Public Lecture.

Towards an Archaeology of the Subaltern: "Squatters" at Late Roman Villas

Prof. Sarah Beckmann (Assistant Professor, Department of Classics, UCLA) reconsiders the rise and fall of the late antique villa but eschews the top-down approach that pervades archaeological syntheses of these structures. Understanding owners as absentee domini, she advocates attention to non-elite groups residing in and around villas. She focuses on late antique but especially post-antique occupational evidence (subdivisions in the pars urbana; constructions in ephemeral materials; the repurposing of space for burial, industrial work, or storage) at three sites in the Roman west, which brings attention to the unseen labor and lived experiences of non-elite groups residing in and around villas, ca. 3rd-6th c. CE. Greater attention to such populations, she argues, is poised to help us understand better the shape, orientation, and evolution of rural life and rural hierarchies in late antiquity and beyond.

Sarah Beckmann is a Roman archaeologist and assistant professor at UCLA. She received her BA from Carleton College in Classical Languages and her PhD from University of Pennsylvania in the Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World. Her research is broadly focused on domestic art and archaeology in the Roman world, especially in Italy and the western provinces. She is currently working on her first monograph, which re-investigates the villa phenomenon of the late antique period (mid-3rd to 5th c. CE). In 2022-23, this research was supported by a fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. Other research interests include statuary, collecting and antiquarianism (in late antiquity and into the present era), and representations of marginalized populations (women; children; enslaved groups) in domestic arts. She has published several articles on these subjects in journals, including the AJA and the Art Bulletin.