Abstracts
Keynote Lecture
Greg Woolf (UCLA) Only Disconnect. Resisting the Deep History of Roman Greece
Nearly a quarter of a century ago The Corrupting Sea placed ‘connectivity’ high on the agenda of ancient historians and archaeologists. It has remained there ever since, and studies of mobility and networks have flourished. But some of their original nuance has been lost. For Horden and Purcell connectivity was a potential, one possible response to a specific regime of risk. Some appropriations of their work forget risk and treat connectivity as a general and enduring condition of the ancient Mediterranean. New perspectives are emerging. Ramgopal reminds us of the “the disconnectivities…of mobility in the empire… the severance of ties and destruction of networks that resulted from phenomena that have been categorized as instances of connectivity and connection.” Concannon and Mazurek in their collection Across the Corrupting Sea challenge the idea that connectivity was either stable in the long term, or a property of the entire Mediterranean world. My lecture will press the concepts of connectivity, mobility, and networks harder, using Roman Greece as field of engagement. Movements of people and goods were intermittent and localized and the region was crisscrossed by shifting networks of very different kinds. Considering these social worlds as constituted by shifting and inconsistent exchanges allows us to escape from the territorial frames offered by both ancient provincial administration and modern national boundaries. Episodes of mobility generated new diasporas, some of which were then stranded in period of low connection. Shifting economic connections created new margins and new peripheries… and then uncreated them. There were communities and individuals responded by investing energy in constructing a highly ideological deep history of Roman Greece. This paper challenges these interested fictions.
Mobility
Sophia Zoumbaki (National Hellenic Research Foundation), From mobility to migration and from interaction to integration: foreigners from the West in Greek towns
Private Italians and Romans started to move systematically to the East from the 3rd c. BC onwards aiming above all at the search for profit opportunities. At the beginning, isolated individual Italians and Romans are to be found at various places of the Greek mainland and the adjacent islands, but gradually they are mentioned in the epigraphic sources as a distinct group in local societies, separate from other foreigners sojourning there. Their engagements as well as their economic success differed from place to place depending on local natural resources, geographic location and the general prevailing circumstances. In various cases, these people belonged to professional networks linking eastern Mediterranean with Rome. The aim of the paper is to offer an overview of the evolution of the presence of Italians and Romans in towns of Greece proper from the 3rd c. BC to the 1st c. AD. It will be examined, how this phenomenon ranged from mobility to migration and from cultural interaction to progressive integration and acculturation of the Westerners in Greek towns. Either attested as collectivities (e.g. cives Romani/Italici/ Ἴταλικοί/Ῥωμαῖοι + various definitions of their occupation or place of residence), as for example on Delos, or as individuals, as e.g. in Athens, these people adopted various strategies for their integration into the host societies. Furthermore, it will be attempted to shed light on their role in social and economic life of the host communities as well as on the mutual impact between the foreign and local element, which led gradually in various cases to the shaping of a new physiognomy of the Greek poleis.
Guillermo Pascual Berlanga (University of Cádiz) Amphorae at the Stoa of Gitana, Thesprotia. Italic Economic Interests in North-Western Greece (2nd – 1st cent. BC)
This paper shows the first results of new research on the study of the amphorae assemblage discovered during the excavations carried out in 1996 by K. Preka-Alexandri at the stoa of Gitana (Thesprotia). The research focussed on identifying the places of production and the definition of the typology and chronologies of the imported amphorae. The results offer an overview of the city connections and commercial interactions with the rest of the Mediterranean during the last two centuries of the Roman Republic and especially show the extreme dependence of the city on Italian imports during the 2nd and 1st centuries BC.
Nefeli Pirée Iliou (University of Oxford) Who invited the Synepirotae to Epirus? Fortified Farms and Networks of Commerce in the Late Republic and Early Empire
In Epirus, unlike in other areas of Greece, Roman investors were present early in the Roman period. Their holdings and related husbandry were recounted (and partly fictionalised) by Varro as well as alluded to by others (e.g. Cicero and Cornelius Nepos). Too often, the relationship between Roman investors and Epirotes has been reconstructed as one-sided, with notable individuals like Titus Pomponius Atticus reaping agricultural rewards by racking up land lost after an allegedly devastating conquest—in fact, this is not a relationship at all. In my paper I want to redress this imbalance, to explore commercial (and other) networks that underpinned the arrival of Italian landowners as well as products such as wine to Epirus, and specifically to fortified farms in the coastal region of Chaonia in northwest Epirus, during the early Imperial period, networks which were rooted in a web of connections spun during the last two centuries BCE. I will begin by presenting a case-study from my doctoral thesis. This case-study focuses on the archaeology of fortified farms in early Imperial times, combining examination of some of the published finds (mainly ceramics, taken as material find concentrations), and of the architecture to highlight the transformations undergone by fortified farms in this period, when evidence for the consumption of Italian goods is also particularly strong. Next, I will trace Italian links back to networks engineered by Epirote families in the late Republic, that brought them into close contact with members of the aristocracy of Rome and attracted Roman credit. I will argue that once the first links between Epirus and the larger trade network of the central Adriatic had been forged, possibilities for phase transition, or the creation of new nodes, abounded, making possible the widespread import of Italian goods to Epirote farms directly or indirectly through cities, ports, and towns. These links were so strong that even after significant disruptions during the Civil Wars, they were sustained and re-invigorated in the early Empire, when in this part of the Roman world, it was fortified farms—not villas—that flourished.
Rebecca Sweetman (BSA) Roman Women on the Move: Mobility and Patronage in the Aegean
Female mobility in the Imperial period is set within the context of the social expectations of how the ideal women should behave which was reinforced behaviourally and there were constant visual reminders such as in sculpture (Foubert 2016). It is assumed that most women were limited in their ability to travel in the Imperial period (Woolf 2013, 360). Archaeological data in the Cyclades suggests that there may have been fewer constraints on women both in terms of travel and patronage. The aim of this paper is to examine the impact of female mobility in the Aegean, particularly set against the background of displacement and the rise of Christianity in the 3rd and 4th centuries.
Demographics and Society
Chryssa Vergidou (University of Groningen, NL & The Cyprus Institute) and Paraskevi Tritsaroli (M.H. Wiener laboratory for Archaeological Science, ASCSA) The ‘commoners’ of Provincia Macedonia through the Lenses of Bioarchaeology
The Roman Empire was a remarkably diverse and multiethnic state, characterized by intensified interaction and increased mobility among the heterogeneous groups of people who comprised its population. Within this highly interconnected world, diverse political, socioeconomic, cultural and environmental tensions were at play leading to the development of new social identities and structures, but also to a change in people’s living standards. Being at the interface of the social and biological sciences, the discipline of bioarchaeology has substantially contributed to our understanding of past life experiences through the contextual study of the human skeleton. Available osteological data from the Roman period suggest variations in health and lifestyle among the diverse groups of people being gradually incorporated to the constantly expanding empire. Under this framework, we examine three archaeological populations from the Roman Province of Macedonia (Greece), a hitherto understudied region and period. The first, comes from the necropolis of the city of Dion, the Macedonian’s religious center and federal shrine, that became a colony in 32/31 BC. The second, was unearthed from a burial site excavated in Pontokomi-Vrysi (1st-4th c. AD) located in the semi-mountainous and relatively remote from the main networks of trade and communication region of the westernmost provincial administrative district of Upper Macedonia. The third, comes from the cemetery excavated in the archaeological site of Nea Kerdylia-Strovolos (1st-4th c. AD) once belonging to a coastal community residing in close proximity to the port of Amphipolis and the Via Egnatia. In this talk, we present the preliminary results of our ongoing comparative analysis. The aim of this approach is to explore the life and death-ways and by extension the identity and social complexity of communities that lived under different administrative (colonies vs free cities, villages) but also environmental conditions. We integrate skeletal and dental palaeopathological and isotopic data with funerary evidence and use them as proxies for health, everyday activities, diet and socioeconomic status. We hope that such a holistic study will not only fill a gap in bioarchaeological research in the Graeco-Roman world but also enhance our understanding of the social history of Macedonia after its incorporation into the Roman Empire.
Anna Moles (University of Groningen) Social inequality in Roman Crete: a Contextualised Bioarchaeological Perspective
Understanding health inequality in the past provides crucial context for current health disparities and offers a wider lens for considering the factors that can lead to such inequalities. Studying the mechanisms through which social factors impact well-being helps build a nuanced understanding of how cultural and social factors intersect with health, providing a more comprehensive view of the challenges faced by different populations. Crete experienced significant socio-economic changes during the Roman period. This was a period of increased connectivity, productivity and investment in infrastructure on the island. Research focusing on trade, politics and administration within the context of the Roman Empire can demonstrate these broad scale changes but a social bioarchaeological approach to the investigation of the mortuary evidence can give greater insights into the lives of people. We can explore the extent of social inequality that was experienced by people how this impacted individual lifeways and society. The palaeopathological study of the human skeletal remains combined with an analysis of social status from the burial environment (tomb type, grave goods) can indicate differential health status, diets, and activities for different groups. This analysis focuses particularly on Knossos where a large skeletal assemblage from the Roman period (as well as the preceding and succeeding periods) has been studied and published.
Dimitris Grigoropoulos (DAI Athens) and Vassilis Evangelidis (ATHENA Research Center) Pacified and Unarmed? Reconsidering Roman Military Presence in Greece during Imperial Times
From the early part of the 2nd c. BC and Rome’s expansion over the Hellenistic world to the period when the armies and navies of Roman generals fought against each other for supremacy over Italy and the eastern Mediterranean, Greece notably became a theatre of numerous brutal and long-drawn wars and military operations. By the time of Augustus and with the re-carving of Rome’s conquered territories under the empire, the southern and northern Greek mainland and the islands were reconfigured into distinct provinces and declared “pacified and unarmed”. But what does this rather commonplace general designation mean? Surely no legionary units were stationed in the Greek provinces, as they were on the north European, British, North African and eastern frontiers, and no campaigns of the Roman army were fought on Greek soil. Yet, it would be a misconception to think that under the Principate Roman military presence in Greece was scant or insignificant. This paper provides a first attempt at reconsidering the nature, extent and function of Roman military presence in Greece under the Empire. To discuss the parameters of this presence, we wish to focus upon three main themes, namely visibility, interaction, and impact, and explore a number of relevant questions. To what extent was the Roman army present in the cities and the countryside? How did soldiers identify and distinguish themselves from the rest of provincial society? What were the main duties of army personnel and how were they involved in controlling the territory? What economic, social and cultural impact did their presence have on provincial society? And how did this presence change from the Early to the Late Imperial period? Drawing upon relevant epigraphic and archaeological evidence, we attempt to show that the presence, as well as the interaction and impact of military personnel in Roman Greece were far more common than hitherto acknowledged, and this needs to be further and more seriously explored in the future.
Religious Networks
Paolo Cimadomo (National Research Council (CNR) – University of Basilicata) Emperors as Gods. Statistical Methods to Analyse the Spread of Roman Imperial Cult in the Roman Province of Achaea
This paper aims to establish the presence – or the lack thereof – of a religious network among the cities of the Roman province of Achaea through the analysis of the development of the Emperor's cult. Most scholars agree that the imperial cult was one of the most important instruments used by Roman emperors to ensure the loyalty of their subjects and, at the same time, one of the most significant transformations to the public life of the Roman cities. In the Roman Empire, imperial worship spread widely under the influence of political and cultural customs. For instance, the idea of a divine ruler was a political and religious novelty in the western part of the Empire. Therefore, it required more involvement from the Roman government. In the East, instead, the groundwork had already been laid by religious precedents established through cults honouring rulers dating back to the Hellenistic period. Following Alexander the Great’s conquest, these cults developed into a legitimate political tool that preserved the relationship between rulers and subjects across the Greek world. This paper examines some elements of the worship of the Roman emperors (cult places, festivals, priesthoods) in the cities of the province of Achaea. The evidence demonstrates these cities’ propensity to include the emperors in all spheres of their political, social, and cultural life. Indeed, pre-existing holy structures were re-dedicated to the emperors, imperial competitions were introduced to ancient Greek festivals, and the emperors were frequently assimilated to traditional gods in inscriptions, coinage, and statues. Members of local aristocracies played a crucial part in organising various events of emperor worship, especially through the assumption of the office of priest of the imperial cult, which was often held by prominent and wealthy individuals. From a methodological point of view, the relationship between the emperors, the Greek cities and the aspects of the worship of the Roman emperors can be seen as a complex network data structure, for which a multimode network approach can be carried out.
Daphni Maikidou-Poutrino (Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University/ Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) Ports, roads and rivers. Religious connectivity in the Roman Strymon Valley
This paper discusses religious connectivity in Roman Greece in relation to geographic interconnectedness (physical landscape, maritime routes, road infrastructure). The complex network structure that affected the diverse social features and religious experience of the agents local to the valley of Strymon river in eastern Macedonia is used as a working example. This area hosted urban settlements that were economic and cultural hubs welcoming, among other, different cults and amplifying religious exchange. The river Strymon flows through a fertile valley that includes smaller and larger sites. These sites communicated through the navigable river supporting the inland movement of products, people, and cults. The river reaches the Aegean shores where one of the most important cities of the area, Amphipolis, prospered, being one of the major ports of the region. The same city was one of the hubs of via Egnatia, crossing northern Greece on the west-east axis. I focus on this geographical and cultural landscape in order to examine the religious network created along those aquatic and terrestrial routes and investigate cults that reached those lands from “overseas”, resulting in religious interactions. These cults bore and were the outcome of a combination of Greek, Egyptian, Roman, and Eastern components. I first delve into how these cults are affected by the aforementioned network of ports, rivers and roads and then Ι visualize the network of cultural exchanges. I aim to understand the social actors involved in these religious activities that shaped social or political balances and their status while structuring social memory. Emphasis is also put on ritual practices and cultic activities surviving through material evidence. The above are better conceptualized under a theoretical framework that understands these lands as part of a globalizing world that combined global and local features, highlighting cultural heterogeneities while emphasizing on local diversities.
Material Conditions
Yannis Nakas (Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University) “For we are in a certain sense amphibious/ ἀμφίβιοι γὰρ τρόπον τινά ἐσμεν”. Ships, Harbours and Networks in the Seas of Greece during the Roman Period
The region of Greece has always been a place in which the sea inevitably played a vital role in the life of its inhabitants, which largely depended on networks of interaction, trade, and travel to sell and buy goods and to exchange and expand knowledge and technology with their neighbouring forelends. In such networks, the coastline and especially harbours would become essential interfaces and commercial knots. And that was the case in the Roman Aegean, in which the cultural, financial, and political unification that had began in the Hellenistic period, was concluded and the pax romana ensured stability and safety. Many harbours and coastal cities became great centres of commerce and shipping, equipped with grandiose monuments and all the necessary infrastructures to serve the increasing volume of commerce, travellers, pilgrims, and merchants. In order, however, to better understand the function of the Roman harbours of the Aegean one has to keep in mind that every harbour’s main mission is to accommodate and serve ships, their cargoes, and their crews and its development largely depends on such an ability and on the practical issues related with it: size, orientation, depth, natural protection from the sea, sedimentation, and the existence or not of harbour works, always considered vis-à-vis the form, size, and technology of contemporary ships, as well as of political and financial conditions within the wider Roman empire. This presentation focuses on the author’s recent studies on the use of harbours of the Aegean and the Ionian seas by ships and the implications of their natural and anthropogenic configuration in their development into commercial and urban centres.
Mantha Zarmakoupi (University of Pennsylvania) Shaping Roman Landscape in Attica
The construction of the Roman idea of landscape took place in the late Republican and Early Imperial period when contemporary notions of nature, the environment, and the relationship between humans and the natural world were shaped due to the radical transformation of the city of Rome and the Italian countryside by extensive building projects. This paper is concerned with the ways in which Roman ideas of landscape intersected with the transformation of the Athenian cityscape and Attic countryside from the early Imperial period onwards.
Johannes Fouquet, University of Heidelberg, Connecting bricks. Towards a study of the brick industry in Roman Greece and its supply network
The practice of building with fired bricks, along with other influences of Roman architecture, became increasingly common in many provinces of the Roman Empire since the Augustan period. In the provincia Achaia, however, fired bricks remained for most of the early Roman period essentially confined to major centres such as the Roman colonies of Patras and Corinth or the civitas libera Nikopolis. Despite the earlier, yet never systematic use of fired bricks in the architecture of Hellenistic north-western Greece and the Peloponnese, it was not before the broader adoption of Roman bathing practices and the widespread construction of corresponding bath buildings in the late 1st and 2nd century AD that this building material in its characteristic Roman modules saw a more extensive production. While research has already discussed the brick masonry of Roman Greece and its potential for technical-architectural innovation in the form of vaulting, a systematic study of the brick industry is still lacking, not at least because the Greek brickyards usually did not stamp their products (contrary to tiles and architectural terracottas) as it was common practice in Italy. This paper, as part of a currently planned archaeological-archaeometric research project on the brick industry in Attica and the Peloponnese during the Roman period, does not set out to provide definitive answers on this topic. It rather seeks to address and explore key aspects of producing and building with fired bricks in Roman Greece from the perspective of connectivity: the inclusion in epistemic and economic networks in the micro regions of southern Greece and the Mediterranean, the identification of local production sites and possible modes of distribution, and the relation of cities and hinterland.
Material Culture
Horacio González Cesteros (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) and Dimitra Voutyrea (ÖAW – Österreichisches Archäologisches Institut Athen, Universidad Complutense de Madrid), Trade Relations between Asia Minor and Athens: Some Preliminary Thoughts based on the Athenian Agora and Ephesus Material
The coastal territories of the Roman province of Asia were a very prosperous area, especially those enclosed in the main river valleys, namely the Hermos, the Kaystros and the Meander. The fertile hinterland and the various natural resources made the Imperial and the subsequent smaller Late Roman province of Asia, one of the richest in the Mediterranean. The density of cities that can be found in western Anatolia and the large extension of most of them, underlines that the province was highly urbanized and counted with one of the most important and richest population of the Mediterranean. Subsequently, this population required a large quantity of resources and boosted an intense exploitation of sea and land. In the harbour of Ephesus the arrival of external commodities is perfectly documented in the archaeological record. However, it is to be noted that most of the commodities consumed by the city’s inhabitants were supplied by the western Anatolian territories, which were able to produce surpluses that reached a broad diffusion in long-distance markets. Even if archaeological objects originated from Asia Minor have been documented all around the Mediterranean basin and even in remote regions such as India and Britannia, some of the main consumption centres of the Asia Minor agricultural and pottery commodities were placed at the western shores of the Aegean. More specifically, the early studies of H.S. Robinson and M. Lang in the 1950s but also the recent work of scholars such as J. Hayes, P. Reynolds and the Ph.D. of J.M. Boyer, indicate that Athens should be regarded as one the major markets for the Asia Minor pottery. Since May 2023 the project “Crossing the Sea. Pottery from Asia Minor in Athens” attempts to analyse the arrival of those commodities in a significant key-site, that is to say the Athenian Agora. The excavations developed by the American School at Athens have resulted in big quantities of archaeological material that in most cases comes from reliable and well-documented contexts. Furthermore, it has a long studies tradition, with important publications, permitting to contrast our own research with the one developed by scholars such as J. Hayes or S. Rotroff. Based on the aforementioned pioneering studies, together with our research in Ephesus and in the Athenian Agora, we aim to explore specific questions such as the import of large quantities of wine, olive oil and other amphorae commodities, or the use of fine and cooking wares produced in Asia Minor by the Athenian population from late Hellenistic to early Byzantine times. By finding answers to these questions we expect to achieve a better understanding of the real scope of the trade relations between both shores of the Aegean with a special focus on the two geographical, political and economic metropolises: Athens and Ephesus.
Phillip Bes (Independent Scholar) On Zones and Borders. Regional Patterning of African Red Slip Ware and Late Roman C in Central and Southern Greece and the Aegean
Various categories of Late Roman Red Slip Wares – mostly African Red Slip Ware (ARSW), Late Roman C (LRC) and Late Roman D (LRD) – reached numerous places in the Mediterranean and Pontic areas. It has long been established that the distribution of these categories is characterised by geographical, chronological, and quantitative patterning, patterns which were shaped by proximity to production places/zones, geography as well as exchange routes and mechanisms, amongst others. The Ancient Cities of Boeotia Project has collected a mass of ceramic artefacts between 1978 and 2011 through intensive and extensive surface survey. While part of this is still being (re)studied for publication, various interesting examples of intraregional patterning have been observed, one notable being that of African Red Slip Ware and Late Roman C. Whilst both categories are present in all ancient cities (e.g. Tanagra, Thespiae) and a number of smaller and rural settlements that were investigated by the Boeotia Project, distinct differences exist across Boeotia. Despite the lack of stratigraphic control, these differences are regarded as representative, also as they appear to match patterns beyond Boeotia. This paper will present the Boeotian evidence for ARSW and LRC and underline the main elements of intraregional patterning. Placing these data in a larger geographical framework that encompasses Central and Southern Greece as well as (parts of) the Aegean sheds further light on distinct geographic and quantitative variations. Subsequently, this allows to address questions and matters of (economic) interconnectivity, zones of interaction and local/regional social, economic, and artisanal contexts.
Keynote Lecture
Miguel John Versluys (Leiden University) Only Connect. Roman Greece in its Afro-Eurasian context
Nearly a quarter of a century ago The Corrupting Sea placed ‘connectivity’ high on the agenda of ancient historians and archaeologists, soon to be seconded by the related concepts of networks and Globalisation. As a result of their massive impact, the original nuances of these concepts have sometimes been lost which may result in unfounded criticisms. One of these critiques is that focusing on connectivity, networks and Globalisation would underplay or even mask questions of power and identity; another that such perspectives would provide too little room for the (local) micro-scale. My lecture will revisit the concepts of connectivity, networks and Globalisation, using Roman Greece as field of engagement and thereby drawing on the papers presented in our meeting, to counter these critiques. I will argue and illustrate that tackling the global scale (that is: putting Roman Greece in its Afro-Eurasian context) in fact illuminates social and historical realities, strengthens micro-historical approaches and, importantly, will elevate the non-Classical Mediterranean, thus promoting decolonial perspectives.