Radboud Institute for Culture and History (RICH)

This paper proposes the hypothesis that, contrary to Peter Szondi and Philippe Lacoue- Labarthe, no clear distinction exists in Friedrich Hölderlins thinking about the Greek tragedy. The theoretical and interpretative frame of Hölderlins so-called Anmerkungen is a conceptual continuation of his work on the play Empedokles. If validated, the unison in Hölderlins thinking can  be pointed out which leads to the conclusion that the tragedy can only be understood through its fundamental paradox. This paradox is the innocent guilt that rests on or befalls the tragic person. It is possible that this conclusion is relevant for modern philosophical thought. Whereas some modern thinkers attempt to modernize the tragedy, Hölderlin tries to penetrate into the deepest cores of the tragic, hence human condition. If the fate of modern, western humanity is that of Oedipus, this character with excess knowledge, Hölderlins insights into the fundamental nature of the classical tragedy – as well as his attempts to restore its long-lost value – can help modern man deal with Moira. Fate inevitably rouses hybris, pride and submissiveness in order to leave man chastened by adversity.

Character assassination is a phenomenon that can be found in every historical epoch. Throughout the ages, numerous kings, queens, generals, clergymen, thinkers and rebels have suffered visual and verbal attacks which sought to undermine their prestige and cast them in a negative light. While this is currently done through tweets and campaign ads, in previous ages speeches, chronicles and pamphlets were the weapons of choice. Their effects were no less devastating. The reputation of notorious figures such as Emperor Caligula, the “Iron Duke” of Alba and the Dutch “King Gorilla” [William III] has been determined by character attacks to this day.

Despite several attempts, amongst others from K.R. Popper, to reevaluate the importance of Xenophanes of Colophon, this poet/philosopher is still frequently seen as a "somewhat precarious" figure in the history of philosophy. Xenophanes is mainly remembered for his bitter attacks on the anthropomorphic character of the Olympic gods, while his epistemology was discarded by Empedocles and Aristotle as being "too naïve". This article tries to examine some of the reasons for this disqualification by analysing Popper's attempt to rehabilitate Xenophanes as "the founder of the Greek enlightenment".

Henri van Nispen De poorten van de natuur Thales en Anaximander van Milete Dit artikel onderzoekt het revolutionaire karakter van de Ionische beweging, een groep denkers actief in het Ionië van de 6de eeuw v.Chr. Waar Thales van Milete de poorten van de natuur op een kier zette door de introductie van een uit observatie volgend verklarend oerbeginsel (water), was het Anaximander die ze wijd opengooide. 'Anaximander van Milete opende volgens de overlevering de poorten van de natuur' (rerum fores aperuisse, Anaximander Milesius traditur primus), aldus Plinius de Oudere (Naturalis Historia 2.6.31). Het bijzondere van Anaximander betreft de idee van een oerprincipe (het apeiron) als al-verklarende oorzaak, terwijl dat beginsel zelf onttrokken is aan menselijke waarneming. Anaximander legt zo de grondslag van wat later wetenschap wordt genoemd. Of in Ionië de Westerse filosofie is ontstaan, hangt af van de definitie die men aan filosofie wil geven. Wat in deze streek in ieder geval duidelijk voor het voetlicht werd gebracht, was het grondprincipe van zowel wetenschap als filosofie: speculatie.

C arl Knappett's latest book thrives on the recent academic buzz around 'networks'. Networks are everywhere these days: it is one of the few terms deployed in the everyday tongue, humanities, and social and natural sciences. Arguably the use of the term across these different fields is either hyper-specialist or intuitive. If archaeology is to put networks to use in the discipline it has to steer a course between these extreme poles of paralyzing specificity and hollow generality. Without any doubt there is a will to 'do networks' within archaeology, as should be clear from a recent discipline-wide conference on the topic: The Connected Past (http://connectedpast.soton.ac.uk/), but how to do networks well within archaeology? This is the challenge that Knappett has taken up in this publication. His answer comes in the form of a critical anthology of network theories of various kinds, discussing benefits and drawbacks, and illustrating these with a series of case studies drawn from Bronze Age Crete. As a whole, the book succeeds in providing both resources for further exploration and a cautionary tale for the unqualified use of networks. It is clear that this is the work of a scholar to whom both networks and archaeology are very dear to the heart.

This paper argues that material culture should be brought even more to the forefront in postcolonial archaeology. At present postcolonial analyses start from a baseline of pinned down, delineated things as processed through artefact analysis, to proceed to interpretations of how these things were used in fluid, multidirectional, ambivalent social and cultural interactions. But what if things themselves can be fluid rather than bounded? Can we look into the various ways in which things were being defined in the past, and the various relations they enabled? Such a change of perspective can also help redress the imbalance within postcolonial studies between on the one hand consumption as the field in which meaning is negotiated and on the other hand production as offering merely a template for the inscription of that meaning. A case study of so-called pre-sigillata production in Southern Gaul articulates the benefit to be gained from considering these issues.

This article examines the compatibility of two narratives: on the one hand, the Romanization debate, and on the other hand, postcolonial studies. Although it takes up the thread of some recent contributions to Roman studies, it aims to develop a more profound deconstruction of scholarship on Romanization and its outhgrowths, by referring in detail to relevant socio-historical tendencies and cross-disciplinary developments. Postcolonial theory is employed both as a tool for critical discourse analysis and as an approach to past cultural contact. Finally, it is argued that the debate should be cast in a new, relational mould in order to take into account both local and global perspectives on the Roman past.

Within the recent popularity of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) in material culture studies, scholars tend to lose sight of its origin in ethnography of laboratory work. In particular, ANT studies how scientific facts are constructed and stabilised in laboratories so that they become universally accepted, seemingly platonic, categories. This article returns to this initial insight and links it to the long-standing issue of archaeological types. Analysis of the practices of production, consumption and distribution of terra sigillata — Roman archaeology’s most salient pottery type — shows how it became a category, how it was stabilized as such, and how this process imbued sigillata with specific agentic properties that allowed it to shape the range of possible actions in the past. By reframing platonic types as constructed categories, they can become active elements in our historical narratives.

Relational approaches have gradually been changing the face of archaeology over the last decade: analytically, through formal network analysis; and interpretively, with various frameworks of human-thing relations. Their popularity has been such, however, that it threatens to undermine their relevance. If everyone agrees that we should understand past worlds by tracing relations, then ‘finding relations’ in the past becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Focusing primarily on the interpretive approaches of material culture studies, this article proposes to counter the threat of irrelevance by not just tracing human-thing relations, but characterising how sets of relations were ordered. Such ordered sets are termed ‘relational constellations’. The article describes three relational constellations and their consequences based on practices of fine ware production in the Western Roman provinces (first century BC – third century AD): the fluid, the categorical, and the rooted constellation. Specifying relational constellations allows reconnecting material culture to specific historical trajectories, and offers scope for meaningful cross-cultural comparisons. As such a small theoretical addition based on the existing toolbox of practice-based approaches and relational thought can impact on historical narratives, and can save relational frameworks from the danger of triviality.

Debates on the nature of the Roman city and its relation to the countryside have lately 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. Terra sigillata, the red-gloss imperial tableware, is a case in point. By adopting a bird’s eye view on sigillata production, distribution, and consumption across a geographical and chronological range, this paper develops a new metaphor for the role of Roman 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.

Bright red terra sigillata pots dating to the first three centuries CE can be found throughout the Western Roman provinces. The pots' widespread distribution and recognisability make them key evidence in the effort to reconstruct the Roman Empire's economy and society. Drawing on recent ideas in material culture, this book asks a radically new question: what was it about the pots themselves that allowed them to travel so widely and be integrated so quickly into a range of contexts and practices? To answer this question, Van Oyen offers a fresh analysis in which objects are no longer passive props, but rather they actively shape historical trajectories.

This paper argues that the historical issue at the roots of the Romanization debate revolves around a particular patterning of material culture. In the Western Roman provinces — in relation to which the Romanization debate has developed, material culture became more abundant and more diversified across functional categories, yet overall more homogeneous between the late Iron Age and the early Roman periods. Prior to investigating the process by which the provinces and their inhabitants ‘became Roman’, Romanization tackles an empirical question: what was the effect of the changes in material culture observed across the Western Roman provinces? This question still stands after several episodes of theoretical debate on what it would have meant to ‘become Roman’.

The relation between form and matter is a fraught issue in archaeological analysis, expressed most vigorously in the style/function debate. Traditionally, formal change has been the empirical identifier for historical trends – including the development of a ‘Roman cultural revolution’ – leaving matter as its mute twin. But even after the
‘material turn’ in archaeological thought, matter continues to be ‘socialised’ or written out of historical narratives altogether. This chapter explores different models for writing truly ‘material’ histories. It does so through the case study of Roman concrete or opus caementicium, one of the few materials recognised to have been developed in the Roman period, and to have been granted its own formal revolution in architecture.