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MEN, WOMEN and ROMAN CULTURE AS REFLECTED in DRESS in the CITIES of the ROMAN NORTH-WEST Ursula Rothe Introductio

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MEN, WOMEN and ROMAN CULTURE AS REFLECTED in DRESS in the CITIES of the ROMAN NORTH-WEST Ursula Rothe Introductio WHOSE FASHION? MEN, WOMEN AND ROMAN CULTURE AS REFLECTED IN DRESS IN THE CITIES OF THE ROMAN NORTH-WEST Ursula Rothe Introduction Portrait gravestones from the Roman provinces, when we are lucky enough for them to have survived in any quality or quantity, shine a spotlight on the people they represent, their achievements, their aspirations, their identity. Part of these monuments’ message was the dress chosen by the various family members for their portrait depictions. Given their very public nature, lining, as they did, the roads out of towns, and the fact that they were often planned well in advance, we may assume that the dress was chosen carefully and as such gives us a unique insight into how these people wanted to be seen. Consequently, any information such images impart as to the cultural outlook of the people depicted is particularly valuable. The funerary art of Rome’s northern and north-western provinces reveals a complex variety in the dress choices made not only by speci c communities and societal groups, but also by families and individual people. A recurring pattern in all of the Roman provinces is a marked diference in the dress of the men and women of a particular area. This, however, is far from straightforward in its interpretation. Using as case studies two urban settlements in the northern provinces with very similar characteristics, Orolaunum in Gallia Belgica and Flavia Solva in Noricum, this paper will demonstrate how varied the dress situation in diferent locations could be, and will argue that although individual taste and cultural orientation were important factors in dress behaviour, the gendered dimension also tells us a great deal about the diferent roles men and women played within their local cultural systems. 244 ursula rothe Arlon Orolaunum, present-day Arlon in Belgium, was a large vicus built at the crossing of two important roads of Gallia Belgica, an east-west route from Reims-Durocortorum through Trier-Augusta Treverorum to Mainz-Mogon- tiacum, and a north-south route from Metz-Divodurum to Tongeren-Adua- tuca Tungrorum. Although never a city in a legal sense, it grew to be the sec- ond largest settlement in the extensive civitas Treverorum (the pre-Roman territory of the Treveri without its easternmost zone along the Rhine), serv- ing in many respects as a western counterweight to the civitas capital at Trier in the east. Recent excavations by local authorities have revealed that Arlon was much larger than previously thought, and boasted many of the amenities of Roman urban life, such as baths, temples, cobbled roads, an artisan quarter, stone houses with hypocaust heating and signi cant quan- tities of imported goods.1 Nonetheless, on the empire-wide scale Arlon was not a major centre. It had no major political or administrative functions, and, unlike the major trade cities of Gaul or the military settlements on the Rhine, did not experience a large amount of immigration from abroad: most of the people who are depicted on the grave monuments of this area can be assumed to have been of northern Gallic origin. There are 26 grave monu- ments in Arlon that contain part or all of a portrait depiction. None were found in situ, and most were recovered as broken fragments used as spolia in the late Roman forti cations on St. Donat’s Hill when these were disman- tled from the 16th century onward. For this reason, the images are rarely attached to their original inscriptions. Two of the stones date to the mid 1st century ad, the others are distributed fairly evenly across the time period from the mid 2nd to the mid 3rd century. The vast majority are of married couples or families, but there are some individual depictions of both men and women. For the purposes of this study, funerary portrait scenes were analysed by individual person depicted according to whether their out ts consisted of thoroughly Roman, thoroughly native, or mixed Roman and native ele- ments. In this region, the Roman dress that can be found on the gravestones is the sleeveless or short-sleeved and girt Roman tunica worn knee-length by men and foot-length by women, and over this the toga or the rectangular pal- lium for men and the stola (a kind of pinafore that hung from straps over the shoulders) and/or palla (a rectangular cloak) for women.2 For women one 1 Recently summarised in Henrotay/Warzée (2010). 2 For details and discussion of these garments generally, see Goette (1990), Scholz (1992),.
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