This latest volume in the TRAC Themes in Theoretical Roman Archaeology series takes up posthuman theoretical perspectives to interpret Roman material culture. These perspectives provide novel and compelling ways of grappling with theoretical problems in Roman archaeology producing new knowledge and questions about the complex relationships and interactions between humans and non-humans in Roman culture and society. Posthumanism constitutes a multitude of theoretical positions characterised by common critiques of anthropocentrism and human exceptionalism. In part, they react to the dominance of the linguistic turn in humanistic sciences. These positions do not exclude “the human”, but instead stress the mutual relationship between matter and discourse. Moreover, they consider the agency of “non-humans”, e.g., animals, material culture, landscapes, climate, and ideas, their entanglement with humans, and the situated nature of research. Posthumanism has had substantial impacts in several fields (including critical studies, archaeology, feminist studies, even politics) but have not yet emerged in any fulsome way in Classical Studies and Classical Archaeology. This is the first volume on these themes in Roman Archaeology, aimed at providing valuable perspectives into Roman myth, art and material culture, displacing and complicating notions of human exceptionalism and individualist subjectivity. Contributions consider non-human agencies, particularly animal, material, environmental, and divine agencies, critiques of binary oppositions and gender roles, and the Anthropocene. Ultimately, the papers stress that humans and non-humans are entangled and imbricated in larger systems: we are all post-human.

This first thematic volume of the new series TRAC Themes in Roman Archaeology brings renowned international experts to discuss different aspects of interactions between Romans and ‘barbarians’ in the north-western regions of Europe. Northern Europe has become an interesting arena of academic debate around the topics of Roman imperialism and Roman:‘barbarian’ interactions, as these areas comprised Roman provincial territories, the northern frontier system of the Roman Empire (limes), the vorlimes (or buffer zone), and the distant barbaricum. This area is, today, host to several modern European nations with very different historical and academic discourses on their Roman past, a factor in the recent tendency towards the fragmentation of approaches and the application of post-colonial theories that have favoured the advent of a varied range of theoretical alternatives. Case studies presented here span across disciplines and territories, from American anthropological studies on transcultural discourse and provincial organization in Gaul, to historical approaches to the propagandistic use of the limes in the early 20th century German empire; from Danish research on warrior identities and Roman-Scandinavian relations, to innovative ideas on culture contact in Roman Ireland; and from new views on Romano-Germanic relations in Central European Barbaricum, to a British comparative exercise on frontier cultures. The volume is framed by a brilliant theoretical introduction by Prof. Richard Hingley and a comprehensive concluding discussion by Prof. David Mattingly.

Contributions by leading archaeologists and historians pay tribute to Paul Bidwell, admired for his ground-breaking work both in the south-west and the military north of Roman Britain. This collection will be essential reading for anyone with an interest in either the civil or military aspects of Roman Britain, or the frontiers of the Roman empire.

Exile and displacement are central topics in classical literature. Previous research has been mostly biographical and has focused on the three most prominent exiles: Cicero, Ovid, and Seneca. By shifting focus to a discourse of exile and displacement in early Greek poetry, Greek historiography, Cynicism, consolatory literature, Latin epic, Greek literature of the empire, and Medieval Latin literature, the present volume questions the notion of a distinct, psychologically conditioned ‘genre’ or ‘mode’ of exile literature. It shows how ancient and medieval authors perceive and present their exile according to pre-existent literary paradigms, style themselves or others as ‘typical’ exiles, and employ ‘exile’ as a powerful trope to express estrangement, elicit readerly sympathy, and question political power structures.

What do the mysterious Roman author Vegetius, the Byzantine emperor Leo VI, and the Chinese general Li Jing all have in common? They are three of the dozens of authors across the medieval Mediterranean world and beyond who wrote works of military literature, sometimes called military handbooks, manuals, or treatises. This book brings together a multidisciplinary international team of scholars who present cutting edge essays on diverse aspects of medieval military literature. While some chapters offer novel approaches to familiar authors like Vegetius, some present research on under-valued topics like Byzantine military illustrations, and others provide holistic studies on subjects like early modern treatises, they all move the discussion of medieval military literature forward. Contributors are Michael B. Charles, Georgios Chatzelis, Pierre Cosme, Maxime Emion, Immacolata Eramo, Michael Fulton, David Graff, John Haldon, Catherine Hof, John Hosler, Savvas Kyriakidis, Łukasz Różycki, Katharina Schoneveld, Georgios Theotokis, Conor Whately, Michael Whitby, and Nadya Williams.

Rome and the Worlds Beyond Its Frontiers examines interactions between those within and those beyond the boundaries of Rome, with an eye to the question of contested identities and identity formations.

How were space and movement in Roman cities affected by economic life? What can the study of Roman urban landscapes tell us about the nature of the Roman economy? These are the central questions addressed in this volume. While there exist many studies of Roman urban space and of the Roman economy, rarely have the two topics been investigated together in a sustained fashion. In this volume, an international team of archaeologists and historians focuses explicitly on the economics of space and mobility in Roman Imperial cities, in both Italy and the provinces, east and west. Employing many kinds of material and written evidence and a wide range of methodologies, the contributors cast new light both on well-known and on less-explored sites. With their direct focus on the everyday economic uses of urban spaces and the movements through them, the contributors offer a fresh and innovative perspective on the workings of Roman urban economies and on the debates concerning space in the Roman world. This volume will be of interest to archaeologists and historians, both those studying the Greco-Roman world and those focusing on urban economic space in other periods and places as well as to other scholars studying premodern urbanism and urban economies.

Christian Origins and the Establishment of the Early Jesus Movement explores the events, people, and writings surrounding the founding of the early Jesus movement in the mid to late first century. The essays are divided into four parts, focused upon the movement’s formation, the production of its early Gospels, description of the Jesus movement itself, and the Jewish mission and its literature. This collection of essays includes chapters by a global cast of scholars from a variety of methodological and critical viewpoints, and continues the important Early Christianity in its Hellenistic Context series.

Beyond the Battlefields explores the relationship between warfare and society in the Graeco-Roman world through the various lenses of history, art, literature and archaeology. The study of ancient warfare often evokes images of crusty old scholars pouring over battle tactics and strategy. This book, a collection of thirteen essays by young scholars, examines the political, social, economic and artistic affects of war in ancient society in Greece and Rome, from Homeric times to the sixth century AD. Essays focus on a wide range of topics from espionage and ancient spin doctors to fantasies of peace in the Iliad and triumphal plants. Each article in this book presents the next scholarly generation’s new and dynamic approach to ancient warfare and seeks to demonstrate how much there is still to learn and understand about ancient society and warfare if we venture beyond the battlefields. “This volume represents a new wave of interest in warfare as a far more than merely military phenomenon.” Professors Brian Campbell and Hans Van Wees, excerpt from the Introduction.

Averil Cameron is one of the leading historians of late antiquity and Byzantium. This collection (Cameron’s third in the Variorum series) discusses the changing approach among historians of the later Roman empire from the 1960s to the present and the articles reproduced have been chosen to reflect both these wider changes in treatments of the subject as well as Cameron’s own development as a historian over many decades. It provides a revealing and important survey of some profound historiographical changes. Her volume contains fundamental papers and reviews that tell a story in which she has played a leading part. They move from her early days as an ancient historian to her important contribution in the establishment of the field of late antiquity and point to her later work as a Byzantinist, a trajectory rivalled by few other scholars. The book will be important for scholars and students of the later Roman empire and late antiquity, and for anyone interested in the inheritance of Edward Gibbon, the perennial questions about the end of the Roman empire and its supposed decline, or the emergence of Islam in the early seventh century and its relation to the late antique world. (CS 1113).