The title of this collection of 12 essays might seem to announce a set of studies centred on the ‘ontological/material turn’, but as Andrew Gardner warns in the introduction, the contributors have varied perspectives on ‘new materialism’ and similar theoretical standpoints. In fact the majority of authors do not mention the ‘material turn’ interpretative framework, while the few who do, use it in passing and more as a reference to the volume’s title than as an operationalised approach. Thus the book does not offer papers that depart from the general archaeological stance on the exceptional importance of material culture and its pivotal role in spheres from imperialism and domination, through subsistence and economy, to group and individual identifications. The thematic axis of the volume comprises conventional ‘big’ subjects, while some contributions adhere to traditional topics and choices of case studies, albeit combining them with relevant revisions.
The selection of themes stems from the inspiration for this anthology: it is half of an initially planned volume that should have had parallel overview papers on the Roman and Chinese Han Empires. This originated in a Beijing conference (2018) dedicated to comparative consideration of the two imperial systems according to the preselected themes (Tanner: Preface xxiii–xxv). Since Chinese participants did not succeed in delivering their papers, the book presents just the work of their Western European counterparts. The volume’s emergence from a project intended mutually to familiarise British and Chinese studies of the ancient empires is an interesting context: it can be seen as a dialogue between academics coming from the former and aspiring world empires, reflecting on a more direct imperial antecedent in one case and symbolic/imagined imperial heritage in the other. It is thus regrettable that we lack the other half of academic (self-)perception, as it is important to appreciate that the published part acknowledges and addresses the imperial and colonial mindset that once dominated Roman studies. In this light it is significant to stress the general distancing from the concept of Romanisation, explicated in nearly all contributions, but especially effectively reviewed in the opening and closing papers dedicated to theoretical currents within Roman archaeology (Gardner: Introduction; David Mattingly: Imperial power and its limits).
The publication’s conceptual background is directly reflected in its content: while the title refers to the entire Roman Empire, the centre of attention is predominantly its western provinces, and the volume’s point of view is principally based on the Anglophone academic tradition. Notwithstanding occasional references and examples from regions like Italy and Africa, there is an apparent imbalance concerning other parts of the Empire (Germania, Pannonia, Illyricum, Dacia, Thrace, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria), although there is enough literature in English nowadays to overcome language barriers and take these areas into account. Despite this western-centredness and limitations, many of which were indubitably necessary and unavoidable, all the chapters bring valuable overviews of their themes and base their standpoints on current research and fresh bibliography. The authors are highly versed academics with many years of experience in their respective fields, and hence they offer state-of-the-art knowledge about some key aspects of the Roman world. While some chapters are especially telling of the functioning, scale and far-reaching effects of the Empire (Ray Laurence on roads, Andrew Wilson on trade, Rebecca Redfern on slavery and Astrid Van Oyen on craft production), every paper is full of insightful and inspiring thoughts, even when they deal with well-known topics and familiar examples. The consensual view, more or less explicated in all chapters, is that the Roman imperial system was simultaneously enabled by and enabling of a composite common framework of social and cultural dynamics. Some chapters demonstrate that this was realised chiefly through imperial authority, ideology and administration (John Pearce: Archaeology and writing in the Roman world), the army (Gardner: Archaeology of Roman frontiers), strategically built road networks (Laurence: Roads and communications), and systemic socio-economic exploitation (Redfern: Archaeological approaches to the study of enslavement). Others point to the shared socio-political templates of cities (Louise Revell: Empire and urbanism) and economy, i.e. monetary unification (Chris Howgego: Archaeologies of coinage), trade (Wilson: Trade in the Roman Empire), and production (Van Oyen: The Roman Empire and transformations in craft production). Finally, two chapters are dedicated to official, state sanctioned religion (Ton Derks: Materialising imperial ideology and religion in the Roman world) and public monumental art (Peter Stewart: Art and Empire in the Roman World). Along with unifying impetuses and shared points of interaction, all papers also accentuate diversity and the enduring particularised adaptations of the general processes and trends. Accordingly, many authors underline the misleading character of understanding culture, architecture, art, economy etc. through essentialist ethnic categories (e.g. Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Celtic, Persian) or in terms of fixed forms, meanings and places of provenance (i.e. originality) of various phenomena, which then influenced the the new environments into which they were introduced (neatly summarised by Mattingly). The pervasive argument of the volume is heterogeneity and complexity of the Roman Empire that cannot be ‘explained away’, either by the unidirectional influences of imperial power and Roman élite culture, or by presuming the existence of important feelings of belonging to discretely defined ethnicities. Instead, the Empire facilitated the interplay and intersection of diverse processes, impacts, flows, structures, knowledge, identities and actors, which resulted in the whole range of specific and particularised variations.
Surprisingly, however, there are no papers specifically addressing the power distribution, pronounced stratification and immensely disproportional capacities within the Empire’s social structure. Although it can be supposed that these aspects are held to be self-evident, it is still curious that the volume lacks focused consideration of the roles that materialities had in creating and maintaining various status groups, and in articulating their specific habitus(es): especially so if one considers that the domains pertaining to these questions (e.g. housing, practices of embodiment, dietary habits, funerary sphere, etc.) are archaeological themes par excellence. While a few chapters do problematise some of these issues (Redfern, Revell, Derks), there are no concrete engagements with the question of the materialisation of different social experiences, as well as of how reflections and ‘refractions’ of the practices of domination were reified within certain social classes. For the intended synoptic purposes and defined thematic scheme, the volume does not sufficiently address the Roman Empire’s inherent nature of perpetual (re)producer of hierarchised differences according to gender, wealth, profession, legal categorisation, religion, age etc.
Considering its overall points, thematic composition and eminent authors, the volume is highly recommended to all who would like to update their general knowledge about the (western) Roman world and keep informed about the current paradigms. While it will be particularly helpful and instructive for students and younger researchers, it surely has much to offer to more senior colleagues who, by specialising in some subfields of the Roman studies, have perhaps lost sight of others. It is especially laudable that the book is an open access publication available on the publisher’s website (https://uclpress.co.uk/book/materialising-the-roman-empire/).
