Dutch Archaeologists clash about city age...

[Rumo]

Here's one from Tongeren. The word "municipium" certainly spreads in certain provinces, but we don't know what this means. My personal opinion is that it is just a change in language. The use of the word coincides with the linguistic fashion of archaism. The problem may be connected to several other phenomenons, like the codification of municipal law (which started a bit earlier, though). But whatever it is, a municipal status cannot be granted by any emperor, as a municipium is by definition a town with ancestral rights.

I doubt that definition because Aelius Gellius says the municipia are made that way (16.13.7). The same text mentions the intervention of emperor Tiberius which confirms the epigraphic evidence that the status of municipium is related to an emperor (probably granted by him). This text suggests those ancestral rights were a privilege coming with the municipal status, not a datum beyond Roman jurisdiction.

Also, I find very unlikely it was just a fashion in naming. This hypothesis doesn't explain why we have the emperors names near the town/tribe names. I know of municipia from the times of Julio-Claudians to the times of Severans, in various provinces of the empire. Why in a territory conquered for a long while a settlement shows as a Severan municipium (in Dacia, AE 1998 1079: m/[uni]c(ipii) Sep(timii) Ap[ul(ensis )?


And if it was just about ancestral laws and no Roman grant, how do you explain documents like lex Irnitana?

That has been claimed by Abbott, and indeed, an emperor can grant Latin rights. But Latin rights are not ancestral rights.

Well, I'm wouldn't go to Abbott, but to more recent texts like this one or this one or this one

Of the hundreds of towns, of the hundreds of thousands of inscriptions, we simply don't have one text that confirms Abbott's idea that ordinary towns or tribes were called civitates, and that they, upon receiving Latin rights, were entitled to the rank of "municipium". Not a single town or tribe has made a grateful dedication - for every gift they erected a statue or a temple or whatever, but not for the grant of municipium rights. Isn't that strange?

There are some hundreds inscriptions mentioning this term, and we do have inscriptions of emperors restitutori/conditori of municipia (see that chapter about city status change under Hadrian, especially footnote 5 for inscriptions; another possible such inscription is analyzed here)

However how many inscriptions do we have for status changes in general?