Debating Roman Imperialism: Critique, Construct, Repeat?

Andrew Gardner

doi:10.16995/trac2015_1_14

Abstract

TRAC has given us 25 years of inspiration, engagement – and sometimes controversy – and in the process has made a massive impact on Roman archaeology and on the careers of many Roman archaeologists, including my own. One of the great strengths of TRAC as a community over this period has been its reflexivity, and it has become customary to reflect on the state of the conference and of our field, whether in publications of or about the proceedings, or in keynote lectures such as that which this paper derives from. Here, I aim to take a different approach to this kind of exercise, starting from a position of confidence in the vitality of the TRAC community, but then comparing what has been happening in theoretical Roman archaeology with broader trends in archaeological theory. This exercise reveals that the agendas in Roman archaeology that TRAC has helped us to develop have distinctive strengths, as well as interesting omissions, but above all it shows that there is a common trajectory from a period of high-energy critique to one of more peaceful application, accompanied by a degree of theoretical fragmentation. In evaluating the positive and negative aspects of this state of affairs, I think that significant insight can be gained into where we should be heading in the future. In particular, I believe that we need to open up a more honest dialogue about the underlying tensions that beset archaeological thinking, in Roman studies as much as anywhere else, and develop ways within the TRAC community to resolve these tensions, in order that we may more effectively communicate with other archaeologists, other classicists, and the wider public.

Highlights

Another Theoretical Health-check?TRAC has given us 25 years of inspiration, engagement – and sometimes controversy – and in the process has made a massive impact on Roman archaeology and on the careers of many Roman archaeologists, including my own
Johnson 2010: 231-233), and getting down to the fundamentals of what different visions of the Roman past mean in the present. In this way we can build a stronger network of communities within and beyond the TRAC umbrella
There is considerable scope for spin-off workshop style meetings from TRAC, as the Standing Committee has already proposed at a recent AGM, which might readily be ideas-led

Summary

Introduction

TRAC has given us 25 years of inspiration, engagement – and sometimes controversy – and in the process has made a massive impact on Roman archaeology and on the careers of many Roman archaeologists, including my own. The spectrum of approaches found under this umbrella within Roman archaeology reflects the great diversity of potential source literature about globalisation in the contemporary world, which comes from a range of disciplinary perspectives – from anthropology to economics – as well as drawing on distinct theoretical traditions, such as world-systems theory, and different political views on how globalisation should be judged This makes it an interesting, if controversial, development, but more importantly for our purposes here, one which, on the one hand, further fragments our discourses about the Roman world, and on the other, does connect us to the agendas of at least some other archaeologists interested in ‘globalisation’ in other ancient contexts (e.g. Jennings 2011). There are pros and cons in most of these phenomena, and these will be explored along with the possible underlying causes – because, while there may be an aspect of cyclical fashions in scholarship, there may be particular deep-rooted tensions in the practice of archaeology that explain these widespread trends

Unifying Problems and Common Tensions

Collaborative and Pragmatic Futures