Understanding objects in motion. Anarchaeologicaldialogue on Romanization

Abstract

This essay argues that Romanization revolves around understanding objects in motion and that Roman archaeologists should therefore focus on (1) globalization theory and (2) material-culture studies as important theoretical directions for the (near) future. The present state and scope of the Romanization debate, however, seem to prevent a fruitful development in that direction. The first part of this paper therefore briefly analyses the Romanization debate and argues that large parts of ‘Anglo-Saxon Roman archaeology’ have never been really post-colonial, but in fact from the mid-1990s onwards developed a theoretical position that should be characterized as anti-colonial. This ideologically motivated development has resulted in several unhealthy divides within the field, as well as in an uncomfortable ending of the Romanization debate. The present consensus within English-speaking Roman archaeology ‘to do away with Romanization’ does not seem to get us at all ‘beyond Romans and Natives’, and, moreover, has effectively halted most of the discussion about how to understand and conceptualize ‘Rome’. The second part of the article presents two propositions outlining how to move forward: globalization theory and material-culture studies. Through this focus we will be able to better understand ‘Rome’ as (indicating) objects in motion and the human–thing entanglements resulting from a remarkable punctuation of connectivity. This focus is important as an alternative perspective to all existing narratives about Romanization because these remain fundamentally historical, in the sense that they reduce objects to expressions (of identity) alone. It is time for our discussions about ‘Rome’ to move ‘beyond representation’ and to become genuinely archaeological at last, by making material culture, with its agency and materiality, central to the analyses.

Glocalization and Religious Communication in the Roman Empire: Two Case Studies to Reconsider the Local and the Global in Religious Material Culture

“…In line with Versluys (2014), it seems important to me to study the material culture in its own right and various contexts to discover the various functions these objects had. New insights on these archaeological data can be provided by incorporating both the local and the global context of the material culture.…”

“…In reaction, several new frameworks have been proposed and discussed, which has led to an increasingly self-reflective, but highly fragmented research field (Pitts and Versluys 2015). While these frameworks often focused on bottom-up processes, some scholars have opposed that these postcolonial perspectives paradoxically maintain the Roman-Native dichotomy (Versluys 2014;Pitts and Versluys 2015;Woolf 1997). Another recent approach, that of globalization theory, aims to get beyond the Romanization paradigm (Versluys 2014;Pitts and Versluys 2015;.…”

“…However, the glocalization framework fits into a general recent trend in archaeology where several justified globalization approaches have been made (e.g., Hodos 2017), as well as in the particular field of Roman archaeology (e.g., Pitts and Versluys 2015;Versluys 2014;Haeussler 2013;Hingley 2005;Pitts 2008). Woolf (1994Woolf ( , 1995Woolf ( , 1997Woolf ( , 2005 already argued that it is not helpful to approach cultural contact in the Roman world by holding up the dichotomy of natives versus Romans.…”

“…Horden and Purcell 2000;Versluys 2014;Pitts and Versluys 2015;. For example, Woolf argues that there was a relative short period of rapid cultural change, a formative period as he calls it, that went through the whole empire and coincided with the rule of Augustus (Woolf 1998).…”

Ambiguity, Iconology and Entangled Objects on Coinage of the Republican World

“…129 The other issues lack 124 e.g. Dietler 2005, Dietler 2010, Hodder 2012, Stockhammer 2012, Versluys 2014 The representation of Stesichorus, Tyche, and the goat are of particular interest since they recall the bronze statues of the city detailed by Cicero in his Verrine Orations. Cicero and other Roman orators acknowledged the power of images (verbal or mental), and often used them to evoke emotion or response from an audience.…”