The MASLAP Project
The Danubian provinces became a determining factor of imperial politics in Late Antiquity, which is also well represented by the change in the countryside. This villa-dominated landscape symbolize the environmental potential of the elites of different backgrounds, and also places and spaces of the transformation from the 3rd to the 7th centuries AD. To study this phenomenon, a new project was launched at the end of 2021, in association with the HALMA-UMR 8164 research centre in Lille: Mutation of Architectural, Social and Landscape Space in the Mirror of Late Antique Peristyle Buildings along the Danube (MASLAP). Coordinated by Orsolya Heinrich-Tamáska (GWZO, Leipzig), in collaboration with Dominic Moreau (Lille), this project was awarded a visiting grant until the end of 2023 by the I-SITE ULNE Foundation of the University of Lille.
The MASLAP project focuses the transformation of architectural, social and landscape space in the mirror of the Late Antique peristyle buildings along the Danube, using selected case studies from Pannonia to Moesia. The Danubian provinces contains well-researched examples of all types of peristyle villae. The analysis of these buildings within their environment and, using the new methodologies of surveys, give the possibility for a diachronic approach, which allows us to comprehend the architectural, landscape and social mutations these types of buildings during Late Antiquity.