 Well, good afternoon everybody. I think we'll just get started. Thanks. Thank you for coming to the session As you might know, it's the it's the last day of the conference Thanks for sticking it out for so long here in Bern. We have a dense-ish program although not as dense as it might have been So let's just start The reason why we wanted to do this session is that we kind of perceive a possible lag between Or a disconnect between research on one hand and how the Roman period is communicated or presented on the other and Sometimes it's got some very large. Sometimes it feels not so large and with this introduction, we'd just like to give you a few of ideas about What how we perceive this gap and them all I just give the speakers the floor because they have their familiar case studies so The aim of this session and this picture has been shown many times at this this year's EAA The main aim of this session is from especially from a European perspective to see if and why there are differences in certain approaches of how The Roman Empire or Roman archaeology is perceived in society So not our perception of scientists or academic flaws are in the broader in the broader society I'm just a kick off and I'm standing in front of the screen Just a kick off We've just juxtaposed to to pictures here from different periods from the from the recent past and your own no asterisks on one hand and even though it was satire or Conceived as a cartoon as a comic In the late 50s, I think when it when it started when it was written and It's still it still seems very much of its time The word occupation is actually mentioned in every asterisks occupying every asterisks book you're open and The general mood of the Gaulish villages is one of resistance. It's one of resistance But it's also one of what we should be so they're having a great time have a lot of parties But the same time they're they are trying to you know fend off fend off an enemy So it's almost a kind of a cold war mentality I still think in these in these asterisks books and this picture is being reproduced Long into the 21st century now. I'm not too sure if it's still you know relevant society has changed and in contrast to this picture In contrast to astra if you have a picture from the BBC and I know that people from Britain will know this this cartoon very well But there are people in this room who may not have picked up on this on the controversy with with this cartoon and this cartoon is actually was Uploaded onto the BBC home page as part of its education service as part of that to understand their own Empire better And it is depicting a commander and that's tea I think it's important that we know that he's a high-ranking officer from Hadrian's wall with his family And if you're interested, I've got another link there. You can't watch it in Switzerland. You have to hack the iPlayer Get back to me And there was a huge controversy in England that you might not be aware of but that people was up in arms Unsurprisingly, but still very disappointing like that. This wasn't What the Roman army should be but of course we know that the Roman army was highly mobile especially in the in the high ranks Traveled all across the Empire, North Africa or the Eastern provinces But I think this kind of discussions are important because for us They are kind of a wake-up call and we do sometimes forget that our research even when it gets published and we think lots of people are looking at on academia or on all the web pages then When it doesn't mean that the public are really taking taking note of it And I'm also one of the questions that we've also talking about last night is and you know a little group is whether you know Whether the public or society how they feel about these paradigm shifts which are constantly happening, you know The honor wasn't like this. It's like this. It wasn't like this. It's like this and the goalposts are changing Quite rapidly at least once a generation, which is great for science, but sometimes it can be confusing That's something we can also talk about So that's the Roman side, but it's not just the Romans which are being sometimes this is a very stereotypical Presentation of the memory. I don't know. I've seen Pompeii the film twice. Don't ask me why Once I was in a plane and once it was a kind of a bet and then I gave a talk a couple of years ago in Switzerland about The movie the eagle and what's interesting that they're both the most possible play with Roman Britain. It's both about Roman Britain The gladiator the Britain the british gladiator and Pompeii has a special power And you can speak to horses So it's very and that's what that's why you can scare of certain situations And also in the eagle when the the two the two legionaries go north of Patrons more than I'm well mentioned in the movie when they go north But then the further north they go the more barbaric and more natural more nature orientated the people become and Obviously these are Roman these are stereotypes which were mentioned in Roman sources But they're being very uncritically projected into 20% in movies and we just have to be aware what's going on I mean they can do what they want, but we just have to know well what what are the archaeological facts? What are the ancient historical facts behind these behind these movies? And that's we'll come to it in a minute and we do see that watching TV and watching movies is one of the way people or the general public actually access the past so I just wanted to Crack on a little bit and you probably know all of the survey It was carried out in 2017 about Europeans in the archaeology and it's a really interesting survey This is just to remind you about the facts and figures Picked out a couple 86% consider having archaeological remains it's advanced for a turn and that's that's really great And so a high number but on the other hand only 11% Think the archaeology helps to understand the present so this seems to be also there a bit of a disconnect Yes, we like archaeology. It's great. But what's it actually doing? And as I just said before with the movies and films a lot of people seem to get that information about the past or the Specific case the Roman past by watching a documentary Film about archaeology at something you have to bear in mind how we want to communicate our results to a bright to our other audience When we were preparing the session last night quickly We just wanted to go through the questions that we had again and the first question is You know who cares about the Roman past anyway society's changing what role can Roman archaeology play in the society in quantitative and structural demographic vision There's a lot happening what strategies might Roman archaeology develop to include all strata the population and it's great that almost all Presentations we're going to have are really a tag these questions So I think I think it's great that we can actually use these questions or you people have you have used these questions And we can then compare them from fast And the other one is how is Roman archaeology taken at grass at level what are the key issues that fall under the remit of local museums Archaeological parks heritage agencies and a large number of non-academics engaging in Roman archaeology now. We're fully aware that You know we're a lot of everybody's from is an academic the general public is not really represented So we are in a kind of filter bubble, but we have to recognize this filter bubble as well If you really want to further How Roman archaeology is perceived now, um, that's a quick bit of um Organizational much a Chatsky and wrote me an email last night. He unfortunately can't make it. So Let's say we're gonna go through Christina will do the transition between the talks We won't have a discussion after each talk because it's a quite small session So we've got the discussion around 1717 45. We'll have a discussion And then we'll see where we go after that So Let's go upload the first paper and I could feel presented quickly the first presenter