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The R oman City as Articulated through T erra S igillata
Author(s) -
Van Oyen Astrid
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
oxford journal of archaeology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.382
H-Index - 31
eISSN - 1468-0092
pISSN - 0262-5253
DOI - 10.1111/ojoa.12059
Subject(s) - metaphor , categorical variable , contingency , economic geography , geography , advertising , sociology , linguistics , computer science , business , philosophy , machine learning
Summary Debates on the nature of the R oman city and its relation to the countryside have recently moved towards questioning the validity of the very category of ‘the city’, both analytically and in terms of past reality. While archaeology has long been mobilized within these debates, this paper argues for the unexplored potential of a range of specialist pockets of qualitative knowledge about specific artefact classes. T erra sigillata, the red‐gloss imperial tableware, is a case in point. By adopting a bird's eye view of sigillata production, distribution and consumption across a geographical and chronological range, this paper develops a new metaphor for the role of R oman cities: as switching devices in the building of networks. By describing the role of cities in structural rather than categorical terms, this metaphor allows for contingency and for the integration of different analytical and interpretive scales.