Mediterranean timescapes : chronological age and cultural practice in the Roman empire / Ray Laurence and Francesco Trifilò.

List of figures -- List of tables -- Preface -- Introduction -- "Demography" and the measurement of time in epitaphs -- Understanding the use of chronological age: from the life course to timescapes -- Inscribing age at death as a cultural practice -- Birthdays, numbers and centenarians -- Towards a geography of age (and gender) in the western Mediterranean -- The family, age, and the commemoration of the dead -- Freed slaves across the Mediterranean: commemorating the dead -- Cities and soldiers: the use of age in the cemeteries of Roman Africa -- The Roman armed forces as an epigraphic institution -- Age and culture in Numidia: establishing localised timescapes -- Explaining variation in the use of chronological age across the western Mediterranean -- Timescapes of life and death in the western Mediterranean -- Afterword: The archaeology of Latin epitaphs in the western Mediterranean -- Index.

"This book, built around the study of the representation of age and identity in 23,000 Latin funerary epitaphs from the Western Mediterranean in the Roman era, sets out how the use of age in inscriptions, and in turn, time, varied across this region. Discrepancies between the use of time to represent identity in death allow readers to begin to understand the differences between the cultures of Roman Italy and contemporary societies in North Africa, Spain, and southern Gaul. The analysis focuses on the timescapes of cemeteries, a key urban phenomenon, in relation to other markers of time, including the Roman invention of the birthday, the revering of the dead at the Parentalia and the topoi of life's stages. In doing so, the book contributes to our understanding of gender, the city, the family, the role of the military, freed slaves, and cultural change during this period. The concept of the timescape is seen to have varied geographically across the Mediterranean, bringing into question claims of cultural unity for the Western Mediterranean as a region. Mediterranean Timescapes is of interest to students and scholars of Roman history and archaeology, particularly that of the Western Mediterranean, and ancient social history"-- Provided by publisher.