Slavery in the Roman Central Balkans

Abstract

The paper reviews previous studies of slavery in the Central Balkan provinces concluding that the issue was marginal and has received very limited research attention. It also attempts to outline possible future directions for investigating archaeological evidence suggestive of an enslaved population. First, it explores funerary contexts that indicate the interments of slaves in a few urban necropolises, aiming to stimulate further discussion of similar cases. Similarly, the paper revises several architectural examples that may have been associated with slaves, mostly from imperial estates and residences, but also from one fortified metallurgical complex. Although the views expressed here are hypothetical and tentative, the purpose of the paper is to emphasize the importance of keeping the topic open and trying to improve our analytical and methodological tools for dealing with it.

Keywords

• Roman Empire
• Central Balkans
• slavery
• funerary archaeology
• villae rusticae
• imperial estates