Cambridge University Press Styling Romanisation: Pottery and Society in Central Italy (Cambridge Classical Studies)

What was the impact of Romanisation on non-elite life in central Italy during the late third and second centuries BC? Focusing on the increasing spread of black-gloss pottery across the peninsula, this text demonstrates the importance of the study of such everyday artefacts as a way of approaching aspects of social history that are otherwise little documented. Placing its subject within the wider debate over cultural identity in the Roman world, the book argues that stylistic changes in such objects of everyday use document the development of new forms of social representation among non-elite groups in Roman Italy. In contrast to previous accounts, the book concludes that, rather than pointing to a loss of regional cultural identities, the ceramic patterns suggest that the Romanisation of Italy provided new material opportunities across the social scale.