Ancient World Seminar: Miguel John Versluys: "Innovating Objects. Global Rome and the making of Empire (250 BCE – 14 CE)"

Abstract

Almost all histories of the rise of Rome in the final two centuries BCE are histories of imperialism in our modern understanding of that concept. In my lecture I would like to explore a different perspective on ‘the rise of Rome’ as it took shape in the Late Republic. To do so I will try and understand Roman imperialism as part of a much larger process of increasing complex connectivity, or Globalisation, that characterized Afro- Eurasia in this particular period, from the Atlantic to the Chinese Sea. My hypothesis is that Rome rides the waves of change brought about by this Globalisation process remarkably well and that it is this characteristic, its ability to embed global diversity, that should play a defining role with explaining the making of Empire. Objects will prove to play a remarkable (and heavily underexplored) role as part of this new perspective.

About the speaker

Prof. Miguel John Versluys is Director of the Graduate School of Archaeology at Leiden University and Professor of Classical & Mediterranean Archaeology. Miguel John is one of the six coordinators of the research programme Anchoring Innovation , awarded with a Gravitation Fund of NWO.

His research has two focus points:

• the interconnection of cultures and their various identities (”Globalisation”); and
• the interdependence of objects and people (“Material Culture Studies”