DECODING SPATIAL FRAMEWORK OF ROMAN-AFRICAN DOMUS, CASE OF CUICUL (DJEMILA) ALGERIA

Abstract

This article focuses on a type of habitat that existed in the Roman territories in North Africa and assumes that the domestic architecture of the domus is a reflection of the collective identity of culture buried for millennia and considers that house can be a carrier of cultural information in its spatial configuration. Space syntax, through its configurational analysis techniques, allows establishing a qualitative and quantitative analysis by reconstructing the ancestral way of life and the interactions between inhabitants and strangers. We here present and discusse the results of the syntactic analyzes applied to a set of large Roman-African residences or domus in the Roman site of Djemila (cuicul) in Algeria. Topics covered include the spatial organization of the domus and the potential for integration and control of shared activity areas within the residence, with an assessment of its relationship with human use of space and functioning of the domus with the public space through its permeability. It appears that the spatial and formal models created through buildings and the way they are connected and sequenced correspond to codes that govern the activities that take place there, those that need to be separated, and which categories of people have access to them. The domus is structured by the introduction of a multitude of transitional spaces which had two major effects: creating a hierarchy from the outside world to the interior of the building and inducing movement by creating circulation alternatives and help separate areas of unrelated function and areas dedicated to a specific function.