Engagements in and beyond Rome in the 5th c. BCE: architectural remains as evidence for action across geo-temporal boundaries

Abstract

In the 5th c. BCE, Rome is understood to have experienced a moment of transition. Scholars highlight evidence for warfare absent widespread triumph, social conflict within Rome, and regional disruption in established power dynamics, trade networks, and material cultures. Despite a revised understanding of the period, wherein narratives of decline were superseded by those of transformation, the long century after the purported fall of monarchy, especially in its middle and later portions, remains segregated in scholarship from the Archaic period and Middle Republic. This article seeks to reframe the moment as integral to events both before and after it. By way of an examination of material remains of architectural projects, I argue that disciplinary preferences for periodization, a Rome-centered historical telos, and hierarchical material taxonomies have manufactured an absence of remains and activity, and I suggest that the field categorically moves away from these practices.