Acculturation and 'Romanisation'

Settlement evidence has long been an under-studied category of finds in
examining the cultural changes which occurred in northern central Europe
in the final centuries BC. These changes have been widely associated with
the process of latènisation which affected most of the communities in the
North European Plain in the Iron Age. This book addresses the central
question of the mechanism and agency behind these changes, by examining
material culture patterns. The study uses data from 89 systematically
selected settlement sites located in the Oder River area, including places
of production. The data is contextualised against the evidence from other
central and northern European sites of similar chronology and against other
categories of finds from the study area. The book also contains systematic
catalogues of the examined sites, of their buildings, and of settlement
features of other kinds.

Existing theories and models to explain the complex developments in art and material culture in the highly interconnected Roman world are clearly unsatisfactory. Having jettisoned 'Romanisation' and 'acculturation' for their inherent bias and inadequacies, creolisation and bricolage have gained popularity. But these also have limitations: bricolage focuses too much on physical items, not on ideas of physicality. Moreover, the concept suggests rather 'random' forms of bricolage: each individual can just pick and mix artefacts and ideas that are readily available in their environment, and then 'cobble together' their cultural repertoire. But this myriad of unique results of bricolage are not evident; therefore, other factors need to be accounted for. By contrast, creolisation focuses on the creation of a new culture, different from both the 'Roman' and 'native' ones. But here also lies its inadequacies: there is too much focus on two 'cultures' interacting with each other, less on the individual social actors. Moreover, the study of provinces like Roman Britain shows that there was no Britanno-Roman 'culture'. A large number of additional factors need to be taken into account: diverse socioeconomic structures, networks, experiences, or the decline of La Tène culture pre-43 CE. Many of these problems can be addressed by 'amalgating' cultural theories from creolisation and bricolage and going beyond: this allows us a focus on the individual and on collective thinking, i.e. the individual's bricolage was taking place within certain societal collective expectations and cognitive understandings. This will allow us to understand the singularity of self-display, like the apparent out-of-box thinking for some designs in art, architecture, onomastics, etc.