Katharine P.D. Huemoeller | University of British Columbia (original) (raw)
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Papers by Katharine P.D. Huemoeller
Freed Persons in the Roman World: Status, Diversity, and Representation, 2024
On a well-known epitaph from first-century CE Rome, one man commemorates another as his “fellow f... more On a well-known epitaph from first-century CE Rome, one man commemorates another as his “fellow freedman and, at the same time, dearest companion” (conlibertus idem consors carissimus) (CIL 6, 22355a). The phrase reveals that the men are connected in two ways: by their involuntary legal subjection to the same patron and by their mutual camaraderie. It is the relationship between these two ties, expressed by the Latin idem, that I investigate in this chapter. Over 100 epitaphs employ a form of idem to communicate two distinct but simultaneous bonds, the majority of which were formed through the processes of enslavement and liberation. Employing this corpus of inscriptions, I explore the entanglement of interpersonal ties experienced by freed persons in Roman households. I show that the word libertus/a (freed person), which we often read as a marker of status, is employed on these epitaphs as a relational term, interchangeable and sometimes overlapping with interpersonal ties generated by very different social and legal phenomena, including affection, birth, marriage, and testation.
Spoils in the Roman Republic: Boon and Bane, 2023
Slavery and Sexuality in Classical Antiquity, 2021
FOLD&R Fasti On Line Documents & Research, 487, 2020
In its fifth season, the American Excavations at Morgantina: Contrada Agnese Project (CAP) contin... more In its fifth season, the American Excavations at Morgantina: Contrada Agnese Project (CAP) continued archaeological investigations inside the Southeast Building, a modestly-appointed house of Hellenistic date located near the western edge of the city. The 2016 CAP season had revealed the full extent of the property’s boundary walls and allowed us to propose a cohesive phasing scheme for the building’s construction, occupation, and abandonment. We suggested that the house was occupied for approximately 60-75 years, beginning in the second quarter of the third century BCE. The 2017 CAP excavations resolved a number of remaining questions, particularly those concerning the phasing of the boundary walls, the layout of interior spaces in the southern and eastern parts of the building, and the nature of domestic activities at different stages of the house’s occupation. This report describes the results of these excavations and proposes a new account of the building’s early development. The discovery of two large rotary millstones within the building raises the possibility that the occupants of the house may have specialized in the milling of grains and prompts us to rename the building, “the House of the Two Mills”.
Fasti On Line Documents & Research 487, 2020
In its fifth season, the American Excavations at Morgantina: Contrada Agnese Project (CAP) contin... more In its fifth season, the American Excavations at Morgantina: Contrada Agnese Project (CAP) continued archaeological investigations inside the Southeast Building, a modestly-appointed house of Hellenistic date located near the western edge of the city. The 2017 CAP excavations resolved a number of remaining questions, particularly those concerning the phasing of the boundary walls, the layout of interior spaces in the southern and eastern parts of the building, and the nature of domestic activities at different stages of the house's occupation. This report describes the results of these excavations and proposes a new account of the building's early development. The discovery of two large rotary millstones within the building raises the possibility that the occupants of the house may have specialized in the milling of grains and prompts us to rename the building, "the House of the Two Mills".
TAPA, 2021
Thousands of people were trafficked around the Mediterranean as a result of Roman conquest. This ... more Thousands of people were trafficked around the Mediterranean as a result of Roman conquest. This article seeks to understand who these people were by examining how an individual's standing in their community determined their experience of military defeat. I argue that socio-legal status was key: enslaved people, as opposed to those of free and especially citizen status, were particularly likely to be seized as captives in the first place, trafficked into slavery as a result of capture, and held in bondage in a new political context. Roman conquest, far from leveling hierarchies in defeated communities, often reproduced existing inequalities.
Journal of Roman Studies, 2020
This article examines marriage as a pathway to free status for enslaved women in the early imperi... more This article examines marriage as a pathway to free status for enslaved women in the early imperial Roman world, arguing that women manumitted for marriage to their former owners experienced a qualified form of freedom. Analysis of a funerary altar from early imperial Rome alongside larger bodies of legal and epigraphic evidence shows that in this transactional mode of manumission, enslaved women paid for their freedom by foregoing certain privileges, including, to varying degrees, the ability to enter and exit the marriage at will and the separation of their property from that of their husbands. Through a close examination of one mode of manumission and the unequal unions that resulted from it, this paper offers further evidence that freedom was not uniform, but varied in its meaning depending on who achieved it and by what means. For PDF: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-roman-studies/article/freedom-in-marriage-manumission-for-marriage-in-the-roman-world/0F2D7704771AE8A578CA590FFF67F5D1/share/dcca2b07c5156e2eb60a8599bd4f3e7afffb48f9
Teaching Documents by Katharine P.D. Huemoeller
Syllabus for graduate seminar offered Spring 2023, Department of Ancient Mediterranean and Near E... more Syllabus for graduate seminar offered Spring 2023, Department of Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies, University of British Columbia
Slavery, broadly defined, was practiced across the ancient Mediterranean. In this graduate semina... more Slavery, broadly defined, was practiced across the ancient Mediterranean. In this graduate seminar we will compare the diverse forms it takes in different Mediterranean contexts, as well as the ways in which slaving as a social, economic, and legal phenomenon connected the region. Each student will be responsible for one particular iteration of slavery according to their research interests so that all leave with both a broad, cross-cultural understanding of ancient Mediterranean slavery and more narrow expertise in one particular time/place/source material. Given the framework of the seminar, we will also explore the challenges (and rewards!) of comparative methodologies.
Freed Persons in the Roman World: Status, Diversity, and Representation, 2024
On a well-known epitaph from first-century CE Rome, one man commemorates another as his “fellow f... more On a well-known epitaph from first-century CE Rome, one man commemorates another as his “fellow freedman and, at the same time, dearest companion” (conlibertus idem consors carissimus) (CIL 6, 22355a). The phrase reveals that the men are connected in two ways: by their involuntary legal subjection to the same patron and by their mutual camaraderie. It is the relationship between these two ties, expressed by the Latin idem, that I investigate in this chapter. Over 100 epitaphs employ a form of idem to communicate two distinct but simultaneous bonds, the majority of which were formed through the processes of enslavement and liberation. Employing this corpus of inscriptions, I explore the entanglement of interpersonal ties experienced by freed persons in Roman households. I show that the word libertus/a (freed person), which we often read as a marker of status, is employed on these epitaphs as a relational term, interchangeable and sometimes overlapping with interpersonal ties generated by very different social and legal phenomena, including affection, birth, marriage, and testation.
Spoils in the Roman Republic: Boon and Bane, 2023
Slavery and Sexuality in Classical Antiquity, 2021
FOLD&R Fasti On Line Documents & Research, 487, 2020
In its fifth season, the American Excavations at Morgantina: Contrada Agnese Project (CAP) contin... more In its fifth season, the American Excavations at Morgantina: Contrada Agnese Project (CAP) continued archaeological investigations inside the Southeast Building, a modestly-appointed house of Hellenistic date located near the western edge of the city. The 2016 CAP season had revealed the full extent of the property’s boundary walls and allowed us to propose a cohesive phasing scheme for the building’s construction, occupation, and abandonment. We suggested that the house was occupied for approximately 60-75 years, beginning in the second quarter of the third century BCE. The 2017 CAP excavations resolved a number of remaining questions, particularly those concerning the phasing of the boundary walls, the layout of interior spaces in the southern and eastern parts of the building, and the nature of domestic activities at different stages of the house’s occupation. This report describes the results of these excavations and proposes a new account of the building’s early development. The discovery of two large rotary millstones within the building raises the possibility that the occupants of the house may have specialized in the milling of grains and prompts us to rename the building, “the House of the Two Mills”.
Fasti On Line Documents & Research 487, 2020
In its fifth season, the American Excavations at Morgantina: Contrada Agnese Project (CAP) contin... more In its fifth season, the American Excavations at Morgantina: Contrada Agnese Project (CAP) continued archaeological investigations inside the Southeast Building, a modestly-appointed house of Hellenistic date located near the western edge of the city. The 2017 CAP excavations resolved a number of remaining questions, particularly those concerning the phasing of the boundary walls, the layout of interior spaces in the southern and eastern parts of the building, and the nature of domestic activities at different stages of the house's occupation. This report describes the results of these excavations and proposes a new account of the building's early development. The discovery of two large rotary millstones within the building raises the possibility that the occupants of the house may have specialized in the milling of grains and prompts us to rename the building, "the House of the Two Mills".
TAPA, 2021
Thousands of people were trafficked around the Mediterranean as a result of Roman conquest. This ... more Thousands of people were trafficked around the Mediterranean as a result of Roman conquest. This article seeks to understand who these people were by examining how an individual's standing in their community determined their experience of military defeat. I argue that socio-legal status was key: enslaved people, as opposed to those of free and especially citizen status, were particularly likely to be seized as captives in the first place, trafficked into slavery as a result of capture, and held in bondage in a new political context. Roman conquest, far from leveling hierarchies in defeated communities, often reproduced existing inequalities.
Journal of Roman Studies, 2020
This article examines marriage as a pathway to free status for enslaved women in the early imperi... more This article examines marriage as a pathway to free status for enslaved women in the early imperial Roman world, arguing that women manumitted for marriage to their former owners experienced a qualified form of freedom. Analysis of a funerary altar from early imperial Rome alongside larger bodies of legal and epigraphic evidence shows that in this transactional mode of manumission, enslaved women paid for their freedom by foregoing certain privileges, including, to varying degrees, the ability to enter and exit the marriage at will and the separation of their property from that of their husbands. Through a close examination of one mode of manumission and the unequal unions that resulted from it, this paper offers further evidence that freedom was not uniform, but varied in its meaning depending on who achieved it and by what means. For PDF: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-roman-studies/article/freedom-in-marriage-manumission-for-marriage-in-the-roman-world/0F2D7704771AE8A578CA590FFF67F5D1/share/dcca2b07c5156e2eb60a8599bd4f3e7afffb48f9
Syllabus for graduate seminar offered Spring 2023, Department of Ancient Mediterranean and Near E... more Syllabus for graduate seminar offered Spring 2023, Department of Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies, University of British Columbia
Slavery, broadly defined, was practiced across the ancient Mediterranean. In this graduate semina... more Slavery, broadly defined, was practiced across the ancient Mediterranean. In this graduate seminar we will compare the diverse forms it takes in different Mediterranean contexts, as well as the ways in which slaving as a social, economic, and legal phenomenon connected the region. Each student will be responsible for one particular iteration of slavery according to their research interests so that all leave with both a broad, cross-cultural understanding of ancient Mediterranean slavery and more narrow expertise in one particular time/place/source material. Given the framework of the seminar, we will also explore the challenges (and rewards!) of comparative methodologies.