Series: Creative Industries in Vienna: Development, Dynamics and Potentials

The migration of the Armenian people into Cilicia in the late 11th century AD was caused by an agreement of several Armenian princes with the Byzantine emperor to leave their homelands to the north in return for imperial military appointments in Cappadocia, Mesopotamia, and Cilicia. Following the defeat of the emperor, Romanos Diogenes, at Manzikert by the Seljuk Turks in 1071, however, the Byzantines gradually lost control of these territories, allowing the Armenians to establish more or less independent chieftaincies there. This culminated in 1198 in the establishment of an Armenian kingdom in the region of Cilicia, which lasted until the Mamluk conquest in 1375. A dearth of historical sources makes it difficult to establish a definite framework for the political history of the period. This doctoral thesis focuses on the origins, development, and spatial distribution of fortified sites in the Armenian Kingdom (1198-1375). Through the examination of known and newly identified castles, this work increased the number of sites and features to be associated with the Armenian Kingdom. Furthermore, it examines the historical landscape of medieval fortifications and analyzes their relationship with several variables, such as nearby un-surveyed rural settlements. Despite the abundance of archaeological remains, little work had focused on the Armenian heritage. In his 1987 book, Robert Edwards argued that the organization of the Armenians in Cilicia represented the triumph of a non-urban strategy. According to Edwards military architecture developed as a primary alternative to urban organization. It is my aim with this work to refine his ideas with new archaeological evidence. It is an attempt to develop a comprehensive and flexible model that explains the role of the military fortifications not as just the product of one particular strategy. Although many of the sites are still relatively well preserved, the project is also timely, as the continuing expansion of the population into the Cilician Highlands is causing archaeological remains to be plundered for building material.

For much of the twentieth century, Romano-Celtic syncretism has been considered an unproblematic fusion of polytheistic belief systems assumed to preserve prehistoric Celtic religion and yet also provide a key form of evidence for the assimilative process of Romanisation. However, given the abrupt disjunction in ritual practice and especially changes in material form, Chapter 1 proposes that the evidence from the Roman period and its relationship to pre-conquest religion needs to be re-evaluated, not assumed. A reconsideration of syncretic or 'native' religion in Roman Britain will be accomplished by focusing on the usual categories of Roman period artefactual evidence, including iconography, inscriptions, ritual sites and votive offerings. The wealth of religious material from the frontier zones of Central Britain will be repositioned within a discussion of ritualised practices, hybridised identities and contextualised landscapes. Chapter 2 will outline how the study of the Roman conquest and colonisation of Britain has affected the study of religion and especially Romano-Celtic syncretism. Previous approaches will be reviewed, as well as the implications of post-colonial theory. Chapter 3 will develop a holistic methodology for studying ancient religion building on theoretical approaches of contextualisation, ritualisation and hybridisation. The general tendency in archaeological discourse to separate the evidence for ritual practice and religion from the wider socio-cultural background compounds the specific problems arising from imperial colonisation and ethnic dichotomies. Considering the socioeconomic, sociopolitical and landscape context of ritual practice provides an integrated methodology for interpretation that has the potential to over-ride dichotomies such as Roman and Native or ritual and practical. Chapter 4 will begin with one of the timeless interpretations of ancient religion, which is a concern with fertility. This paramount ritual motivation is often framed in general terms, but this chapter will demonstrate that more specific interpretations can be offered by examining the socio-economic context of ritual practice. The relationship between sheep husbandry, pastoralist production and iconographic expression in Roman Britain will help contextualise the fertility interpretation of the genii cucullati, associated matres, and the divine couple of Mercury and a goddess with a vessel. Chapter 5 considers the regionalised distribution of votive altars dedicated to the local deities of the Hadrian's Wall frontier zone. A case study of inscriptional practice on the 61 votive altars dedicated to the variously spelled theonym of Vitiris will explore identity and the socio-political context of ritual practice. Discussions of religion in Roman Britain barely consider Vitiris despite being the most popular local cult from the frontier zone and in terms of inscriptional evidence second only to Jupiter for all of Roman Britain. A floruit in the late second and early third century AD and the multi-cultural milieu of the northern frontier provide the socio-political context for the local cult of Vitiris. Chapter 6 considers the landscape context of ritual practice and evidence for votive deposition from both pre-and post conquest Central Britain. The landscape context of votive deposits, especially votive altars, and other 'stray' finds from non-military contexts, have not received great attention from Roman studies. A reliance on classical and early medieval texts has led to interpretations of Celtic religion as a natural religion with frequent emphasis on the essential sacred nature of water. A frequent focus on watery contexts in the archaeological study of hoarding and votive deposition has also created binary distinctions in interpretation between wet and dry contexts. However, there would have been considerably more complexity to the bodies of knowledge associated with these important ritualised practices. A variety of spatial scales will be used to contextualise material culture that has often been labelled as 'stray' finds. Examining this material through wider, regional, topographic and hydrographic analysis will allow more to be said about the context of deposition, and show the long-term ritualisation of the landscapes of Central Britain. The final chapter will summarise the inter-dependence of, and interaction between, society, the economy, and the landscape, generating the holistic methodological approach of vernacular religion. As befits a wide-ranging study of religious material in an imperial context, Chapter 7 will shift to a British and western provincial scale in order to place the local and regional case studies into their wider context. The contextual categories allow analysis to shift from everyday socio-economic practices, to life-span concerns and identity construction of socio-political context, to the landscape and longue duree. Following these themes from prehistory into the post-conquest period will acknowledge not just continuity, abandonment and assimilation, but also adaptation, innovation, and renovation; renewal as the complex "reconciliation of tradition and innovation" (Woolf 2001a: 182). Through a careful critical evaluation of vernacular religion, Roman archaeology has a chance to move beyond the dichotomies of religious syncretism - not by using vernacular descriptively as a simple replacement of 'native', but by considering the context specific processes of hybridisation and ritualised practice.

Settlement is an inevitability of human presence in a landscape; a collection of houses indicates settlement, but so too does a field system - the farmers must live somewhere. Wherever there are people there will be settlement, from large concrete and glass urban centres to the tented impermanence of a nomads' camp. Settlement is a result of the human presence, but remains a sterile idea without some discussion of the community. Certainly settlement can be studied without community, but it remains an abstract assembly of parts unless the people that constructed or occupied it are taken into account. A single settlement is home to numerous communities that continuously form, divide and reform in response to the changing practical and social situations that everyday life presents. Before any settlement is established a series of decisions has to be made with due consideration of an area's topography and natural resources, as well as existing settlements in the landscape and any established social, economic or political systems. Physical considerations such as a settlement's location and extent, or the definition of its boundaries, can be viewed individually, but are more usefully considered in conjunction with one another so that a settlement is treated as a working unit that is part of a wider system, rather than an abstract collection of components. This thesis approaches questions of settlement and community in historic Cyprus - from the late Roman period to the end of the Ottoman period - through a presentation of the experience and results of fieldwork I carried out in 2003. The fieldwork comprised a survey project specifically conceived, planned and executed by myself for my PhD research. It focused on three discrete areas of Cyprus: Akrotiri, a low-lying area salt marsh, batha and cirtus groves in the south of the Island; an area of agriculture and coastal maquis on the west coast, north of Peyia; and the Nikitari village territory, which stretches from the southern margins of the Mesaoria up into the lower reaches of the Troodos mountains. The topographical cross section evident in my chosen areas gave me the opportunity to study the diversity of settlement across most of the range of habitats of the island, from the coast, through the plains, scrub and foot hills, to all but the highest reaches of the Troodos mountains. My experiences in the landscape undoubtedly influenced my observation, recording and interpretation of material evidence in the field, and are a vital, if elusive element of my data. I have exploited their influence to make my presentation the landscape I perceived coherent and vivid. Whilst they could not give me a complete understanding of the experiences of erstwhile occupants of the settlements I have studied, my own experiences do lead me toward it through and appreciation of the landscape and the considerations necessary for anyone living, working or travelling in it. Through my data I examine the location of settlements in the landscape and their changing distribution over time, before endeavouring to identify evidence for community amongst the physical remains in the landscape.

Henges are circular earthwork monuments built from the 32nd-17th centuries BC throughout the British Isles. Seen as a discrete monument ‘type’ since the early 1930s, they comprise a morphologically-varied group of sites. Excavations of henges have demonstrated them to be multi-phase sites which were repeatedly returned to, reused and rebuilt over thousands of years. The earthworks so often seen as the defining feature of henge sites are increasingly recognised as a ‘late’ addition to existing sites which were already long-established as significant places in the landscape. The key aim of this thesis is to ‘de-henge’ henges, removing the focus from the final morphology of monuments to instead consider how henge sites were used and transformed throughout their lives. It reinterprets henge sites in Scotland, a previously neglected corpus of sites, using a biographical approach to understand the significance of the transformations effected at henge sites over time, and consider aspects of both tradition/continuity, and change/innovation over time. Henge sites are interpreted as places of commemoration where people encountered, mediated and re-negotiated their pasts and present. The research explores relationships with the past and the creation of memory at henge sites during the Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Bronze Age in Scotland. It is argued that this occurred through monument construction, destruction, rebuilding and reuse; but can be best understood by focusing not only on monumental architecture, but also on the (re)use of materials and material culture, the control and manipulation of sensory experiences of (monumental) spaces, and the relationships between henge sites and other spheres of prehistoric life and death, such as house architecture, farming practices, uses of fire and the burial of (fragments of) people and objects. The thesis discusses these themes through comparison of the biographies of case study sites from Scotland, and contextualises these with reference to henge sites elsewhere in the British Mainland. The reinterpretations of Scottish henges presented in the thesis, and the approaches used, represent a contribution not only to the study of henge monuments, but also have implications for the interpretation and understanding of prehistoric monumentality more generally.

This thesis incorporates a reassessment of Roman pottery from non-Roman contexts in southern Scotland to investigate the complex processes of interaction between Romans and provincial societies. Modern theoretical constructs form the interpretive framework for the discussion to explore how Roman objects functioned in their new social settings. A detailed database has identified a total of 168 sites containing c. 1766 Roman pottery sherds and other objects, while Roman non-ceramic objects have been recovered from an additional 234 sites. The insertion of this data into the ArchGIS program has produced detailed distribution maps to graphically display material spreads and facilitate the identification of material foci. A lack of clearly definable central nodes suggests that the concept of elite access to and control over incoming Roman exotica may be inadequate explanations for the complex and multifarious processes by which the material culture of Empire moved through provincial communities. The hillfort at Traprain Law, East Lothian, is often used to epitomise elite restriction of prestige goods (Hunter 2009) and a detailed study of the Roman ceramics from Traprain is used as a case study (see Chapter 9) to determine the viability of this model. The incorporation of robust and demonstrably appropriate social theories is suggested as an effective means of investigating these processes in a region that conventional wisdom has traditionally deemed to be marginal. The concept of Romanisation is critically deconstructed in favour of a more nuanced approach to the issue of culture contact. Modern postcolonial approaches, most of which have been applied predominantly to Mediterranean colonial situations, are tested against the data to determine their suitability in the context of the aggressive territorial expansionist policies of Rome in northern Britain. These paradigms consider the different ways in which Roman and frontier societies may have experienced the same events and how these communities selectively adopted, adapted or reused foreign material culture. The effects of the conquest are shown to have been differently experienced in Scotland compared to other parts of the Empire and the research proposes methods of recognising the active participation of local people in past events. Rather than viewing northern societies as passive recipients of the imposition of oppressive Roman cultural values, an attempt is made to strip away widespread Romanocentric biases inherent in traditional approaches to the subject. The research adopts a bottom-up approach to the material remains to determine the demonstrable realities of interaction between Romans and northerners, the chronologically restricted and geographically variable extent of contact over time and the role of material culture in negotiating such contact as well as potential resultant cultural transformations. A detailed contextual analysis of Roman pottery from non-Roman contexts has confirmed the variable character of contact across time and space. The study further recognises the potentially lengthy curation of culturally significant objects and traces material biographies to determine alternative social functions of Roman objects in their new cultural settings through their contexts of deposition. Roman objects are confirmed as being appropriated into local ritual and ideological practices, having been subjected to culturally specific physical and symbolic redefinition and structured votive deposition. The research also confirms the heterogeneous, inter and intra regionally variable character of local contact with the Empire and serves as model against which the data from other frontier regions can be tested.

This thesis explores two key themes: (1) the social, cultural and economic changes in the Roman provinces of Spain during the last half of the first century BC and the early first century AD, and the direct effect that Augustus had in driving these developments; (2) the significance that the provinces of Spain had for Augustus and Rome. Initially we assess the exploitation of the Cantabrian War for the military image of Augustus, suggesting that the conflict played a crucial role in bolstering the position of the princeps following the Civil Wars and the constitutional arrangements reached with the senate up to 27. From here in turn we consider the manner in which Augustan action within Iberia impacted upon the literary and visual depictions of the peninsula. The thesis also highlights the fiscal imperatives that acted as a driving force behind the growth in urbanisation, the widespread promotion of privileged status and the provincial reorganisations of Augustus. Following this, the surge in monumentalisation across Hispania’s towns and cities is treated, placing a renewed emphasis on the role of the Augustan regime in encouraging, if indirectly, these processes. An assessment of the impact of Augustan rule on the upward mobility of the Spanish elites follows, highlighting patronage and wealth as the twin pillars of Spanish advancement and suggesting that the first princeps is instrumental in laying the groundwork for the expanding promotion of Spaniards during the reigns of his immediate successors. Finally, the thesis concludes with an overview of the nascent imperial cult in Spain, suggesting in the first instance that the imposition of the cult in the north-west aided the suppression of the recalcitrant tribes and may very well have impacted upon Augustan policies in similarly unstable areas such as Germany and Gaul; and secondly, that whilst direct compulsion cannot be countenanced, Augustus’ dissemination of civic organisation created a framework within which elite competition ensured the rapid proliferation of the imperial cult throughout the towns and cities of Spain and the western provinces.

The aims of this research are to provide a comprehensive review of the available evidence for the socio-economic structure of the Urartian kingdom (of the 9th-6th centuries BC) and by doing so, to analyse and critique previous interpretations of the subject. Although there has been intensive research on different aspects of the Urartian kingdom, mainly chronological studies or excavations and surveys that cover different parts of what was once the lands of the kingdom, unlike previous studies this research presents a systematic review of the geographical, archaeological and textual evidence of the Urartian (and Assyrian where relevant textual evidence is available) as well as original ethnographic observations in order to analyse the socio-economic and administrative organisation of the Urartian kingdom. After reviewing and evaluating the history of research of Soviet, Turkish and Western scholars on various aspects of the Urartian kingdom, I move on to investigating the available economic resources in the region and the movement of commodities such as the produce of arable agriculture, animal husbandry, metallurgy, and craft activities undertaken by Urartian society. The next step, in order to understand the management of these economic resources, is to examine the administrative organisation of the state including the Urartian concept of kingship and the king’s role in administration, construction activities, the administrative division of the kingdom, and the income generated by warfare. It is concluded that the Urartian state economy was heavily dependent on agriculture and animal husbandry. Military expeditions generated substantial income in the form of livestock and prisoners of war. Further wealth was accumulated by tribute, taxation and metallurgical activities. However, how these factors combined into a single economic system has been variously interpreted by individual scholars in response to their contemporary theoretical and political context.

Despite the large amount of historical church archaeology carried out within English churches, the relevance of British regional variations to conclusions reached has only been recognized relatively recently (Rodwell 1996: 202 and Yates 2006: xxi). This offered opportunities to consider possible meanings for the evolving post-Reformation furnishing arrangements within Manx churches. The resultant thesis detailed the processes involved whilst examining changes made to the Anglican liturgical arrangements inside a number of Manx and Welsh churches and chapels-of-ease between 1634 and 1925 from previously tried and tested structuration, and sometimes biographical, perspectives for evidence of changes in human and material activity in order to place Manx communities within larger British political, religious and social contexts. Findings challenged conclusions reached by earlier scholarship about the Commonwealth period in Man. Contemporary modifications to material culture inside Manx churches implied that Manx clergymen and their congregations accepted the transfer of key agency from ecclesiastical authorities to Parliamentary actors. Thus Manx religious practices appeared to have correlated more closely, albeit less traumatically, with those in England and Wales during the same period than previously recognized, although the small size of this study could not discover the geographical extent of disarray within Island parishes. Amendments made to the material culture after 1665 which indicated the status quo was soon re-established in Man probably reflected a shared, compliant paradigm. Alternatively, in England and Wales the official exclusion of dissidents from the Church of England in 1662, visible in the landscape in Nonconformist chapels from the beginning of the eighteenth century, signalled the beginnings of the Church’s loss of full judicial authority. In Man, hierarchical acceptance of moderate religious dissidence within the Anglican Church after the Restoration of the Monarchy, traditional cultural practices, and changed relationships between clergy and parishioners visible materially within the two Island parishes studied, reflected the Manx Church’s more successful strategy to maintain power. A number of sections within chapters focused on material evidence of the unusual relationships between Castletown communities and their parish church between 1704 and 1925. Consideration of seating arrangements also highlighted the effects onto various Manx communities of the sale of the Island to England in 1765. Throughout, the contents of the Welsh churches provided informative, comparative contexts that informed the hermeneutic processes undertaken. To conclude, generally this project placed previously unexplored material culture within wider church archaeology and revealed regionally-specific habitus, human agency, and material activity and trends. The structuration approach taken identified a number of issues suitable for publication, and raised unanswered questions that would benefit from further research.

War captives are generally thought to have comprised the main portion of the Roman slave supply during the Republic. Likewise, the result of mass enslavement through continuous war has been interpreted as a principle factor in the agricultural evolution in Italy from the second century BC which saw a significant increase in large plantation style farming (latifundia). The misconception of a male bias in agricultural labour has put a heavy influence on the need for an external supply of slaves rather than through reproduction. However, an analysis of documentary evidence suggests that wartime enslavement was more limited. Problems in supervising, transporting, and trading large numbers of slaves, as well as competing markets elsewhere in the Mediterranean, made immediate absorption of captives as slaves into the central Italian economy problematic. Furthermore, the vast majority of wartime enslavements occurred following the capture of cities, where larger numbers of civilian prisoners were taken, mostly comprising women, children and slaves. Ancient sources frequently exaggerated the number of war captives and often neglected to elaborate on the fate of those taken in war. Many modern historians have been far too quick to assume that prisoners were enslaved, which has given a disproportionate view of the importance of the contribution of war captives to the slave supply and their effect upon the growing slave population at Rome during the Republic. Such assumptions have left critical analysis wanting and, as a result, war captives have been largely neglected by Roman historians. This study attempts to address the gap in our analysis of these crucial practices in antiquity and to offer an explanation of how the taking of war captives was impacted by Rome’s changing socio-political and economic structures during the Republic.