Abstract
In 106 CE, the Roman Empire annexed the Nabataean Kingdom as the province of Arabia Petraea in a process that, to date, remains poorly understood. In the absence of clear evidence for a Romano-Nabataean conflict, the dominant annexation theory describes a peaceful process, in which the Nabataean kingdom willingly became a province of the Roman empire. Recent studies (al-Otaibi 2011; Cimadomo 2019) have sought to complicate this narrative through the reinterpretation of archaeological and epigraphic data tied to the event, arguing that the annexation did, in fact, meet resistance in some form. This study builds upon the contributions of this new work through a consideration of how the peaceful annexation model, which presumes native passivity (predicated on Roman silence and an absence of data), has the potential to do interpretive violence to indigenous voices in antiquity. This thesis reconsiders the annexation evidence, to move beyond the discussion of the peaceful/violent binary and frames the annexation debate through a discussion of traditions of European imperialist thought on paradigms of cultural change and its influence on the development of Roman provincial archaeology as a field.