"Colours and Carved Stones: Aesthetics on the Edges of Roman Britain" with Eleri Cousins

Romano-British art, especially the art of northern Roman Britain, has long been caught in the middle of a tug of war. Its failure to live up to the Classical norms of the Mediterranean has been either disdained as the product of incompetent provincials, or framed as an active resistance to Roman rule by local populations. But what happens if we take the art of the northern frontier on its own terms? No matter its state of technical competence, what does it reveal about the aesthetic aims and values of frontier society? This talk considers this question through the lens of the sculpture and the colours of the frontier and proposes new ways of thinking about the visual worlds of the edge of empire.

Dr Eleri Cousins is Assistant Professor in Roman Archaeology at Durham University. Her first book, The Sanctuary at Bath in the Roman Empire, was published…