Gender in Question

She Said ‘Emic’

“…In 2006 Pim Allison and Thomas Becker first published their various work using artefact analysis and GIS to identify a female presence in the forts and fortresses in Germany (Allison 2006a;2006b;2008;2009;Becker 2006). This was groundbreaking research which supported the theories expounded in TRAC 2 (van Driel Murray 1995;Allason-Jones 1995). Nowadays it can be accepted that there were women present in Roman military contexts and we really don't need to keep hammering away at this.…”

The Construction, Use, and Discard of Female Identities: Interpreting Spindle Whorls at Vindolanda and Corbridge

“…Archaeological evidence for families, including wives and children of both officers and lower ranking soldiers in frontier communities has previously been discussed in detail by authors such as Van Driel-Murray (1995;1997), Allason-Jones (1999b), Allison (2011), Greene (2013;2015a;2015b) and many others. Amongst other finds, footwear, writing tablets, and military diplomas have been used to illustrate the presence of women within frontier communities.…”

Romanization: A Feminist Critique

“…The archaeological evidence from Hadrian's Wall points to a mixed community, with material culture indicating the presence of women and children in and around the forts. The sizes of the leather shoes found at Vindolanda and a number of German forts points to the presence of women and children (van Driel-Murray 1995), and epigraphic evidence shows that in some cases these were not only wives and children, but also unmarried sisters and widowed mothers, who were presumably the legal dependents of the soldiers (Allason-Jones 1989: 62-3). This suggests that the soldiers were forming family units with women and children based in the forts themselves and their environs, but that, for whatever reason, the strength and social pull of these relationships were less strong than the soldiers' relationships with their fellow soldiers.…”

“…It was one of the stated aims of Eleanor Scott in founding TRAC to challenge the androcentrism of contemporary approaches to the Roman provinces (Scott 1993). In the first conferences all looked good, and there was a flurry of papers deconstructing present approaches (Scott 1995; and looking for the evidence for the lives of women within the Roman provinces (van Driel-Murray 1995), or challenging assumptions about the gendered meaning of material culture (Allason-Jones 1995). Later conferences saw a reduction in the numbers of papers on gender, leading to Patty Baker's paper in the proceedings from Canterbury lamenting the fact that things were still no better (Baker 2003).…”