Reims and the Remi: Identity Making within the Roman Empire

This is a study of the behaviours, linguistic landscapes, and identity-making of the Remi of northeastern France within the Roman period. The Remi were a group situated within the northern Champagne plain, through the southern fringes of the Ardennes Forest, between the Meuse and Marne rivers, and along the Aisne valley, which sits roughly within the modern French départements of the Marne and Ardennes. This research is deliberately Remi- and Gaulish-centric, concentrating on the people living in and around Reims, and placing these findings within regional, that is Belgic and eastern Gaulish, patterns through a bottom-up approach. Driven by the frequency and quantity of available distributions in the data, much of this book is devoted to describing and analysis of 'middling' social and economic people. The epigraphic habit, stone funerary monuments, dress and accoutrements, scene, and the use of everyday writing are principally investigated amongst the Remian corpora and across Belgica, the Rhine-Moselle, and northern Bourgogne to establish and detail a shared entrepreneurial and production-oriented visual syntax. This analysis proposes a nuanced hierarchy of the interrelated social and economic groups that are represented amongst the Remi within Reims and contextualises them within the behaviours of their neighbours, positioning their choices within broader social and linguistic backgrounds established through close study of linguistic data. Together, this research presents an integrated sociolinguistic and archaeological approach dedicated to further understanding the Remi as a people across multiple social domains and demographics and offers novel insights into our understanding of the east of Gaul and how urban settlements and the people living in them interacted socially, linguistically, and economically. AUTHOR: Tim Berner has recently submitted his PhD in the department of Archaeology at Nottingham University. He also holds two master's degrees with distinction, from the University of Glasgow in Ancient History and Celtic Languages and Culture, and from Newcastle University in Archaeology and Roman Frontier Studies. This is his first publication. 100 b/w illustrations