Reims and the Remi: Identity Making within the Roman Empire Hardcover – October 23, 2026

Examines the Roman-period Remi of northeastern France, analyzing identity, language, and social structures through archaeological and epigraphic evidence.This is a study of the behaviours, linguistic landscapes, and identity-making of the Remi of northeastern France within the Roman period. The Remi were a group situated within the northern Champagne plain, through the southern fringes of the Ardennes Forest, between the Meuse and Marne rivers, and along the Aisne valley, which sits roughly within the modern French départements of the Marne and Ardennes. This research is deliberately Remi- and Gaulish-centric, concentrating on the people living in and around Reims, and placing these findings within regional, that is Belgic and eastern Gaulish, patterns through a bottom-up approach. Driven by the frequency and quantity of available distributions in the data, much of this book is devoted to describing and analysis of ‘middling’ social and economic people. The epigraphic habit, stone funerary monuments, dress and accoutrements, scene, and the use of everyday writing are principally investigated amongst the Remian corpora and across Belgica, the Rhine-Moselle, and northern Bourgogne to establish and detail a shared entrepreneurial and production-oriented visual syntax. This analysis proposes a nuanced hierarchy of the interrelated social and economic groups that are represented amongst the Remi within Reims and contextualises them within the behaviours of their neighbours, positioning their choices within broader social and linguistic backgrounds established through close study of linguistic data. Together, this research presents an integrated sociolinguistic and archaeological approach dedicated to further understanding the Remi as a people across multiple social domains and demographics and offers novel insights into our understanding of the east of Gaul and how urban settlements and the people living in them interacted socially, linguistically, and economically.Table of ContentsAcknowledgementsList of figures and tablesList of abbreviations1. Reims and the Remi: enterprise, socio-economic groups, and identity-making within the Roman Empire2. The city of Reims and the geographical and political landscape of northeastern Gaul3. The languages and epigraphic landscape of Reims: habits and choices4. The economy within and around Reims through epigraphic records5. The dress patterns of the Remi, Belgica, and the Rhine-Moselle preserved through stone funerary monuments6. The visual syntax of Remian stone funerary monuments7. Enterprise, stelae, and identity making: a case for the Remian plebs media8. The ‘Remian Way’Bibliography Read more