Subaltern Spaces in the Ancient City: Cultural Identity, Spatial Memory, and Networks of Meaning in Roman Pompeii

Abstract

This thesis is about subaltern spaces and identities in the Roman colony of Pompeii—an ancient city notably destroyed and preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE; one that has been widely studied for its preservation of a Roman urban environment that was ‘frozen in time’. The excellent preservation of the site reveals a colonial material record that has long encouraged terminal narratives of Roman acculturation, so-called Romanization, which have devalued the plurality of identities and meanings found in the dispersed spaces and imageries of the ancient city. Rejecting this unilinear narrative of colonization, this thesis instead examines the networks of meaning tied to subaltern spaces, architectures, and imageries of Pompeii under Roman colonial rule.

In doing so, this thesis adopts a middle-range approach to the study of Pompeii’s spaces—giving attention to the distinct elements of the material record while acknowledging their interrelations that form networks of meaning stretching across time, space, and culture. These networks shaped and collated the distinctive spatial and imagistic elements constructed in the city under Roman rule—creating cohesive and legible spaces that recursively engaged with the diverse population of the city. Engaging in a ‘peopling’ of the past—that is, reimagining the lived experiences of subaltern Pompeian residents within the ancient colonial city—this thesis explores how networks of meaning led to the persistence, subsidence, and emergence of subaltern identity spaces within the ancient colonial city—spaces that were erased, appropriated, and peripheralized under Roman colonial rule.

Through a detailed analysis of the networked spaces in the city—employing methodological frameworks from urban planning, social geography, and urban ethnography—this thesis tracks the presence of the proposed networks of meaning attached to subaltern spaces within the spatial and imagistic environment of the Colonia Cornelia Veneria Pompeianorum. In doing so, this thesis finds that the plurality of identity spaces in Pompeii cannot be understood through top-down, unilinear narratives of domination and erasure; rather, they must be apprehended as dynamic social and spatial features wherein subaltern Pompeian identities persisted within the very frameworks intended to marginalize them—producing hybridized spaces, syncretized architectural forms, and alternative discourses of place defined by the networked meanings that made the city legible to the diverse individuals who inhabited it.