Throughout the countryside, streets, and museums of the former Roman Empire are physical remains of that empire such as aqueducts, amphitheaters, portraits of emperors and anonymous citizens, and terracotta lamps. These ruins, art objects, artifacts, potsherd scatters, and even seeds and bones all testify to aspects of the ideology, beliefs, aspirations, social norms, and lifestyles of the inhabitants of that empire. Some of these material remains are studied as art objects, while others are considered archaeological, but they present the fullest picture ofRoman life when taken together. Given the immensity of this body of information, I do not present a chronological survey, but rather a consideration of the chief genres of artistic monument and the leading avenues of archaeological research, grouped thematically instead of by method of investigation. Art cannot be understood independently of the society that produced it, and we find the power relationships, agendas, and anxieties of the Roman world embedded in its art. From this immense and unwieldy corpus of information, we may distil some major contexts: the emperor, the cityscape, the countryside, the home, and death. Looking at the Roman army provides a further example of how very different kinds of evidence can be integrated to contribute to a historical picture.
Before continuing, however, we must first raise the most fundamental questions in these disciplines. What is Roman art? What is Roman archaeology? These questions are not so redundant as they might at first appear, and scholars have continuously evaluated them (Brendel 1979; Kampen 2003; James 2003). ‘‘Roman’’ art and archaeology might reasonably refer to the material culture of the city of Rome only, of Roman citizens only (wherever they might live), or slightly more broadly, that of Rome and the Italian peninsula. It could refer to art, artifacts, and architecture that have Roman qualities, assuming that those qualities can be given a consistent definition. The most expansive answer to these questions, and the one I shall use here, is that Roman art and archaeology are the material culture of the city of Rome and the regions under its rule. This approach raises different complications, however, as it might appear to deny regional diversity, the continuation of indigenous traditions, or resistance to Roman practices. I will return to these questions in the final section of the chapter.
World History
