Ways of Linking Drinking in the Roman Iron Age

My study of serving and drinking reveals that within ritual in the Roman Iron Age were inherently extensive non-ceremonial social practices, and many twisted facets of the public and private that we have learned to know from former studies. The variations in vessel composition in the drinking sets indicate a political-geographical distribution pattern for vessels of Roman origin. But, the drinking set should not be considered as merely an assemblage of attributes from which people were serving and drinking. It should also be noticed that serving and drinking in the Roman Iron Age were learned and achieved behaviours. Everybody once has had to learn how to drink from a vessel as a child, and the introduction of various types of vessels to the individual throughout life requires new and different ways of handling these vessels. After the primary socialisation process there were secondary socialisation processes. I operate with a perspective of serving and drinking as corporeal and embodied social practices. The source material for my analyses consists of the miscellaneous vessels, spatial relations, and corporeality of deceased in graves in southeast Scandinavia. I consider concepts such as knowledge, experience and skill to be associated with many, and not only with those connected with drinking attributes of Roman origin.