This paper dissects assumptions about rural time in archaeology: ‘Other’ to the urban, trapped either in a backwards past or an eternal present, variably derided or romanticized, and denied future-oriented phenomena such as innovation and social mobility. Based on recent fieldwork at the Roman-period site of Marzuolo in the Tuscan countryside, I will explore different rural temporalities, including the delayed return of experimentation and innovation; the agricultural time of small farmers; and the rhythm of rural consumption.

Astrid Van Oyen is Assistant Professor in Classical Archaeology and Emerson-Krapels Faculty Fellow at Cornell University. She is currently Distinguished Junior Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Centre. Her research focuses on the archaeology of Roman Italy and the Western provinces, exploring the social, cultural, and economic dimensions of empire, craft production, storage, and rural economies. She is author of How Things Make History: The Roman Empire and its Terra Sigillata Pottery (Amsterdam University Press, 2016) and co-edited Materialising Roman Histories (with Martin Pitts, Oxbow, 2017). She co-directs the Marzuolo Archaeological Project (Italy) and is currently writing a book about storage in the Roman world.