The universal and the local in the Civitas Batavorum

Abstract

Intense recruitment for the Roman army among the Batavians of the Lower Rhi­ne exposed their community more profoundly to Latin literacy and the universal cul­ture of the empire than many oth­er provinces. How­ever, through an anthro­polo­gi­cal examination of their commu­ni­ty, the present paper demonstrates that even under the­se con­di­tions, the cultural amalgamation of the impe­rial and the lo­cal was li­mi­ted, and Batavian society retained a markedly distinct cul­ture through­out centuries of Ro­man rule.