Can we write an archaeology of “race” in the Roman period? This paper considers the question through the lens of images of and artefacts related to Aethiopians (that is, Sub-Saharan Africans). After providing a brief overview of the corpus of objects and their imagery and the critical axioms of their study, the paper will propose some new ways of thinking about this material culture and discuss the ethical stakes of such a project within the field of archaeology more broadly.