one simple entrance, while Porta Di Ercolano had 3 entrances, only other city gate in Pompeii with more than one entrance was Porta Marina which had two entrances. This makes Porta Di Ercolano an interesting object to look at since it differs from the other city gates in Pompeii, and that is why I decided to look at this specific area rather than the others. My original goal for this thesis was to shed light on what the streets around the city gate, both inside and outside, and the city gate itself could tell us about the function of Porta Di Ercolano, and to shed a light on reasons why they decided to build a city gate with 3 entrances rather than just the one as the standard city gate used to be, and it will also include a comparison of the street inside of the city gate and the street outside of the city gate. The year in focus is year 79 A.D. This year was investigated specifically because most of the evidence that survived to this day is from that year because of the eruption of Vesuvius. An investigation into this area showed that the necropolis area outside of Porta Di Ercolano also had commercial activity, just as much of the area inside of the city gate. The results show that the area around the city gate had urbanized and had a lot of traffic when the city ceased to exist after the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Those things also might have influenced Porta Di Ercolano having 3 entrances at that time rather than just one. | |
