‘Political space and the experience of citizenship in the city of Rome: architecture and interpellation’, in Urban Space and Urban History in the Roman World, ed. Miko Flohr, Routledge 2020: 19-38. (original) (raw)
Related papers
2022
The Athenian Agora in the Roman period has received sustained attention from archaeologists and historians of the Greek past alike. However, within this substantial body of research a number of problematic ideas and assumptions remain about the changes observable in the space during this period. Often, the Roman developments are linked with a ‘monumentalising’ of the Agora, whereby increasing architectural grandeur symbolises a decline in the space’s civic vitality (Shear 1981, 362; Walker 1997, 72). However, in recent years and with the growth of research paradigms such as acculturation, scholars have begun to recognise the broader significance of public spaces in creating understandings of social relations as the Greek cities become incorporated into the Roman Empire (Evangelidis, 2014; Dickenson, 2016). This work takes a longitudinal approach to studying the Agora to understand how social actors and groups shape it in response to new circumstances, and how in-turn they may act to challenge or reproduce these structures. This is accomplished through the implementation of the space syntax approach, a theoretical approach and methodology which provides analytical means to understanding the relevance of spatial configurations to social relations. The work will also serve as a test case for this approach, in order to generate new ways of accessing the responses of public space and provincial communities to incorporation into Empire.
Centrality in its Place: Defining Urban Space in the City of Rome
This paper is a look at the concept of centrality as developed in the work of spatial theorist Henri Lefebvre, with particular attention to his discussions of ancient Rome. It considers where Lefebvre might be a useful guide and, more importantly, where his theories conflict with ancient testimony.
Reading the Roman House: The Social Interpretation of Spatial Order
Theoretical Roman Archaeology Journal
Ifwe wish to study the Roman house, how should we go about it? If we were to follow the tradition within which most of the literature on Roman houses has been produced, our concerns would be "painstaking recording and analysis of the minutiae" (Ling 1993, 331). The persistent aim of such art historically driven research has been to create ever more refined chronologies and typologies of the architecture of the house itself (e.g. Richardson 1988) and of the decoration and objects found within it This has had the unfortunate effect of fragmenting the archaeological evidence, causing it to become divorced from both its physical and social contexts (Wallace-HadrilI1988, 48). More recently, however, some have voiced criticisms. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill (1988, 1994) has perhaps been the most notable. He has argued that the quality and quantity of decoration within the Roman house was closely linked to social standing. The nature of aristocratic competition and the role of patronage in Roman political relations re
A note from me, 2021: In the first few pages of this article I make an argument that the shift from women's history to gender history in the twenty years or so leading up to its publication risked leaving behind some important unfinished work on women's lives. I was mostly worried about what I saw as a trend in the late 1990s and early 2000s towards masculinity studies, which in the wrong hands meant using the terminology of gender studies to recentre men and masculinity: I got a sense in some venues that 'just' researching women was seen as passé. When I read this article now, I am horrified at how close my argument gets to the kind of rhetoric used in recent years by TERFs or 'gender-critical' writers to deny trans women's rights and position their existence as some kind of attack on cis women. I hadn't come across that rhetoric at the time; now that I have, I think that if I were reading the piece for the first time I would suspect that the author was making an anti-trans dogwhistle. And I worry that trans scholars and others who love and support them may have read it and been hurt, or felt less welcome in the research community. I believed then and believe now that trans women are women, and that all women's (all people's!) liberation is bound together. I am sorry. Abstract Feminist approaches to gendered space, including the second wave theories of the 70s (Ardener, Pateman), the Marxist-inflected geographies (Soja and Hooper) and urban theories of the 90s (Spain, Wilson), and more recent work (Puwar), often rest on assumptions situated in their own time and place which are not easy to apply to the ancient world. For example, some such models claim that gender stratification is often reinforced by spatial segregation, that women are not given access to places where power is exercised or knowledge is kept, and that ‘the greater the distance between women and sources of valued knowledge, the greater the gender stratification in the society’ (Spain, 27). In Republican Rome, sources of valued knowledge were spatially located in places like the elite house – seen at least in part as women’s domain – while the topography and archaeology of the political space of the Forum suggests an open and accessible multipurpose square which was not defined by architectural barriers and was available to all. Other contemporary theoretical work considers the relationship between the public/private divide and gender: in this model, while women are not physically confined to ‘private’ space or men to ‘public’ space, the public/private divide is a tool used to police gender. Women are conceptually tied to the private sphere, and when they are in public space they are either constrained and marked or smothered and denied. Our imperfect understanding of Roman concepts analogous to ‘public’ and ‘private’ make it hard to apply this model directly, but by heeding Soja and Hooper’s call to look not for ‘the difference that space makes’ but ‘the spaces that difference makes’, we can in fact turn the question on its head and use Roman gender policing to understand the public/private divide itself. By asking how women’s spatial experience may have been different from that of the (male) ideal user we usually envisage we can identify previously invisible categories and spatial boundaries. Many of Republican Rome’s civic buildings and monuments sent a clear message to that same ideal viewer: they testified to a patron’s glory, military success, and the unbroken tradition of Roman virtus – ‘manliness’ – stretching down the centuries. But what of those who could not vote for the patron or serve in the army, and were biologically incapable of ‘manliness’? In a world where the elite house was hardly less ‘public’ than the Forum and elite patrons used architectural style and decoration to construct the buildings they donated as civic benefactions almost as an extension of their own private property, we cannot unthinkingly rely on the unstated equivalences between the dichotomies public/private and masculine/feminine which characterize much work on gendered space in our own culture. Tracing the evidence from Cato’s disgust at the presence of women in the Forum in 215 BCE to the sculptural decoration of Pompey’s portico, I find evidence for a discourse which did use the public/private divide to police gender (and status), and both marked and erased the presence of women in public. Thinking about how these processes might have worked and how women experienced them can help us understand better how the house was and was not different from the basilica, or the forum from the portico: the spaces difference makes.
Traditionally, histories of Late Republican Roman architecture have focused on matters of design and typology. In such accounts, dominated by an emphasis on the diffusion of architectural styles and processes of acculturation (such as 'Hellenisation'), resources are mainly identifi ed with building materials. By contrast, it is the aim of this paper to signifi cantly widen the defi nition of ' resources' by looking at knowledge created through the process of construction. The study conceptualises the construction site as a horizontal network of social relations, whilst at the same time acknowledging the crucial role played by individual agents and particular materials. Ultimately, this leads to the distinction between two different types of knowledge which served as invaluable resources in Late Republican architectural practice: on the one hand, the 'vernacular knowledge' of commissioners, users, and viewers of Late Republican buildings; and, on the other hand, the 'expert knowledge' of architects, builders, and craftsmen active in the building industry. Both types of knowledge, far from being neutral, come with particular power relations which play out before, during, and after the process of construction. Through the discussion of a particular building technique (opus incertum and opus reticulatum), the paper demonstrates how this new concept changes our understanding of Late Republican architecture and its role within the wider socioeconomic and political canvas of the 1 st cent. BC.
Architecture, Performance and Ritual: the Role of State Architecture in the Roman Empire
IN: Baker, P., Forcey, C., Jundi, S., and Witcher, R. (eds) 1999. TRAC 98: Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, Leicester 1998. Oxford: Oxbow Books., 1999
All empires need to consolidate their dominions, colonies or provinces and all therefore face similar problems of coercion, control and communication. This paper examines how Rome' s 'superior' role was manifested in local communities In order to tie them to the centre of the empire. Road building, architecture and art are considered more than just a practical necessity or a physical expression of 'imperialism'. They play an often pivotal role in 'materialising' imperial ideologies, and coercion, as the most visible means through which to present the Roman state, a social construction, physically throughout the empire. Moreover, imperial architecture, or political architecture, as we shall see, provides the setting for rituals, and especially rituals related to Rome. The scale and elaboration of monumental architecture, which exceeds any functional requirements, is intended to impress subjects by dispJaying the power of the centre. The 'centre'-that is the princeps, the senate, and Roman magistrates - actively promote this type of architecture, most apparently at places such as Athens or Lugdunum which were of major concern to the Roman emperors. All this underlines that urbanism, as promoted in the first century Bc/ AD was considered essential for the integration process. Imperial ideologies and hierarchy aimed at undermining local authority. This is characteristic for any 'new' state, because the ties with the centre need to be increased, automatically disturbing existing social geographies. With the emergence of the Principate, urbanisation, imperial ideologies and state/political architecture are promoted on an unprecedented scale. Throughout history, in periods of significant socio-cultural change the new social order has to be publicised, maintained and consolidated. This phase of intensive promotion is most visible in architectural terms. In regard to Augustus, this is not to deny that many developments and architectural forms had Republican predecessors, but the political will reflects an autocratic regime that wanted to indoctrinate its power all over the empire. Architecture is a tool that enabled the new regime to create a physical presence of the Roman State, while creating the stage for legitimating rituals. One can only speculate on the overwhelming effect of Roman architecture, especiaJly in the Roman West where monumental architecture of this scale was previously unknown - there, Roman architecture must have been considered intimidating and mirroring Rome's claim to eternal rule. But because Roman architecture had practical purposes, which intruded everyday life, as well as representing Rome, it was essential as a means to legitimise Roman rule.