Negotiating Romanization in Gaul Coercion, Adaptation, and Cultural Hybridity

An examination of the ethnography of Gauls, Celts and Germans and their lands in Caesar's Gallic Wars, with some comparisons to the traditional or stereotypical ideas of these peoples.

In A. Lichtenberger and R. Raja (eds) The Diversity of Classical Archaeology (Studies in Classical Archaeology 1), Turnhout: Brepols., 2017

This paper argues that the historical issue at the roots of the Romanization debate revolves around a particular patterning of material culture. In the Western Roman provinces — in relation to which the Romanization debate has developed, material culture became more abundant and more diversified across functional categories, yet overall more homogeneous between the late Iron Age and the early Roman periods. Prior to investigating the process by which the provinces and their inhabitants ‘became Roman’, Romanization tackles an empirical question: what was the effect of the changes in material culture observed across the Western Roman provinces? This question still stands after several episodes of theoretical debate on what it would have meant to ‘become Roman’.

2013

NW Italy (500 - 1 BCE) provides an interesting case scenario to explore methodological problems regarding issues of identity and ethnicity. In an area with many long-distance contacts across the Apennines, Alps, and along the Po Valley, the question arises how the various forms of cultural interaction were shaping people’s sense of identity. One major concern is, of course, the nature of our evidence. To what extent do pottery types, imported luxury products, funerary rituals, coinage, writing, language, and religion really inform us about issues of ethnicity? Artefact assemblages, for example, seem to change constantly and significant changes that indicate new developments regarding self-identity need to be identified. The second problem concerns the role of external factors in this process. What impact did the Celtic ‘invasion’ – allegedly in 396 or 388 BC – and subsequent Roman domination really have on people’s identity? Another issue concerns the development and nature of these identities: was there ever anything like a ‘Ligurian’ or ‘Celtic’ identity in Cisalpine Gaul? In this context, the term ‘Celtic’ is a convenient shorthand to describe people who wrote and spoke a Celtic language and used artefacts and practices of Transalpine origin. We also have to explore the heterogeneous and geographically diverse character of local ethnicities and the way how these identities evolved when "ethne" became Roman-style municipalities Otherness, state formation and ethnogenesis - How did these constantly re-negotiated local identities develop in an increasingly pan-Italian world? With increasing interaction across Italy we would perhaps expect to find a more ‘global’ Italo-Hellenic identity in the post-conquest period. Instead our evidence suggests a much stronger local identity, especially aspects that reflect a certain ‘Celticity’ in writing, coinage, and material culture, as well as the continuous use of rituals and artefacts that go back to the early Iron Age period. Roman presence per se did not result in people ‘imitating’ or ‘emulating’ the conqueror’s culture, but their integration in Roman political and military structures and their involvement beyond their local sphere of influence seems to create the wish to demarcate themselves by a stronger identity.

Celto - Gallo - Roman, 2018

Romanisation has been studied on various levels from the material culture to the different social, economic or religious aspects. The main questions were how and in what way the Roman culture penetrated the everyday life in the provinces, i.e. from the local point of view. But how did Rome or its rulers perceive the progress of Romanisation? How can this be traced and what kind of a picture – realistic or idealistic – does this reveal to us? There are some special representations, the personifications of provinces that reflect exactly this.

The study of pre-Roman Provencal peoples has not been subject to re-examination in the recent syntheses concerning south-east Gaul. By associating a critical historical approach with the philological and archaeological data, the authors seek to show that the Celts, Galatae and Ligurians of this region were the product of contingent historical, social, political and economic processes, in which Greek merchants and colonists, and among others Sicilian Greeks, played a determinant role.

2017

Following in the footsteps of Karl Schmidt's 1967 article, Keltisches Wortgut im Lateinischen, and J.P. Wild's 1970, Borrowed Names for Borrowed Things?, this thesis examines a total of twenty-one Gallic lexical items that were borrowed by the Latin language during the period of Roman hegemony over the whole of Gaul and, from that point, discusses whether the borrowing of these terms is proof of corresponding instances of cultural diffusion. In an effort to examine lexical and cultural integration in tandem, this study has selected terms from three semantic categories of material culture, specifically 'food and drink', 'clothing', and 'wheeled vehicles', and uses contextual evidence from the literary record to gauge the integration levels of the terms within both the Latin language and Roman culture. As a result, this thesis not only reveals much valuable information pertaining to both lexical and cultural integration, but also the effect which factors like perceived social status and the search of prestige had on the entire process. Furthermore, as a form of linguistic archaeology, this study succeeds in reconstructing certain aspects of Celtic culture which may have otherwise been lost to the passage of time.

The concept of Romanisation can only be considered useful if it can be qualified and analysed at different levels in order to compare the acculturation rates, frequency and form of the phenomenon among the regions concerned. But before an overview of Romanisation can be considered, its multiple aspects must be examined in a specific manner. The need to ‘break down in order to understand’ has lead to the development of specialised studies and themes on a regional scale. Among the French speaking areas, it is only recently that research concerning Gaulish and Roman periods has risked expanding the scope to a supra regional scale. Against this background, the purpose of my doctoral thesis is to examine the qualitative and quantitative aspects of acculturation among Gaulish fine wares (200 BCE – 50 CE). Based on a corpus of 130 assemblages from 21 urban sites from the western centre of France, Auvergne, to the Swiss plateau and Luxembourg, the study is characterised by new methodological techniques. The analysis of the rhythm and intensity of a phenomenon like acculturation of fine wares on a widespread geographic and chronological scale required the development of a comprehensive quantification method, here described as the Romanisation index. Developed from several earlier systems, the index calculation is based on the attribution of a value for the categories of pottery techniques, the types of wares (which in this system are linked to the form) and in function of their cultural group. The final result is presented in the form of a numeric value between 0 (absolutely no sign of Romanisation) and 100 (completely Romanised) that permits comparisons between the different levels obtained as well as making obvious spatial or diachronic phenomena. For example, the Romanisation index value for the assemblages studied at the site of Bibracte (Eastern central France) is 21 at the end of the second century BCE, while the value for the assemblages of Orleans (Western central France) falls between 3 and 6, but index values for both sites reach 50 by the end of the first century BCE. It is necessary to point out that this number is a relative and not absolute value. It constitutes the manner for permitting the comparison, integration and analysis of the data within a broad chronological and geographic scale, and does not allow a finer analysis than these parameters. In order to better understand the potential of this quantification method, some selected examples of the results are presented here. These show the diachronic evolution of the index values for three of the territories studied (Arvernians, Eduans and Helvetians) and the comparisons of the results between the before and after Conquest periods through the use of maps. If the Romanisation index allows a rapid and synergetic realisation of quantitative comparisons of acculturation between pottery assemblages, it is also necessary to examine the qualitative aspects of the phenomenon, in order to understand the transmission methods (commerce, imitations, travelling potters). These analyses, here termed as ‘modalities’, are frequently limited to proportional comparisons (importations, forms, etc.). While retaining this analysis method, in which its usefulness has been shown most effective when only two or three variables are taken into account, here we have opted for a method based on a computerized graphic system that appears to offer new perspectives on the obvious forms of acculturation, particularly for immense range of material in the corpus. The evolution of the forms’ categories has been studied through seriation and factor analysis. Both statistical methods used here show in two different ways similar phenomena with one part showing a ‘perfect’ chronological seriation showing a succession from the La Tène forms to the Mediterranean and a second part showing the partition between the periods LT D1/LT D2a and the Augustan and Tiberio-Claudian periods, indicating an important cultural transition during LT D2b, since the immediate post Conquest period. The advantage of using statistical methods, and particularly seriation graphs, clearly shows the evidence of from which moment the forms are chronologically characteristic, and the inverse; at which moment their presence becomes asynchronous for each period. This allows an immediate resolution of problems linked to the material’s life time usage, redeposit and residual presence within the assemblages, all of which a simple comparison of proportional relations between forms could not have distinguished. The final stage of the analysis of the phenomenon of Romanisation consisted of gathering the aggregate data in quantitative and qualitative ‘levels’ (modalities). Based on cluster analysis and the Romanisation index values, these levels were transformed into a model by associating the observed results with a historical interpretation. The cluster analysis revealed three principal categories, among which sub-categories could be established. These categories are associated with the Romanisation indexes (see above) that constitute the acculturation levels. Three levels could be established (A, B, C, from less to more Romanised), and these were further divided into two sub-levels (A1, A2, etc.). It goes without saying, that these levels, established from the data of the corpus, could well be brought to a more advanced state through the introduction of new data. After the levels were defined, an attempt at constructing a hypothetical model for the phenomena of acculturation was formulated in order to produce an analysis of the general history of the phenomenon. The totality of the assemblages are presented in classification tables that permit a concise presentation of the data in order to preserve groups of index values that reflect the corresponding proportions of each analytic criteria for each level. These elements will be the object of further commentary, with the intention of precisely qualifying each of the Romanisation levels and with special attention to the explanation of the principal factors. By establishing a definition of ‘levels’, new possibilities for comparisons are opened in other acculturation subjects, such as the cooking wares, small finds, numismatics or architecture, and by utilising the criteria specific to each of these domains to establish the basic modalities.

Une vision critique de l'apport possible de l'archéologie à la question de l'identité et de l'ethnicité des populations barbares établies en Gaule à partir de la fin de l'époque romaine.

TRAC97: Proceedings of the 7th annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, Nottingham 1997, ed. by C. Forcey, J. Haythorne, R. Witcher, 1998

Incorporation into the Roman Empire caused a variety of socio-economic pressures, such as demographic change, large-scale dispossessions, the loss of authority, tribute/taxation, and many more. This must have caused disruptions to existing social hierarchies and economic systems - disruptions which needed to be resolved by processes of adaptation. In North Italy (Cisalpine Gaul) we can identify several means by which the existing elites aimed to maintain their control in the local and regional context. In the second century BCE. this was still possible within pre-existing patterns. In the first century BC, the local population became increasingly involved in Rome's internal conflicts with the result that local individuals challenged existing elite symbols of power, leading to a comparatively rapid period of change. We see the emergence of new social strata in Cisalpine Gaul (e.g., craftsmen, traders, freedmen, collegia, etc.) that developed their own identity within the urban landscape. As a result, we can identify the emergence of a certain "global culture" in the Roman world that was activey supported by the centre (e.g., colonial, imperial discourses). The concept of modern globalisation does not mean the homogenisation of culture, but it involves (in the words of R. Robertson, Globalization Theory, 1987) "the development of something like a global culture, not as normatively binding but in the sense of a general mode of discourse about the world and its variety". Romanization - if understood as a specific post-Republican discourse - has become necessary to maintain the empire. It is a means to spread an ideology of prosperity and pax Romana, which was internalised by local elites and sub-elite people and motivated their widespread allegiance within the Empire. Romanization and Roman imperialism have therefore become mutually conditional, and the spread of Roman culture cannot be expected to be an arbitrary or accidental movement in the post-Republican period. This is a paper I gave in 1997 at the RAC/TRAC in Nottingham. For detailed and updated study: see Ralph Haeussler, Becoming Roman? Diverging Identities and Experiences in Ancient NW Italy. Abingdon, Routledge, 2013.

How the Roman Army spread Roman Culture, 2019

This paper explores the numerous roles the army played during both the Republic and the Empire in serving as a bastion of Roman culture, both through the establishment of Coloniae Veteranorum and through through the intricate pattern of social networks that developed between legionaries and provincials.