Content:
Over the last few decades, there has been significant debate about the place of Rome within the Roman Empire, with scholars suggesting, adopting, critiquing, and rejecting various models of imperialism, colonization, acculturation, resistance, and hybridization, often in response to contemporary social and economic events. At the same time, the combination of recent and on-going excavations and multiple revolutions in archaeological theory and practice, the storage, manipulation, and dissemination of information, and the digital and computational interpretation of ancient remains means that we have never been better informed about the material life of the capital and its relationship to the provinces. The aim of this session is therefore to take the opportunity to reflect on the place of Rome in the empire that bears its name, and its role within the imperial system. In particular, it will consider, first, the extent to which recent discoveries allow us to reassess the demography, topography, and socio-economic conditions of the capital, and, secondly, what newer theoretical models, more powerful computational approaches, and more thoughtful modes of synthesis reveal about the relationship between the capital and other communities. We would therefore welcome contributions that either allow us to reassess the relationship between Rome and the wider empire using new theoretical, computational, synthetical approaches, or that allow us to trace the interactions between them through the lens of social and cultural transmission or the exchange of material remains. Contributions to the session may therefore come in a variety of forms, from direct reports from fieldwork projects to the results of longer-term research initiatives, and could cover a range of types of evidence, from art and architecture to epigraphy, numismatics, ceramics, and bioarcheological and archaeobotanical evidence.
Keywords:
Rome, Provinces, Roman Empire, Complex systems, Social and cultural change, Multi-scalar approaches