Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T10:33:11.150Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Struggling with a Roman inheritance. A response to Versluys

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2014

Richard Hingley
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

I am very grateful to Miguel John Versluys for this paper, which raises several important issues that derive from current debates in Roman archaeology. I am aware of the context of Versluys's arguments as I am a contributor to the forthcoming volume Globalization and the Roman world (which Versluys has jointly edited; Pitts and Versluys 2014). I am pleased to be able to develop some of the themes outlined in my chapter for that volume (Hingley 2014b) through this reflection upon Versluys's contribution to the developing debate. The issues raised by Versluys are particularly timely since a number of younger colleagues have observed that the critical focus provided by what I shall term ‘post-colonial Roman archaeologies’ (PCRAs) is stifling innovative research. PCRA is the term I use to address the body of research and publication characterized by Versluys as ‘Anglo-Saxon Roman archaeology’ (for reasons given below). I did not attend the TRAC session at Frankfurt to which Versluys refers, but I recognize his observation that there is a genuine concern about the form and content of PCRAs arising from Roman archaeologists both in Britain and overseas. PCRAs have focused around two core themes: (1) critiquing the concept of Romanization and (2) the development of new ways of approaching the Roman Empire. Versluys suggests that this discussion has culminated in ‘an uncomfortable ending’ (p. 1) for the Romanization debate and his proposal includes the reintroduction of this concept. Taking a rather different perspective, I shall propose that a dynamic and transformative agenda is spreading across several continents and that PCRAs form an important aspect of this developing perspective.

Type
Discussion
Information
Archaeological Dialogues , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , June 2014 , pp. 20 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baudrillard, J., 2003: Passwords, London.Google Scholar
Cunliffe, B., 1984: Images of Britannia, Antiquity 58, 175–8.Google Scholar
Dietler, M., 2010: Archaeologies of colonialism. Consumption, entanglement, and violence in ancient Mediterranean France, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London.Google Scholar
Gardner, A., 2013: Thinking about Roman imperialism. Postcolonialism, globalisation and beyond?, Britannia 44, 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garraffoni, R.S., and Funari, P.P., 2012: The uses of Roman heritage in Brazil. Traditional reception and new critical approaches, Heritage & society 5 (1), 53–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
González-Ruibal, A., 2010: Colonialism and European archaeology, in Lydon, J. and Rizvi, U.Z. (eds), Handbook of postcolonial archaeology, Walnut Creek (World Archaeological Congress Research Handbooks in Archaeology 3), 39–50.Google Scholar
Hardwick, L., and Gillespie, L. (eds.) 2007: Classics in post-colonial worlds, Oxford.Google Scholar
Hingley, R., 1989: Rural settlement in Roman Britain, London.Google Scholar
Hingley, R., 2005: Globalizing Roman culture. Unity, diversity and empire, London.Google Scholar
Hingley, R., 2014b: Post-colonial and global Rome. The genealogy of empire, in Pitts, M. and Versluys, M.J. (eds.), Globalisation and the Roman world. Perspectives and opportunities, Cambridge, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Hodos, T., 2010: Local and global perspectives in the study of social and cultural identities, in Hales, S. and Hodos, T. (eds), Material culture and social identities in the ancient world, Cambridge, 3–31.Google Scholar
Krishnaswamy, R., 2008: Postcolonial and globalization studies. Connections, conflicts, complicities, in Krishnaswamy, R. and Hawley, J.C. (eds.), The post-colonial and the global, Minneapolis, 2–21.Google Scholar
Lafrenz Samuels, K., 2008: Value and significance in archaeology, Archaeological dialogues 15 (1), 71–97.Google Scholar
Lafrenz Samuels, K., and Totten, D.M. (eds.), 2012: Making Roman places, past and present, Portsmouth, RI (Journal of Roman archaeology Supplementary Series 89).Google Scholar
Laurence, R., 2012: Roman archaeology for historians, London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morley, N., 2010: The Roman Empire. Roots of imperialism, New York.Google Scholar
Mouritsen, H. 1998: Italian unification. A study in ancient & modern historiography, London.Google Scholar
Orrells, D., Bhambra, G.K. and Roynon, T. (eds.), 2011: Black Athena. New agendas, Oxford.Google Scholar
Pitts, M., and Versluys, M.J. (eds.), 2014: Globalisation and the Roman world. Perspectives and opportunities, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Reece, R., 1982: Review of Roman Britain by Peter Salway, Archaeological journal 139, 453–6.Google Scholar
Scott, E. (ed.), 1993: Theoretical Roman archaeology. First conference proceedings, Avebury.Google Scholar
Sonntag, S.K., 2003: The local politics of global English, Lanham, MD.Google Scholar
Terrenato, N., 2005: The deceptive archetype. Roman colonization in Italy and post-colonial thought, in Hurst, H. and Owen, S. (eds), Ancient colonizations. Analogy, similarity and difference, London, 59–72.Google Scholar
Versluys, M.J., 2014: Roman visual material culture as globalising koine, in Pitts, M. and Versluys, M.J. (eds), Globalisation and the Roman world, Cambridge, forthcoming.Google Scholar