Gentrification has received overwhelming attention in studies of the modern city, with scholars disputing various causes while acknowledging the phenomenon as an increasingly global problem. There remains a surprising lack of consensus, however, on what gentrification is, how we might identify it, or how it impacts urban populations. Despite this acceptance of the complexity of gentrification, archaeologists and historians have been hesitant to explore whether a similar process might be occurring in the cities of different places and periods. Yet we might reasonably ask if gentrification is a strictly post-industrial occurrence, or a wider fact of urban life. This paper unpacks the debate surrounding the many faces of present-day gentrification, arguing for a qualitative understanding of this type of regeneration centered on neighborhood change and population displacement. In light of this broader definition, I consider the evidence for urban renewal in the Roman world, in particular the densely urbanized landscape of North Africa. Across cities showing rapid growth, new foundations, and smaller towns, a few key architectural characteristics can serve as the hallmarks of gentrification in a Roman, North African context. Considering these developments explicitly as gentrification, I argue, gives us interesting insights into the social impacts of these changes, and raises new questions of why a given neighborhood might be subjected to this process.

Dr. Andrew Dufton 

Andrew Dufton is a Visiting Assistant Professor at NYU’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. He received his PhD in Archaeology from Brown University. His research interrogates the long-term dynamics of change in the cities of North Africa, from the Iron Age into late antiquity, through the lens of urban process. This work highlights the diversity, haphazardness, and improvisation that best characterize urban life in both ancient and modern contexts. He has excavated and surveyed at sites in the US, the UK, and across the Mediterranean world, including at the imperial villa and medieval monastery at Villa Magna (2006–2010); at the Tunisian site of Utica (2010–present); and with Brown University at Petra, Jordan (2012–14).