South Street Portico: Shopping under Cover
Listen at the stop, then read the transcript and follow the sources behind the story.
Listen
Transcript
Urban comfort begins before you enter the shop.
The Oil Merchant's premises were reconstructed with an adjoining covered portico. Porticoes allowed movement and commercial interaction with some protection from weather. Covered street edges were part of Roman urban architecture in kar-NOON-toom.
Watch how the roofed edge mediates between private rooms and public street.
The evidence level here is reconstructed from street and building evidence.
Keep the early fourth century in mind: the reconstructed quarter presents a late phase of a city that had already been growing and rebuilding for centuries.
What looks like one archaeological attraction is really evidence for a city operating at several social levels at once.
Do not let the modern quietness mislead you. The ancient setting depended on traffic, labor, maintenance, noise and repeated social routines.
One of kar-NOON-toom's strengths is that archaeology can test the attractive story against material evidence—and sometimes force us to tell a better, less convenient story.
For a visitor, the value is causal rather than chronological: this stop explains why a frontier metropolis needed this particular space, system or institution.