Theme:
6. Contested Pasts & Presents
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
Encounters and Transformations on the Borders of the Roman Empire: From the Late Iron Age to Late Antiquity
Content:
What was the impact of the Roman Empire on societies located at its borders? How did interactions change over time and space, and to what extent did life differ for communities located in the immediate inner vs. outside hinterlands of the frontier? These and other related questions have been at the heart of Late Iron Age and Roman studies for a long time, but can now be re-evaluated in light of new archaeological evidence as well as novel theoretical and methodological approaches. Development-led archaeology has significantly increased the corpus of available information in many regions, whereas increased chronological accuracy is proving crucial for obtaining higher-resolution insights into the transformations that took place before, during, and after the integration of territories into the Roman state. Isotopic and aDNA studies, for their part, are revolutionising our knowledge of aspects such as diet, health, and mobility within and outside the political borders of the Empire. Conceptually, the growing influence of perspectives derived from globalisation studies and postcolonial and decolonial theories is changing the way in which many scholars are interpreting the evidence, particularly in relation to the indigenous side of the story. In this session, we invite papers that address the topic of encounters and transformations along the border regions of the Roman Empire. Chronologically, the scope of the session extends from the 2nd century BC to the 5th century AD. Our aim is to bring together papers that address the situation in specific case studies and others that take wider, comparative perspectives.
Keywords:
Borders, Encounters, Roman Empire, Late Iron Age, Limes
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
Manuel Fernández-Götz (United Kingdom) 1
Co-organisers:
Vladimir Mihajlovic (Serbia) 2
Affiliations:
1. University of Edinburgh
2. University of Novi Sad
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