Session: #1022

Content:

Ancient traces of incarceration, exile, and other forms of punitive unfreedom have historically been ignored or under-documented, a problem stemming both from prevailing historiographic dogmas that prisons were at most a marginal element of pre-modern societies (Durkheim, Foucault, Mommsen) and the difficulty in securely identifying evidence and remains of these practices in ancient Mediterranean archaeological contexts. Yet various literary and documentary sources give ample evidence that sites of incarceration were commonplace in many cities and that exile was a widespread ancient practice. This session seeks to address this imbalance by inviting papers focused on material aspects of incarceration and exile in ancient Mediterranean contexts (600 BCE to 600 CE). The goal of the session is to explore how to identify such carceral spaces, what were the types and forms of such sites, who inhabited them (both as captors and those being detained), and how the public perceived and conceived of such spaces. Possible paper topics include: reports on prisons attested in archaeological excavations; analysis of inscriptions which relate to any aspect of the practices, spaces, or experience of incarceration; and visual materials which represent spaces of incarceration, prison personnel, or depictions of prisoners.

The three hour session will include six papers of fifteen minutes, a fifteen minute response from a specialist, and an hour and fifteen minutes of discussion.

Session: #1022

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