Writing the Roman Empire

The paper offers: a) A critique of traditionalist Roman archaeology, including its lack of contact with such overlapping issues as an archaeology of material culture, gender relations, structuration, the social meanings of power, and human agency. It is suggested that this is linked to the dominant concerns and social strategies of the influential traditionalist Romanist Establishment. b) Some examples of remedial research in the field of villa studies are the Brislington well the Hambleden infant burials, and the distribution of villas in Britain. c) And, linked to the above, a brief a discussion of the opportunities for theory-building in Roman archaeology