This paper offers a critique of some recent new materialist approaches and their
application to Roman expansionism. According to certain authors, ‘Romanisation’ should be
about “understanding objects in motion”, a perspective that carries ethical implications. In
contrast, we introduce the notion of a predatory political economy as an alternative for
conceptualising Late Republican and Early Imperial Rome. Our approach aims to make
visible the dark sides of Roman expansionism in order to produce a more balanced and
inclusive account. Two archaeological cases studies –Roman conquest and rural
communities– are presented to illustrate the potential of such a perspective.
