“Changing Times: The Allocation of Land to Barbarian Settlers in the Late Roman World,” in Irene Bavuso, Angelo Castrorao Barba, eds., The European Countryside during the Migration Period Patterns of Change from Iberia to the Caucasus (300–700 CE) (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2023), 13-32, 2023
This discussion has suggested not only that there was a long tradition of assigning land to barba... more This discussion has suggested not only that there was a long tradition of assigning land to barbarian settlers, but also that there continued to be enough land for doing so in the fifth century. This creates a model much less complex, much more consistent with Roman administrative traditions, and much more intuitively attractive than the tax-shares thesis. Indeed, if the primary issue truly was about payment of taxes, then this model for settling barbarians on imperial land and agri deserti would have been much more workable than the distribution of tax-shares. It was suggested in the tax-shares model that the only loser was the government. But in the “distribution of agri deserti and imperial land model,” no one had to be a loser. If agri deserti had been distributed to barbarian settlers, the government would have lost no revenue. This clearly would have been a better idea than confiscating land from senators, which would have created hard feelings and the loss of productive taxable land for the fisc, or granting tax revenues, which likewise would have created hard feelings plus a loss for the fisc, not to mention continuing administrative headaches. But the distribution of agri deserti and land controlled by the res privata meant that there were no losers. No unhappy dispossesed or overtaxed Romans. No barbarians confronted by angry dispossessed landowners or grumpy taxpayers. No need for maintaining an administrative superstructure to deal with tax-shares. And minimal loss to the fisc.
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Thematically papers were divided into 11 sessions, dealing with different aspects of Greek, Roman and Byzantine fibulae (cf. the program in the abstract booklet). Revised papers will be published in a peer-reviewed proceedings volume.
A fibula is a brooch or pin for fastening garments, typically at the right shoulder. The fibulae developed in a variety of shapes and are usually divided into families that are based upon historical periods, geography, and/or cultures. They are also divided into classes that are based upon their general forms. Fibulae were found in relatively large quantities in the Mediterranean and Black Sea area, where they were in use and produced frequently between the Bronze Age and Medieval periods. So far the study of these multifunctional objects has been overlooked in the Mediterranean whereas there is still a huge amount of unpublished material from excavations and museums in an area from Portugal down to Egypt.
Fibulae can be categorized based on different criteria, including genres of material, production, use and distribution. The purpose of this video conference was to create an analytical framework for understanding the fibulae in their social and material contexts. This conference considered in depth the role played by fibulas – whose uses ranged from clothes pins to status symbols to military badges of rank – in ancient Greek, Roman and Byzantine societies. In recent decades, major excavation projects have produced vast quantities of material data that have reshaped our understanding of the fibulae, while also raising new questions about their use and production over the long term. We focused on a study of brooches in general and fibulas in particular. Along the way we looked at the intersection between material culture and ethnicity, dealing with the contentious issue of how much that a people’s material culture can tell us about their ethnicity – or not! In this online conference we only focused on Greek, Roman and Byzantine fibulae from the Mediterranean and Black Sea area between c. early sixth century B.C. and early seventh century A.D., and attempted to set out a comprehensive model for the study of fibulae, including their definition, typology, chronology, contexts, function, regional characteristics and distribution patterns in the whole Mediterranean and Black Sea geographies.
This conference on ancient material culture and instrumenta is dedicated to the 75th birthday of Dr Maurizio Buora, the former director of the Civici Musei Castello di Udine in Italy and an international authority on fibulae.
Such papers that engage the following themes and topics are invited:
- Fibulae from archaeological field projects (especially well-dated finds), museums and private collections,
- Identification of different kinds of fibulas,
- Ancient Greek and Latin textual sources on fibulae,
- Evolution of fibulae in the Mediterranean and Black Sea area during the Etruscan, Lydian, Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods,
- The construction of fibula taxonomies,
- Similar instrumenta in the ancient Near East and their relations to ancient Graeco-Roman fibulae, - The nature of different types of surviving material culture,
- What ancient Greeks and Romans thought about afterlife? Fibulae in funerary and votive contexts,
- Comparative studies and issues related to the adoption of Greek and/or Roman fibula models in indigenous contexts: fibulae as major indicators of the relationship between these two communities (indigenous and Greek or Roman),
- Fibula as an indicator of rank and prestige in the ancient world,
- Domestic and commercial use of fibulae,
- Early Christian fibulae,
- Byzantine fibulae,
- Post-Byzantine or modern replicas of Classical fibulae,
- Eastern fibulae in the ancient western world,
- Major production centres of fibulae in the eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea area,
- Related instrumenta to fibulae in the regards of their function,
- Documentation and analysis of fibulae,
- The creation of a fully annotated and organized corpus,
- Publication of fibulae in the Mediterranean in possible corpara,
- Miscellanea.
We would be delighted, if you could consider contributing to our e-conference and contact us with the required information below before March 1, 2022. Our e-mail addresses are: terracottas@deu.edu.tr or alevcetingoz@gmail.com
We would be thankful, if you send us your abstract and required information only in word doc. For all your queries concerning the e-conference our phone number is: +90.539.577 07 33.
We would also be grateful if the lecturers can submit their presentations as a video until April 15, 2022 so that we can make sure to have their lectures prior to the virtual conference on May 12-13.
After the conference participants will be required to submit their revised papers by October 1. Revised papers will be published in a peer-reviewed proceedings volume.
The organizers seek to widen participation at this e-conference, and would like to encourage colleagues from all parts of the world to attend. The conference committee kindly requests that you alert any interested researches, colleagues and students within your research community who would be interested in participating at this e-conference, either by forwarding our e-mail through Academia, Researchgate, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or other similar social media, or by printing this circular or our poster and displaying it in your institution. Please share it also on your ListServs. We hope that you will be able to join us on Zoom, and look forward to seeing you in May!
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N.B.: An illustration can be included; it should be sent by e-mail to terracottas@deu.edu.tr or alevcetingoz@gmail.com