• January 9, 2026 | 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM
• Golden Gate 6, Lobby Level

6H: Inscribed Communities: Group Identity and Space in Roman Provincial Epigraphy (Colloquium)

Sponsored by:
AIA Roman Provincial Archaeology Interest Groupand AIA Archaeology of North Africa Interest Group

Organizers:
Andrea Gatzke, SUNY New Paltz, and Katelin McCullough, Hollins University

Overview Statement:
Epigraphy has long provided significant insights into the identities and social connections of individuals living in the boundaries of the Roman Empire. Epigraphic analysis also allows scholars to examine the development and transformation of collective identities in the Roman provinces. Inscriptions from Roman provincial contexts present an opportunity to examine the diversity of methods by which collective identity(-ies) were negotiated and/or marginalized across various places, times, languages, ethnicities, genders, and cultures. From the development of group identities among Christians to those found among soldiers or laborers, the examination of epigraphic remains for evidence of group identity or “imagined communities” has proved a fruitful endeavor, and can especially provide an avenue for looking at groups overlooked in the literary record.

This panel builds on existing scholarship on epigraphy and group formation by grounding examinations of collective identity and “imagined communities” within the context of spatial analysis. The “spatial turn” in Roman studies has revealed the wealth of information that we can gather by considering inscriptions not simply as texts, but also as contributors to space and makers of place. In the scholarship of human geography, place is defined as a space that has been assigned meaning, identity, or even security by the people who live in it, pass through it, or interact with it in some way. This panel explores how these inscribed texts contributed to communal “place-making.” The Roman provinces provide an exciting focus for this project because of the different ways in which subsets of the population across the Mediterranean used writing to define and/or redefine their own collective narratives and the spaces they inhabited, and may provide a starting point for a comparative analysis of how conceptions of space and identity overlapped and were differentiated among these different regions.

This collection of six papers approaches the question of space and group identity through communities across the empire. From broad-ranging questions about agricultural workers across several eastern and western provinces, to the detailed analysis of Roman interactions with the Baquatian tribes in North Africa, these papers range in their scope and focus. What they collectively show, however, is the importance of considering inscriptions within their spatial contexts, and how looking at these inscriptions not simply as texts, but as participants in physical landscapes, can reveal more to us about collective identities and the formation of place in the Roman world.