Lansdowne lecture presented by the Department of Greek and Roman Studies

The Department of Greek and Roman Studies welcomes: PROFESSOR PENELOPE ALLISON Professor of Archaeology, School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester Dr. Allison will present a lecture entitled: Women, Children, and the Roman Army The Roman military was an important component of life in the Roman provinces. Only a decade or so ago, though, the widely-held perspective of most Roman scholars was that Roman military bases, particularly in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, housed essentially segregated communities of male combatants. With the exception of commanding and senior officers’ households, all women, families and other hangers on, were thought to have lived and worked in external settlements outside the fort walls. This lecture will discuss increasing evidence for women and children associated with the Roman military during the Early Empire and show how attitudes are changing to the nature Roman fort and fortresses, to the kinds of people who inhabited them and to the concept of military communities. This lecture will also reflect on some of the inherent biases in past and in current scholarship, and on how such biases have impacted on the ways in which questions concerning the presence and roles of soldier families have been treated. Dr. Allison is an expert on Roman household archaeology, material-culture consumption, space and gender in domestic and frontier spaces, and digital archaeology. Her research has produced significant publications on social relations around food and drink in the Roman world (co-edited Big Data on the Roman Table: New Approaches to Tablewares in the Roman...