Latinization, Local Languages, and Literacies in the Roman West

by Mullen, Alex; Willi, Anna

• ISBN13: 9780198887515
• ISBN10: 0198887515
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780198887539
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2025-03-19
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• More Book Details

Summary

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

The patchwork of local languages which existed across the western provinces in the Iron Age was radically reconfigured by the rise of Latin. Latinization, Local Languages and Literacies in the Roman West offers a detailed anatomy of the local and regional patterning across Britain, Gaul, the Germanies and the Iberian Peninsula primarily from the later Republic to the end of the Principate. The chapters draw on a combination of various sets of evidence and an interdisciplinary perspective--historical, archaeological, sociolinguistic, and epigraphic--to uncover local voices, tracking 'differential Latinization', and revealing the probable survival of local languages, alongside, or even to the exclusion of, Latin in some communities in non-Mediterranean areas. The results underscore the variety of factors involved in language change and the importance of sensitivity to local communities. By including everyday writing in their epigraphic evidence, the volume reveals regionality in the varieties of Latin used and disparities in engagement in both the epigraphic habit and broader literate practices. New data enable the description of types of literacies, and movement away from debates on provincial percentages of literacy and from generalizations about associated social dynamics. Contributors to the volume grapple with the 'characterful' datasets they have created and collated, the careful treatment of which enables the exploration of a range of themes vital for understanding provincial life. The complexity uncovered by these studies will be a starting point for future investigations.

Author Biography

Alex Mullen, University of Nottingham,Anna Willi, University of Nottingham

Alex Mullen (PhD, FSA, FRHistS) is Associate Professor in Classics at the University of Nottingham and Principal Investigator of the European Research Council-funded LatinNow project exploring life and languages in the Roman western provinces. She previously held research fellowships at the Universities of Cambridge (Magdalene) and Oxford (All Souls College). She is the author of Southern Gaul and the Mediterranean (Cambridge, 2019), co-author (with Olivia Elder) of The Language of Letters (Cambridge, 2019), and co-editor (with Patrick James) of Multilingualism in the Graeco-Roman Worlds (Cambridge, 2012). In recognition of her interdisciplinary work, she won a Philip Leverhulme Prize in Classics in 2018.

Anna Willi is obtained her PhD from Zürich University, Switzerland. Following her postdoctoral research on Roman writing equipment, literacy, and non-monumental inscriptions as a Research Fellow on the ERC-funded LatinNow project, she was awarded a research grant from the Gerda Henkel foundation for her project Tabulae Ceratae (TabCer) on Roman stylus tablets as everyday objects. She is currently Curator of Ancient Mediterranean Life at the British Museum.

Table of Contents

1. Exploring Life and Languages in the Roman Western Provinces: Methods, Materials, and Mindsets, Alex Mullen2. Indigenous Languages, Bilingualism, and Literacy in Hispania Citerior, Third Century scbce/sc-First Century scce/sc, Noemí Moncunill3. The Rise of Latin in Hispania Ulterior, Third Century scbce/sc-Second Century scce/sc, María José Estarán Tolosa and Javier Herrera Rando4. The Epigraphic Habit in Post-Conquest Hispania: A Geospatial Analysis of the Epigraphic Data and Self-Governing Communities, Pieter Houten5. The Languages and Epigraphies of Iron Age and Roman Gaul, Alex Mullen6. The Onomastics of the Batavian civitas in the Context of the Latinization of Gallia Belgica and Germania Inferior, Marie-Thérèse Raepsaet-Charlier7. Literacy in Gaul: The Value of Instrumentum, Michel Feugère and Anna Willi8. Writing Latin in Germania Superior, Anna Willi9. Writing Equipment and Latin Literacy in the Netherlands: An Archaeological Perspective, Jasper de Bruin10. Languages and Literacies in Roman Britain, Alex Mullen11. Intermezzo, Greg Woolf