Gender and Sexuality in Greek Sport

2021 ◽  
pp. 652-675
Author(s):  
Thomas F. Scanlon
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Sexual System ◽  
Female Participation ◽  
Male Activity

Greek sport was in its earliest forms and predominantly thereafter a male activity. Greek masculine virtues were consistently reflected in texts discussing sport from Homer onward. The athletic and the martial spheres were often in tension regarding how greatly success in sport was valued as a measure of male excellence. The Greek gymnasium and athletic nudity were factors that fostered the Greek male sexual system of pederasty. Material culture in the form of sculpture, inscriptions, and vase paintings reflects the androcentrism of Greek sport. Female participation in Greek sport has a historical existence much less consistent and widespread than that of males, seen most prominently during the Roman empire.

Images and Interpretation of Africans in Roman Art and Social Practice

2021 ◽  
pp. 424-463
Author(s):  
Sinclair W. Bell
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Racial Differences ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Visual Media ◽  
Roman Art ◽  
Social Functions ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Physical Traits ◽  
Sub Saharan

The representation of foreign cultures with manifest ethnic or “racial” differences, such as unfamiliar physical traits or exotic dress, has been a long-standing and often visceral site for human artistic expression. The visual and material culture of the Roman Empire provides an abundant record of such encounters which render visible complex formulations of ethnicity, social hierarchies, and power. The present chapter focuses on how artists represented the peoples whom Romans referred to as Aethiopians or Nubians (i.e., sub-Saharan or “Black” Africans) in different visual media, and it explores issues related to the social functions, patronage, and viewership of these works. In particular, the chapter discusses the formalized conventions, object types, and display contexts of their representations; examines the two critical axioms of their study (the philological and social historical); and maps out recent approaches to and future directions in their interpretation.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 126-128
Author(s):  
Ersin Hussein
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Near East ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Roman Provinces ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Cultural Networks ◽  
Written Sources

The Conclusion revisits the questions that lie at the heart of studies of the Roman provinces and that have driven this study. What is the best way to tell the story of a landscape, and its peoples, that have been the subject of successive conquests throughout history and when the few written sources have been composed by outsiders? What approach should be taken to draw out information from a landscape’s material culture to bring the voices and experiences of those who inhabited its space to the fore? Is it ever possible to ensure that certain evidence types and perspectives are not privileged over others to draw balanced conclusions? The main findings of this work are that the Cypriots were not passive participants in the Roman Empire. They were in fact active and dynamic in negotiating their individual and collective identities. The legacies of deep-rooted connections between mainland Greece, Egypt, Asia Minor, and the Near East were maintained into the Roman period and acknowledged by both locals and outsiders. More importantly, the identity of the island was fluid and situational, its people able to distinguish themselves but also demonstrate that the island was part of multiple cultural networks. Cyprus was not a mere imitator of the influences that passed through it, but distinct. The existence of plural and flexible identities is reflective of its status as an island poised between multiple landscapes

Mobility in Prehistory and Early Historic Times

2019 ◽  
pp. 103-121
Author(s):  
D. W. Harding
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Culture Contact ◽  
Migration And Invasion ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Dna Analyses ◽  
Documentary History ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
North Western

For most of the twentieth century migration and invasion were the default explanation of material culture change in archaeology. This model was largely derived from the record of documentary history, which not only recorded the Gaulish diaspora of later prehistory but the migrations that resulted in the breakup of the Roman Empire. The equation of archaeological distributions—the formula ‘pots = people’—was a model adopted and promoted by Gordon Childe, and remained fundamental to archaeological interpretation into the 1960s. Thereafter diffusionism was discredited among British prehistorians, though less so among European archaeologists and classical or historical archaeologists. Even the Beaker phenomenon became a ‘cult package’ rather than the product of settlers, and it is only as a result of more recent isotopic and DNA analyses that the scale of settlement from the continent introducing Beakers has begun to be demonstrated. Other factors in culture contact including long-distance trade have long been evident, for example, from the distribution of finds of Baltic amber from Northern and North-Western Europe to the Mediterranean, or the distribution of continental pottery and glass via the western seaways in the post-Roman period.

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.

scholarly journals A view from the margin? Roman commonwares and patterns of distribution and consumption at Interamna Lirenas (Lazio)

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 323-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Launaro ◽  
Ninetta Leone
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Economic Performance ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Direct Result ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Widespread Distribution ◽  
Long Period ◽  
Trade And Exchange

There can hardly be any doubt that goods moved in large quantities and over great distances under the Roman empire. This awareness is borne out of a long tradition of archaeological research attesting to the widespread distribution of specific categories of material culture across the full expanse of the Mediterranean and beyond. This phenomenon has been interpreted as a more or less direct result of Rome's military expansion and the fundamental political unification which came with it, bringing about unprecedented conditions which favoured trade and exchange. Scholarship has often stressed the rôle played in this by ‘institutions’: the spread and adoption of a common set of laws, currency and units of measure, fostered by a relatively long period of internal peace and political stability, would have boosted the economic performance of the empire to levels that had not been witnessed before and would not be seen again for many centuries. Indeed, the notion of ‘efflorescence’ has sometimes been employed to describe and explain the kind of economic growth to which this process might have contributed.

Changing Materialities

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Gardner
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
Roman Imperialism ◽  
General Terms ◽  
The Face ◽  
Messy Reality

The material signature of the Roman period in Britain is undeniably distinctive, marked as it is not only by a whole series of changes and additions to the formal repertoire of artefacts but also by a great proliferation of the sheer numbers of things. The traditional explanation for the changing contours of materiality in Roman Britain has been the over-simplistic narrative of ‘Romanization’. While it is certainly the case that there is a connection between Roman imperialism and material change, this traditional picture cannot be sustained in the face of new understandings of the material patterning in Roman Britain, and of the ways in which people interact with material culture in more general terms. In this chapter, I will review this recent empirical and theoretical work to demonstrate how this is gradually giving us a fuller picture of the complicated and messy reality of life in the Roman empire.

scholarly journals The Oxford Handbook of Roman Britain

2014 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Main Stream ◽  
Young Generation ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
Narrative Approaches ◽  
Archaeological Work ◽  
The Rich

Roman Britain is a critical area of research within the provinces of the Roman empire. It has formed the context for many of the seminal publications on the nature of imperialism and cultural change. Roman rule had a profound impact culture of Iron Age Britain, with new forms of material culture, and new forms of knowledge. On the other hand, there is evidence that such impacts were not uniform, leading to questions of resistance and continuity of pre-existing cultural forms. Within the last 15-20 years, the study of Roman Britain has been transformed through an enormous amount of new and interesting work which is not reflected in the main stream literature. The new archaeological work by a young generation has moved away from the narrative historical approach towards one much more closely focused on the interpretation of material. It has produced new interpretations of the material and a new light on the archaeology of the province, grounded in a close reading of the material evidence as collected by previous scholars and exploiting the rich library of publications on Romano-British studies. For the first time, this volume draws together the various scholars working on new approaches to Roman Britain to produce a comprehensive study of the present state and future trajectory of the subject. Arranged thematically and focussed primarily on the archaeological evidence, the volume challenges more traditional narrative approaches and explores new theoretical perspectives in order to better understand the archaeology of the province and its place within the wider context of the Roman Empire.

scholarly journals An Agent Based Model to Detect Variations in the Transmission of Potters from Baetica Province

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Coto-Sarmiento ◽  
Simon Carrignon
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Social Learning ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Scale Production ◽  
Agent Based Model ◽  
Pottery Production ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Modes Of Transmission

The goal of this study is to analyse the transmission of technical skills among potters within the Roman Empire. Specifically, our case study has been focused on the production processes based on Baetica province (currently Andalusia) from 1st to 3rd century AD. Variability of material culture allows observing different production patterns that can explain how social learning evolves. Some differences can be detected in the making techniques processes through time and space that might explain different degrees of specialization. Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to identify some evidence of social learning strategies in the archaeological record. In Archaeology, this process has been analysed by the study of the production of handmade pottery. In our case, we want to know if the modes of transmission could be similar with a more standardized production as Roman Age. We propose here an Agent-Based Model to compare different cultural processes of learning transmission. Archaeological evidence will be used to design the model. In this model, we implement a simple mechanism of pottery production with different social learning processes under different scenarios. In particular, the aim of this study is to quantify which one of those processes explain better the copying mechanisms among potters revealed in our dataset. We believe that the model presented here can provide a strong baseline for the exploration of transmission processes related to large-scale production.

scholarly journals Agripina e o diálogo com o poder: Reflexões sobre gênero e sexualidade em Roma Antiga

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (8) ◽  
pp. 93
Author(s):  
Caroline Rodrigues Coelho ◽  
Caroline Rodrigues Coelho
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Academic World ◽  
Active Woman ◽  
Politically Active

Os estudos sobre questões de gênero e sexualidade no Império Romano têm crescido cada vez mais no mundo acadêmico. No entanto, cabe ainda entender de que maneira essas experiências do passado podem ser atribuídas aos conceitos e às situações metodologicamente novas do presente, e o respectivo desafio do historiador em pensar na dialética dos tempos. O objetivo deste artigo, portanto, é analisar o papel de Agripina como mulher politicamente ativa na biografia de Nero, articulando com os conceitos de misoginia, virilidade, homossexualidade, e, ao mesmo tempo, fazendo uso da própria obra de Suetônio como instrumento de diálogo temporal. Palavras-chaves: Gênero, Agripina, Misoginia, Sexualidade.Abstract The studies about issues of gender and sexuality in The Roman Empire are growing every day in the academic world. However, it remains difficult to not only understand how these old experiences could be developed into new methodological situations and concepts, but also the challenge of the historians face when thinking in the dialectics of time. Therefore, this article seeks to analyze Agrippina's role as a politically active woman in Nero’s biography, by articulating the concepts of misogyny, virility, and homosexuality, all the while using the Suetonius’s work as an instrument of dialogue.Keywords: Gender, Agrippina, Misogyny, Sexuality.

The Kushan Empire

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xinru Liu
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Silk Road ◽  
Local Institutions ◽  
Large Area ◽  
Ruling Elite ◽  
Trade Networks ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
The Silk Road

The Kushan Empire was a political power that started as a nomadic tribe from the Central Asian steppe and became established as sedentary state across South Asia and Central Asia. Migrating from the border of agricultural China in late 2nd century bce to north Afghanistan, by the 1st century ce, the Yuezhi nomads transformed themselves into a ruling elite in a large area from Afghanistan to the Indus Valley and North Indian Plain, embracing many linguistic and ethnic groups. Adapting the Persian satrapy administrative system into Indian kshatrapa administration, the Kushan regime gave much autonomy to local institutions such as castes, guilds, and Buddhist monasteries and meanwhile won support from those local communities. Legacies from Achaemenid Persia and Hellenistic cities, the cultures of various nomadic groups from Central Asia, and Buddhist and Brahmanical traditions merged to create a cosmopolitan Kushan material culture and art. Mahāyāna Buddhist theology and institutions matured in the Kushan economic and cultural environment and were propagated to Central Asia and China from there. Having under their control several important commodities, such as silk, lapis lazuli, and horses, demanded by elites from the Roman Empire, the Han Empire, and the Parthian Empire, the Kushan court sat on a key location of the Eurasian trade networks, or the Silk Road. The Kushan Empire benefited from the Silk Road trade economically and meanwhile received knowledge of faraway countries and facilitated transferring the information to the visions of the Romans, Parthians, and Chinese.

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