This paper addresses the problem of how an empire, both as structure and as process, transforms a distant and highly variable periphery.  It focuses is on the Atlantic "rim" of the Roman empire, stretching from the British Isles to Mauretania.  It argues, mainly on the basis of the artefactual record, that this macroregion was integrated under the Roman empire, but in a highly differentiated way that not only shattered a preexisting Atlantic world that had been bounded and unified, but also reordered its constituent parts in the service of empire.  The central thesis, seemingly paradoxical, is that imperial integration and regional fragmentation went together.

Carlos Noreña is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley.  He works on the political and cultural history of the Roman empire.  He is the author of Imperial Ideals in the Roman West (Cambridge 2011) and co-editor of The Emperor and Rome: Space, Representation, and Ritual (Cambridge 2010), and has also published on the topography and monumentalization of the city of Rome; the material culture of Rome's provinces; and comparative empires.