BOOK ed. (1999) Roman Germany: Studies in Cultural Interaction

JOURNAL OF ROMAN …, 1999

A recent archaeological research trend claims great Roman ideological influence in Germania or parts thereof, especially in the military, cultic and burial spheres of society. This article investigates through tests of three groups of archaeological material in South Scandinavia whether the Romans were directly involved in the process of “Romanization”, or whether the Roman influences are more indirect. The first part of the article consists of a presentation of the recent research into the matter as well as a discussion of the concepts “Roman import” and “Romanization”, as well as an analysis of the feasibility of using the Roman written sources in conjunction with archaeological material. In the second part it is shown through archaeological cases that the Roman influence of South Scandinavian archaeological material must be regarded as indirect rather than direct in strong contrast to many recent studies of the matter. It is concluded that while direct ”Romanization” may be observed in a few areas close to the borders of the Roman Empire this cannot possibly hold true for South Scandinavia. Note: without German abstract and figures. From EAZ 2010.

Interdisciplinaria Archaeologica - Natural Sciences in Archaeology

In: H. Van Enckevort et al. (ed.), Strategy and Structures along the Roman Frontier. Proceedings of the 25th International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies 2 (Leiden 2024) 25-32, 2024

Roman-period archaeological research in the regions north and east of the Roman Empire generally focuses on either individual sites and finds or macroregional patterns. In this paper we demonstrate that interdisciplinary research on a regional level offers opportunities to gain new insights into site location, landscape organisation and the structure, origin and development of settlement patterns. Furthermore a long-term perspective is a necessary prerequisite for understanding the origins and dynamics of settlement patterns. The results of our pilot study, focusing on the Vecht valley in the Dutch-German border area, are compared to other regions both within and outside Roman territory.

2019

Link to publication in VU Research Portal citation for published version (APA) Heeren, S., & van der Feijst, L. M. B. (2019). Roman troops of Germanic descent in limes forts? Back to Scheveningseweg and other garrisons along the Lower Rhine in the third century AD. In R. J. van Zoolingen (Ed.), AB HARENIS INCVLTIS: Artikelen voor Ab Waasdorp (pp. 154-164). Gemeente Den Haag, afdeling Archeologie. General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.

Britannia, 2009

T. Ivleva, J. de Bruin and M. Driessen (eds.), Embracing the provinces. Society and material culture of the Roman frontier regions. Essays in honour of Dr Carol van Driel-Murray, 2018

The subject of this contribution is a probable military site tucked away in a river bend in the Rhine delta, west of the Roman fort at De Meern – a site that has recently come to life again largely owing to Carol van Driel-Murray’s input and inspiration. Not only did her expertise of Roman military leatherwork provide high-resolution dating evidence, it also managed to revive the motley crew that populated and worked this micro-installation between c. AD 180–230. Perhaps most importantly, Carol’s out-of-the-box and precociously “post-colonial” way of looking at the Roman army has been crucial in helping us interpret the seemingly hybrid find assemblage of a site that sheds unexpected light on the functioning of the Lower Rhine limes in the Severan period.

Germania

"A regional, interdisciplinary and landscape-oriented approach is desperately needed in order to shed more light on Roman-period rural settlement, and in order to achieve a better understanding of the developments on both sides of the limes. During the Roman period along the river Vech(e) a number of important changes took place, especially in the initial stages of the Middle Roman period. Important new phenomena appearing at that time were the fixation of settlements in one location, and a remarkably regular settlement distribution pattern. On average these settlements were larger than the single farmsteads which had characterized the preceding phases. In the eastern Netherlands the size of the largest 3rd to early 4th-century settlements remained unequalled until the Late Middle Ages. Why exactly these changes occurred and why some developments in this area were so different from those observed in some rural areas south of the limes are questions that fall beyond the scope of this paper. Finding answers to them certainly is an important challenge for future research. Comparing the Vecht region with others inside and outside Roman territory has shown that its settlement and occupation density are roughly similar to those in several well-studied sandy regions south of the limes. It is also evident that these numbers are much lower than those in (especially) Holocene clay areas along the main rivers (inside Roman territory) and near the northern coast (outside). Clearly, in terms of settlement and population density the effect of limes was negligible. There were, however, regional variations both north and south of the Roman border. The loess and sandy regions of the Meuse-Demer-Scheldt area, for instance, experienced a very different development, and even within the eastern Dutch river area distinctly different settlement patterns have been documented. Likewise, observations made in the Vecht region cannot be simply extrapolated to adjacent parts of the eastern Netherlands and western Germany, while along the North Sea coast yet another fundamentally different settlement pattern and settlement system existed in Roman times. "