The Urban Social Stratification of Southwestern Asia Minor

For a long time, civic society in antiquity was conceived as having consisted only of the rich and the poor. This conception is outdated, and has, in recent years, been replaced by a model comprising also a broad middle spectrum in between the elites and the poor. But how exactly can we grasp these middling groups? What was their approximate size? Can we detect finer layers within this middle spectrum of society? And, finally, what strategies of upward mobility can we find? The project targets these as well as similar questions in detail and aims at two things: Establishing and refining methods that make possible the detection of the different strata of urban society, and delivering a fine-grained picture of civic population and its various actors. As a geographical limitation, the cities of ancient Southwestern Asia Minor (i.e. the Southwestern part of modern-day Turkey) have been selected. The chronological scope will cover the Roman Imperial period, i.e. roughly the first three centuries of the Common Era. The decision to target specifically this region and time was made due to the abundance of the preserved ancient sources, mostly consisting of inscriptions. The most important sub-group within these inscriptions is formed by the thousands of epitaphs the region has to offer. These epitaphs are not only preserved in such abundance that statistical analyses are feasible , they are also often still placed on the pertaining tomb monument, making it possible to contextualise them and analyse the texts together with the original monument and within their original surroundings. The picture gained from these analyses shall serve two purposes. For one thing, our understanding of the ancient societys composition as well as strategies of social mobility shall be broadened. In addition to that, the project aims at providing a versatile foundation for further studies into the regions economic, cultural and political history.