Marisia - Maros Megyei Múzeum Évkönyve 30/1. (2010)
Articles
WOMEN IN A MAN'S WORLD? FEMALE RELATED ARTEFACTS FROM THE CAMPS OF DACIA LÓRÁNT VASS Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca Keywords: forts, ban of soldiers’ marriage; ‘sexing’ small finds, jewellery; spinning, barracks, Buciumi The hypothesis according to which women played an active role in the daily life of a soldier within military forts is one of the major themes of the Roman gender archaeology. The lai'ge quantity of female sized-shoes in the barracks in the camp of Vindolanda,1 not to mention the written evidence of one of the famous tablets from this site,1 2 3 or the large distribution of female related artefacts at Vetera P indicate that, in spite of the legal ban, women could have had access to the inner buildings of one camp, and lived an active life within it. The presence of women in military spaces seems to be accepted by researchers of the military history as well. Adrian Goldsworthy in his work about the Roman army treats this subject as evidence supported by artefacts unearthed from different forts.4 In spite of the legal ban of the soldiers’ marriage introduced by Augustus and lifted only in the 3rd century AD by Septimius Severu s, many researchers leave from the premise that 25 years of military duty would be too long period for excluding women from the daily life of a soldier.5 Though the different jewellery articles as well as some clothing accessories found in military camps in the Roman Empire seems to be the most convincing proofs of female presence in military spaces, all the researchers agree that their ‘sexing’ is very subjective, sometimes even impossible.6 1 van Driel-Murray 1997; 2001. 2 The writing tablet found in the fort of Vindolanda contains a warm invitation of Suspicia Lepidina, the wife of Flavius Cerialis, prefect of one of the cohorts from this camp, to the birthday of Claudia Severa. This letter proves that wives were not only present in camps, but they lived a very vivid social life as well, Bowman-Thomas 1987, 137-140. 3 Allison 2005, 835-836, fig. 11. 4 Goldsworthy 2003, 103. 5 “How can there even be any doubt about the presence of women, when a large percentage of males spent 25 years - for many of them their entire life span - in the army and the system was maintained over 400 year?” (van Driel- Murray 1997, 55). 6 van Driel-Murray 1997, 55. Taking into consideration the subjective character of‘sexing’ small finds, the author believes that the female size shoes can be related to women with more certainty. B. Rudán and U. Brandi after a critical review of ancient sources and artefacts came to the conclusion that there is almost no objective and convincing argument to point out the presence of women in forts (Rudán-Brandl 2008). In order to exclude the subjective feature of ‘sexing’ R M. Allison developed a special methodology (with critical review) in mapping artefacts in the camp of Vetera I (Allison 2005; 2006). MARISIA XXX, p. 127-152
