William Van Andringa, a specialist in religious and funerary practices in the Roman world, is director of studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes and a member of the Institut Universitaire de France. He is co-winner, with the anthropologist Henri Duday (CNRS), of the 2021 Grand Prix of the Simone and Cino Del Duca Foundation for his work on the necropolis of Porta Nocera, in Pompeii, and author ofArcheology of the gesture. Rites and practices in Pompeii (Hermann editions, 2021).
You have just published a work in the form of a manifesto for the “archeology of gesture”. What is it about ?
Archeology is not about discovering the exceptional. Twenty years spent studying the most trivial remains have even convinced me otherwise. The main interest of this discipline lies in its ability to account for the daily activity of populations of the past. The tasks we perform, the objects we handle and, in general, the gestures we perform leave traces. And some sites are able to save them.
This is the case of the necropolis of Porta Nocera, in Pompeii, whose beaten earth circulation floors have been preserved under a four-meter layer of ash and pumice stone, exactly as they were when the eruption of Vesuvius in the year 79. The extensive excavations that my team has undertaken at this location have enabled them to reconstruct entire sequences of gestures associated with rituals. Other discoveries followed, which gradually led us to reflect on the place of archaeology. This does not belong so much to the field of historical research as to the field of the human sciences. In the vast majority of cases, an archaeological vestige does not show us man as he wants to show himself but as he is. It is a piece of evidence that testifies to the way in which he appropriated a territory and the way in which he built a tradition. This is the message we wanted to convey through this manifesto.
Are not the ways and customs of the Romans known to us?
Antiquity has the immense advantage over prehistory of having left us texts and monuments. The study of this material has considerably enriched our perception of the Roman world. We know his ideas. We know how its architecture, its art, its industry, its commerce have evolved. We have acquired a great deal of information on its political, economic and religious organization. But, in the end, these sources only give us access to the major tendencies: to the “standards” of ancient life, if you will. They do not tell us how these norms were implemented, based on individual experience or family or local customs. And, by that very fact, they ignore the essence of the cultural and social characteristics attached to this civilization.
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