Roman visual material culture as globalisingkoine

Connecting the ancient Afro-Eurasian world

“…3 Carl Knappett, 'Globalization, Connectivities and Networks', in The Routledge Handbook of Archaeology and Globalization, 32. Justin Jennings is a prominent proponent of applying globalization thinking to pre-modern societies; see Justin Jennings, Globalizations and the Ancient World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Justin Jennings, 'Distinguishing Past Globalizations', in The Routledge Handbook of Archaeology and Globalization,[12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28] Tamar Hodos, ed., The Routledge Handbook of Archaeology and Globalization. Pharaonic Egypt).…”

Lived Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean World

“…Borg this volume; Gasparini this volume) by revising and recontextualizing the material related to these sites (image-objects of deities and users, dedications, architecture), and by looking beyond the setting and architectural characteristics of a temple, its priests, statues, and inscriptions, or the worshippers who use it (Krumeich 1998;Freyberger 1999). This approach offers an insight into how local residents instrumentalized the tension between the local, the close-by, and the global (Massey 2004;Versluys 2015) in order to negotiate their needs, identities, and attitudes (Butcher 2011, 456) by acknowledging the spatial relations between places, objects, and religious groupings. We can ask a range of important questions.…”

“…Changes over time in political control of areas and networks of routes (Guillon 2013, up to the 1st century CE) influenced the political, administrative, and logistical conditions of the sacralized places and their users. 6 At the same time, gods from the Western Asian provinces who were originally very local -Dea Syria, Zeus Heliopolitanus, Zeus Dolichenustraveled with groups and individuals from their places of origin and spread as part of processes of appropriation, due to a combination of factors such as an interest across the Roman Empire in "exotic" deities, in religious Otherness, or in Antiquarianism Blömer 2017;Versluys 2015). However, many other deities maintained their staunchly local guises, transmitting their vernacular character in names, epithets, and the places with which they were associated.…”

Understanding objects in motion. Anarchaeologicaldialogue on Romanization

“…This metaphor -and Wallace-Hadrill's 'classical', exclusive focus on Greece and things Greek in a Roman context -is not unproblematic in itself (cf. Versluys (2014) and below), but its importance lies in the circularity that it puts at the centre of its understanding of transformation. What I have above characterized as the 'handicap' of anti-colonial studies here becomes particularly apparent: its focus on (good) Natives presupposes (bad) Romans -it simply needs two different cultural containers -and as such it leaves little room for circular processes whereby Natives become Romans and Romans behave as Natives.…”