Sites of a Flexible Identity – Communities of Foreign Traders in the Roman Port Societies of Ostia and Puteoli.
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2023-06-15
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en
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In Roman cities, individuals contested for prestige by representing themselves in the public sphere through graffiti, inscriptions, statues, and buildings. In this regard, associations played a significant role in this process as they provided a platform for traders and craftsmen to represent themselves prominently in urban public space. I investigate how groups of foreign traders tried to employ material and textual dimensions of space to influence the construction of their social identity in Puteoli and Ostia during the Roman empire. My thesis adds to previous insights by arguing that the social sites of the traders allowed the expression of local and foreign markers, but also opened up possibilities for social identities not marked by this binary distinction. This suggests a fluidity in the social identity of traders hitherto overlooked. This insight is based on a systematic historical examination of Ostian and Puteolian epigraphic sources in their (reconstructed) archaeological context.
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Faculteit der Letteren