The Zoninus Collar and the Archaeology of Roman Slavery

Abstract

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New Materialism and Posthumanism in Roman Archaeology: When Objects Speak for Others

“…Slavery and speaking objects are not two different cases: they exist within this ontological fluidity and are one side of the same coin; the entanglements between objects and personhood, however, take different shapes. Critical perspectives inspired by posthumanism and new materialism, notably those of Allewaert on colonialism and parahumanity and Ellis' work on slavery and posthumanism (Allewaert 2013;Ellis 2018), can help us better understand this particular entanglement, adding to the ongoing debates on comparative, anti-colonial and materiality approaches to Roman slavery by scholars like Bodel (2011;; Joshel & Hackworth Petersen (2014); Lenski (2018); Trimble (2016); or Webster (2005;. The new materialist interrogation in this case is not only considered a helpful step for rethinking Roman slavery, but will reinforce their efforts and might open new, different sets of questions and avenues.…”

“…For more on marks and Roman enslaved, see Kamen 2010). As Trimble showed in her study of the Zoninus collar, what the collars do in terms of their shape and inscription is to entangle an object with the ownership and control of human bodies (Trimble 2016). The neck collar as an object generally became associated with slavery, but not just as marking domination; with their connection to runaway slaves, Thompson (1993) argued that they were also signs of resistance.…”

“…2) with the text ‘ hold me lest I flee, and return me to my master ’. Such collars—about 40 of them are attested throughout the Empire—probably functioned as embodied reminders of enslavement, a punishment for runaways, or a more astute means by the owner to mark a runaway slave rather than using a permanent tattoo (as a slave who attempted to escape was worth less on the market and a collar would only be a temporary mark, although they have been found in graves, proving they could be less temporary than assumed: see Trimble 2016, 461–2. For more on marks and Roman enslaved, see Kamen 2010).…”

“…What is perhaps most remarkable to note in relation to our new materialist rethinking is that these collars are not just embodied; they are speaking objects too, as almost all inscriptions are written in the first person. This points to interactivity, and the object as active messenger for the master (Trimble 2016, 462), but also of animism, where the master speaks for the slave through the object, but the object is the one that speaks. The collar testifies on a material level of the grim reality that the slave was indeed a thing rather than a human being.…”

Taskscapes, Landscapes, and the Politics of Agricultural Production in Roman Mosaics

“…Though not always landscape focused, nevertheless, meaning and power in Roman art likewise became important topics of study for Classicists, leading to a continual emphasis on the non-neutrality of Roman art and the messages it carried (Clarke 2003;Spencer 2010;Trimble 2011). This has led to a range of studies in the context of labor that have focused on the representation of work and the self-representation of workers (Petersen 2011;Holleran 2016;Trimble 2016;Ferris 2021).…”