Egypt in the Roman and Late Antique World

2021 ◽  
pp. 335-342
Author(s):  
Ellen Swift ◽  
Jo Stoner ◽  
April Pudsey
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Social Archaeology ◽  
Secure Foundation ◽  
Roman Culture ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
Shared Culture ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
Early Islamic Period

Following a short section summarizing the interpretative contributions of the book as a whole, this chapter takes a wider perspective, drawing on the material studied in the preceding chapters to first compare Egypt to the wider Roman world, and, second, examine the transition from the Roman to late antique period and beyond in Egypt. First, the overall contribution of the book is emphasized: a new interpretation which takes a social archaeology approach to everyday life. The point is also made that the work is grounded in a careful re-evaluation of object dating, and informed by neglected archive information. In addition to providing a secure foundation for the book, this fundamental research provides an important resource for future studies. Next, evidence for both similarities and differences to wider Roman culture is presented, and the multiple ways in which Roman-style material culture may have functioned within the social context of Egypt are examined. Finally, the relationship between the objects studied and wider social changes is investigated; the transition from the Roman to the late antique period, and beyond. This includes a consideration of the impact of Christianity, and wider evidence, through dress objects, of shared culture across the Byzantine Christian world, as well as evidence of economic change at the end of the Byzantine period in Egypt. Some aspects of continuity and change into the early Islamic period, as reflected through the material studied, are also briefly considered.

A Social Archaeology of Roman and Late Antique Egypt

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Swift ◽  
Jo Stoner ◽  
April Pudsey
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Social Archaeology ◽  
Essential Information ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Principal Source ◽  
Close Study ◽  
Depth Study ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
And Gender

The first in-depth study of the society and culture of Roman and late antique Egypt that uses everyday artefacts as its principal source of evidence, this book transforms our understanding of many aspects of its society and culture. It represents a fundamental reference work for scholars, with much new and essential information on a wide range of artefacts, many of which are found not only in Egypt, but also in the wider Roman and late antique world. It also sets out a new interpretation of everyday life and aspects of social relations in Egypt in the period under study. By taking a social archaeology approach, it contributes substantial insights into everyday practices and their social meanings in the past. Artefacts from UCL’s Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology are the principal source of evidence. Most of these objects have not been the subject of any previous research. The book integrates the close study of artefact features with other sources of evidence, including papyri and visual material. There are two principal parts to the book, Part I: ‘Exploring the Social Functions of Dress Objects’, and Part II: ‘The Domestic Realm and Everyday Experience’. An important theme is the life course, and how both dress-related artefacts and ordinary functional objects construct age and gender-related status, and facilitate appropriate social relations and activities. There is also a particular focus on wider social experience in the domestic context. Other topics covered include economic and social changes across the period studied.

Scribal Repertoires in Egypt from the New Kingdom to the Early Islamic Period

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Historical Sociolinguistics ◽  
Islamic Period ◽  
The People ◽  
Modern Egypt ◽  
Early Islamic Period ◽  
Early Islamic ◽  
Point Of Departure

This volume deals with the possibility of glimpsing pre-modern and early modern Egyptian scribes, the people who actually produced ancient documents, through the ways in which they organized and wrote those documents. Breaking with the traditional conception of variation in scribal texts as ‘free’ or indicative of ‘corruption’, this volume reconceptualizes scribal variation in pre-modern Egypt from the point of view of contemporary historical sociolinguistics, seeing scribes as agents embedded in particular geographical, temporal, and sociocultural environments. This volume comprises a set of studies of scribal variation, beginning from the well-established domain of scribal variation in pre-modern English as a methodological point of departure, and proceeding to studies of scribal variation spanning thousands of years, from Pharaonic to Late Antique and Islamic Egypt. This volume introduces to Egyptology concepts such as scribal communities, networks, and repertoires, and applies them to a variety of phenomena, including features of lexicon, grammar, orthography, palaeography, layout, and format.

Singa Transitional: Rock-art Saywas Marking Boundaries of Identity and Socializing Landscape in Huánuco, Peru

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-263
Author(s):  
Jonathan J. Dubois
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Rock Art ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Regional Survey ◽  
Intermediate Period ◽  
Social Trends ◽  
The North ◽  
The Andes ◽  
Early Horizon ◽  
Landscape Feature

This paper introduces a new art style, Singa Transitional, found painted onto a mountainside near the modern town of Singa in the north of Huánuco, Peru. This style was discovered during a recent regional survey of rock art in the Huánuco region that resulted in the documentation of paintings at more than 20 sites, the identification of their chronological contexts and an analysis of the resulting data for trends in changing social practices over nine millennia. I explore how the style emerged from both regional artistic trends in the medium and broader patterns evident in Andean material culture from multiple media at the time of its creation. I argue that the presence of Singa Transitional demonstrates that local peoples were engaged in broader social trends unfolding during the transition between the Early Horizon (800–200 bc) and the Early Intermediate Period (ad 0–800) in Peru. I propose that rock art placed in prominent places was considered saywa, a type of landscape feature that marked boundaries in and movement through landscapes. Singa Transitional saywas served to advertise the connection between local Andean people and their land and was a medium through which social changes were contested in the Andes.

The Solitary Sphere in the Age of Virgil

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron J. Kachuck
Keyword(s):  
Political Education ◽  
First Person ◽  
Tripartite Model ◽  
Latin Literature ◽  
The Public ◽  
Roman Literature ◽  
Roman Culture ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Late Works

The Solitary Sphere in the Age of Virgil uses an enriched tripartite model of Roman culture—touching not only the public and the private, but also the solitary—in order to present a new interpretation of Latin literature and of the historical causes of this third sphere’s relative invisibility in scholarship. By connecting Cosmos and Imperium to the Individual, the solitary sphere was not so much a way of avoiding politics as a political education in itself. As reimagined by literature in this age, this sphere was an essential space for the formation of the new Roman citizen of the Augustan revolution, and was behind many of the notable features of the literary revolution of Virgil’s age: the expansion of the possibilities of the book of poetry, the birth of the literary cursus, new coordinations of cosmology and politics within strictly organized schemes, the attraction of first-person genres, and the subjective style. Through close readings of Cicero’s late works and the oeuvres of Virgil, Horace, and Propertius and the works of other authors in the age of Virgil, The Solitary Sphere thus presents a radical reinterpretation of classical Roman literature, and contributes to the study of premodern culture more generally, especially for traditions that have taken antiquity as too fixed a point in their own literary, religious, and cultural histories.

The Table of Ptolemy’s Terms (Tetr. 1.21)

Philologus ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 162 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-264
Author(s):  
Cristian Tolsa
Keyword(s):  
Original Text ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Direct Transmission ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Byzantine Period

AbstractThe paper presents three strong arguments advocating for the exclusion of the table of Ptolemy’s own planetary terms (Tetr. 1.21.28–29) from the original text of the Tetrabiblos. This table was vastly used by Renaissance astrologers, and much work on its rationale and its manuscript variant readings has been published recently. The author argues that the table was the product of the systematic analysis of Ptolemy’s instructions for the terms in the late antique commentary on the Tetrabiblos edited by Wolf in 1559, and that it entered the direct transmission of Ptolemy’s text in the Byzantine period, probably in the 11th century through cod. Laur. 28,34. The absence of the table in the original Tetrabiblos would explain Ptolemy’s recourse to a probably invented manuscript find and his limited account of the system’s workings.

Population Migrations, Colonization, and Social Changes in the Late Prehistoric Lower Yangtze River

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tianlong Jiao
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Yangtze River ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Yangtze River Delta ◽  
River Delta ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
The North ◽  
Population Migrations ◽  
Lower Yangtze ◽  
Liangzhu Culture

This chapter presents a case study that challenges commonly used approaches in Chinese archaeology to population migration, diffusion, colonization, and material culture change. The dramatic decline of the Liangzhu culture in the Lower Yangtze River Delta around 2000 BC has been extensively investigated. Environmental disasters such as rising sea-level and flooding were suggested by some as the main factors, while others highlighted internal social conflicts or the exhaustive use of jades as the responsible forces. This chapter instead argues that the decline of Liangzhu culture was a dynamic process in which waves of population migrations from the Guangfulin culture in the north was the primary cause. These migrants were organized colonizers who were forced to expand southward by violent conflicts in the Central Plain. Archaeological data suggest the Guangfulin conquered the Liangzhu land and restructured the cultural landscape of the Lower Yangtze River Delta.

Slave Religiosity in the Roman Middle Republic

2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-369 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan-el Padilla Peralta
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Black Atlantic ◽  
Republican Rome ◽  
New Interpretation

This article proposes a new interpretation of slave religious experience in mid-republican Rome. Select passages from Plautine comedy and Cato the Elder's De agri cultura are paired with material culture as well as comparative evidence—mostly from studies of Black Atlantic slave religions—to reconstruct select aspects of a specific and distinctive slave “religiosity” in the era of large-scale enslavements. I work towards this reconstruction first by considering the subordination of slaves as religious agents (Part I) before turning to slaves’ practice of certain forms of religious expertise in the teeth of subordination and policing (II and III). After transitioning to an assessment of slave religiosity's role in the pursuit of freedom (IV), I conclude with a set of methodological justifications for this paper's line of inquiry (V).

Amulets and the Ritual Efficacy of Christian Symbols

2019 ◽  
pp. 349-366
Author(s):  
Rangar H. Cline
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Insight Into

Although “magical” amulets are often overlooked in studies of early Christian material culture, they provide unique insight into the lives of early Christians. The high number of amulets that survive from antiquity, their presence in domestic and mortuary archaeological contexts, and frequent discussions of amulets in Late Antique literary sources indicate that they constituted an integral part of the fabric of religious life for early Christians. The appearance of Christian symbols on amulets, beginning in the second century and occurring with increasing frequency in the fourth century and afterward, reveals the increasing perception of Christian symbols as ritually potent among Christians and others in the Roman Empire. The forms, texts, and images on amulets reveal the fears and hopes that occupied the daily lives of early Christians, when amulets designed for ritual efficacy if not orthodoxy were believed to provide a defense against forces that would harm body and soul.

THE MODENA WELL-HOARDS: RURAL DOMESTIC ARTEFACT ASSEMBLAGES IN LATE ANTIQUITY

2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 363-384
Author(s):  
Sauro Gelichi
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Transitional Period ◽  
Late Antique

This article discusses a number of late antique well-hoards found in the vicinity of Modena, which the author investigated in an earlier work published in 1994. Here, the coherence of this group, the nature of the finds from each hoard, the identity of their possible owners and their dating are re-considered. The author also questions his earlier supposition that the hoards were deposited as a result of generalised crisis, and an argument is presented that they reflect the rural material culture of a more continuous transitional period.

Roman Knossos: Discovering the City through the Evidence of Rescue Excavations

2010 ◽  
Vol 105 ◽  
pp. 339-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca J. Sweetman
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Complete Picture ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Industrial Areas ◽  
The Many ◽  
The City ◽  
Do So

Thus far, much of the analysis of Roman and Late Antique Knossos has been based on the material culture produced through research excavations such as the Villa Dionysus and the Unexplored Mansion. Such excavations provide a tantalizing view of select aspects of the community and city and are essential for an understanding of the chronology of much of the material culture. However, these excavations cannot provide a complete picture of the character and diachronic range of the entire city. To do so, it is necessary to turn to the hitherto unpublished rescue excavations undertaken in dispersed locations of the valley. These range from the many graves located on the slopes of the surrounding hills, to monumental architectural remains in the area to the east of the Villa Dionysus, and to mundane features such as cisterns and roads in the modern village. In this paper, within the context of the published Roman material and with a focus on mosaics and ceramics, the evidence of the rescue material is used to develop a better perception of the city and all its residents, including the layout in terms of administrative, residential, and industrial areas from the first to the seventh centuryad.Μέχρι σήμερα ένα μεγάλο μέρος της εξέτασης της Κνωσού κατά τη ρωμαϊκή περίοδο και την ύστερη αρχαιότητα έχει βασιστεί στα υλικά κατάλοιπα από συστηματικές ανασκαφές, όπως στην Έπαυλη του Διονύσου και την Ανευξερεύνητη Οικία. Αυτές οι ανασκαφές παρουσιάςουν μία δελεαστική όψη επιλεκτικών εκφάνσεων της κοινότητας και της πόλης. Επιπλέον είναι σημαντικές για την κατανόηση της χρονολόγησης ενός μεγάλου μέρους των υλικών καταλοίπων. Ωστόσο, δεν μπορούν να παρουσιάσουν μία συνολική εικόνα του χαρακτήρα και της διαχρονικής αλληλουχίας όλης της πόλης. Για να γίνει κάτι τέτοιο είναι απαραίτητο να στρέψουμε την προσοχή μας στο μέχρι σήμερα αδημοσίευτο υλικό των σωστικών ανασκαφών που έχουν πραγματοποιηθεί σε διάφορες θέσεις στην πεδιάδα. Αυτές οι ανασκαφές ποικίλλουν: από τους πολλούς τάφους στις πλαγιές των γειτονικών λόφων, στα μνημειακά αρχιτεκτονικά κατάλοιπα στην περιοχή ανατολικά της Έπαυλης του Διονύσου και τα κοινότοπα στοιχεία, όπως δεξαμενές και δρόμοι στο σύγχρονο χωριό. Στο άρθρο αυτό, μέσα στο πλαίσιο του δημοσνευμένου ρωμαϊκού υλικού και με έμφαση στα ψηφιδωτά και την κεραμεική, τα δεδομένα από το υλικό των σωστικών ανασκαφών χρησιμοποιούνται για την καλύτερη κατανόηση της πόλης και όλων των κατοίκων της συμπεριλαμβανομένης της διάρθρωσής της ως προς τις περιοχές διοίκησης, κατοίκησης και βιοτεχνικής παραγωγής από τον πρώτο μέχρι τον έβδομο αιώνα μετά Χριστόν.

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