2023-2024 7/11/2023 Richard Alston (Royal Holloway University) Reimagining Provincial Communities (recording here) This paper is an attempt to think through how materialist feminism might align with understandings of community formation and ideas around social reproduction to change our approaches to gender and community in the Roman provinces. Combining these approaches provides an opportunity to engage with the micro-histories of community and gender formation in the provinces, to understand the agency of individual social actors, and to explore diverse strategies in engagement with the Roman imperial period. The paper’s contention is that gender is formed within micro-level social engagements. The focus is on those representing/represented as women. The first part of the paper will explore the advantages of a material feminist approach in situating gendered representation within a diversity of sex and in particular socio-ecological circumstances. Gender is exposed more fully as a discourse of power, which can be transmitted within imperial networks of knowledge and status. In the second part, I explore how gender representation might intersect with the material requirements of social reproduction. Social reproduction requires social actors (individuals and households) to operate within discrete communities. It is particular communities that most individuals assert and negotiate status is negotiated. Through focusing on community, allows exploration (or imagining) of the different ways in which women’s status is represented and, potentially, of the different socio-economic roles of women within communities in various parts of the Empire. 28/11/2023 Alena Wigodner awigodner@princeton.edu Materializing a Gendered Colonial Worldview: Permeability and Impermeability in Votive Offerings from the Roman Northwest Roman imperialism had a gendered dynamic at its core: the Roman worldview entailed a gendered binary in which masculine, civilized Rome was obligated to control and care for an uncivilized, feminine other. Therefore, we must seek to understand not only how colonialism differentially shaped men’s and women’s opportunities, challenges, and behavior in the provinces but also the impact of a conquering worldview so symbolically intertwined with gender. To what extent did colonial subjects take up this loaded worldview? I examine its impact in Roman Britain and Gaul by applying a symbolic anthropology approach to objects uniquely suited to the task: votive offerings are highly individual, each one representing a single symbolic act. I include even the most inexpensive offerings so as to capture the behavior of rich and poor alike. Analysis of the materials offered by men and women, and of the materials in which men and women (both humans and deities) were portrayed, reveals a permeability-impermeability binary that reflects fundamental Roman understandings of femininity versus masculinity: women are associated with breakable clay, porous bone, and translucent glass and men with the strength and durability of metal. A comparison of this finding to gendered material associations in the Late Iron Age reveals the nuanced ways gendered understandings of the world changed as a result of Roman colonialism. 19/12/2023 Leticia Tobalina-Pulido leticia.tobalina-pulido@incipit.csic.es Analysing Roman Settlement Dynamics by Considering the Imperfection of Archaeological Data When analysing Roman settlement patterns in a given area (in our case the Iberian Peninsula), we have to resort to information and data of a very varied nature and origin. The introduction of computer tools such as GIS in the analysis has made it possible to consider a greater volume of data in the research. Data imprecision (e.g. imprecise dating), uncertainty (e.g. unreliable sources) or inaccuracy are some of the variables that can be assessed and measured (at least partially). However, there is still little reflection on the value of these results without considering the quality, imperfection and validity of the data used. Thus, there are not many analyses of settlement patterns that take into account imperfection of data, offering results that come from the use of very heterogeneous information. Using such varied and heterogeneous data can lead to several problems, one of the most important of which is obtaining settlement models that are biased by the data used. Thus, in this paper we propose an analysis of 3rd to 5th century Roman and Late Roman settlement dynamics by considering the imperfection of the data. We will focus on some case studies from the Iberian Peninsula on which we are currently working. First of all, we make a theoretical reflection on the problem of archaeological data and its weaknesses and problems. Secondly, we consider two proposals for managing data imperfection and, finally, we conclude with the cases of application. Click here to book tickets 09/01/2024 Arnau Lario Devesa Urban archaeology: the challenge of reconstructing “invisible” economic activities from Roman cities in Hispania with almost no data and some ways to solve this issue To any scholar interested in the society, culture and politics of a Roman province other than Italy, their main source of information, besides scant indirect mentions of it made by classical authors, are the cities. However, when the focus is the economy, and again leaving aside the case of Rome and Italy, the situation is dramatically reverted; now the countryside pulls almost all the weight. Data about production is mainly drawn from villae, other productive centres, landfills and even shipwrecks. In the case of the city, the archaeological record is seldom studied in terms of production, but of consumption, perhaps an echo of the increasingly discredited “consumer city” paradigm. This situation has a clear culprit: the dense superposition of archaeological phases up to the present ones, which limits archaeological intervention to salvage excavations and hinders a proper “horizontal” interpretation of whatever is found. To whoever focuses their research on urban economy (craftsmanship, services, port logistics, “industrial” production of building materials and amphorae, etc.), this is only an added problem to one that is inherent to their discipline: the “invisibility” of many of those activities in the archaeological record: A caupona is difficult to tell apart from a house, the traces of the existence of a workshop other than a forge or a pottery are easily degraded over time, and ports tend to be eroded either by changes in the shoreline or the construction of their modern equivalents. This webinar presents the pitfalls in the archaeological research of urban economy, particularly in the especially dire case of Hispania Tarraconensis, but also makes some proposals in order to mitigate and complement the scarcity of archaeological data. Click here to book tickets 30/01/2024 Carmen María Ruiz-Vivas carmenruvivas@ugr.es The other face of Roman imperialism: women and peace as key principles of the system Peace and gender studies have pointed out the women ́s role in maintaining and promoting spaces of peace. With regard to the roman context, concretely, to the studies of Roman imperialism, the link between violence and hegemonic masculinity has been emphasised. However, while various works have explored the diversity of issues related to women, gender and imperialism; the question of the relationship between women and peace has not been linked to the redefinition and diffusion of certain gender and sexual models during the Roman imperialism. The aim of this paper focuses on the normative femininity and its construction based around values reproduction, caring and peace. The analysis of different sources, epigraphic and iconographic, and from a feminist and pacifist perspective, allows us to understand the diffusion and negotiation by the agents of these discourses of gender and sexuality in different parts of the empire. The following questions will be addressed: the importance of attributing peace roles to Roman imperialism; its implications for women’s subordination and control of their bodies; its meanings in each context-specific; and, above all, the constant complementarity between models of femininity and masculinity. Click here to book tickets 20/02/2024 Abigail Graham abigail.graham@sas.ac.uk Experiencing Epigraphy: Applying Cognition Theory to Reading Inscribed Monuments Studies in cognitive neuroscience, particularly in reading and perception, have changed the way we approach the act of “reading”. The way modern scholars engage with epigraphy in published formats, however, is still quite different from how ancient viewers engaged with urban monuments. Text-based approaches tend to focus on what was written, with physicality, context, and imagery often treated as secondary. In reality, this is an inversion of the perceptive process, where what one sees at a glance, often determines how or whether a person engaged in reading the text. While it may include some elite benefactors, this perspective can overlook a broad audience of viewers on the urban landscape, excluding neuro-diverse individuals and/or those with limited literacy. To capture the primary experience of viewing an inscription, we must integrate physicality, context and the visual framework into our assessment of inscribed objects, considering sensory experiences and different modes of reading. Cognitive neuroscience provides key theoretical models for constructing a methodology that incorporates sensory experiences into scholarship. The webinar will present a new theoretical approach through a series of case studies (ca. 1st-2nd centuries CE) from Roman Ephesus. Case studies explore examples of bilingualism and erasure as visual phenomena, whose physical presentation and context could play a fundamental role in the perception and interpretation of a monument. Click here to book tickets 12/03/2024 Goran Đurđević goran.djurdjevich@gmail.com gdjurdjevich@bfsu.edu.cn Global antiquities: case study of public reflection This paper explores the interdisciplinary field of global antiquities, focusing on the ancient worlds of Afroeurasia. The comparative method employed revolves around the concept of reflection, involving the reproduction and interpretation of reverse images found in natural and artificial materials such as water, metals, stones, pottery/ceramics, and glass. Reflection is understood as a multifaceted process that encompasses the combination of reverse images, perceptions, mental associations, knowledge, and social values. The paper delves into visual reflection as a psychological process, exploring its connection to interpersonal trust, communication, self-observation, self-image, self-discovery, self-identity, self-recognition, and self-criticism. By analyzing permanent and extensive objects and natural phenomena, the study identifies seven aspects of public reflection: size, fixed location, changeable directions, collective and individual echoes, time, space, environment and landscape, and additional function. The author proposes the concept of reflection in ancient India, Persia, the Greco-Roman worlds, and China, highlighting the reflective potential found in various surfaces such as water, stone, metals, ceramics, and glass. Primary written sources, as well as recent scholarship, support the emphasis on reflective elements within these civilizations. Reflection is viewed as an integrative concept that encompasses nature, political circumstances, and social identities within the context of building empires, disseminating imperial ideas, and shaping power dynamics and hierarchies. The research issues arising from this hypothesis include the transformation of knowledge from natural to public reflection, technological developments in reflective objects, the production of power and hierarchy through monumental reflections, the analysis of nature as a political and social object, and a comparative examination of Afroeurasian empires in the ancient world. 2/4/2024 Sue Alcock Googling the Roman Empire