Roman Failure: Privilege and Precarity at Early Imperial Podere Marzuolo, Tuscany

Abstract

The case of the early imperial small rural settlement of Marzuolo, in south-central Etruria, paints a micro-history of arrested developments: a couple of decades into the site's existence, an abandoned wine-production facility was converted into a blacksmithing workshop, which in turn burnt down and was abandoned soon after. But were both these endings failures? This article uses the concept of failure as an epistemic lens to examine inequality: who could fail in the Roman world, and for whom was failure not an option? It argues that failure was tied up with particular notions of the future, which were not equally distributed. Yet in contrast to modern paradigms, in the Roman world even the privileged seem not to have embraced failure as a stepping-stone towards growth.

Ending the war on error: towards an archaeology of failure

“…In this vein, it is also important to consider—as Van Oyen (2023) does in an examination of an abandoned wine-production facility in Tuscany during the first century AD—the risks associated with failure. Specifically, who can and who cannot afford to fail?…”

Everyone can make mistakes, but not everyone can fail: a response to Price & Jaffe

“…Failure is more than an error or mistake: it is a social phenomenon. I have elsewhere defined failure as instances when risk catches up with plans (Van Oyen 2023). This is an etic definition, but one that takes into account both the temporal and the social scale-dependency of failure that the authors helpfully foreground.…”

“…Failing at something means being recognised as trying to do or achieve something (a ‘project’ or programme of action), which requires one to be seen socially. I have elsewhere stressed the link between failure and the privilege of making plans, which entails the ability to foster expectations against some future horizon as opposed to the drudgery of living day to day (Van Oyen 2023).…”