Interdisciplinary approaches in Roman Family Studies: heuristic potential and possible limitations

Abstract

Family relations are the basic "structures of everyday life" and therefore act as part of the macro-context of the life of the past. In addition, it is within the framework of the institution of the family that the gender roles of a certain society, its economic and cultural traditions and norms are most clearly manifested. Therefore, by studying family relations in the multi-ethnic military community of the Roman Empire, we have the opportunity to eventually get information about various layers of culture of the Roman civilization. Nevertheless, the versatility of such a subject of research requires a special approach and new methods in the study. The article uses the example of three disciplines — gender archaeology, historical demography and the history of emotions — to prove the need for an interdisciplinary approach in the study of the ancient Roman family. The object of the research is significant scientific works for these disciplines. The subject of the study is the methodology of these works. The author considers the fundamental works (p. Alison, T. Parkin, K. Kreineker) of the named directions, examples of studies are given in which the methods developed in key works were successfully used, shortcomings and possible limitations of each direction are identified separately and ways to overcome them with the help of interdisciplinary synthesis are proposed. The novelty of the research lies in the appeal exclusively to modern foreign historiography and new directions of historical science. The author comes to the conclusion that the interdisciplinary approach allows overcoming the limitations set by the source base, building new hypotheses and generally contributes to the increment of historical knowledge in the field of the study of the ancient Roman family.