 So, this paper is about contact, influence and change outside the Roman lemens, and we as organisers thought it would be nice to take an indigenous perspective rather than the Roman perspective. So we are focusing on archaeological sources rather than historical sources, and that is because these historical sources are part of a colonial discourse which should not always be relied upon. And we also like to, in anthropological terms, take an image rather than an attic point of view. So this session could as well have been titled Coping with a Colonial Neighbor, that sort of sums it up. Questions that will be addressed, what was the nature of the context and interactions between Romans and indigenous people? How was indigenous material culture influenced by Roman material culture or vice versa? What role did Roman-imported objects play outside the empire? And what can we learn from material culture about the processes that occurred outside the Roman Empire or in frontier contexts? We have a large range of contributors addressing these topics from different sides, also geographically as you can see. We will start after my presentation in Egypt, then go to Syria and moving up to Central Europe and Northern and Western Europe. So I will start the session with my own paper on Teresigilata in the Teresigilata region of the Northern Netherlands, Teresigilata is also called Cossamian Ware in British archaeology and the title is Luxury Table Ware and you will see what I mean by that. Just to know where it is the Northern Netherlands in this area, which has a very specific landscape as you will see. The Northern Netherlands were part of the Roman Empire for a short period between 12 B.C. and AD 47. In 12 B.C. General Drusus had several campaigns against the Fritians and the Chalke in the North and that is when the Fritians also became part of the Roman Empire. They were supposed to pay taxes in the form of animal hides, cattle hides and soldiers were recruited from them. In 1828 there was a successful revolt of the Fritians and in 1847 the area was left by drums altogether and the lemurs was established at the Rhine in the central part of the Netherlands. Then there was a long period of probably context but not on a regular basis and then from about 150 to the later Roman periods there were more regular contexts between the Roman Empire and this Northern area and we know that because there were also Fritian soldiers listed in the Roman army, for example on Hadrian's Wall in England and we have many finds from this period, Roman-imported objects in the Northern Netherlands. Now this is a very special landscape, it's a salt marsh landscape where people couldn't live just on the surface but had to raise their area so they lived on artificial dwelling mounds called turps. This area was subject to large-scale destruction of the archaeological record between 1840 and 1940. It was discovered that the turps soil was very fertile and it was commercially quarried on a large scale and shipped inland to poor areas. That also was the start of turp archaeology because many finds were uncovered during these quarium campaigns. So quarium and later excavated resulted among other objects in thousands of Teresigelate shares. They are very common in the turps, in most of the Northern elements. There are very few finds from this first period of contact but many from the second and third centuries AD. The traditional interpretation of these Teresigelate shares is that they must have belonged to luxury tableware that was imported by the elite or acquired by trade or received as political gifts from the Romans. As such they might indicate Romanization of the elite and it was compared to, for example, really Romanized areas where Roman villas were such as the villa of Aschaffenburg in Germany where a full set of Teresigelate tableware is on display. Well as you will see we have quite different finds. My own interest was triggered by this find from an excavation in 2000, a very early Teresigelate shirt from this very first period of contact. It's one of the earliest T.S. shirts in the Northern Netherlands from the late Iron Age, the Roman Iron Age in the first century AD context. And as you can see this is not just a normal shirt but it was worked into a pendant which may perhaps have been used as an amulet. Then this large amount of middle Roman period Teresigelate characteristics are that hardly any complete vessels. Most shirts are small or very small. Hardly any fitting shirts despite the fact that they are easily recognized of course. And also during this quarry and campaigns workers were paid for finding and handing it over any Teresigelate shirt. So we have quite a full set all the Teresigelate shirts were collected that were during excavations and quarry. And shirts belong to very many different pots and last but not least 70 to 80 percent of the Teresigelate shirt is used or worked in some way. What does that look like? Well just a small selection of finds. There are pendants, there are spindle walls, there are beads, there are play encounters and there are many shirts that are worked in some way or used in some way although we do not know precisely in what way but there are traces of working or use wear. The key to the interpretation of these finds for me was this book one is another man's treasure was the catalog of a museum an anthropological museum in Rotterdam in 1995. And one of the finds on display was this pendant of Delftware. It's from the 7th century and it was found in a Native American setting near what was then Amsterdam is now New York. So this was a very comparable find to the pendants of the Norderly Delft as you can see. There are many more examples of finds from first contact periods of a colonial power and an indigenous population and there's a pattern which can be summarized as that material culture is never, the material culture of the colonial power is never adopted as it is. There's always a selection and objects are not used for what they are made for but often in very different ways and that's often a symbolic rather than a practical use. There's another example, this one from Papua New Guinea. Men have large shells in their headdresses, in their ceremonial headdresses, but these can be replaced as you can see by white porcelain dishes. The reaction that you show now, laughing at it, it's funny to us because we, well, unawaresly we think it's a bit primitive and these people don't know what that was and how to use it. But actually it's, of course, this period of contact that we are on the colonial side and they are on the indigenous side and that's what makes it difficult for us to really comprehend the perspective of indigenous people. They have other values and other meanings attached to objects. So was Teresie Gelata a luxury tableware? I think no, it was rather raw material valued for its symbolic meaning and it may well have been imported as shells rather than as complete vessels. How was it imported? Maybe as pickups, maybe as diplomatic gifts or perhaps as payments in barter trade comparable to the trade beats of Europeans from the 16th to 20th centuries who paid for slaves and other colonial wares with beats of the types that you can see here. So what was the value of Teresie Gelata can also be inferred from its long-term use? It was often used into the early Middle Ages and you see worked and unworked but induced Teresie Gelata shirts often in the Roman period and early medieval context in fine assemblages that may be interpreted as ritual deposits. Now we show you one example from the excavation in the Turk of Asenger several or many Roman period houses, these are a few of them and associated with these houses buried outside the walls were two ritual deposits with Teresie Gelata. One of them was a deposit of six play encounters made of home vessel and the other one was a deposit of four different Teresie Gelata shirts of different vessels and all worked or used. So my conclusion is that looking closely at your fine material may reveal very unexpected outcomes and indigenous people did not necessarily accept or want fancy Roman culture. Thank you for your attention.