The Legacy of Racial Anthropology in the Archaeology of the Roman Period
Keywords:
racialism, racial theory, Roman period, races, physical anthropology, craniometryAbstract
Ideas about differences among humans, based on phenotypic traits, are not of recent origin; they emerged as early as the 18th century, when the first systematic racial classifications were established, such as those of Carl Linnaeus. When such ideas become associated with value judgments and ideology, they evolve into racialism, which can be further politically instrumentalized. Within such a scholarly climate, physical, cultural and mental characteristics of human groups were frequently perceived as inherent traits, thus giving racialist assumptions a primordial character. These concepts can be traced in the work of Yugoslav physicians, anthropologists and archaeologists from the early 20th century. Nevertheless, traces of these ideas can be implicitly identified in contemporary archaeological practices within the domain of Roman funerary archaeology, as a legacy of racial anthropology in the German-speaking world. This raises the question of whether the use of inherited practices from racial anthropology is appropriate in the contemporary context. The aim of this paper is a critical assessment of the use of interpretive frameworks derived from primordialist and racialist repertoires in contemporary Roman archaeology in Serbia.
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