Annual Adelaide Hahn Lecture in Classical Studies

DISCOVERING DAILY LIFE IN ROMAN EGYPT

A lecture by Dr. Anna Lucille Boozer, Professor of Archaeology and Ancient History, Baruch College

Egypt has served as a critical source of evidence for social history in the Roman world. Studies of everyday life within Roman Egypt, however, have been riven by disciplinary, methodological, and theoretical ruptures. In this lecture I explore the history of these ruptures and lay the groundwork for a fundamental rethink of archaeological approaches to daily life in Roman Egypt. I do so by taking a cross-cultural perspective on both the evidence and our interpretations of it. My approach shifts attention away the singularities of Egypt towards a deeper, more anthropological and embedded understanding of how past people negotiated their daily lives.