Les rites de passage dans l’Empire romain : esquisse d’une approche anthropologique

Abstract

This paper presents an anthropologically informed approach to the study of rites of passage within the Roman Empire. It includes an historical case study and two archaeological ones taken from the empire’s Gallic and Germanic provinces. Through the nature of the evidence, this paper takes a slightly different stance towards the central issue of the volume, which is the relationship between Ancient studies and anthropology. The first part of this paper thus aims to situate the sub-discipline of Roman archaeology within the triangle of archaeology, history and anthropology. It is argued here that Roman archaeology opened up for anthropological thinking much later than other branches of archaeology (and indeed as well as particular branches of ancient history). The initial reluctance to engage with anthropological theories in the 1960s and 1970s is to be related to a bad fit between the paradigms that at the time dominated anthropology (or rather anthropologically oriented prehistory, which functioned as intermediate between Roman archaeology and anthropology) and Roman archaeology. At the time, Roman archaeology was still just the handmaiden of history. It focused on the grand narrative of the Roman conquest with the successful pacification of the newly conquered territories of the Roman empire as its main frame of reference. In line with this, the approach adopted was colonialist rather than anything else. The neo-evolutionist paradigm and in particular its method of cross-cultural generalization conflicted with the emphasis on the historical particular achievements of Roman civilization that marked most Roman studies of the time. Much has changed since then, on both sides of the divide. First, thanks to post-processualism, archaeology at large, including Roman archaeology, now puts a much stronger emphasis on the role of the individual in processes of cultural change as well as on the role of material culture as an active agent in the construction of identities. Second, Roman archaeology in particular has largely lost its ideological feathers of colonialism and has learned to turn its attention to the ‘people without history’ and adopt a pluralistic concept of society. And, finally, after the ‘linguistic turn’ which questioned the holistic approach of much ethnographic writing, anthropology has developed an interest in history and material culture studies. So it seems that through this gradual convergence of approaches the minds are finally ripe for a historical-anthropologically oriented study of Rome and the societies under its rule. In the second part of the paper, the anthropological concept of rites of passage is discussed. Starting point is the idea that while rites of passage may be a universal phenomenon across the globe, it is the historically contingent forms which they assume within a particular society that should be the focus of study. Several archaeological parameters are discussed that might be used to reconstruct these specific forms. It is argued that rites of passage, which aim to produce a change of status of the individual, mostly do so with particular reference to the human body. It is above all parts of the human body itself or manmade adornments of the body which often play a prominent role in the performance of the rites and in the actual creation of a new social persona. These material tokens of the ritual can be studied through the structured deposits of tombs and cult places. Apart from such material manifestations of the rituals themselves, monuments that were erected to commemorate the act of the rite itself (e.g. funerary or votive monuments) are a wealthy source of information as well. They served to ‘re-present’ the rite long after the accomplishment in a future present. Ideally, one should try to study a chain of rites of passage and investigate in what way the individual links of the chain are interconnected. The third part of the paper deals with a discussion of three case studies, one based on historical and epigraphic material, the other two on archaeological sources. Through their confrontation the paper additionally seeks to argue that while archaeologists and historians may study the same society, their source material often refers to different levels of the same reality. Especially where the artefacts of the archaeologist seem to speak a different language than the texts of the historian, archaeology is most likely to make a contribution of its own. In such cases, comparison between the results of historical and archaeological analysis may be achieved most successfully if the historian and the archaeologist both use the same anthropologically derived concepts.