Cultural Interaction and Economic Ambition in Roman Dalmatia

Kristina Glicksman
Cultural Interaction and Economic Ambition in Roman Dalmatia
An interesting aspect of the Roman economy, and indeed the economy of any age, is the extent to
which certain economic choices are dictated by a region’s socio-cultural framework. Equally important is the
way in which economic activities can promote cultural interaction through the movement of goods and
people.
The Roman period is particularly useful for considering these aspects for two reasons. The first is a
certain level of cultural homogeneity. This is not to say that society and culture were identical in all parts of
the empire throughout history. Nothing could be further from the truth! But specific regions show certain
changes within the socio-cultural makeup of their societies, which we can identify as resulting from external
(what we would call ‘Roman’) influences. These changes are not necessarily related to changes in identity,
which are difficult to identify, and for the purpose of this paper, it is of small import whether certain changes
in practice were a conscious adoption of Roman ways or a subconscious acceptance of new lifestyles.
The second advantage offered by the Roman period is the high level of interconnectedness which
characterised the Roman Mediterranean. The large-scale movement of goods and of people was a catalyst
for cultural exchange across the empire.
In order to understand how these influences functioned and how they affected the lives of people
living in the Roman world, it is necessary to consider the evidence on a local level. The province is a valid
place to start because it yields a certain level of cultural similarity, and it provides a focus while still offering
enough evidence for useful analysis.
This paper takes as its focus the Roman province of Dalmatia. Even though the archaeological
evidence from Dalmatia is much scarcer than from other Roman provinces, it would be a heavy task to cover
in detail every aspect of the possible relationship between society and economy in Dalmatia. The purpose of
this paper is to give an idea of the socio-cultural complexity of the region and its impact on the economy, and
vice versa, and also, to demonstrate, if only superficially, the validity of this approach.
Agriculture is an important place to look for signs of interaction and exchange because it was the
single most important economic activity in the ancient world. Also, certain agricultural practices are often
considered characteristic of Roman society, for example the use of centuriation in the demarcation and
administration of land.
By the end of the first century BC, Dalmatian society was comprised of three separate groups of
people with their own cultural and agricultural traditions, and each is represented in the archaeological
record by the remains of land division systems used during the Roman period. As one might expect, there is
evidence of centuriation around the colonies, and it is especially clear around Salona and Iader. Overall, the
geology of Dalmatia makes it generally unsuitable for large-scale centuriation, and it is difficult to know just
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K. Glicksman – Cultural Interaction and Economic Ambition in Roman Dalmatia
Fig. 1 - Satellite image of the centuriation system belonging to the Roman colonia of Iader, which
was situated on the small peninsula now part of the modern city of Zadar (Google Earth 2006).
how much land was divided in this way. Modern land use, especially recent urbanisation and
industrialisation, has altered the picture in some places, but also, the nature of aerial photography makes it
highly dependent upon favourable conditions for visibility. For example, since Bradford’s excellent work on
1
Dalmatian centuriation, Iader’s system has been thought to consist of only 150 centuriae , but recent satellite
imagery shows quite clearly that it was a least twice that size, extending much further north than was
previously thought (fig. 1). It is important to remember that centuriated land does not necessarily equal
Roman (i.e., immigrant) agricultural activity. The agrimensores are quite clear on that point; these areas
2
would have been used both by the immigrant veterans and by the original native communities .
Centuriation was not the only type of land division used in this period. Although we often like to think
of the Romans as imposing their own particular brand of administration, they seem to have been tolerant of
earlier forms, adapting local traditions to imperial administration. Greek colonists used different forms of land
division, and the island of Hvar has one of the best-preserved examples of a Greek chora in the
Mediterranean. The fact that this system continued to be used under the Roman administration is seen
3
through evidence of Roman-period division of the blocks in ways that were particularly Roman . However,
the layout of this chora used a foot measurement different from the Roman foot, and there is no written
documentation to show whether the Romans took this into account, although the writings of the
4
agrimensores show that Roman administrators were aware of these sorts of issues .
5
There is also a reference among the writings of the agrimensores to Dalmatian use of the versus ,
which is an Osco-Umbrian unit of measurement based on the Oscan foot and equivalent to 10,000 Oscan
1
BRADFORD 1957, 180.
CAMPBELL 2000, 121–123.
3
SLAPŠAK ET AL. 2001, 89–91.
4
E.g., public land in Cyrene divided according to the Ptolemaic foot: CAMPBELL 2000, 89–91; use of the Drusian foot in Germany:
CAMPBELL 2000, 91.
5
CAMPBELL 2000, 91.
2
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XVII International Congress of Classical Archaeology, Roma 22-26 Sept. 2008
Session: Interaction, Urbanisation and Cultural Change in the Balkans
Fig. 2 - Map showing two Dalmatian agricultural traditions.
6
square feet , so the influence here is clearly Italian, and it was quite probably used by early Italian colonists.
The introduction of this measurement must, therefore, predate the imperial period, but the versus was
adopted by the local Roman administration, and its use continued at least until the early second century AD.
Finally, there was also a division of land according to tribal boundaries. A number of inscriptions, all
dating to the first century AD, have been found indicating the division of land according to tribes under the
7
Roman administration . This is potentially significant, as Strabo records a custom of the Delmatae of
8
redistributing land, which they held in common, every seven years , and while there is no indication of
whether or not this practice continued into the Roman period, there is no reason to assume that it did not.
This example of land division systems shows already how cultural differences could have an effect
on the region’s agriculture, but the analysis can be taken one step further by looking at the evidence for olive
and vine cultivation. In comparing the evidence for olive oil and wine production and the locations of the tribal
boundary stones, we find that there is very little overlap and that the area showing the most evidence for oil
and wine production is the central Adriatic region around the colonies of Salona and Narona and the islands
colonised by the Greeks – in other words, the area under the greatest Greco-Roman cultural influence (fig.
2).
6
Varro, RR 1.10.1; CAMPBELL 2000, 11.
WILKES 1974.
8
Strabo, 7.5.5.
7
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K. Glicksman – Cultural Interaction and Economic Ambition in Roman Dalmatia
How can that information improve our understanding of the region? Evidence indicates that the
9
Illyrians were keen pastoralists , and products such as cheese and wool seem to have been important
10
exports from Dalmatia throughout the Roman period . So these cultural influences could have had a
significant impact on the region’s economy, influencing the nature of agriculture and the products exported.
In terms of the relationship between culture and economy, burial practice is another relevant
category because it is culturally-linked and also provides a lot of evidence since people are constantly
needing to be buried. In particular, the fashion for the use of sarcophagi is a cultural element which had an
identifiable impact on local economic activity. Inhumation burials began to replace cremation at Rome in the
early second century AD, and this fashion was adopted to varying degrees throughout the Roman world,
stimulating mass production and trade in sarcophagi. This phenomenon is well-known, but the wider
economic impact of this cultural change can be seen in this provincial case study.
Inhumation seems to have been the norm both among Illyrian communities and in the Greek
colonies prior to Roman occupation, but from about the middle of the first century BC, cremation was
gradually adopted until inhumation burial all but disappeared. The inhumation fashion began to catch on
again in the later second century, and there are some examples of imported Roman and Attic sarcophagi
from that time, but this trend really takes off at the beginning of the third century, and along with Rome,
Thessalonica and Aquileia, Salona becomes one of the largest importers of sarcophagi from the Attic
11
workshops, which stopped producing in the middle of the third century . This import had an influence in
Dalmatia beyond just burial practice because, from the third century onward, locally-produced sculpture in
12
Dalmatia shows a heavy Attic influence . The other major source for imported sarcophagi at Salona was
Proconnesos, and one of the well-known features of Proconnesian sarcophagi is that they were usually
shipped in a partially-worked state, so that the final work needed to be done at the place of import.
While this importation of sarcophagi would have been significant in terms of long-distance trade, the
greatest impact of the practice of inhumation on the local economy appears in local industries. It has been
calculated that about two thousand sarcophagi, whole or fragmentary, have been found in Salona or its
13
hinterland, and ninety percent of these were made in Salona from local stone .
The impact of this new trend on the local economy clearly must have been massive. It would have
increased the demand for local stone, meaning greater activity at quarry sites, but also greater business for
merchants willing to transport the materials. Since one of the main sources for stone was the island of Brač,
ships would have been required to transport the sarcophagi in their initial stage. And then, of course, there
would have been more work for sculptors, even to the extent that there could have been sculptors who
specialised only in sarcophagus production.
Naturally, the reality of the situation is even more complex. Local economy can also affect local
acceptance of cultural practices. While inhumation itself was generally accepted throughout the province, no
other site in Dalmatia has yielded anything approaching the plethora of sarcophagi from Salona. This is most
likely due to a concentration of wealth in the capital city. Thus, the state of the local economy can dictate the
extent to which certain cultural practices are adopted.
The relationship between economy and culture also works the other way around, and economic
activity can act as a catalyst for cultural interaction. The main type of evidence to look for in this case is the
movement of people specifically related to economic activity. Long-distance trade is an obvious candidate,
and the nature of this sort of action is complex, but the existence of examples besides trade demonstrates
the wider validity of this sort of approach.
The first Dalmatian example of this type centres on the building of Diocletian’s Palace. Some of the
construction has been thought to indicate the presence of workmen from the eastern part of the empire, who
9
Varro, RR, 2.10.6-10; WILKES 1969, 179; WILKES 1992, 222.
Pliny 8.191 and 11.240; Expositio totius mundi et gentium, 53.7; GLICKSMAN 2005, 214–216.
11
CAMBI 1988, 73.
12
CAMBI 1988, 83.
13
CAMBI 1998, 169.
10
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XVII International Congress of Classical Archaeology, Roma 22-26 Sept. 2008
Session: Interaction, Urbanisation and Cultural Change in the Balkans
14
were brought to the area at the end of the third century specifically for this project . Interestingly, from the
first century AD, Greek is rarely used in local epigraphy, but around the beginning of the fourth century,
Greek appears again on funerary inscriptions from the area around Salona, although Latin never loses its
15
dominance . It is also possible that these workmen brought with them the Christian religion, which gained a
16
strong foothold around Salona at this same time . These indicators of a new cultural tradition suggest that
workmen came to this region for a specific project and that many of them stayed and established families
there. Certainly, they created a large enough community to influence local culture in terms of language and
religion.
Another example is the presence of Dalmatians in Dacia. The gold mines of Dalmatia were probably
failing by the beginning of the second century AD, just around the time that Trajan conquered Dacia. The
closing of mines would have created not just large scale unemployment but, more specifically, a flood of
people with specialist knowledge. The relative ease of travelling within the Roman world would have aided
the movement of people in search of better prospects of employment, which is the most reasonable
explanation for the large number of Dalmatians recorded in the epigraphic evidence of Alburnus Maior in
17
18
Dacia . Some have seen this relocation of Dalmatians as forced migration , and such large-scale
movement of populations seems to indicate a centrally planned and administered undertaking. The peregrine
status of much of the Dalmatian population living in this Dacian mining region has been taken as proof of a
19
forcibly exiled, and therefore dissident, population . However, this hypothesis does not take into account the
relatively high status of some of the members of the community nor of the apparent financial independence
of even the peregrini.
Wax tablets discovered at Alburnus Maior are helpful regarding the social and financial situation of
the Dalmatians living at the site. Some of the population at least was involved in financial transactions,
20
21
including the buying and selling of slaves and property . Three of the tablets also record mining contracts ;
the tablet IDR 1, 42 records the name of the employer as Titus Beusantis qui et Bradua, a Dalmatian. This
evidence points towards at least part of the Dalmatian population being financially solvent, a circumstance
contrary to the theory of an oppressed and forcibly exiled population; it would be more reasonable to see a
financial incentive for the migration, which includes not only Dalmatians but also people from the eastern part
22
of the empire .
None of the examples discussed in this paper is unique to Dalmatia. Every one can be paralleled in
other parts of the empire, and there are many more examples besides. I have attempted, in this short paper,
to demonstrate the complexity of the relationship between Roman society and economy. It is not enough
merely to accept the changes that occurred as a result of and during Roman occupation. Although many
aspects seem to us to be clearly following a recognised pattern, it is because we have the benefit of
hindsight and two millennia of separation. But it is important also to look at the process from the perspective
of the people involved in it and to try to understand the different influences – the way various social and
cultural norms affected economic choices and also the way in which economic ambition in the Roman world
stimulated the movement of people and furthered cultural exchange.
Kristina Glicksman
Institute of Archaeology
University of Oxford
14
WARD-PERKINS 1981, 458; WILKES 1993, 23; CAMBI 2005, 171.
MARIN 1993.
16
WILKES 1993, 23.
17
PROTASE 1978; ZANINOVIĆ 1995; CIOBANU 1999; PISO 2004.
18
E.g., DUŠANIĆ 1977, 93.
19
DUŠANIĆ 2000, 348.
20
Slaves: Inscriptiones Daciae Romanae 1, 36–37; Property: IDR 1, 39.
21
IDR 1, 40–42.
22
HIRT 2004, 312.
15
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K. Glicksman – Cultural Interaction and Economic Ambition in Roman Dalmatia
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