Archaeology of consumption: practices, objects, and meanings in the Roman world

Directors: Noé Conejo Delgado and Pedro Trapero Fernández.

Location: Room 1.0.A04 (Miguel de Unamuno Building). Colmenarejo Campus.

Language of instruction: Spanish and English

Target Audience

UC3M undergraduate students from all faculties, particularly those from the EPS Leganés. Postgraduate, Master’s, and Doctoral School students, particularly from the CCSJ and HCD faculties. Students from other universities in the Community of Madrid. Students from the UC3M Senior Program. General public interested in archaeology, material culture from ancient and medieval periods, European cultural history, and the foundations of Western civilization.

Speakers

Directors: Noé Conejo Delgado and Pedro Trapero Fernández. Link to CV.
Speakers:

Noé Conejo Delgado, César Nombela Talent Attraction Researcher in the Ancient History area of the Department of Humanities: History, Geography and Art at UC3M.
Pedro Trapero Fernández, Ramón y Cajal Researcher at the University of Cádiz.
Weiya Li, César Nombela Talent Attraction Researcher in the Department of Humanities: History, Geography and Art at UC3M.
André Carneiro, Associate Professor of Archaeology in the Department of History at the University of Évora.
Jesús Bermejo Tirado, Associate Professor of Ancient History at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and current Director of the Department of Humanities: History, Geography and Art at UC3M.
Eleonora Voltan.
Luz Neira, Professor of Ancient History at UC3M.

Program

Monday, June 29
Consumption: basic concepts and analytical theories.

10 AM to 12 PM. Noé Conejo Delgado: Consumption and its social, economic, and historical dimensions: theories and applications.
12 PM to 12:30 PM. Break.
12:30 PM to 2:30 PM. Pedro Trapero: Sources and key concepts for understanding consumption as a source of archaeological information.

Tuesday, June 30
Consumption habits through the archaeological record.

10 AM to 12 PM. Weiya Li: Archaeology and the microscope: consumption habits through archaeobiology.
12 PM to 12:30 PM. Break.
12:30 PM to 2:30 PM. André Carneiro: The Lusitanian rural world, an example of the archaeology of consumption.

Wednesday, July 1
Consumption from a macro and microspatial perspective.

10 AM to 12 PM. Pedro Trapero Fernández: Production and consumption, new approaches through Geographic Information Systems.
12 PM to 12:30 PM. Break.
12:30 PM to 2:30 PM. Jesús Bermejo Tirado: Consumption in Roman domestic spaces: microhistorical perspectives.

Thursday, July 2
Consumption and ideology: the demand for images and media.

10 AM to 12 PM. Eleonora Voltan. Selected iconographies: painting as a form of social expression.
12 PM to 12:30 PM. Break.
12:30 PM to 2:30 PM. Luz Neira. Consuming images to convey ideas: the mosaic as a source.

Friday, July 3
Consumption in the modern world versus consumption in the ancient world: keys to understanding the present?

10 AM to 12 PM. (Practical session) Jesús Bermejo Tirado. Open science methods and techniques applied to the study of consumption.
12 PM to 12:30 PM. Break.
12:30 PM to 2:30 PM. Concluding roundtable: Eleonora Voltán, Luz Neira, Noé Conejo Delgado (moderator)

Course Objectives and Motivations

The course is designed as an academic initiative aimed at demonstrating how material evidence of consumption offers valuable information for understanding aspects of the economy, society, and ideology of past societies, particularly Roman times, which has left a significant archaeological footprint in Hispanic territory:
-To observe and understand some of the fundamental concepts currently used in anthropology and sociology for the analysis of consumption as a source of information and to integrate them into the understanding of the archaeological context, without falling into presentism or anachronisms.
-To identify and interpret consumption as an economic phenomenon, generating guidelines for recognizing patterns in the archaeological record, as well as factors and agents involved in the process, while reflecting on other fundamental concepts such as “production,” “distribution,” and “market,” and their materiality in the archaeological evidence available today.
-To understand the trade structures existing in the Hispanic world during Roman times in order to interpret the agents and factors that favored the manufacture of products, their traffic, their distribution, the creation of demands and the importance of specialization, as well as the identification of market spaces, their functioning, regional differences, and the use of GIS applications for tracking consumption elements in the territory from micro and macrospatial perspectives.
-To identify and interpret consumption as a social phenomenon, generating guidelines for recognizing in the archaeological record the evidence of everyday consumption and ostentatious consumption, and how the latter was used in Roman times as a tool for social distinction and promotion, through hidden codes in the demand and acquisition of imported goods, exotic products, and the use of extraordinary services.
-To introduce students to innovative methodologies for understanding the archaeological record, incorporating digital tools and applying archaeometric and bioarchaeological techniques, generating a critical understanding of historical processes and the economic, ideological, and social complexity of those who inhabited the Iberian Peninsula in Roman times.

Upon completing the course, students will realize that the most emblematic value of the classical world is not the elitist character of its education or a particular monumental aesthetic (to cite two typical categories of interpretation throughout the 19th century), but rather the capacity to thematize every human problem, transforming it into a source of personal and collective teaching, fruitful and always enriching. From this experience, capable of converting the intimate drama of existence into a rational theme (thus allowing the birth of philosophy and Attic tragedy), or the difficulties of community life into political reflection, or the imitation of nature into art and technique, emerges that freedom of spirit that permeates all humanisms throughout history and remains one of the priority ideals of the modern world.

Furthermore, the classical tradition is much closer to the paradigms of digital culture than one might imagine: if the “digital humanities” constitute in a certain way a form of re-imagining the traditional humanities, rethinking the development of the human being in relation to their history and culture through new possibilities for creating and disseminating knowledge, it is well known that the legacy of Greco-Roman civilization has been performing this same task for centuries, updating itself in each era, according to the urgencies of the societies that return to study Antiquity, to find in it answers about their own time.

CURRICULUM

Directors: Noé Conejo Delgado and Pedro Trapero Fernández

Noé Conejo Delgado is a César Nombela Talent Attraction Researcher in the Department of Humanities: History, Geography and Art at UC3M (2024-2029). Between 2021-2023 he was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship researcher at the Università di Padova. He has conducted research stays at the Universities of Lisbon, Bordeaux, Padua, Sassari, and Oslo. He is the principal investigator of two competitive projects, one regional, the basis of his contract, dedicated to the study of coinage in rural areas of the central peninsula, and another national, whose objective is to analyze the economic and ritual use of coins in Christian environments of the northwestern peninsula between the 4th and 8th centuries AD. He has published several monographs, of which Moneta et territoria en Lusitania: economia monetaria y rural de una provincia romana (UNED-2024) was awarded the Lastanosa Prize 2025 as the best numismatics book of the year. He collaborates with more than twenty archaeological museums on projects in Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece.

Pedro Trapero Fernández is a Ramón y Cajal researcher in the Ancient History Area at the University of Cádiz. Among his most relevant contributions are several monographs published by top-tier international publishers such as Bloomsbury, as well as his participation in the Cambridge Elements series, which reflects the international recognition of his methodological and theoretical approach. His research career has been enriched by research stays in Greece, Portugal, and Hungary. In this context, he is co-founder and coordinator of the Arkeosig network, focused on the application of Geographic Information Systems to historical and archaeological studies, and has participated in editing a collective volume published in the BAR International Series. He also directs and coordinates multiple state and regional research projects, as well as archaeological projects in Portugal and Spain.

Teaching Team

The teaching team for the course “The Classical World in the Digital Age: New Challenges” consists of six people, including the Directors, with equal representation between men and women (3+3). Coming from different but complementary disciplines such as Philology, Law, Archaeology, and History, they have all been cooperating for many years, working together on the research lines of the “Lucio Anneo Séneca” Institute of Classical Studies at UC3M. This institute is at the forefront in Spain and internationally in the field of “digital humanities,” developing a series of projects for the online publication of databases and digitization of documents related to the classical world and its survival throughout history. Regarding teaching activities related to the promotion, updating, and scientific presentation of various aspects of the classical world, the six course instructors have extensive teaching experience, of which the following activities are worth highlighting:

Francisco L. Lisi Bereterbide was for many years coordinator of the Classical Studies area in the Department of Humanities at UC3M and instructor of the undergraduate courses “Classical Culture” and “Transmission of the Classical Legacy” and the postgraduate course “The Transmission of the Classical Legacy.” Founder and first director of the “Lucio Anneo Séneca” Institute of Classical Studies.

Rosa M. Carreño Sánchez has been teaching, in both Spanish and English, the Humanities Course “Daily Life and Norms in Rome” for more than five years. This course is taught at the Getafe and Colmenarejo campuses and is offered to students of different nationalities and from the most diverse degree programs (Law, Economics, Business Administration, Computer Engineering, etc.). She has experience in creating digital libraries and participated in the digitization and publication of the ancient legal collection “Antecessores” from the Library of the Universitat de Girona.

Ana M. Rodríguez González was coordinator of the Conference on Greco-Roman Criminal Law: Crimes and Punishments in Antiquity, organized by the “Lucio Anneo Séneca” Institute of Classical Studies in 2008. Since then and until today, one of the lines of her teaching activity has been dedicated to disseminating how criminal justice was perceived and organized in ancient history. On this topic and others also related to Roman culture, society, and law, she has taught numerous Humanities Courses and has published several didactic works intended to explain these subjects through a careful selection of texts. She has also participated in various research projects aimed at analyzing the relationship between Law and religion in the past of Greece and Rome.