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Papers by Miguel John Versluys
The idea of organizing this colloquium first occurred to Johannes Bergemann and myself when we we... more The idea of organizing this colloquium first occurred to Johannes Bergemann and myself when we were working on the details of another seminar, one on Roman Sicily. The latter took place in Göttingen in 2017. Entitled Roman Sicily. Cities and territories between monumentalization and economy, crisis and development, it took stock of the results of archaeological research conducted on the island over the last twenty years 1. The results of that research have been remarkable: however, what emerges from the book which published the papers from the conference is a "Roman" Sicily that is considered in itself not just a part of the wider Roman world. On reflection, it seemed clear to us that we needed now to think in a broader context. Anyone following the debate on Romanization in recent years will have noted that North European (especially Anglo-Saxon and Dutch) contributors to the debate have adopted a different perspective from those of Central and Southern Europe. The first group turned their attention away from the city and the urban elites to the countryside, and to the material culture of the peasant and native social groups, developing a position that was defined as "anti-colonial" 2. A remarkable exception to this trend in northern Europe has been Greg Woolf, who sees "Romanization" as a cultural revolution 3. Other scholars (Italians and French, but also Germans) have continued to lay emphasis mainly on the role of local elites in the "Romanization" process, investigating the usefulness of interpretative categories such as "self-romanisation", in an attempt to overcome both the "colonial" and the "anti-colonial" viewpoints 4. This dichotomy of approach has become particularly marked in recent years 5. Observing that in any case both positions aim to explore the formation of cultural identities, Martin Pitts and Miguel John Versluys, among others, have proposed to explore cultural transformations not in the context of identities, but in the sense of a dialectic between local and global, of which material culture is an expression, using the theory of globalization and focusing on aspects of connectivity and interdependence within the Roman world, and the "entanglement" of people with their material culture 6. Of course, I as a landscape archaeologist cannot disagree with the claim that "artefacts are material presences, part of a spatial relation in (historical) time and (geographical) space" 7. The concept of globalization has indeed recently been considered helpful for interpreting other periods of the ancient world, such as the Hellenistic era and the cultures of the eastern Mediterranean in the late Bronze Age, without however convincing the majority of scholars as to the validity of this approach.
Objects instigate and get things going. Material culture, therefore, is as much catalyst and prot... more Objects instigate and get things going. Material culture, therefore, is as much catalyst and protagonist of cultural change as an expression of such processes. Taking this material agency perspective as its point of departure, this essay explores the role and function of Aegyptiaca in world history. Emanating from the Nile valley in northeast Africa originally, Aegyptiaca (i.e. objects that express stylistically and materially a distinctively ancient Egyptian-ness), soon became part of many different cultural contexts and networks through processes of globalization. In all those (new) contexts and networks Aegyptiaca had considerable agency, thus constituting and determining processes of cultural innovation. Combining a material agency perspective with the network perspective of globalization allows us to see how Aegyptiaca shaped and shape global history. Moreover, it brings to the fore the important question how to account for the power and agency of Aegyptiaca in a global and long-term perspective. Why is it that, from 2500 BCE onwards, Egypt and Aegyptiaca seem to spread like a virus and are to be found everywhere? What, in other words, is their fitness for survival or 'evolutionary strength' about?
M. Pitts, M.J. Versluys, Objectscapes. A manifesto for investigating the impacts of object flows ... more M. Pitts, M.J. Versluys, Objectscapes. A manifesto for investigating the impacts of object flows on past societies, Antiquity. A review of world archaeology 95 (Issue 380) (2021) 367-381.
Globalisation and the Roman world: World history, connectivity and material culture, 2015
Aegyptiaca-like Domitian's obelisk is now decorating Bernini's fountain on Piazza Navona or the E... more Aegyptiaca-like Domitian's obelisk is now decorating Bernini's fountain on Piazza Navona or the Egyptian lions flanking Michelangelo's stairs towards the Capitol figure prominently amidst Rome's cultural heritage. Motivations for the import, contextualization, and copying of these objects during the Imperial Roman period are as heavily debated as they are ill understood. Provenance determination plays an important role in these discussions in terms of a (supposed) dichotomy between Egyptian (real) versus egyptianising (copy) but has only been applied stylistically and never been tested analytically. A scientific characterization of the materials themselves is even lacking altogether, as is an investigation into the cultural and symbolic meaning of the materials used. This paper is a first attempt to address these important lacunae on the basis of an explorative study of a selected sample of Egyptian statues from Rome. The identification and provenance attribution of the materials used for these statues are often problematic due to their relatively finegrained nature and dark color. Therefore, a full nondestructive analysis of Egyptian statues in dark-colored rocks is presented in this study, with the stones evaluated by macroscopic examination and handheld X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis. The implemented methodology has allowed a distinction between greywacke and several varieties of granitoid rocks. In order to evaluate the potential for source attribution, a comparison was made between the results of our analyses and geochemical data for several granitoid rocks from Egypt. This has suggested Aswan as most likely source. The results presented here indicate that handheld XRF analysis can be used for the assessment of compositional variability in and potentially for the provenance of granitoid rocks, provided that a fine-grained area of the material can be measured on multiple locations, and if these values can be assessed on (in)consistencies with other published reference materials.
![Research paper thumbnail of C.A. van Eck, M.J. Versluys, P. Ter Keurs, The biography of cultures: style, objects and agency. Proposal for an interdisciplinary approach, Cahiers de l’École du Louvre. Recherches en histoire de l’art, histoire des civilisations, archéologie, anthropologie etc. [en ligne] no. 7 (2015) 2-22.](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/66141280/thumbnails/1.jpg)
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We are inclined to think that there must be something in common to all games, say, and that this ... more We are inclined to think that there must be something in common to all games, say, and that this common property is the justification for applying the general term "game" to the various games; whereas games form a family the members of which have family likenesses. Some of them have the same nose, others the same eyebrows and others again the same way of walking; and these likenesses overlap. 1
Book Reviews by Miguel John Versluys
Hrsg.), Lost in Things. Fragen an die Welt des Materiellen. Tübinger Archäologische Taschenbücher... more Hrsg.), Lost in Things. Fragen an die Welt des Materiellen. Tübinger Archäologische Taschenbücher 12. Münster /New York: Waxmann 2015. 212 Seiten. ISBN 978-3-8309-3175-1.
The idea of organizing this colloquium first occurred to Johannes Bergemann and myself when we we... more The idea of organizing this colloquium first occurred to Johannes Bergemann and myself when we were working on the details of another seminar, one on Roman Sicily. The latter took place in Göttingen in 2017. Entitled Roman Sicily. Cities and territories between monumentalization and economy, crisis and development, it took stock of the results of archaeological research conducted on the island over the last twenty years 1. The results of that research have been remarkable: however, what emerges from the book which published the papers from the conference is a "Roman" Sicily that is considered in itself not just a part of the wider Roman world. On reflection, it seemed clear to us that we needed now to think in a broader context. Anyone following the debate on Romanization in recent years will have noted that North European (especially Anglo-Saxon and Dutch) contributors to the debate have adopted a different perspective from those of Central and Southern Europe. The first group turned their attention away from the city and the urban elites to the countryside, and to the material culture of the peasant and native social groups, developing a position that was defined as "anti-colonial" 2. A remarkable exception to this trend in northern Europe has been Greg Woolf, who sees "Romanization" as a cultural revolution 3. Other scholars (Italians and French, but also Germans) have continued to lay emphasis mainly on the role of local elites in the "Romanization" process, investigating the usefulness of interpretative categories such as "self-romanisation", in an attempt to overcome both the "colonial" and the "anti-colonial" viewpoints 4. This dichotomy of approach has become particularly marked in recent years 5. Observing that in any case both positions aim to explore the formation of cultural identities, Martin Pitts and Miguel John Versluys, among others, have proposed to explore cultural transformations not in the context of identities, but in the sense of a dialectic between local and global, of which material culture is an expression, using the theory of globalization and focusing on aspects of connectivity and interdependence within the Roman world, and the "entanglement" of people with their material culture 6. Of course, I as a landscape archaeologist cannot disagree with the claim that "artefacts are material presences, part of a spatial relation in (historical) time and (geographical) space" 7. The concept of globalization has indeed recently been considered helpful for interpreting other periods of the ancient world, such as the Hellenistic era and the cultures of the eastern Mediterranean in the late Bronze Age, without however convincing the majority of scholars as to the validity of this approach.
Objects instigate and get things going. Material culture, therefore, is as much catalyst and prot... more Objects instigate and get things going. Material culture, therefore, is as much catalyst and protagonist of cultural change as an expression of such processes. Taking this material agency perspective as its point of departure, this essay explores the role and function of Aegyptiaca in world history. Emanating from the Nile valley in northeast Africa originally, Aegyptiaca (i.e. objects that express stylistically and materially a distinctively ancient Egyptian-ness), soon became part of many different cultural contexts and networks through processes of globalization. In all those (new) contexts and networks Aegyptiaca had considerable agency, thus constituting and determining processes of cultural innovation. Combining a material agency perspective with the network perspective of globalization allows us to see how Aegyptiaca shaped and shape global history. Moreover, it brings to the fore the important question how to account for the power and agency of Aegyptiaca in a global and long-term perspective. Why is it that, from 2500 BCE onwards, Egypt and Aegyptiaca seem to spread like a virus and are to be found everywhere? What, in other words, is their fitness for survival or 'evolutionary strength' about?
M. Pitts, M.J. Versluys, Objectscapes. A manifesto for investigating the impacts of object flows ... more M. Pitts, M.J. Versluys, Objectscapes. A manifesto for investigating the impacts of object flows on past societies, Antiquity. A review of world archaeology 95 (Issue 380) (2021) 367-381.
Globalisation and the Roman world: World history, connectivity and material culture, 2015
Aegyptiaca-like Domitian's obelisk is now decorating Bernini's fountain on Piazza Navona or the E... more Aegyptiaca-like Domitian's obelisk is now decorating Bernini's fountain on Piazza Navona or the Egyptian lions flanking Michelangelo's stairs towards the Capitol figure prominently amidst Rome's cultural heritage. Motivations for the import, contextualization, and copying of these objects during the Imperial Roman period are as heavily debated as they are ill understood. Provenance determination plays an important role in these discussions in terms of a (supposed) dichotomy between Egyptian (real) versus egyptianising (copy) but has only been applied stylistically and never been tested analytically. A scientific characterization of the materials themselves is even lacking altogether, as is an investigation into the cultural and symbolic meaning of the materials used. This paper is a first attempt to address these important lacunae on the basis of an explorative study of a selected sample of Egyptian statues from Rome. The identification and provenance attribution of the materials used for these statues are often problematic due to their relatively finegrained nature and dark color. Therefore, a full nondestructive analysis of Egyptian statues in dark-colored rocks is presented in this study, with the stones evaluated by macroscopic examination and handheld X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis. The implemented methodology has allowed a distinction between greywacke and several varieties of granitoid rocks. In order to evaluate the potential for source attribution, a comparison was made between the results of our analyses and geochemical data for several granitoid rocks from Egypt. This has suggested Aswan as most likely source. The results presented here indicate that handheld XRF analysis can be used for the assessment of compositional variability in and potentially for the provenance of granitoid rocks, provided that a fine-grained area of the material can be measured on multiple locations, and if these values can be assessed on (in)consistencies with other published reference materials.
We are inclined to think that there must be something in common to all games, say, and that this ... more We are inclined to think that there must be something in common to all games, say, and that this common property is the justification for applying the general term "game" to the various games; whereas games form a family the members of which have family likenesses. Some of them have the same nose, others the same eyebrows and others again the same way of walking; and these likenesses overlap. 1
Hrsg.), Lost in Things. Fragen an die Welt des Materiellen. Tübinger Archäologische Taschenbücher... more Hrsg.), Lost in Things. Fragen an die Welt des Materiellen. Tübinger Archäologische Taschenbücher 12. Münster /New York: Waxmann 2015. 212 Seiten. ISBN 978-3-8309-3175-1.
Plundering and taking home precious objects from a defeated enemy was a widespread activity in th... more Plundering and taking home precious objects from a defeated enemy was a widespread activity in the Greek and Hellenistic-Roman world. In this volume literary critics, historians and archaeologists join forces in investigating this phenomenon in terms of appropriation and cultural change. In-depth interpretations of famous ancient spoliations, like that of the Greeks after Plataea or the Romans after the capture of Jerusalem, reveal a fascinating paradox: while the material record shows an eager incorporation of new objects, the texts display abhorrence of the negative effects they were thought to bring along. As this volume demonstrates, both reactions testify to the crucial innovative impact objects from abroad may have.
Canonisation is fundamental to the sustainability of cultures. This volume is meant as a (theoret... more Canonisation is fundamental to the sustainability of cultures. This volume is meant as a (theoretical) exploration of the process, taking Eurasian societies from roughly the first millennium BCE (Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian, Greek, Egyptian, Jewish and Roman) as case studies. It focuses on canonisation as a form of cultural formation, asking why and how canonisation works in this particular way and explaining the importance of the first millennium BCE for these question and vice versa. As a result of this focus, notions like anchoring, cultural memory, embedding and innovation play an important role throughout the book.
