Urban Differentiation Potentials of Roman Burial Monuments in the North of the Roman Empire.
Supervisor: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Johannes Lipps
The Roman Empire was always characterized by comparatively high mobility and migration, but a particularly large fluctuation prevailed in the border cities of the Empire, often closely linked with military camps and serving as hubs for troop movements. Thus, sometimes thousands of soldiers from the entire Mediterranean area would suddenly arrive in newly founded or existing cities, followed by veterans, craftsmen, administrative personnel, traders, and freedmen who, along with their families who had relocated or were established locally, wanted to benefit from the economic centers established at the borders. Additionally, numerous members of the indigenous population and typically enslaved individuals lived here. One can easily imagine the logistical and social challenges these border cities faced, having to ensure the supply of a large and multilingual population and negotiate social roles.
An important medium for representing diversity and social boundary-making were burial monuments, which unlike today, were not isolated from everyday public life but permanently testified to the social self-positioning of their owners along the major access roads outside the cities. They offered a rich potential for differentiation, where various constructed identities, including 'foreignness', could be condensed, solidified, and also dissolved in text and formal design; processes that were always negotiated in the field of unquestioned production traditions and changing societal and functional demands. The images and texts on the graves are not to be understood as direct visualizations of the deceased's life. Rather, they are highly idealized and thus in a sensitive tension between social conventions and their own creative potential inherent in the media, capable of oscillating between documentation and fiction. The construction of grave monuments was therefore not only for the dead but also for the collective community of the living, who conceived, constructed, received, and thus were influenced by these monuments.
The special hermeneutic potential for a dissertation project arises from the burial monuments through the combination of the inscription, in which many of the deceased state their territorial or ethnic origin, and the design of the respective monument including the reliefs and portraits placed on them. Moreover, numerous such monuments are preserved and especially for the north of the Empire, they are well-documented epigraphically and archaeologically, allowing for a comparative study which, among other things, specifically addresses the questions of in which spaces and historical constellations urban groups utilize the differentiation potential of 'foreignness' for their needs.