Egyptian Houses in their Urban and Environmental Contexts: some case-studies of the Roman and Late Roman Periods

The article presents a first attempt to focus the attention on the environmental contexts and constraints in which houses and settlements were built in Graeco-Roman Egypt, and aim to add a new perspective to social and cultural interpretative theories on domestic architecture. This environmental perspective helps to clarify the origins of some peculiar features of the spatial organization of local communities. Some characteristics are far from being of Greek or Roman origin.