On May 3rd, Junior Fellows James Gross (AAMW), Chelsea Cohen (ANTH), and John Sigmier (AAMW) present their research at the annual spring colloquium of the Kolb Society. In addition, the candidates newly elected as Junior Fellows are introduced to the society.
Holly Pittman, PhD, Faculty Chair, Senior Fellow
Welcome and Introduction of Newly Elected Junior Fellows
PRESENTATIONS
James Gross (AAMW)
Taxation, Commerce and the Economic Experience of Empire in Late Roman Sicily
Chelsea Cohen (ANTH)
Tracing Landscape Changes through Maritime Construction in the 18th-century Middle Atlantic
John Sigmier (AAMW)
Indigenous Expertise and Architectural Innovation in the Earthwork Theaters of Roman Gaul
ABSTRACTS OF THE 18TH Annual Kolb Junior Fellows Spring Colloquium
James Gross
Taxation, Commerce and the Economic Experience of Empire in Late Roman Sicily
This talk considers how Roman rule impacted economic life in Sicily across Late Antiquity from the vantage point of taxation. I focus on taxation, since it was the one facet of imperial rule that touched the lives of nearly all the Empire’s subjects. Scholars have generally approached the tax system from a top-down perspective, emphasizing the state’s domination and constraining its impact to the direct effects of resource extraction and redistribution. Drawing on recent scholarship on the limitations of Roman state power, I instead apply a bottom-up approach, arguing that the Empire’s subjects retained the agency to respond to the state’s demands in a variety of ways. These responses included quiet acts of resistance like tax evasion as well as attempts to profit from within the system. More specifically, they could leverage the tax network – the set of infrastructure, mobile capital, and relationships that the state relied on to transport its revenues – to trade on their own initiative. Through individuals’ collective responses, the tax system then had the potential to indirectly stimulate commerce. With this foundation, I turn to the archaeological record of Sicily to consider if and how this potential was realized in Late Antiquity. Relying on evidence for amphora production, the distribution of amphora exports, and shipwreck data, I trace the changing scale and spatial organization of trade, particularly in wine and olive oil, across the 4th-7th centuries. Ultimately, this analysis reveals that the tax system and, particularly, the fiscal supply of the city of Rome had a significant impact on Sicilians’ economic lives. The tax system indirectly forged new links between Sicily, central Italy, and North Africa, and, in response, Sicilian farmers adapted their economic strategies to sell more of the produce they grew and purchase more of the foodstuffs and basic commodities they needed.
Chelsea Cohen
Tracing Landscape Changes through Maritime Construction in the 18th-century Middle Atlantic
As the forests of the Chesapeake were cleared for tobacco and wheat agriculture, timber consumption reformed both rural and urban landscapes. The systematic clearing of timber opened land for European-style open-field agriculture while directly contributing to the development of urban ports by supplying wood for ship construction and waterfront infrastructure. This timber taskscape was enmeshed in the wider agricultural and labor regimes of the Chesapeake, shaping and being shaped by laborers living and working on land increasingly defined by their commercial productivity. By synthesizing legacy archaeological data and archival labor accounts, this paper conceptualizes how the archaeology of the waterfront infrastructure in the port of Alexandria, Virginia reflects the larger patterns of social and environmental change in the region. Working from ships buried along the city’s waterfront to the interior forests of the Atlantic colonies, it seeks to explore the rhizomatic footprint of amphibious colonialism on both terrestrial and watery scapes.
John Sigmier
Indigenous Expertise and Architectural Innovation in the Earthwork Theaters of Roman Gaul
This paper examines how indigenous construction expertise contributed to the development of regional forms in the theater buildings of Rome’s northwestern provinces during the first two centuries CE. Unlike theaters elsewhere in the Roman Empire, those in the Northwest used earthwork substructures rather than masonry vaults to support audience seating. Scholars have historically treated the earthworks as structural simplifications, motivated by low budgets and a lack of technical expertise at provincial building sites. I argue instead that building in earth was a sophisticated structural solution that continued an established local tradition of large-scale construction.
I begin by analyzing representative examples of Gallo-Roman theaters whose seats were arrayed on artificial embankments. To understand the specialized knowledge and labor needed to build these embankments, I draw geoarchaeological comparisons between the theaters and monumental mounds in pre-Columbian North America. I then situate the theaters within a tradition of pre-Roman earthen architecture represented by Iron Age Gallic ramparts.
This analysis demonstrates that earthwork theater architecture required both a sophisticated understanding of soil engineering and the deliberate sourcing of specialized building materials. I argue that Gallic builders chose earthworks over masonry because they already possessed the structural and material expertise to build in earth thanks to the active tradition of earthwork construction in Gaul. These conclusions call for a revised understanding of earthwork theaters not as evidence of the limitations of provincial builders, but rather as examples of the innovative deployment of local architectural knowledge and skill in the Roman Northwest.
