Ancient World Seminar: Tesse Stek (University of Leiden) 'Roman Colonialism on the Ground. Historiographical and Archaeological Approaches to Republican Period Expansion'

Abstract

Few things in recent years have changed as dramatically as our understanding of early Roman colonialism. Initially, during the first postcolonial wave of archaeological studies, literary sources and traditions were largely dismissed. However, more recently, considerable progress has been made precisely at the intersection of history, historiography, and archaeology. This lecture will sketch examples of this intricate debate for the Republican period, building upon both armchair research and fieldwork in the western Mediterranean. It intends to show how a better understanding of the intellectual climate behind (early) modern scholarship on Roman colonialism is more closely connected to practical field methodologies than one might think.

About the Speaker

​Professor Tesse D. Stek is a distinguished archaeologist specializing in the archaeology of the Western Mediterranean. He currently serves as the Director of the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome (KNIR) and holds a professorship in Western Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Groningen. His research interests encompass the archaeology and ancient history of the Mediterranean region, with a particular focus on rural communities and their interactions with broader socio-political structures. His scholarly contributions have been widely recognized, as evidenced by his extensive citations in academic literature.