- Viale J. F. Kennedy 112, 81031 Aversa (CE). Italy
- Roman Lamps, Parthian Kingdoms, Parthian Pottery, Romanization, Lychnology, Ancient Roman economy, trade and commerce, and 28 moreArcheologia della produzione e del commercio, Iraq, History and Archaeology of Asia Minor, Italian Sigillata - Roman Pottery - Arretine decorated ware, Ancient Technology (Archaeology), Roman Near East, Late Antiquity, Dura Europos, History, Anthropology, Communication, Archaeology, Art History, Humanities, Ancient History, Classics, Digital Humanities, Roman History, Classical Archaeology, Anthropology of Religion, Hellenistic Roman and Byzantine Archaeology in the Land of Israel, Acculturation and 'Romanisation', Roman Frontiers (Archaeology), Archaeology of Identity, Material Culture Studies, Roman Archaeology, Roman games, and Postcolonial Archaeologyedit
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The archaeological cultures are considered true entities, “true” meanings that they were with all probability perceived as entities. Nowadays we are inundated with new literature on ethnicity and cultural identity in Antiquity. Some... more
The archaeological cultures are considered true entities, “true” meanings that they were with all probability perceived as entities.
Nowadays we are inundated with new literature on ethnicity and cultural identity in Antiquity. Some questions arise: What did it mean to be Roman in the provinces of the Roman world? What really was the phenomenon known under the name of "romanization"? Can we talk about "racism" in roman times?
Nowadays we are inundated with new literature on ethnicity and cultural identity in Antiquity. Some questions arise: What did it mean to be Roman in the provinces of the Roman world? What really was the phenomenon known under the name of "romanization"? Can we talk about "racism" in roman times?
Research Interests:
There is currently a developing interest in such historical phenomena as poverty, exclusion and crime. In the fields of social history and the history of thought, robbers and bandits are fascinating objects of study and attention. A study... more
There is currently a developing interest in such historical phenomena as poverty, exclusion and crime. In the fields of social history and the history of thought, robbers and bandits are fascinating objects of study and attention.
A study which pioneered the way for much recent work into bandits in history was Eric Hobsbawm’s (1969) Bandits, on robber bands of the modern period.
This dealt not with common criminals, but with bandits from agrarian societies with socio-political motivations. Their violence was interpreted as a form of individual or minority protest against the instigators of social need.
Hobsbawm claimed that his model of the social bandit was valid for all pre-industrial peasant societies, thus elevating the social bandit to the rank of an anthropological constant.
The purpose of this dissertation is to understand if this model is valid for Judaean bandits. They were not social bandits but rival contenders for political power branded as ‘bandits’ and described as such by a reporter – Flavius Josephus – who was a witness and a protagonist of events occurred in Judaea during the first century CE.
Josephus deployed the term ‘bandit’ entirely pejoratively and described the rival politicians to whom he applied it using the same conventional clichés as used by Roman writers. He acted from the standpoint of a Jewish aristocrat and rebel leader, who sought to manage the turmoil created by problems within his society and by its subsequent setting of itself on a collision course with Rome. But he then went over to Rome and so had to defend his actions.
A study which pioneered the way for much recent work into bandits in history was Eric Hobsbawm’s (1969) Bandits, on robber bands of the modern period.
This dealt not with common criminals, but with bandits from agrarian societies with socio-political motivations. Their violence was interpreted as a form of individual or minority protest against the instigators of social need.
Hobsbawm claimed that his model of the social bandit was valid for all pre-industrial peasant societies, thus elevating the social bandit to the rank of an anthropological constant.
The purpose of this dissertation is to understand if this model is valid for Judaean bandits. They were not social bandits but rival contenders for political power branded as ‘bandits’ and described as such by a reporter – Flavius Josephus – who was a witness and a protagonist of events occurred in Judaea during the first century CE.
Josephus deployed the term ‘bandit’ entirely pejoratively and described the rival politicians to whom he applied it using the same conventional clichés as used by Roman writers. He acted from the standpoint of a Jewish aristocrat and rebel leader, who sought to manage the turmoil created by problems within his society and by its subsequent setting of itself on a collision course with Rome. But he then went over to Rome and so had to defend his actions.
Research Interests:
The study of ethnicity is a rather controversial field in contemporary archaeological research. The identification of "cultures" through the archaeological remains and the association with ancient ethnic groups is often considered... more
The study of ethnicity is a rather controversial field in contemporary archaeological research. The identification of "cultures" through the archaeological remains and the association with ancient ethnic groups is often considered inadequate. In pre-industrial societies, behavior patterns related to food and table often survived for a long time, as the ethnological observation showed, albeit radical changes in social and cultural life of the people occurred. It is important to distinguish between the social context of production and the social context of consumption: the pottery usually lose the feature of representing boundaries of a human group after leaving the context of production. An important case-study is represented by the pottery production at Kefar Hananya in ancient Galilee. Remembered by many rabbinic sources, the center of Kefar Hananya was able to impose for many centuries (from the 1st century BC to the 6th century AD) its products in Galilee and Golan as well as in Transjordan. The study of pottery and its distribution testifies of transformations as regards their primitive functions outside the circle of potters.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Starting from the methodology explored in the volume L’oiseau et le poisson. Cohabitations religieuses dans les mondes grec et romain (PUPS, Paris 2011), edited by N. Belayche and J.-D. Dubois, this conference aims to analyze different... more
Starting from the methodology explored in the volume L’oiseau et le poisson. Cohabitations religieuses dans les mondes grec et romain (PUPS, Paris 2011), edited by N. Belayche and J.-D. Dubois, this conference aims to analyze different cultural elements that prove the interactions between neighboring groups that share actual and symbolic spaces in the so-called “Roman Orient” (Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Persia, and so on). Thanks to a methodological approach that considers religious groups as loci of cohabitation, rather than emphasizing their ideological and/or theological polarizations (i.e. the consideration of Jews, Pagans and/or Christians as isolated entities), cultural products, literary texts, epigraphs, papyri, as well as schools, places of meeting, public and religious spaces will be regarded under a different perspective. First of all, the conference aims to focus on distinct aspects concerning the implicit value of the documents analyzed: for example, the use of specific literary forms and/or specific terminology, the reformulation of traditional topoi, the use of appellatives and formulae that also characterize contexts represented and/or considered as ‘other’ in order to construct a viable representation of the self. In such a perspective, the conference will also pay attention to cases of renegotiated identities, in which the alterum appears to be re-constructed in terms of conflict, with the aim of defining specific group identities. Our congress, in other words, intends to analyze the construction of conflicts as instruments of self-definition, rather than mirrors of real and/or well documented social contrasts. We aim to analyze the material traces of collective identities in the East Roman Empire and an important contribution to the research will be provided by the survey on the location of specific groups in space and, above all, on the particular mode of appropriation of urban spaces, on the possible processes of distinction due to the presence of peculiar buildings (‘christianization' of a
specific space with churches or other, the presence of synagogues, the presence and / or refunctionalisation of ‘pagan’ temples) or of possible elements of distinction or separation of burial spaces (restricted areas, burial types, funerary decoration and epitaphs, structures linked to rituals, location of the burial areas in relation to the village).
Furthermore, this conference aims to propose a scheme for further research into the problem and attempts at an overview of Greek and Roman conceptions of the “East” and the implications that such conceptions may have entailed both for the “East” and for the “West”, in this case, Greece and Rome. Greek and Roman understanding, imagination and intellectual construction of the “East” are a complicated, continuous process. What We propose to do therefore is to single out some key phases of this process for discussion and to make some suggestions for possible directions of research especially dedicated to the Urban spaces as cultural constructs.
We intend to focus on the following topics:
- the cultural topography in main urban areas of the Roman Orient – the location of schools
and the organization of urban spaces in connection with different groups;
- the construction of authority in philosophical-religious schools;
- cults and ritual practices as places of encounter and interaction;
- ‘opened’ and ‘closed’ groups: interactions and self-definitions;
- uses, appropriations and re-definitions of traditional literary forms;
- onomastics and epigraphy as evidence of cultural and religious cohabitation;
- papyri as proofs of actual practices of cohabitation;
- ideological debates and theological questions.
With the term “groups”, we mean those collective entities traditionally defined according to both ethnical paradigms (for example, Asians, Greeks, Romans) and cultural models (Pagans, Jews, Hebrews, Christians, Gnostics). Upon a close examination of the sources, the use of such categories does not always seem justified, especially in the urban contexts of the Roman Orient, where interactions cut across areas of social, cultural and religious cohabitation, trespassing frontiers that certainly were less stable than we can image.
specific space with churches or other, the presence of synagogues, the presence and / or refunctionalisation of ‘pagan’ temples) or of possible elements of distinction or separation of burial spaces (restricted areas, burial types, funerary decoration and epitaphs, structures linked to rituals, location of the burial areas in relation to the village).
Furthermore, this conference aims to propose a scheme for further research into the problem and attempts at an overview of Greek and Roman conceptions of the “East” and the implications that such conceptions may have entailed both for the “East” and for the “West”, in this case, Greece and Rome. Greek and Roman understanding, imagination and intellectual construction of the “East” are a complicated, continuous process. What We propose to do therefore is to single out some key phases of this process for discussion and to make some suggestions for possible directions of research especially dedicated to the Urban spaces as cultural constructs.
We intend to focus on the following topics:
- the cultural topography in main urban areas of the Roman Orient – the location of schools
and the organization of urban spaces in connection with different groups;
- the construction of authority in philosophical-religious schools;
- cults and ritual practices as places of encounter and interaction;
- ‘opened’ and ‘closed’ groups: interactions and self-definitions;
- uses, appropriations and re-definitions of traditional literary forms;
- onomastics and epigraphy as evidence of cultural and religious cohabitation;
- papyri as proofs of actual practices of cohabitation;
- ideological debates and theological questions.
With the term “groups”, we mean those collective entities traditionally defined according to both ethnical paradigms (for example, Asians, Greeks, Romans) and cultural models (Pagans, Jews, Hebrews, Christians, Gnostics). Upon a close examination of the sources, the use of such categories does not always seem justified, especially in the urban contexts of the Roman Orient, where interactions cut across areas of social, cultural and religious cohabitation, trespassing frontiers that certainly were less stable than we can image.