Prof. A. Van Oyen (Astrid)

I am an archaeologist studying Roman Italy and the Western provinces, exploring the social, cultural, and economic dimensions of empire, craft production, storage, and rural economies. I am particularly interested in the socio-economic history of non-elites. Prior to joining Radboud University I was Associate Professor at Cornell University.

My most recent book The Socio-Economics of Roman Storage: Agriculture, Trade, and Family (Cambridge University Press, 2020) cuts across the scales of farmer and state to trace the practical and moral reverberations of storage from villas in Italy to silos in Gaul, and from houses in Pompeii to warehouses in Ostia. Following on from the material turn, an abstract notion of ‘surplus’ makes way for an emphasis on storage’s material transformations (e.g. wine fermenting; grain degrading; assemblages forming), which actively shuffle social relations and economic possibilities, and are a sensitive indicator of changing mentalities.

How Things Make History: The Roman Empire and its Terra Sigillata Pottery, my first monograph, was published in 2016 by Amsterdam University Press. With Martin Pitts (University of Exeter), I co-edited Materialising Roman Histories (Oxbow, 2017), a volume that scrutinizes how Roman archaeology marries the detail of artefact studies with big historical narratives. I co-direct the Marzuolo Archaeological Project – in collaboration with Gijs Tol (University of Melbourne) and Rhodora Vennarucci (University of Arkansas) – excavating the rural craft site of Marzuolo (Tuscany, Italy) to explore innovation, investment and connectivity in a rural community.

I have held fellowships at Homerton College, Cambridge and at the Stanford Humanities Center.

• Roman archaeology