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In this paper we analyze the dynamic nature of ethnic identities in Late Iron Age Gaul and the paramount role that in their definition played warfare and military pressure, especially Roman intervention from the middle of the 2nd century BC onwards. Even if some ethnic identities in Gaul could perhaps be traced as far back as the 4th century BC, the migration of the Cimbrii and Teutones at the end of the 1st century BC, the increasing Roman presence, crystallized in the Caesarean conquest, and the own rivalries among Gallic civitates, meant a situation of pervading military stress. Against this backdrop, group identities were redefined according to political and military developments. Migrating communities as the Helvetii, military coalitions as the one constituted by the Belgae, or hegemonic civitates as the Aeduii, show us inclusive and fluid processes of construction of ethnic identities, where small groups could coalesce into bigger ones ‒or segregate. Alongside the political dimension, cultural strategies as the construction of a shared cultural memory were crucial in the strengthening of these redefined identities, in a time when changes brought by Roman Imperialism were increasingly felt by Gallic societies.
The paper is the analysis of a number of examples of forensic complex in which, after the end of the roman city (as an entity organized and administratively dependent from a central power) and the next phase of abandonment, happens a reoccupation of the spaces, that previously had been public. The forum of the city, for its innate topographical peculiarities, among which, in primis, the constant characteristic of centrality (which does not always exist from a geometrical point of view, relative to the entire urban plant, but certainly always exists from a functional point of view) and point of passage of large road arteries, is particularly appropriate to become the place where, even after a big traumatic event, can easily be realized a new beginning of human activities, although very different from those carried out during the life of the Roman city. The same condition of “destroyed city” can give life, also in a relatively short time, to a mosaic of activities related to the recovery of material, coming from the destroyed buildings and create a new, also if reduced, urban core. Not only natural disasters can determine the end of a city; the absence of a strong central government, in fact, can determine the abandonment, or a substantial downsizing, of an urban plan, in particular, if it was originally designed for strategic or commercial demands. Even in these cases, the area of the forum, may be altered, such as, for example, the invasion perpetrated by citizens who take possession of space previously of public destination.
2012, Imperialism and Identities at the Edges of the Roman World. Petnica Science Center, September 19th – 23rd
2014, The Edges of the Roman World
The paper considers cultural and imaginative construction of the Ister/ Danube, and its implications in the creation of the limes area of the provinces of Moesia and (part of) Pannonia. It discusses how the Danube was used as an element in construing the Scordisci as a Roman enemy and (pseudo)ethnic tribe, what was the meaning of this connection, and did such conceptualization have real repercussions in the area of waterscape associated with the ‘tribe’. It is proposed that the Danube emerged as a hydrographical frontier thanks to its specific longue durée symbolic meaning of liminality embedded in the imperialistic agency in the course of creating provincial/frontier/imperial space. The basic point is that the ancient imagological tradition had an important effect on the construction of Roman imperial space thanks to the intellectual and political elites’ capacities to shape powerscapes by projecting their own conceptualizations of the world into the webs of relations under their influence.
2016
2018, Reflecting Roman Imperialisms
My paper discusses the issue of gender, politics and asceticism in fifth century Georgian hagiographical work Martyrdom of Šušanik. The composition describes the torture of fifth century Armeno-Georgian queen Šušanik at the hands of her apostate husband - Varsk‘en - who converted from Christianity to Zoroastrianism. The author of composition – Jacob of C‘urtavi - gives us a valuable information about gender and ethno-political borders in Late Antique Georgia. The Martyrdom illuminates how the different kind of ascetic practices crossed the borders and spread over all Late Antique Christian oicumene.
My intervention was about the gradual construction of a border between the Byzantine Empire and its own province of Chaldia before the foundation of the Empire od Trebizond in 1204. The region became increasingly autonomous and its aristocracy developed its own ways to rule and manage political power, regardless of imperial authority.
Anatole Upart, Alla Vronskaya, Lily Filson, Maja Babic, Flavia Marcello, Maria Elisa Navarro Morales, Fatina Abreek-Zubiedat, Alona Nitzan-Shiftan, Raluca Muresan, Andreea Ion Cojocaru, ISIL EKIN CALAK, Georgios Karatzas, Ceren Katipoglu Ozmen, Caterina Cardamone, Edoardo Piccoli, Sanja Matijević Barčot, Eliana Sousa Santos
2018, Reflections of Roman Imperialisms
2018, Violence in Prehistory and Antiquity Die Gewalt in der Vorgeschichte und im Altertum
THE FINAL VERSION OF THE PROGRAM
2016, Proceedings of the23rd International Congress of Byzantine Studies
2018, Limes Congress XXIV. 24th Internatioanl Limes Congress.
The 27th Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference
Late Antique visual and material culture across empires frequently incorporated elements of 'the other', of cultural traditions other than the patron's own, and often these same elements are found in different empires. This is especially true for luxury objects and the decoration of monuments commissioned by royal or elite patrons. This paper will focus on the transfer of images between Late Antique empires and the motivation of the patrons that resulted in this highly connected visual koiné. Based on recent theories of cross-cultural interaction (e.g. Brands, Canepa, Cormack) and globalisation (e.g. Versluys), I wish to discuss the appropriation of images in Late Antiquity as a cross-cultural circular system, crucial in royal and elite identity formation. I will argue that the phenomenon can be seen as a successive appropriation of first objects (such as luxury goods) and in a second step of the material and visual properties which had been associated with them and had obtained a positive cultural connotation. Both the objects themselves and their iconographic motifs and material characteristics served as a mode of communication between the elites of different empires and as an elite marker within their own cultural sphere. Objects were passed on, even across borders, for example through diplomatic gift exchange or as war booty, and gained prestige in this interaction. As the thus ideologically charged 'foreign' iconographic motifs and forms were not only appropriated, but imitated, and the newly produced objects potentially entered the cycle of cross-cultural interaction, it becomes increasingly difficult to determine the origin of their visual and material properties – a concern probably more vital to us than to the Late Antique contemporaries. Exemplified by case studies, I wish to reconstruct the different steps of appropriation that may have led to the globalised visual koiné of Late Antiquity.
2017, EX NOVO Journal of Archaeology
Modern Romania is a nation-state containing space which has long been considered marginal-first as part of the Roman Empire and now within the European Union. The national narrative of Romania highlights this liminality, focusing on the interactions between the Romans and the local Dacians on the northeastern border regions of the Empire. Romania still contains significant material remnants of the Iron Age, including the Roman Limes, a series of fortifications on the Danube River meant to protect the Roman borders. As such, the archaeological tradition of this geographic space is heavily entangled with Romania's identity as a frontier region. This paper outlines the formation of Romanian national space, focusing on the period between the seventeenth century and 1918. It considers the relationship between the materiality of the Roman Limes and ideological frontiers in Romania, examining the role of archaeology in the sustainment of the Romanian nation space.
In this paper I will try to examine how the monthly distributions of free grain to the urban citizens of Rome worked. Starting from the already well-known problem of the monthly distributions of free grain from the Republican to the Imperial era, I will try to reconstruct the original aspect of the buildings where they took place, generally known as porticus Minuciae (the vetus one and the frumentaria one), by means of a new comparative approach involving the archival data (from 1884 to 1941) and the nowadays archaeological evidences. The examination of the excavation journals of its discoverers Guglielmo Gatti and Antonio Maria Colini (done on 1937-1941) allows for both the reconstruction of the appearance of the building at its discovery and for the dating of its phases. A careful analysis of this archival material with the help of the successive documents of the adjacent excavations of Giuseppe Marchetti Longhi (non-edited notes, drawings, tracings and photos of the years 1928-1937) has permitted the reconstruction of the history of the excavation of the building and the identification of the Marchetti Longhi’s excavation pits and of the relative finds. Moreover, a study of the present state of the monument (the temple of via delle Botteghe Oscure and the ruins under via S. Nicola dei Cesarini) and a new survey of the structures revealed a bulk of unpublished information, not yet accessible through the journals. On these grounds, it is now possible to offer a scientific reconstruction of the building that impedes the general interpretation as one of the two porticus Minuciae known, and sheds new light on the topic, providing new directions for further research.
The paper reviews the conventional notion of the straightforward relation between the presence of warrior equipment, its quantity and quality, and the warrior status of the deceased in the area of middle Danube by revising the evidence from Karaburma necropolis. It is argued that the concept of the warlike late Iron Age Scordisci is derived from ancient written accounts and that the role of war and violent character of communities in the middle Danube region are overemphasized and uncritically taken as an axiom. The paper suggests other possible paths of interpretation which point to the diversification of social roles, possible professionalization within the late Iron Age social structure, as well as (probably) diverse meanings and utilization of weaponry in the funerary context.
2019, Sastre, I. and Currás, B. X. (eds.) Alternative Iron Ages: Social Theory from Archaeological Analysis, 218–256. London: Routledge.
2018, Adalbert Cserni and his contemporaries. Pioneers in the Archaeology of Alba Julia
Although most of his work was devoted to the study of Roman Britain, in the ninety years since his death, Professor Francis Haverfield (1860-1919) remains one of the most influential figures in the study of the archaeology of the Roman Empire. At one and the same time philologist, epigrapher, historian and archaeologist, one of his legacies was his ability to marry literary, historical, epigraphic and archaeological evidence to create an interpretative framework for understanding not just of the political and military history of the western provinces of the Empire but to explain their cultural development. If the paradigm he devised for his interpretation of cultural assimilation – best known as Romanisation – has in recent decades come under sustained criticism, Haverfield’s work remains central to the debate concerning life in the provinces. His opinions on the subject were derived not just from his familiarity with the British evidence but from his network of contacts in Europe. A number of opinions have been offered to explain from where and for what reasons Haverfield devised his views on Romanisation theory but a little explored possibility is the experiences that he took as a consequence of a tour he made of the eastern territories of the Austro-Hungarian empire at an early stage in his career in the late 1880s. This paper examines how Haverfield made his tours and in turn with whom he came in to contact. In establishing these facts we can begin to assess how work in what is now Romania and Hungary came to fill a pivotal role in his thinking on cultural assimilation in the Roman Empire.
The Conference will address a range of important topics and themes relating to the archaeology of the Roman world. We are inviting proposals for Papers that will present new discoveries or ideas in the field of Roman archaeology through 40 themed conference sessions. Paper proposals that extend beyond these thematic areas will also be considered. SESSION 1: TERRA MARIQUE: ECONOMY, SPATIAL MANAGEMENT AND TRANSFORMATION AT THE ANCIENT ADRIATIC (TERRA MARIQUE (ECONOMIA, GESTIONE E TRASFORMAZIONE DELLO SPAZIO NELL'ADRIATICO ANTICO) The focus of this session is on various forms of human interventions made to the environment of the ancient Adriatic and the consequences they had for both economy and society. Points of interest are land and maritime resources, their exploitation and management, as well as landscape transformations occurring due to such human interventions. The latter include settlements, cemeteries, port structures and installations, production and trade facilities, and other types of human-environment correlations, but also the impact that the exchange of goods and persons had on both societies of origin and destination.
2017, Archaeology and Science
Roman archaeozoology is a relatively young discipline in Serbia. In the course of the 20th century only a few papers regarding animal remains from the Roman period sites in Serbia have been published, while in the past decade archaeozoology has gathered momentum in Serbia, and so did the Roman archaezoology. This paper reviews available (published and unpublished) archaeozoological data from Roman sites in Serbia, gives a short overview of research topics and also offers suggestions for future studies.
The founding works of A.H.M. Jones, C. Lepelley and J.H.W.G. Liebeschuetz on cities in Late Antiquity have shown that their so-called decline and fall, defended by Fustel de Coulanges, were rather corresponding to profound changes in terms of topography, forms and functions, than to an actual disappearance. It is undeniable that the Roman classical model one day ceased to be, but it was not by leaving room for nothingness. There was indeed a lively world of Late Antique and Early Medieval cities. The last centuries of Antiquity even saw the foundation of new cities, some of them having never been anything but Christian cities. Given the magnitude of the impact of the great invasions/migrations in this region, the three dioceses of Illyricum, Dacia and Thrace were among those, in the Late Roman World, which saw their civic system most shaken by wars and population movements between the third and the eighth centuries. This session proposes to re-evaluate and to illustrate this historical issue in the light of archaeological discoveries of an overlooked region, especially with regard to the spread of Christinianity, by taking a look at the provinces that covered, in Late Roman times, the northern part of the Balkans.
The RAC 2020 Executive Committee is pleased to announce the Call for Individual Papers for the Fourteenth Roman Archaeology Conference in Split, which will run from Thursday 16th to Saturday 18th April 2020, with excursions on Wednesday 15th and Sunday 19th April. The Conference will address a range of important topics and themes relating to the archaeology of the Roman world. We are inviting proposals for Papers that will present new discoveries or ideas in the field of Roman archaeology through 40 themed conference sessions.
Bibliography on Late Roman urbanisation, with many entries on local scholarship. Feel free to use it and contact me if you need a copy of an obscure, local article.
The RAC 2020 Executive Committee is pleased to announce the Call for Individual Papers for the 14th Roman Archaeology Conference in Split (Thursday 16th to Saturday 18th April 2020). The Conference will address a range of important topics and themes relating to the archaeology of the Roman world. Session Boardgames and Gambling in the Roman World. Organisers: Natasha Harlow, University of Nottingham, UK; natasha.harlow@nottingham.ac.uk Summer Courts, University of Edinburgh, UK; s.l.s.courts@sms.ed.ac.uk; Tim Penn, University of Edinburgh, UK; tim.penn@ed.ac.uk; Veronique Dasen, ERC Locus Ludi (741520), University of Fribourg, Switzerland veronique.dasen@unifr.ch. The enjoyment of leisure time and recreation is an important part of human experience. While much attention has been paid in Roman archaeology to top-down mass entertainment such as amphitheatre games or races in the circus, gaming and gambling, a more ad hoc and, in many ways intimate, type of leisure activity, has received comparatively little attention. Past work, drawing on literary evidence, explores the kinds of games played in the Roman world and examines social attitudes to gaming and gambling. This scholarship often references material remains, such as board layouts or inscriptions, but textual sources remain in the forefront. Some recent research into, for example, the phenomenological experience of dice-rolling, the transmission of games within the Roman world and the connection between gaming, gambling and literacy, has emphasised the valuable insights to be gained from interrogating the material evidence on its own terms, underlining the potential for archaeologically-informed contributions. The literary focus has, however, led to the materiality of games and gaming being underexplored; further consideration of the material evidence has potential to provide new outlooks on the social value of this aspect of entertainment in the Roman world. This session invites papers focusing on any aspect of the material culture of gaming and gambling from across the Roman world, with a special focus on dice, dice cups/towers, counters and boards which survive in the archaeological record – whether these items are specially manufactured or created from recycled material. Papers focusing on the more ephemeral effects of materiality on the gaming experience, such as availability, portability, and the creation of such objects are also welcome, as are those exploring the distribution patterns and chronological changes relevant to gaming and gambling. Paper proposers should note the following: • Presentations should last no longer than 30 minutes • Speakers should leave sufficient time at the end of their papers for questions from the audience • The official conference languages are English, French, German, Spanish and Italian • Unfortunately, RAC cannot cover the costs of speakers’ travel and accommodation to attend the Conference Proposals for papers must include the following information: • Title of the Paper • Name, affiliation, postal address and email of the proposer(s) • Title of the themed session in which they would like to offer a Paper (or ‘General’ if outside a themed session) • A short description of the theme or subject area of the Paper (not more than 200 words) Submissions should be sent by email to the RAC Executive Committee: rac2020split@gmail.com AND to the lead organiser of the session. The official conference languages are English, French, German, Spanish and Italian • Unfortunately, RAC cannot cover the costs of speakers' travel and accommodation to attend the Conference. Proposals for papers must include the following information: • Title of the Paper • Name, affiliation, postal address and email of the proposer(s) • Title of the themed session in which they would like to offer a Paper (or 'General' if outside a themed session) • A short description of the theme or subject area of the Paper (not more than 200 words). The full Conference schedule will be announced in December 2019.
2014, In Celtic Art in Europe: Making Connections (eds) C. Gosden, S. Crawford & K. Ulmschneider, 315-324. Oxbow Books, Oxford.
As is amply demonstrated in the Megaw’s extremely useful book Celtic Art, first published in 1989 and reprinted in 2001, designs recognisable as Iron Age or Celtic in character persist in Roman Britain, particularly in the north and the west where flourishing new regional art styles develop. Objects include horse-gear, as well as new varieties of other well-known Iron Age object types such as torcs. Recent surveys reveal that these objects are in fact more numerous than art made before the conquest (Gosden and Hill 2008, 2; Garrow et al. 2009). The influence of Rome can be seen especially in the use of enamels of multiple colours arranged in geometric patterns and brass, a Roman metal. However, although this paper is situated within a wider discourse of Romanisation, it is from the perspective not of how pre-Roman peoples became Roman but rather the role of art in the construction and renegotiation of identity. Building on recent research by Fraser Hunter (2006a; 2006b; 2008a; 2008b; 2010; 2012) and Mary Davis and Adam Gwilt (2008), which highlight regionality and diversity, it is argued that this art is not an historical fossil. Rather, through the making and wearing of these objects, people were actively working out how to live in the Roman world, or on its frontiers.
GrenzÜbergänge. Spätrömisch, frühchristlich, frühbyzantinisch als Kategorien der historisch-archäologischen Forschung an der mittleren Donau. Forschungen zu Spätantike und Mittelalter 4.
In the course of rescue excavations in 2011 a grave was found at the Davidovac-Gradište site. Th e locality is situated in the southernmost part of present-day Serbia, in the South Morava valley, on the route of the Roman Via publica. In the grave, a 30–40 year old male was buried with his belt and a battle axe. Th e belt consists of pressed bronze sheet strap-ends and a cast bronze buckle. Alongside them there was a purse buckle, also a characteristic early seventh-century Byzantine product. The anthropological analysis indicates that the deceased had military training. Such graves are rarely found throughout the Byzantine Empire. Being very diff erent from the sixth-century Roman burials, they were commonly attributed to migratory mercenaries of the Empire. Having surveyed similar burials of that date from Corinth, Pergamon, present-day Albania and Sardinia, we are in favour of interpreting them in the context of social changes which occurred at a time of crisis in the Empire, and not in ethnic terms.