Hit Send: Carrie Atkins on Roman Luxury & Mobility in the Ancient World

“Hello! Come on in!” Carrie Atkins answers the door to her office, wearing a friendly smile and a flower-dotted navy summer dress. She walks back to her desk past shelves filled with what look to be very old – and worryingly fragile – artifacts. She nods in their direction.  

“These are replica artifacts,” she explains. Professor Atkins, who is teaching a course on Intro to Greek and Roman archaeology, received a grant from the Experiential Learning Division so she could buy them.  

“The amphora there are made to look like they’re from shipwrecks. So, I talk with the students about the marine organisms that are on it, and we talk about what the amphora were used for and filled with.”  

Atkins is an Assistant Professor in UTM’s Department of Historical Studies and is cross appointed with the Classics Department at U of T. Her work deals with mobility in the ancient world – the people who traveled and how, travel networks, as well as the social and cultural implications of mobility.  

She explores this through maritime remains, such as shipwrecks and remnants of harbours and anchorages, and is currently looking into how digital technology, such as photogrammetry, can be used to record remains underwater – a method she argues would be quicker than diver excavation and more cost effective than remotely operated vehicles (ROVs).  

With preparations for her forthcoming monograph well underway, Atkins is the 2023-24 recipient of the First Book Manuscript Workshop competition, which is awarded annually by the Office of the Vice-Principal, Research and Innovation (OVPRI).  

The internal competition, which launched in 2021, funds and helps organize a workshop which includes one expert external reader along with six to eight faculty participants. They read the manuscript in advance, and the author receives constructive and informed feedback during the workshop, which takes place during the winter semester and is held in the Collaborative Digital Research Space (CDRS).  

Atkins’s book focuses on the concept of ‘Roman luxury’ and how it was transported back in first-century BC. But those goods are not uncomplicated evidence of their dominion over the Mediterranean. There’s a tension there, she says, pointing to Roman authors who wrote about how luxury came to Rome in the first and second centuries because of military conquests. They argued that it was terrible for Rome, that luxury goods were eroding their morals and ruining everything that is Roman.  

On the other hand, there were Romans who used these luxury objects to build up their identity.  

“My project uses this framework to say, let’s examine shipwrecked remains, to look at where they’re moving these objects and when, and what they’re traveling with, and who is transporting them,” Atkins says. 

We tend to get narratives of women traveling as downplayed in our literary sources, which are often told through elite male perspectives who have their own agendas. But it’s not necessarily only elite males traveling. There are middle and lower classes traveling – and among them women – who we might not see otherwise.  

The book also looks at food, animals, and some of the finished objects that were being moved, such as furnishings, statues, and raw materials. These ‘luxury’ items were being used by people of different classes and genders, in different spaces, and for different purposes. Raw pigments, for example, would be used in wall paintings, but they would also be used in women’s makeup, or to paint the hulls of ships. 

“I want to break down this category of ‘luxury,’ and the view of what is luxury and what is not,” says Atkins. 

One of the shipwrecks she talks about in the book is wrecked off the coast of Antikythera, in the early-mid first century. Of the human remains found on board, one of them was a woman and, based on the remains that were found, she may have been wealthy. 

“This is why I love archaeology and looking at mobility from the material remains of shipwrecks,” she says. “Because you get snippets like that that help to fill in our picture.” 

“We tend to get narratives of women traveling as downplayed in our literary sources, which are often told through elite male perspectives who have their own agendas,” Atkins points out. “And that's one of the threads I want to emphasize with my work. It’s not necessarily only elite males traveling. There are middle and lower classes traveling – and among them women – who we might not see otherwise.” 

Atkins says the First Book Manuscript Workshop had been on her radar for a while; several supportive colleagues had sent the posting to her before she had a manuscript to submit – but once she had applied and learned she received it, she was elated. U of T faculty from Historical Studies, Art History, and Classics joined the seminar, and Dr. Greg Woolf, at the time at UCLA, joined as the external reader. 

“It was terrifying to have colleagues and an external reviewer read something that wasn’t polished and finished,” Atkins admits. “But they were all so supportive, and the seminar was really effective. They had suggestions for things I had been struggling with and it was such a positive experience.” 

“I feel so honoured to have colleagues devote so much time to something like this,” she adds. “Reading a manuscript is no small time commitment. To have them all here for the day – it was mind-blowing.” 

Now, Atkins is working on revisions based on their suggestions along with notes from her editor at Oxford University Press (OUP). She’ll be sending the changes back to OUP in the new year. 

Next summer, with support from the OVPRI’s Research and Scholarly Activities Fund (RSAF), Atkins will be taking a graduate student to Cyprus to start the next phase of her field project, which is on an anchorage off the coast of south-central Cyprus. 

I love being in the field, the exploration and diving. And then being able to connect it back up and build up these histories from it – that's huge. 

It’s Late Bronze Age, around 1200 BC, and the site she’s working at is shallow, only three metres up to the coastline where it meets the shore. A lot of erosion has happened in the area, and they’ll be doing a geoarchaeological analysis to try to determine where the coastline was.  

“I love being in the field,” Atkins says, “the exploration and diving. And then being able to connect it back up and build up these histories from it – that's huge.” 

Across the conversation, it’s clear Atkins is grateful for the various supports she has at the University of Toronto Mississauga, whether it’s the colleagues who recommended the Manuscript Workshop to her back before she’d written the book, or the funding she’s received to support her teaching and research.  

“I can’t say enough about UTM,” she says. “I always thought I’d teach at a small liberal arts college; that’s where I came from, and I loved the hands-on experience I got there. But now I'm part of this huge research university that can support my maritime expeditions and I can provide experiential learning for my students.” 

“I have the best of both worlds.”