Year: 2015
Type: article
Abstract: Summary Debates on the nature of theRoman city and its relation to the countryside have recently moved towards questioning the validity of the very category of ‘the city’, both analytically and in terms of past reality. While archaeology has long been mobilized within these debates, this paper argues for the unexplored potential of a range of specialist pockets of qualitative knowledge about specific artefact classes.Terra sigillata, the red‐gloss imperial tableware, is a case in point. By adopting a bird's eye view of sigillata production, distribution and consumption across a geographical and chronological range, this paper develops a new metaphor for the role ofRoman cities: as switching devices in the building of networks. By describing the role of cities in structural rather than categorical terms, this metaphor allows for contingency and for the integration of different analytical and interpretive scales.
Source: Oxford Journal of Archaeology
DOI: 10.1111/ojoa.12059
Author: Astrid Van Oyen
Language: English
Subfield: Archeology
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,840
Award: G2546390839
OpenAlex ID: W1535696273