RAC/TRAC Session 40: TRAC General Session

Conference Sessions and Abstracts - Saturday 13 April 2024

40. TRAC General Session

Session schedule 

Abstracts 

 The Bath of the Sick: Sensory Experiences of Illness and Water
Giacomo Savani – University of St Andrews

Bathing can be considered one of the most deeply synaesthetic experiences, and its popularity in antiquity makes it an essential component of the Roman sensorium. People of different ages, genders, and cultural and social backgrounds appreciated this practice, which took place in many forms and settings and responded to different needs and expectations (e.g., religious, therapeutic, hygienic, and recreational). This paper investigates how the array of sensory stimuli associated with bathing was experienced by a specific category of ancient bathers: the sick. By focusing on Soranus’ Gynaecology, Galen’s Method of Medicine, and Aelius Aristides’ Sacred Tales, I explore the diverse settings and arrangements of ancient hydrotherapy, re-evaluating the patient’s sensory experience in connection with memory, feelings, and healing expectations. I also assess the unsettling perception of estrangement generated by experiencing a familiar practice in an unfamiliar and potentially traumatic context.

 The Monstrous Body of the East: Eutropius and the Fall of Roman Masculinity
Larisa Vilimonovic – University of Belgrade

My intention in the proposed paper is to address the interplay of Roman imperial expansion and Roman hegemonic masculinity which was manifested in the social and cultural anxieties surrounding the integrity of the elite male body - vir Romanus. A distinctive dialectic between Roman sexual protocol and Roman imperialism formed the moral geography of the Mediterranean as a cultural byproduct of the Roman imperial expansion by separating the manly West from the womanly East, placing them in a hierarchical gendered position of two opposed geographical zones where the former symbolized a domineering male and the latter submissive female. I intend to delineate the proto-Orientalist discourse already present in antiquity by closely analyzing two invectives directed against the Eastern consul Eutropius by the poet Claudian from the late fourth century A.D. These two relatively understudied invectives compellingly attest to the political tensions between two imperial centers at a time when they both claimed their political and cultural hegemony. Obscene vocabulary, aggressive sexual humor, and scopophilic body shaming are all literary tactics that Roman politicians used to demean and discredit their opponents. In the case of Eutropius, the first and last eunuch consul, his gender fluidity and unmanliness were the most important tenets of the invective that exemplifies Roman imperialist sexuality discourse to the greatest degree. This study also enables us to comprehend the intersectional discursive technology of otherness in antiquity, in which poet Claudian intersected gender, class, and age by creating a monstrous body of the eunuch Eutropius that anthropomorphized the body of the Empire’s East - the emasculated, pathic eunuch, slave, and a repugnant old prostitute.

 First trials managing and representing the imperfection of the data in the Roman Settlement Dynamics Study in Hispania
Leticia Tobalina-Pulido - Instituto de Ciencias del Patrimonio

When we study Roman settlement dynamics, we use a large amount of archaeological data from different sources and of varying quality. In other words, we work with a large and very heterogeneous volume of data. With the widespread use of GIS in these studies, sometimes no distinction is made in the analysis between "good quality" and "poor quality" data that would allow us to offer results in accordance with the characteristics and problems of our corpus. Despite this, there are still few works that include this management of the imperfection of archaeological data in their research. Thus, in this paper we will present a case study for the Iberian Peninsula in which we have carried out an analysis of Roman settlement dynamics at the macro level considering these data imperfections (e.g. imprecision, uncertainty). Settlement models have been carried out considering all sites, then only those with less imperfect data and, finally, injecting the worst quality ones. This allows us to see the differences in the results if we consider only sites with accurate or precise chronological or typological data.

 Breaking the Great Boar’s Back – Gallic Masculinity, Defeat, and Iconographic Appropriation in Roman Art
Ralph Moore – Trinity College Dublin

The depiction of defeated foes, in various states of abjection, and of the spoils of war taken as trophies are common features of Roman art, at both monumental and more intimate scales. The visualisation of ethnic others in attitudes of failure and weakness undergirded and projected the power of the Roman Imperial state and marginalise the cultural identities of former rivals. This power was closely tied to ideologies of virtus as Roman hegemonic masculinity, in contrast and competition with the masculinities of other communities. The Caesarian Gallic Wars of c.58-50 BCE and the failed revolt of Florus and Sacrovir c.21 CE made the peoples of Gaul common subject matter for this kind of display, in ways that reveal much about the processes by which artists communicated the marginalisation of vanquished cultures and audiences may have engaged with it through a gendered lens. This paper examines how depictions of Gallic defeat in Roman contexts (e.g. Caesarian coinage, Augustan statuary, architectural sculpture in Gallo-Roman coloniae etc.) frame the othered, contested gender of their subjects and appropriate symbols from indigenous Gallic iconography and display of masculinity and martial prowess to communicate this ideological attack not merely to other Romans but to the Gauls themselves.

 The Etruscan woman: ‘Romanisation’, epitaphs, and material culture
Alexis Daveloose – Universiteit Gent

This paper revaluates our knowledge of Etruscan women during the late Etruscan period (ca. 350-1 BCE). This subject is complex for two main reasons: 1) the lack of Etruscan literary sources; 2) the Roman conquest of Etruria. Within the framework of glocalization and giving primacy to the role of female material culture, the societal status of the Etruscan woman is scrutinised analysing two separate but interwoven elements of late funerary culture. Firstly, the ratio of women in Etruscan tombs is diachronically studied. The prevalence of women in these contexts informs us about the value attributed to them within funerary and familial representation. Secondly, the way in which women are represented is analysed. The use of the various onomastic elements – such as praenomen, patronymic, metronymic, and gamonymic – is investigated for three case studies (Chiusi, Tarquinia, and Volterra). This is the first attempt at statistically analysing all onomastic components for the entire Hellenistic period. This paper explicitly rejects the old paradigm of pervasive ‘Romanisation’, with Roman influence not a priori assumed. Instead, Etruscan developments within a broader Italic context are seen as the basis for this analysis. Finally, this paper argues that there is no such thing as ‘the Etruscan woman’. Rather, Etruria consisted of many subcultures with their own customs and modes of representation, as illustrated by the local funerary cultures.

 Materializing a Gendered Colonial Worldview: Permeability and Impermeability in Votive Offerings from the Roman Northwest
Alena Wigodner – Princeton University

Roman imperialism had a gendered dynamic at its core: the Roman worldview entailed a gendered binary in which masculine, civilized Rome was obligated to control and care for an uncivilized, feminine other. Therefore, we must seek to understand not only how colonialism differentially shaped men’s and women’s opportunities, challenges, and behavior in the provinces but also the impact of a conquering worldview so symbolically intertwined with gender. To what extent did colonial subjects take up this loaded worldview? I examine its impact in Roman Britain and Gaul by applying a symbolic anthropology approach to objects uniquely suited to the task: votive offerings are highly individual, each one representing a single symbolic act. I include even the most inexpensive offerings so as to capture the behavior of rich and poor alike. Analysis of the materials offered by men and women, and of the materials in which men and women (both humans and deities) were portrayed, reveals a permeability-impermeability binary that reflects fundamental Roman understandings of femininity versus masculinity: women are associated with breakable clay, porous bone, and translucent glass and men with the strength and durability of metal. A comparison of this finding to gendered material associations in the Late Iron Age reveals the nuanced ways gendered understandings of the world changed as a result of Roman colonialism.
 

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