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AUSTRALASIAN HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, 1 1, 1993

Archaeology and Belief in the Roman World:an Iconoclast s Approach

JONATHAN BARLOW

Historical archaeology is an highly interpretive discipline and there exists a tendency toJi ll in our ignoranceof the past with modern preconceptions. An assessm ent of ancient belief in terms of interpretation, social cus-tom and multi-function of objects illustrates the point. f critical analysis of these issues fades, m od em con-ceptions of religion flourish, giving rise to the application of crude and simplistic parameters for ancientbelie f we apply a more rigorous methodology, it is more apparent that belief in the ancient w orld is con-fluted in understanding, imagery and iconography.Archaeology was once the science of collecting andcataloguing the material evidence of the past. noi in asAntiquities, it was the junior sibling to Classics and the twodisciplines were expected to fun ction in much the sam e way asa modem archivist prepares the ground for an historian: theformer assembles the text, the latter analyses it. A century ofintellectual development has seen archaeology emerge as aninterpretive discipline in its own right. Yet herein lies aproblem. Whereas much interpretation is sophisticated, there iswide scope tc interpret cbje cts ix w ays which have itt ebearing on past reality. Bricks and mortar do not speak;material culture and the written word look past each other.Archaeology demands constant awareness of both its ownfundamental limitations and our tendency to impose pre-existing bias. It is not to be summoned in order to embellishhistory with quaint anecdotal vignettes or to vindicate racism,nationalism, gender politics or sheer invention.The object of this essay is iconoclasm, to break up falseimages which, if we do not analyse archaeological materialcritically, flood our minds and construct for us a simple andmisrepresentative picture of religion in the ancient world. Ishall discuss three aspects of archaeolog ical metho d nter-pretation, social custom and multi-function eforeconcluding that the material evidence we do have suggests aconflation of ancient belief systems.In regard to the problem of interpretation, I cite theperformer Madonna. Assess a photograph of the earlyMadonna as you would an artefact on a museum shelf. What dowe learn of religious belief? The crucifix is a symbol of pietyknown from other contexts and the inscription 'Madonn a' sealsthe identification: she is christian. But what is the ritual shepractices which does not adhere to any known christian rite? Isit a primeval pagan rite, a fertility goddess invoking MotherEarth? The point is far-fetched, I realise, but imagine the debateraging in the scholarly journals of the future when the only'evidence' for 'religion' in the twentieth century is a page fromTV Week. There is a fundam ental rule about the archaeology ofreligion: objects do not have religious beliefs, people do.Religious iconography is not a determiner for absolute belief.There is no way of knowing, on the basis of spoons foundamong grave goods and inscribed with 'Saulos' and 'Paulos',whether the person buried at S utton Hoo was a christian. D oesthe burial of a person with a crucifix today represent the pietyof the deceased or the piety of the grieving relative who placedit there?Social custom is just as relative as interpretation. Much ofour physical evidence for the spread of christianity in the

ancient world comes from burial practice. Yet does change inburial practice indicate the diffusion of a new belief system, orevolving social custom? People follow certain behaviouralbecause it is expected of them. A daughter may getmarried in a church, not because she is a believer, but becauseit is expected of her, because she seeks to please her family,because the tradition and am bience of a church service appealto her. Although the context of this example is christian, a placeof christian worship, the individual herself is not. A churchmarriage is 2s much a socia curte m as a statement of personalpiety. Where religion and social custom are blurred, we mustnot privilege one over the other and construct a superficialpicture for the impact and spread of belief.General trends are observed in the development of burialcustoms in the Roman world. In the first and second centuriesbodies were cremated, but in the third and fourth centuriesinhumation became the prevailing rite. It is maintained thatinhumation is the method of burial favoured by christians,recalling the supposed 'christian' belief that a perso n's bodhad to be buried whole in order to be resurrected whole.However, the change in burial practice happened too early andwas too widespread for christianity to have been a direct cause.It is also argued that the general change in orientation withininhumations themselves in the late Roman empire, whereburials tend (roughly) to be laid out west-east, reflects theburial wishes of 'christians'. Th e argum ent runs that thedeceased wanted to face the east in order to sit up and answer

the call when the day of judgement is nigh.2 The thesis isseductive, but we cannot assume that every person who wasburied west-east was a christian (the deceased after all wouldhave little say), and when we exam ine evidence cited for west-east burial in Roman Britain, we find bodies laid out facing theother way, the west, which suggests that the concept of dawnand the Last Day had no bearing on the body's orientation.When we investigate the evidence more closely, we find anumber of seemingly 'pagan' features, like decapitatedstones placed on the corpses in order to stop them from rising.When we think more dekply, we understand the very belief thatthe body had to face east in anticipation of the resurrection islate Medieval, and even if we allow the germination of aMedieval idea in the late Roman empire, we cannot be certainthat the wider population was aware of it and practiced it as achristian rite.4 The arguments for the trend from cremation toinhumation and for the west-east orientation of graves as'christian rites' are general and ill-considered. Why doesorientation of the grave not have as m uch deb t to social custom(or topography of burial ground) as to religious belief?

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Other trends are cited as 'proof ' of the presence ofchristians. Watts would presume that the burial of infants is theprime criterion to indicate a christian rite in R oman Britain, theresult of Christ's teachings and the christian concern for~ h i l d r e n . ~ot only is this a questionable proposition (itimplies that pagans were not concerned for their children ), itis also a suspiciously simple equation here there are infantburials there are christians. Watts would contend, on the basisof a passage in Vergil, that the abse nce of hobnail boots froma cemetery indicates the presence of a christian identity.6Variable factors are glossed over: local dress custom, regionalvariation, select excavation at select sites, mutating socialmores, the probability that distant provincials were not familiarwith Aeneid Book 6 Arguments from silence (or absence) arealways suspect and arguments which canvass religious reasonsas the sole explanation for change are m i ~ c h i e v o u s . ~o statethat the above practices are 'christian rites', is to state that thepresence of gnomes in one's garden is an 'exotic religious rite'designed to placate garden sp irits haunting everyday life in thetwentieth century.When scholars like Watts attempt to delimit belief, that is touse material culture to argue X is christian, Y is pagan, they fallinto a methodological trench. They work by the premise thatancient belief systems use certain types of objects, practicecertain types of rites to the exclusion of other influence^ ^ Thisassumes that objects are mono-functional and that we isolatethe believers if we can only find the object. While this mightbe true in some cases, it is not true in the majority of cases. Alarge number of Vikings were buried in Scandinavia withchurch plate and associated religious objects: were they piouschristians or were they itinerant cutthroats who purloinedtreasure during the Age of Viking attacks on Britain and~ u r o ~ e ? ~second fundamental rule of archaeology is thatobjects are more likely to be multi-functiona thanmono-functional: material is constantly re-used and re-contextualised. Even where a sarcophagus is suggestive of'christian' sensitivity in its iconography an d context, wecannot ascribe categorical belief to it. Th e sixth-century bishopof Tours, Gregory, records that at a time of persecution pagansenclosed the body of the 'Apostle' Bartholomew in asarcophagus and flung it into the sea. On its re-discovery, this'pagan' sarcophagus became an object of 'christian'veneration. l o Amphorae, the vessel we associate w ith wine inAntiquity, have been found at Pompeii to contain anchovies,dates and wall plaster.Space too can be multi-functional and even the holiest sitescan be reused and their meanings blurred. Is the Dome of theRock in Jerusalem jewish, christian o r islamic? The visitor canadmire the Haci Bayram Cam ii mosque at Ankara in Turkey asthe city's most revered place of muslim worship. Yet adjacentto the mosque is a former Byzan tine church built on the site ofthe former Tem ple of Augustus and R ome, originally dedicatedto Cybele, the Anatolian godd ess of fecundity. One wall of thepagan temple has the best surviving inscription of 'TheAchievements of the Divine Augustus' (Res Gestae DiviAugusti). If only the marble block with its public inscriptionhad survived, would w e have know n that it w as a sacred site atall?The remarkable clarity which distinguishes who is christianand who is pagan in modern archaeological-based scholarshipis the result of the modem scholar's detachment from the Dast.This problem usually arises when q uestions are framed purelyfrom an historical perspective and archaeology summoned tofill in the gaps without adequate thought or methodology.Moreover, while sloppy methodology is a problem in allperiods of historical archaeology, we must also be alive to ourown cultural preconceptions. We are heirs to a christiantradition which stressed conversion and the rejection of the Oldfor the New, whether it be Saul on the road to Damascus orMartin Luther in a thunderstorm. It is a small step for us todelimit religious identities in these terms and then approach

material evidence to seek confirmation. I call this 'looking forNoah's Ark'. It is more foreign for us, yet more meaningful ifwe w ant to understand the ancient world, to exorcise from ourminds 'conversion9 as transformation (literally 'turning aw ayfrom') and embrace belief as conflation (ie. syncre tism).l lBurial custom is difficult to interpret for reasons set outearlier, and it is germane to remember that pagan cultscontinue at the same time as the expansion of christianity. Inancient Britain, for instance, religions do not just arrive andtake over from the ones already there. Belief in the nativeCeltic deities did not cease with the Roman conquest of Britainin AD 43. They often merged as in the case of the temple ofSulis Minerva at Bath, an amalgam of Sulis, a local Celticwater deity in charge of the hot-water spring, and the importedRom an goddess ~ i n e r v a . ~ ~s Celtic deities were notreplaced by Roman deities, so too pagans were not replaced bychristians. Numerous artefacts survive from the M editerraneanworld with mixed iconography suggestive of the point: theiconography of Madonna and child filched from Isis and~ o r u s ; l ~he appearance of solar imagery on Constantine'scoinage long after his conversion;14 a mosaic found underSaint Peter's which depicts Christ as a Sun-G od driving a two-horsed chariot across the sky.15 Num erous artefac ts survivefrom the northern world with mixed iconography suggestive ofthe point: the Niederdollendorf grave-stone in the Rhinelandwhich displays serpents on one side and christ on the other;16the Franks Casket in the British Museum with scenesportraying Weland the Sm ith and the Adoration of the M agi;17Scandinavian rune stones with crosses in the centre boundedby fettered serpents. l8We cannot draw concrete conclusions on the existence of'christians', 'christian ceme teries' and 'ch urch es'. Not only isthe evidence lacking, but it assumes there is a strict dichotomybetween pagar: and chrisdan. It is more probab e that no suchdichotomy existed (especially outside the educated priesthood)and that christ was merely added to the existing panoply ofpagan deities. The acceptance of christ does not entail therejection of the pagan gods.Far from causing the abandonment of paganism, christianitygrew out of paganism. Our festival Christmas comes from thepagan festival, 'the Day of the Birth of the Unconquered Sun'(Dies Solis Invicti Nati), inaugurated by the Roman emperorAurelian in 274 and celebrated on 25 December in order tomark the 'nativity' (nata lis) of the Sun. Wo rship of Sol Invictuswas itself a mixture of the Roma n imperial cult and Sun-godsimported from the east. Mithras, the Persian god of light, wasassimilated with the sun and hence shared the same birthday.Sol Invictus gained primacy as the official, universal worshipof the late empire, but it gradually gave way to another mysterycult derived from the east. At a time of competition with thesolar Mithras, christianity usurped his birthday in order to givedefinition to the nativity of its own founder, christos.19Christianity rose to prominence on the shoulders of paganpractices and social custom, it was a slow cum ulative processrather than a sudden rejection of the Old for the New.20Belief in the Roman world, even belief which tended to besocially exclusive in initiation, is not always exclusive inimagery, iconography, or understanding. We must expect, inparticular on the remote periphery of Mediterraneancivilisation, a blurring of beliefs within paganism itselfbetween various local and imported deities, and betweenpaganism and mystery religions like christianity. We cannotcome to our evidence with preconceptions of what it pagan andwhat is christian and state blithely 'archaeology proves' X orY is the case. The hindsight of the twentieth century too oftenrenders something which does not look christian as'paganism', when in fact, it equally indicates a complex ritualand custom. Christian dogma itself was only formulated (at anintellectual level) in its recognisable catholic form in the latefourth century, and it is anachronistic to project convictionsframed from a modern perspective, from the clarity of modem

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clkristian metaphysics and iconography, into the past in order toisolate an exclusive belief system. We must be aware of theconstraints of our evidence when m uch of it is drawn from therelative and inconclusive archaeological record. The emperorAlexa nder Severus thought of enrolling Christ among the gods,and his private chapel contained a number of statues rangingfro m his household Lares, to Orpheus, to Christ. Redwald, kingo f the east Angles, also hedged his bets on the supernatural andworshipped at a temple which contained both heathen andchristian altars.21 I suggest Severus and Redwa ld are typical ofRaman world and it is only the dominant discourse of athousand years of Medieval catholicism, the generichomogeneity of scholarship bereft of methodology, whichmake us think otherwise.CKNOWLEDGMENTS

This paper is based on a talk I gave at the ProfessionalDevelopment Course for Teachers of HSC Ancient History, atthe University of Sydney in February, 1995. I thank theconvenor, Dr Kathryn Welch, for the invitation to speak and thesmooth running of the seminar. In writing the paper, I amindebted to the ideas and insights of Young 1977; Bullough1983; and James 1988 and 1989.NOTES1 . Watts 1991:522. Watts 1991: 53-54,5 8. D espite the qualification buried onp.238 (n.21), west-east burial is given maximum rankingon the christian identification scale (p.53).3 . This evidence is discussed by Watts 1991: 58-59, 73. Sheconcludes that such inconsistencies are the absorption ofpagan practices into 'Christian burials' and the intrusionof pagan elements into 'presumed Christian cemeteries'(pp. 189, 196). The utility of the 'weighting' system

employed by Watts, where artefacts and burial rites aregiven a numerical value on the christian scale, lies in itsability to devalue inconsistent and con tradictory evidence.Watts herself has trouble reconciling the inconsistencies:four definitive 'Christian cemeteries' on p. 89(Cannington, Butt Road 11 Colchester and Poundbury 3)become 'presumed Christian cemeteries' on pp. 195-96.The alternative conclusion is that they were neither'Christian cemeteries' nor 'presumed christiancemeteries' in the first place. The methodology of theweighting system is borrowed from Thomas (1981), whoemploys it with greater acumen and caution (there is alimit to inferences based on archaeology, p. 23). For aconsidered introduction to the (slight) evidence ofchristianity in Roman Britain see Salway 1993512-29.

4. There could be many factors behind the west-east burialphenomenon, Young 1977: 16-24; Rahtz 1978:1-14. Wecannot privilege christianity a s the so le reason.5. Watts 1991:38-51. Th e christian-pagan polarity thusbecomes christo-centric and pagans are reduced to thebarbaric 'Other', cold-blooded infanticides (p. 49).6. Watts, 1991:71. The thesis runs that the pagan,forecasting the need for adequate footwear whenwandering in the netherworld, was buried in his boots(Watts 1991:70, citing Vergil, Aeneid 6. 326-330).Unfortunately, Watts does not cite line 325: haec omnisquam cernis inops inhumatague turba est (Austin[ed.] 19 77 :ll) . The reason the crowd of souls w anderedthe netherworld was because they were poor andunburied.

is full of how lers: demand for lead tanks booms after theconversion of Constantine, but slows to a trickle in themid-fourth century when there was no-one left to convert(p. 172 ); a wom an buried with a Y-shaped lump of metalcould be either a 'Christian with neo-Pythagoreanleanings, or neo-Pythagorean w ith Christian inclinations'(p. 178); a Rom an Catholic canon law of 191 7 is'presumed to go back to the early Church' (p. 50 -thelongue durke in history?). Reviews of the bo ok have beenmixed: contrast the levitas of Furlonger (1992) and thegravitas of Henig (1992).E.g. 'it is quite likely, too, that only baptised Ch ristians orcatechumens w ere interred in Christian cemeteries' (p. 50[my emphasis]); 'a site may be identified with areasonable degree of certainty as either Christian orpagan' (p. 38, a list of cemeteries proposed as 'christian'is given on p. 89); or, citing the catacombs in Rome andtwo sites in North Africa, Watts generalises 'a tradition ofseparate Christian cemeteries had thus been wellestablished' (p. 64 [it has been established only for thecatacombs in Rom e and two sites in North Africa ]).Wormald 1982: 133, 139 -40.Van Dam 1988:34This is not a new argument (e.g. Ferguson 1970: ch. 12),but its one that has to be restated continually.The bronze head of Minerva found at the site is classicalin inspiration and contrasts with the gorgon 's head (malewith moustache and knotted brow) originally on thepediment of the temple. See further Toynbee 1963:135-36, 163-64 and plates 20 and 96.Ferguson 1970:237.Ferguson 19 70 55 and plate 25.Ferguson 1970:237 and plate 86.Ament 1980:54.Fell 1980:30-3 1Prof. E. Sharpe pers. comm.Cumont 1956:xvii; Ferguson 1970:239.Cumont, in a traditional yet remarkably fresh book (1909,trans. 1956), saw the triumph of christianity as evolutionof belief, with Oriental religions central in re-aligningmental horizons. On a different tack, Sharpe lendsthought to the cum ulative traditions in a northern contextwhich turned salvation in an increasingly christiandirection, 1973:246-47.Magie [ed.] 1924:'Severus Alexander' 29.2; King [ed.]1930:Bede 2.15.

7. The book Christians and Pagans in Roman B ritain itself

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