Ancient World Seminar: Dr Emma-Jayne Graham (joint GIA Research Seminar Event)

Relational reflections: bodies, mirrors, and ritual in the Roman world

Small lead-framed mirrors with convex glass reflecting surfaces are known from settlements, cemeteries, and sanctuaries located across the western provinces of the Roman empire. Usually considered ‘impractical’, and therefore unlikely to have formed a functioning part of cosmetic kits, these items tend to be referred to in generic terms as ‘votive’ and sometimes ‘apotropaic’ objects thought to have been appropriate for use as offerings in both sanctuary and mortuary settings. This paper presents a reassessment of the lead-framed mirrors in order to direct attention away from the current narrow focus on what these objects were and what ideas or identities they might have been used to represent, towards an investigation of the consequences of embodied engagements with their material qualities in the course of ritual activities. After all, despite their dimensions, these were not ‘fake’ or imitation mirrors: they were reflecting devices in their own right, with distinctive material qualities. Once we acknowledge this, we can no longer characterise them as intentionally de-functionalised simulacra of larger mirrors, or simply as small-scale symbols of feminine ideals. More specifically, this paper draws on relational and posthuman approaches to explore what the lead-framed mirrors could affect as part of ritual activities, or in other words what their distinctive material qualities could allow to happen when religious or funerary ritual caused them to become combined into relational assemblages with different sorts of bodies, both living and dead. It looks at what range of sensory effects and embodied experiences might emerge, why these were significant, and how they could enable people to participate in the world in particular ways, with the ultimate aim of reimagining ritualised relations between Roman bodies and material things.