Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T08:31:27.942Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Transformation of Landscape and Religious Representations in Roman Gaul

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Ton Derks
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This essay starts from the initial presupposition that the landscape is more than the proverbial backcloth to human action found so often in archaeological writing. It is not just the natural feature of the environment putting important constraints on human behaviour, as a popular ‘naturalist’ tradition in archaeology would like to have it, nor is it simply a cultural construction of human conceptions about the world, as its ‘culturalist’ counterpart is advocating (cf. Descola and Pálsson 1996, 2-3). Rather the landscape is doubly-faced, consisting of a foreground actuality of every-day existence and a background potentiality of an imagined timeless ideal (Hirsch 1995). The phenomenal and the imagined landscape are alternately perceived and inextricably intertwined, in that people continuously seek to realize in ordinary life the ideals of an imaginary existence. The ways in which they imagine the world may thus heavily bear on the appearance and organization of the landscape they live in. This is true for all societies in past and present. But while in the modern west the ideals have up to a point a secular character, in all other societies, including those of Roman Gaul, the imagined landscape takes the form of a cosmology.

Type
Discussion Article
Information
Archaeological Dialogues , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , December 1997 , pp. 126 - 147
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baatz, D., and Herrmann, F.R. (eds), 1982: Die Römer in Hessen, Stuttgart.Google Scholar
Bayard, D., and Collart, J.-L. (eds), 1996: De la ferme indigène à la villa romaine. La romanisation des campagnes de la Gaule. Actes du deuxième colloque de l'association AGER tenu à Amiens (Somme) du 23 au 25 septembre 1993, Amiens (Revue Archéologique de Picardie, numéro special 11).Google Scholar
Bedon, R., 1984: Les carrières et les carriers de la Gaule romaine, Paris.Google Scholar
Bellen, H., 1989: Der römische Ehrenbogen von Mainz-Kastel. Ianus Germanici aut Domitiani?, Archäologisches Korrespondenzblatt 19, 77–84.Google Scholar
Bender, B. (ed.), 1993: Landscape. Politics and perspectives, Providence-Oxford.Google Scholar
Benecke, N., 1994: Archäozoologische Studien zur Entwicklung der Haustierhaltung in Mitteleuropa und Südskandinavien von den Antängen bis zum ausgehenden Mittelalter, Berlin (Schriften zur Ur- und Frühgeschichte 46).Google Scholar
Bernhard, H., 1990: Die römische Geschichte in Rheinland-Pfalz, in Cüppers, H. (ed.), Die Römer in Rheinland-Pfalz, Stuttgart, 39–168.Google Scholar
Binford, L.R., 1972: An archaeological perspective, New York.Google Scholar
Binsfeld, W., 1987: Caiva Dea, Archäologisches Korrespondenzblatt 17, 373–374.Google Scholar
Bloch, M., 1992: What goes without saying. The conceptualization of Zafimaniry society, in Kuper, A. (ed.), Conceptualizing society, London-New York, 127–146.Google Scholar
Bogaers, J.E., 1972: Romeins Nijmegen. Van Nijmegen naar Nehal(a)en(n)ia, Numaga 19, 7–11.Google Scholar
Barrett, J., Bradley, R. and Green, M., 1991: Landscape, monuments and society. The prehistory of Cranborne Chase, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braudel, F., 1989: The identity of France I. History and environment, London.Google Scholar
Bunnik, F.P.M., 1995: Pollenanalytische Ergebnisse zur Vegetations- und Landwirtschafts-geschichte der Jülicher Lößbörde von der Bronzezeit bis in die frühe Neuzeit, Bonner Jahrbücher 195, 313–349.Google Scholar
Cloke, P., Philo, C. and Sadler, D., 1991: Approaching human geography. An introduction to contemporary theoretical debates, London.Google Scholar
Coarelli, F., 1974: Guida archeologica di Roma, Verona.Google Scholar
Coarelli, F., 1987: I santuari del Lazio in età repubblicana, Roma.Google Scholar
Cornell, T.J., 1995: The beginnings of Rome. Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000–264 BC), London-New York.Google Scholar
Croll, E., and Parkin, D., 1992: Anthropology, the environment and development, in Croll, E. and Parkin, D. (eds), Bush base: forest farm. Culture, environment and development, London-New York, 3–10.Google Scholar
Derks, T., 1991: The perception of the Roman pantheon by a native elite. The example of the votive inscriptions from Lower Germany, in Roymans and Theuws (eds), 235–266.Google Scholar
Derks, T. 1995: The ritual of the vow in Gallo-Roman religion, in Metzler, et al. (eds), 111–127.Google Scholar
Derks, T., 1996: Goden, tempels en rituele praktijken. De transformatie van religieuze ideeën en waarden in Romeins Gallië, Amsterdam (Ph.D. thesis University of Amsterdam).Google Scholar
Descola, P., 1992: Societies of nature and the nature of society, in Kuper, A. (ed.), Conceptualizing society, London-New York, 107–126.Google Scholar
Descola, P., 1996: Constructing natures. Symbolic ecology and social practice, in Descola, P. and Pálsson, G. (eds), Nature and society. Anthropological perspectives, London-New York, 82–102.Google Scholar
Descola, P., and Pálsson, G., 1996: Introduction, in Descola, P. and Pálsson, G.(eds), Nature and society. Anthropological perspectives, London-New York, 1–21.Google Scholar
Douglas, M., 1972: Symbolic orders in the use of domestic space, in Ucko, P.J., Tringham, R. and Dimbleby, G.W. (eds), Man, settlement and urbanism. Proceedings of a meeting of the research seminar in archaeology and related subjects held at the Institute of Archaeology, London university, London, 513–521.Google Scholar
Dumézil, G., 1996 (1966): Archaic Roman religion with an appendix on the religion of the Etruscans, Baltimore-London.Google Scholar
Es W.A. van, , 1981: De Romeinen in Nederland, Haarlem.Google Scholar
Fraschetti, A., 1996: Jeunesses romaines, in Levi, G. and Schmitt, J.C.(eds), Histoire des jeunes en occident de l'antiquité et l'époque moderne, I, Paris, 63–100.Google Scholar
Frenz, H.G., 1989a (1988): The honorary arch at Mainz-Kastel, Journal of Roman archaeology 2, 120–125.Google Scholar
Frenz, H.G., 1989b: Zur Zeitstellung des römischen Ehrenbogens von Mainz-Kastel, Archäologisches Korrespondenzblatt 19, 69–75.Google Scholar
Gros, P., 1995: Hercule à Glanum. Sanctuaires de transhumance et développement “urbain”, Gallia 52, 311–331.Google Scholar
Heinen, H., 1985: Trier und das Trevererland in römischer Zeit, Trier.Google Scholar
Heller, J., and Waitz, G. (eds), 1881: Flodoardi Historia Remensis ecclesiae, in Monumenta Germaniae historica, Scriptores, Vol. 13, Hannover, 405–499.Google Scholar
Hirsch, E., 1995: Introduction. Landscape, between place and space, in Hirsch, E. and O'Hanlon, M.(eds), The anthropology of landscape. Perspectives on place and space, Oxford, 1–30.Google Scholar
Hodder, I., 1992: Theory and practice in archaeology, London-New York.Google Scholar
Ingold, T., 1993: The temporality of the landscape, World archaeology 25, 152–174.Google Scholar
Jackson, J.B., 1984: Discovering the vernacular landscape, New Haven-London.Google Scholar
Kolen, J., 1992: Archaeology as hermeneutics. The science of ambiguity. Remarks on Christopher Tilley, ‘Material culture and text. The art of ambiguity’, Helinium 32, 227–244.Google Scholar
Kommers, J., 1994: Mythische geografie. Landschap en wereldbeeld in niet-westerse culturen, in Driessen, H. and de Jonge, H. (eds), In de ban van betekenis. Proeven van symbolische antropologie, Nijmegen, 46–69.Google Scholar
Kooistra, L.I., 1996: Borderland farming. Possibilities and limitations of farming in the Roman period and Early Middle Ages between the Rhine and Meuse, Assen-Amersfoort.Google Scholar
Kopytoff, I., 1986: The cultural biography of things. Commoditization as process, in Appadurai, A. (ed.), The social life of things. Commodities in cultural perspective, Cambridge, 64–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lefèvre, F., 1988: Reflexions à propos des sculptures de la “Porte de Mars” à Reims, in Lemonde des images en Gaule et dans les provinces voisines. Actes du colloque, Sèvres 16 et 17 mai 1987, Paris (Caesarodunum 23), 148–160.Google Scholar
Lefèvre, F., and Legros, R. 1985: La Porte de Mars de Reims, Reims (Bulletin du Groupe d'études archéologiques Champagne Ardenne, numéro spécial).Google Scholar
Lemaire, T., 1997: Archaeology between the invention and the destruction of the landscape, Archaeological dialogues 4, 5–38.Google Scholar
Lepetz, S., 1996: Effets de la romanisation sur l'élevage dans les établissements ruraux du nord de la Gaule. L'exemple de l'augmentation de la stature des animaux domestiques, in Bayard and Collart (eds), 317–324.Google Scholar
Lorenz, C., 1987: De constructie van het verleden. Een inleiding in de theorie van de geschiedenis, Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Lutz, M., 1970: Au temps de la paix romaine. La civilisation dite des “sommets vosgiens”, Archéologia 37, 50–57.Google Scholar
Martlew, R.D., and Ruggles, C.L.N., 1996: Ritual and landscape on the west coast of Scotland. An investigation of the stone rows of northern Mull, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 62, 117–131.Google Scholar
Metzler, J., Millett, , Roymans, and Slofstra, J. (eds), 1995: Integration in the Early Roman West. The role of culture and ideology, Luxembourg (Dossiers d'archéologie du Musée National d'Histoire et d'Art 4).Google Scholar
Moitrieux, G., 1992: Hercules Salutaris. Hercule au sanctuaire de Deneuvre (Meurthe-et-Moselle), Nancy.Google Scholar
Nesselhauf, H., and Lieb, H., 1959: Dritter Nachtrag zu CIL XIII. Inschriften aus den germanischen Provinzen und dem Treverergebiet, Berichte der Römisch-Germanischen Kommission 40, 120–228.Google Scholar
Noske, B., 1989: Humans and other animals. Beyond the boundaries of anthropology, London.Google Scholar
Ossel P. van, , 1992: Etablissements ruraux de l'Antiquité tardive dans le nord de la Gaule, Paris (Gallia, suppl. 51).Google Scholar
Pater, B. de, and H., van der Wusten, 1991: Het geografische huis. De opbouw van een wetenschap, Muiderberg.Google Scholar
Petit, J.P., and Mangin, M. (eds), 1994: Atlas des agglomérations secondaires de la Gaule Belgique et des Germanies, Paris.Google Scholar
Petrikovits, H. von, 1977: Kleinstädte und nichtstädtische Siedlungen im Nordwesten des römischen Reiches, in Das Dorf der Eisenzeit und des frühen Mittelalters, Göttingen (Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Philologisch-historische Klasse, Dritte Folge 101), 86–135.Google Scholar
Pickles, J., 1985: Phenomenology, science and geography, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Renard, M., 1959: Technique et agriculture en pays trévire et rémois, Latomus 18, 77–109, 307–333.Google Scholar
Rhodes, P.J., 1990: The Attidographers, in Verdin, H. and, De Keyser, E. (eds), Purposes of history. Studies in Greek historiography from the 4th to the 2nd century BC, Leuven.Google Scholar
Richards, C., 1996: Monuments as landscape. Creating the centre of the world in late Neolithic Orkney, World archaeology 28, 190–208.Google Scholar
Roymans, N., 1990: Tribal societies in Northern Gaul. An anthropological perspective, Amsterdam (Cingula 12).Google Scholar
Roymans, N., 1996: The sword or the plough. Regional dynamics in the romanisation of Belgic Gaul and the Rhineland area, in Roymans (ed.), 9–126.Google Scholar
Roymans, N., (ed.), 1996: From the sword to the plough. Three studies on the earliest romanisation of Northern Gaul, Amsterdam (Amsterdam archaeological studies 1).Google Scholar
Roymans, N., and Theuws, F. (eds), 1991: Images of the past. Studies on ancient societies in Northwestern Europe, Amsterdam (Studies in prae- en protohistorie 7).Google Scholar
Schama, S., 1995: Landscape and memory, London.Google Scholar
Scheid, J., 1996: Graeco Ritu. A typically Roman way of honouring the gods, Harvard studies in classical philology (forthcoming).Google Scholar
Schiffer, M.B., 1976: Behavioral archeology, New York.Google Scholar
Schindler, R., 1969: Eine gallorömische Wüstung und Feldflur in Landscheid, Wittlich, Kr., Bonner Jahrbücher 169, 281–289.Google Scholar
Schönberger, H., 1985: Die römischen Truppenlager der frühen und mittleren Kaiserzeit zwischen Nordsee und Inn, Berichte der Römisch-Germanischen Kommission 66, 321–497.Google Scholar
Sherratt, A., 1996: ‘Settlement patterns’ or ‘landscape studies’? Reconciling Reason and Romance, Archaeological dialogues 3, 140–159.Google Scholar
Slofstra, J., 1991: Changing settlement systems in the Meuse-Demer-Scheldt area during the Early Roman period, in Roymans and Theuws (eds), 131–199.Google Scholar
Slofstra, J., 1995: The villa in the Roman West. Space, decoration and ideology, in Metzler, et al. . (eds), 77–90.Google Scholar
Strobel, K., 1987: Der Chattenkrieg Domitians. Historische und politische Aspekte, Germania 65, 423–452.Google Scholar
Thomas, J., 1993: The politics of vision and the archaeologies of landscape, in Bender (ed.), 19–48.Google Scholar
Thomas, J., and Tilley, C., 1992: TAG and ‘post-modernism’. A reply to John Bintliff, Antiquity 66, 106–114.Google Scholar
Tilley, C., 1993: Art, architecture, landscape [Neolithic Sweden], in Bender (ed.), 49–84.Google Scholar
Tilley, C., 1994: A phenomenology of landscape. Places, paths and monuments, Oxford and Providence.Google Scholar
Tilley, C., 1996: The powers of rocks. Topography and monument construction on Bodmin Moor, World archaeology 28, 161–176.Google Scholar
Trierum, M.C., van, A.B. Döbken, and Guiran, A.J., 1988: Archeologisch onderzoek in het Maasmondgebied 1976–1986, Boorbalans 1, 11–104.Google Scholar
Vanderhoeven, A., 1996: The earliest urbanisation in Northern Gaul. Some implications of recent research in Tongres, in Roymans (ed.), 189–260.Google Scholar
Vries, R. de, 1991: Van wetenschapstheorie tot dierenleed. Wetenschapstheoretische opmerkingen over de plaats van het subjectieve in de natuur, Antropologische verkenningen 10.2, 64–81.Google Scholar
Wightman, E.M., 1985: Gallia Belgica, London.Google Scholar
Wonterghem, F. van, 1992: Il culto di Ercole fra i popoli osco-sabellici, in Bonnet, C. and Jourdain-Annequin, C. (eds), Héraclès, d'une rive à l'autre de la Méditerranée. Bilan et perspectives. Actes de la table ronde de Rome, Academia Belgica-École Française de Rome, 15–16 septembre 1989, Bruxelles-Rome, 319–351.Google Scholar
Woolf, G., 1992: The unity and diversity of romanisation, Journal of Roman archaeology 5, 349–352.Google Scholar
Woolf, G., 1996: Monumental writing and the expansion of Roman society in the early empire, Journal of Roman studies 86, 22–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woolf, G., 1997: Beyond Romans and natives, World archaeology 28, 339–350.Google Scholar
Zanker, P., 1988: The power of images in the age of Augustus, Ann Arbor.Google Scholar