New approaches to the architectural design, amenities, and function of <i>macella</i>: typologies, scale, and the Macellum Magnum

Abstract In recent years, scholars have drawn particular attention to the existence in the ancient world of permanent, specialized market buildings, macella or μάκɛλλοι , which offered dedicated facilities for the processing and sale of luxury commodities such as fish and meat. However, important questions remain about the typologies, architecture, and “end-users” of these structures. Here, I outline a basic model for how the total and average wealth and traffic of settlements increases with estimated populations, before exploring the relationships between the total footprints and wider architectural characteristics of macella and estimated populations of sites. This reveals that there is a series of relationships between these measures that are not only consistent with wider theoretical and empirical expectations, but also have the potential to alter dramatically our understanding of macella by revealing the connections between the sizes and capacities of these structures and the wealth, connectivity, and integration of settlements.