CULTURE 2252007). Hundreds of local languages were spoken across the empire, but only a few
(for example, Aramaic in the Near East and perhaps Punic in North Africa) were the
basis of literary activity (Harris 1989, Mullen and James 2012). Cultural production
was indeed focused on the cities, which is to say that for most of this period local
and imperial elites chose to spend a good part of their surplus there. The contrast
drawn between large scale patterns and localized variants also remains valid.
Archaeological work has added nuance and detail to that picture without challenging
its broad lines. Understanding how these patterns came about, and why they were
sustained, has proved more contentious. We might distinguish some very widespread
(global) patterns – wine- drinking for example, or cult paid to the emperors –
from highly localized ones, like the hairstyles on the tombstones of women
living around Cologne, or the shape of tombs on the edge of the Libyan Desert.
How can we best explain these two levels of patterning and their relation to one
another?
Let us start with the global patterns. Very few can be plausibly represented as the
result of deliberate political action emanating from Rome or the imperial court,
especially now that neither Hellenization nor Romanization is regarded as an active
force (as opposed to something that needs to be explained). Roman institutions of
government might seem to have promoted urbanism, but their impact on the physical
form or social texture of cities was limited. In the north- west cities only rarely had
more than 5000 inhabitants while in other regions (usually ones with long pre-
Roman urban traditions) they could be ten or even one hundred times that size. As
for widespread tastes in ceramic tableware or in the mosaic décor of dining room
fl oors, or in bathing or the design of domestic housing no political dimension is
plausible, although a cultural centripetalism is likely from the populations of what,
by and large, were a series of subjects happy to be under a loose imperial control.
Part of this global culture of consumption derives from the emergence of a
technological koine in the Mediterranean world and its hinterlands, processes that
began long before Roman unifi cation of the area (Oleson 2008). The working of glass
(including the invention of blowing about 50 BC ), to make bottles and eventually
windows is a case in point, as is the development of waterproof concrete, the creation
of kilns capable of fi ring at very high temperatures, or of aqueduct technology. Freer
movement of artisans and capital was matched by a trade in materials (pozzulana sand
for concrete from the Bay of Naples, granites from the eastern desert of Egypt, marbles
from the Aegean, timbers from the forested margins of the Mediterranean and much
else). Powering all this activity was the emergence of a set of tastes that were shared by
Greek and Latin speaking elites (Elsner 1998, Thomas 2007). Mosaic fl oors decorated
villas in the Aegean and Syria, in North Africa and Italy, Spain, Gaul and Britain
(Dunbabin 1999). Similar meals were served on similar silver plate across the vast
range of the empire (Murray and Tecusan 1995, Nielsen and Nielsen 1998, Garnsey
1999). The elite dead were not only buried in similar forms of coffi n, sarcophagi,
across the empire from the later fi rst century AD , but actual fi nished items – expensive
and often ornately carved to a high degree of completion – were exported across the
entire Mediterranean region with as much enthusiasm as raw materials.
How global cultural phenomena and universal empire should be connected is a
matter of current debate (Inglebert, Gros, and Sauron 2005, Veyne 2005). Few
researchers see Roman authorities actively and deliberately promoting cultural
changes, nor provincials retaining traditional forms as a means of asserting resistance
to Roman values. But opinions vary as to how far Roman ideologies and values