Female Identity in Roman London, 2014 (MA thesis 2013) (original) (raw)

The female population of the Roman Empire – particularly those located in the provinces – represent a research subject rarely engaged with; due in part to the problematic task of identifying a particular sex in the archaeological record, but also the enduring assumptions regarding the status of women in the Roman world. Subsequently, the variant social roles female may have occupied are not considered, and women are largely missing from the archaeological discourse. To address this situation, artefacts and burial data from London have been selected to review how material remains can be used to understand both the cultural character of London, and the identities of the women who resided and died there. Artefacts recovered from settled areas in London are contextualised to ‘map’ where women were present in Roman London; burial data is used both to reveal the discrepancy between items found with women compared to those artefacts recognised as ‘feminine’, and to demonstrate the elevated status females could achieve. The data considered in this paper illustrates both the pitfalls of approaching gender from a gynocentric perspective, and more generally the constraints of using a context-based approach in London.