"Housing Empire: The Archaeology of Daily Life in Roman Amheida, Egypt" by Anna Lucille Boozer

Anna Lucille Boozer

Deposited 2007

Abstract
Housing Empire: The Archaeology of Daily Life in Roman Amheida, Egypt examines the daily life practices of individuals from the Roman (1st C AD–4th C AD) city of Trimithis (now Amheida) in the Dakhleh Oasis of Egypt.1 Drawing upon archaeological research on two Roman Egyptian houses, it consider how imperial consolidation works in practice by conceptualizing empire as a fluid set of meanings that individuals contested and reconfigured as they incorporated them into their daily lives. In so doing, it investigates the forms and practices of personal commitments to specific heritages within the context of empire and demonstrates that some individuals actively reconceptualized their own heritage and identity for public consumption while others maintained their customary lives with only modest modification.

This work illuminates different strategies of forging, transmitting, and renegotiating identities and heritage, exploring how heritage intersects with other vectors of identity, as well as the variety of tactics employed by social opportunists in the wider context of imperial change. Consequently, this study contributes to our understanding of culture contact and daily life in the ancient world, as well as the relationship between the social construction of heritage and the emergence of new social forms in imperial settings. This contextual analysis of two houses begins to give a history to the ordinary people of the past.

1The Columbia University excavations at Amheida are directed by Professor Roger Bagnall along with Professors Paola Davoli and Olaf Kaper. These excavations operate as part of the Dakhleh Oasis Project.