By Wayne Marsahall
This essay will examine the ways in which the expansion of Roman culture is detectable archaeologically within the cities and landscapes of Etruria and Campania. This essay will look at the ways the resistance 1to the expansion of Roman Culture can be seen in the Etruria landscape. Archaeological evidence from farms and the burials associated with them demonstrate that the process of acculturation was ongoing, which can be seen in the burial urns and the latinization of tomb inscriptions. In Campania the expansion of Roman culture was aided by the building of aqueducts. These building projects affected the spread of Roman culture in Pompeii. The local élite adopted Roman style architecture, this in turn trickle down into the lower classes spreading Roman culture in the process. In the city of Paestum the Romans took control of the political life of the city. They built a new Forum which helped strengthen the Roman expansion in the city and landscape of Campania.
Archaeological evidence shows that the expansion of Roman culture in the landscapes northern and southern Etruria varied possibly because cultural attitudes. Terrenato hypothesizes that cultural homogeneity for the northern Etruscans was a result of their tight community(Terrenato, 1998 p. 109). However, social anthropologist Eriksen notes that regular contact between two ethnic groups might make them emphasized their own cultural uniqueness (Eriksen, 2010 p. 276). The site San Mario shows evidence for the Etruscans protecting their own cultural identity. The San Mario site is thought to be a typical Etruscan farmstead. Artifacts from the site date to the fourth century BC, right into the Roman period. This Terrenato suggests is evidence for a long occupation by people of the same culture and that these people had some degree of autonomy away from the central influences of Rome (Terrenato, 1998 p. 102, Nicola Terrenato, 1996 pp.101-106). In southern Etruscan settlement patters change dramatically with Roman control. Local settlement population decrees and unlike northern farms local southern farms are abandoned (Potter, 1978 p. 107). This change is settlement patterns may show that the process of Romanization in southern Etruria was far more extensive then the northern people. Terrenato hypothesizes Etruscans held onto their own culture their outward focus and appearance emulated Roman fashions (Terrenato, 1998 p. 102). In south Etruscan resistance to Romanization can be seen in the settlement patterns of smaller farms that seem to avoid major Roman highways sticking to the fringes of valleys (Potter, 1978 p. 109). With increased contact with the Romans the people of Etruria started to emphasized their own culture uniqueness. They resisted Romanization by keeping aspects of their culture intact, but northern Etruscans were better able to resist then southern Etruscans.
The idea to become Roman, or the process of Romanization, was an ongoing process, because the idea of what being Roman was alway changing. To chart the expansion of Roman culture through the archaeological record dose not represent a change in cultural identify but merely a change in material culture. Language, however, is at the heart of a community changes in language could mean changes in the community as a whole. Language, Cooley says, can be used to resist cultural and political change or integrate one culture into another (Cooley, 2002 p. 77). There is evidence to support that local Etruscans were successful in keeping important aspects of their cultural alive centuries after the Romans had conquered them, through burial customs and language. Analysis of élite burials associated with villa sites suggests that Etruscans maintained their funerary traditional several centuries after annexation. At the tomb site I1 Puntone an inscribed stone shows etymological evidence of Etruscans origins. The tomb may have belonged to a magistrate with the name Anaenius and his cognomen, Pharianus. Anaenius may have its origins in the Etruscan language. This assertion, as Terrenato indicates, is hard to establish, as the etymological evidence also point to a romanization of Etruscan language. Terrenato suggests that inscribed names could be the latinized version of the original Etruscan. A sarcophagus inscribed with name Pestinia Apricula shows evidence of latinization. The name Pestinia may be the latinized version of the Etruscan pestiu (Terrenato, 1998 pp. 101-102).
In the city of Volaterrae, one of the oldest and most important Etruria cities, public life became essentially a Roman affair. The expansion of Roman culture was fueled by the building of great urban works The locals went to great length to convoy a level of Roman sophistication. The local élite's adopted Roman architectural, the domus was popular of house build in this style. The Romans would expand their culture through the construction of urban development. One such development in Volaterrae is the Great urban reservoirs, built to ease water supply problems (Terrenato, 1998 p. 105). Such works show the spread of Roman culture in public life, through the spread of Roman urban developments. The city of Volaterrae was not the only city where the Romans used urban works to expand their culture.
Romans were known for their urban infrastructure, it’s a lasting image of Roman culture. Aqueducts were build to serve many large cities and had important affect on the development of culture in these cities. The building of an aqueduct to relive the water problems of Pompeian would also serve to expand Roman culture in the city. According to Jones, social competition within the city was fierce. The building of an aqueduct led to the elite redesigning their houses to take advantage of the water, often adopting roman styles, to gain prestige (Jones, 2005 p. 696). In this way the architectural features of Pompeian houses emulate the ideas of what it means to be Roman. The competition among the Pompeian élite’s, to gain prestige, speeded up the process of acculturation. The Pompeiian élite emulated the Roman style, so much so, that they became the visual symbols of what it meant to be Roman (Graham, 1998 pp. 172-173). The site, house of the Vestals show that it went through several redesigns to take advantage of the access to water (Jones, 2005 p. 697).
While competition among the élite's to emulate the Romans style raged the trickle down effects of romanization can also be seen in the architectural features of everyday houses. The lower class tried to emulated the élite class thereby expanding the cultural fabric to include Roman culture (Graham, 1998 p. 165). An archaeological study shows that out of 144 houses from the city region VI that the spatial layout of a Pompeian house became very similar to that of a Roman houses overtime. Although individual houses differ their are many similarities. Evidence of Pompeian houses show that their was a shift from houses with no courtyard spaces to houses with. Of the 144 houses 29.9 per cent had no courtyard and of those with courtyards, the larger the house the more courtyards their were (Graham, 1998 pp. 167-171). The wealthier an individual was the more they could afford to emulate the Romans. In this way the expansion of roman culture may have been accelerated by the locals trying to emulate Roman architecture.
The city of Poseidonia name change when the Romans took control and changed the name to Paestum. At the time the city was occupied by two cultures the Greek and Oscan, who turn it into a thriving city. The Romans set about changing the typology of the city starting with the political spaces. Archaeological evidence of Roman expansion in the city can be seen in the Roman style Forum. Build right in the center of the city it became center of political life and a statement of influence for the spread of Roman culture in Campania. The Forum was build in the third century, AD, moving the political center away from the Greek and Lucanian agora. A small Roman style temple was build on the northern side and may have been the capitolium attributed to Jupiter, Juno and Minerva although the evidence is weak. The three temples that make up the capitolium are the religious cultural heart of the city, ritualistic becoming the foundation of the new city. This step represents an important step in the expansion and dominance of Roman culture (Torelli, 1999 p. 52, Pedley, 1990 p. 118-119) . The evidence for the small northern temple being the Capitolium is weak. For starters their is only one temple not three and it seems that the temple was built after the first phase of Forum construction. Torelli suggests instead that this temple is dedicated to the cult of Bona Mens an important political cult and the capitolium may be located at the eastern non-excavated end of the Forum. This close connection with the forum is not unusual. In Rome itself a temple of Bona Mens was constructed on the capital (Torelli, 1999 p. 65). Such evidence shows that Roman culture was adaptive and trends in Rome quickly expanded into other territories. It is in these ways that the expansion of Roman culture is detectable archaeologically with in the cities and landscape of Etruria and Campania.
This essay explored the ways in which Roman culture is detectable archaeologically in the cities and landscapes of Etruria and Campania. Examining evidence such as burials site, diachronic change, urns and sites such as San Mara and the architectural features of Volaterrae in Etruria. In Campania the evidence included Roman construction of aqueducts and the effects on social competition within the city of Pompeii, and the changes to political life in Paestum by the construction of the forum.
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