The people maketh the town / Ljudje, ki tvorijo mesto

2020

This paper addresses how the changes in Slovenian politics have been influencing the interpretation of identity in the sphere of Roman mortuary archaeology. The paper starts with an overview of the political history of Slovenia, separated into three phases: the period until 1945, the Yugoslav period (1945–1990), and independent Slovenia (1991–present). The second part of the paper focusses on theoretical studies directly discussing identity of the deceased in Roman period Slovenia. The majority of such studies is centred on the material from larger cemeteries, notably those of Colonia Ulpia Traiana Poetovio (modern Ptuj) and Colonia Iulia Emona (modern Ljubljana), of which the latter is better documented and researched. The paper concludes with a discussion of the potential for future studies.

Nowadays we can observe the ongoing process of formation of a so-called "somatic society" [Kurczewski 2006 : p.172 and the next one], where a body is considered as a cultural product; as space where meanings are broadcasted and written in. This particular perspective, suggesting the performative nature of corporeality as such, does not explain, however, substantial differences in the perception and self-experience for women and men. The aim of this paper is therefore to approximate the process of developing the different stereotypes regarding gender, which appear to be of such importance that they determine not only radically different way of perceiving and experiencing each other by men and women, but also determine their fundamentally different opportunities for selfexpression and self-creation and, in consequence, differentiate the real possibility of access to social gratification.

Burying the deceased within the settlement area but outside of consecrated ground of the cemetery that belonged to the community was considered as unusual throughout the Middle Ages. A relatively small number of burials within settlements were found in Northern Croatia. There are burials of three men, two very small children (a foetus and a new-born), and one individual of unknown sex and age. The burials of two men can be dated to the 8th century, one to the 14th century, a foetus to the second half of the 14th century and the new-born in a pot to the period from the 15th – 17th century. This paper presents possible interpretations of these unusual burials that occur within the settlement but outside of regular cemeteries. Although there a number of interpretations offered by Western and Central European archaeologists for such burials during the early Middle Ages, they emphasise the need for a special consideration of similar cases in subsequent periods when Christianity was fully established. Some historical sources testify to cases of hidden burials of small children within the settlement or settlement structures – in such cases it usually occurred because of infanticide, but for other age categories these historical sources mostly remain silent. Archaeology may provide a large contribution by defining whether the burial took place within the village on a private household plot or on the communal village property. Only within the well-known archaeological context can we discuss with more certainty specific relationships between the particular identity of the deceased and community identity.

East Central Europe, 2003

East Central Europe, 2003, 30(2):21-38.

La Construction du Sujet Exclu (IVe-IXe Siècles): Discours, lieux et individus, ed. S. Joye, C. La Rocca & S. Gioanni (Brepols: Turnhout, 2019), pp.15-26. ISBN 978-503-57605-3, 2019

Journal of European Archaeology, 1997