John Pearce

Un-Roman Sex explores how gender and sex were perceived and represented outside the Mediterranean core of the Roman Empire.

The volume critically explores the gender constructs and sexual behaviours in the provinces and frontiers in light of recent studies of Roman erotic experience and flux gender identities. At its core, it challenges the unproblematised extension of the traditional Romano-Hellenistic model to the provinces and frontiers. Did sexual relations and gender identities undergo processes of "provincialisation" or "barbarisation" similar to other well-known aspects of cultural negotiation and syncretism in provincial and border regions, for example in art and religion? The 11 chapters that make up the volume explore these issues from a variety of angles, providing a balanced and rounded view through use of literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence. Accordingly, the contributions represent new and emerging ideas on the subject of sex, gender, and sexuality in the Roman provinces.

As such, Un-Roman Sex will be of interest to higher-level undergraduates and graduates/academics studying the Roman empire, gender, and sexuality in the ancient world and at the Roman frontiers.

50 Finds from the Portable Antiquities Scheme highlights some of the most important and interesting Roman objects recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) or reported as Treasure. It features a wide variety of objects, allowing for a balanced representation of both well-preserved everyday objects and some of the  most spectacular finds to have been recorded by the PAS. Iconic objects featured here include the Crosby Garrett helmet and the Ilam pan. Collectively, the fifty examples featured here exemplify the cosmopolitan culture of the Roman world and help shed further light on a fascinating period of British history.
Stroud: Amberley ISBN 9781445686844
https://www.amberley-books.com/50-roman-finds-from-the-portable-antiquities-scheme.html

A fragment of Roman monumental bronze sculpture was discovered near Lincoln in 2015 and reported to the Portable Antiquities Scheme. This note offers identification of the piece as an over-life-size finger, describes comparable examples and similar pieces from the local area, and makes suggestions as to the original form of the sculpture from which it may have derived. The statue’s metallurgical characteristics and making, the possible context of display and the circumstances of deposition are also considered.

This paper investigates how far human mobility associated with ports on Rome's Atlantic facade may be reconstructed from funerary evidence, with a focus on memorials and skeletal remains from France and Britain.  Previous work on ports here has been primarily topographic and economic, with limited consideration of port societies.  Epitaphs make limited references to occupations associated with ports, although images on memorials sometimes represent directly or allusively participation in trade and riches thus gained.  The evidence of geographic origin, a little more abundant, suggests that mobility to and through ports was a restricted, mainly male phenomenon, with soldiers looming largest amongst those attested.  The impact of the epigraphic habit is fundamental: with occasional striking exceptions, local commemorative practice conditioned the form memorials took to remember the dead whether of local or distant origins.  However, indicators of population ancestry and geographical origin derived from analysis of light stable isotopes and of human skeletal (cranial) form give a different impression of human experience in these maritime centres.  Their analysis suggests mobility characterised a more numerically significant proportion of the population, frequently including women and children, and individuals from more distant geographical origins and of more diverse ancestry than is commonly visible among inscriptions.

A Roman-era carriage fitting in tigress form, found in Norfolk in 2016, the first of its kind to be discovered in Britain. This note, published in  Epistula XIV, December 2017 (the e-newsletter of the Society for the Promotion of Roman studies) considers the form and significance of the object, a status-defining and journey-protecting image. A reference is given to a fuller study.

This article examines the significance of a major new source of archaeological data from Roman Britannia, the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS), a department within the British Museum responsible for documenting archaeological objects found in England and Wales by members of the public, mainly metal detectorists. Of the more than one million objects now recorded, more than a quarter are Roman in date, documented mainly from what were, in the Roman-period, rural landscapes in eastern England. After outlining their broad character and distribution the article uses two case studies to explore the contribution of this new dataset to understanding rural Britannia, one on brooch types in relation to the study of provincial costume, the other on the new iconographic evidence for the visual culture of the province.

In the Roman period, urban and rural ways of living were differentiated philosophically and legally, and this is the first regional study of these contrasting life-ways.  Focusing on frailty and mortality risk, we investigated how these differed by age, sex and status, using coffin type as a proxy for social status.  We employed skeletal data from 344 individuals: 150 rural and 194 urban (1st-5th centuries A.D.) from Dorset, England.  Frailty and mortality risk were examined using indicators of stress (cribra orbitalia, porotic hyperostosis, non-specific periostitis, and enamel hypoplastic defects), specific metabolic and infectious diseases (rickets, scurvy and tuberculosis) and dental health (carious lesions and calculus).  These variables were studied using Chi-square, Siler model of mortality, Kaplan-Meier analysis and the Gompertz model of adult mortality.

Our study found that overall, mortality risk and survivorship did not differ between cemetery types but when the data were examined by age, mortality risk was only significantly higher for urban subadults.  Demographic differences were found, with urban cemeteries having more 0-10 and >35 year olds, and for health, urban cemeteries had significantly higher frequencies of enamel hypoplastic defects, carious lesions and rickets.  Interestingly, no significant difference in status was observed between rural-urban cemeteries.  The most significant finding was the influence of the skeletal and funerary data from the Poundbury sites, which had different demographic profiles, significantly higher frequencies of indicators of stress and dental health variables.  In conclusion, there are significant health, demographic and mortality differences between rural and urban populations in Roman Britain.

Among the many thousands of Roman objects reported to the Portable Antiquities Scheme in England and Wales more than one hundred and fifty carry inscriptions, usually in Latin, occasionally in Greek. These may be significant in their own right, for example the first discovery of a fleet diploma for a British sailor from Durham, or a fragment of a rare calendrical device found near Winchester. More commonly however they extend our understanding of categories of inscribed objects, for example of the repertoire of texts which they carry, especially mottoes and gift-giving dedications, and of the processes by which they were made and exchanged, as well as their distribution across the province and empire. This poster will assess the contribution made by these inscribed artefacts to understanding the uses of writing in the Roman countryside, since most Roman objects reported to the PAS derive from a rural context. Presenting individual recent discoveries and examining the wider body of inscribed artefacts documented by the PAS, the poster will draw on work undertaken by Beth Waters in 2018 under the auspices of the King’s undergraduate research fellowship scheme (KURF).
(poster, Hoarding and deposition in Europe from later prehistory to the medieval period – King’s College London, 12th–14th June 2019)

"The twenty-third Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference (TRAC) was held at King’s College, London in spring 2013. During the three-day conference nearly papers were delivered, discussing issues from a wide range of geographical regions of the Roman Empire, and applying various theoretical and methodological approaches. Sessions included those looking at Roman–Barbarian interactions; identity and funerary monuments in ancient Italy; migration and social identity in the Roman Near East; theoretical approaches to Roman small finds; formation processes of in-fills in urban sites; and new reflections on Roman glass. This volume contains a selection of papers from the conference sessions.

Table of Contents

Introduction: TRAC Past, Present and Future: Where to go from here? (Hannah Platts, John Pearce, Caroline Barron, Jason Lundock, Justin Yoo)
Hobson, M., An Historiography of the Study of the Roman Economy: economic growth, development, and neoliberalism.
Jongman, W. M., Why Modern Economic Theory Applies, Even to the Distant Roman Past.
Lulic, J., Dalmatian Silvanus: A Cognitive Approach to Reinterpretation of the Reliefs Representing Silvanus from Roman Dalmatia.
Cousins, E., Votive Objects and Ritual Practice at the King’s Spring at Bath.
Dicus, K., Resurrecting Refuse at Pompeii: The Use-Value of Urban Refuse and its Implications for Interpreting Archaeological Assemblages.
Marchiori, G., Decline, Migration and Revival: Kom al-Ahmer and Kom Wasit, a History of a Forgotten City.
Ball, J., Small Finds and Roman Battlefields: The Process and Impact of Post-Battle Looting.
Prior, J. D, Methods and Difficulties in Quantifying Archaeological Vessel Glass Assemblages.
Podavitte, C., Pompeian–red Ware in Roman London: Insights on Pottery Consumption in Colonial Environments.
Vucetic, S., Roman Sexuality or Roman Sexualities? Looking at Sexual Imagery on Roman Terracotta Mould-made Lamps.
Heeren, S., The material culture of small rural settlements in the Batavian area: a case study on discrepant experience, creolisation, Romanisation or globalisation?

APPENDICES (on CD)
Appendix I. A revised classification and chronology for daggers and knives, by Stuart Needham
Appendix II. The role and use of daggers in british early bronze age society: insights from their chemical composition, by Peter Bray
Appendix III. Animal bone and antler, by Mark Maltby
Appendix IV. Identification of Bronze Age pommels and other osseous objects, by Sonia O’Connor
Appendix V. The study and analysis of jet and jet-like materials: methods and results, by Mary Davis, Duncan Hook, Mick Jones, Alison Sheridan and Lore Troalen
Appendix VI. Stone: PXRF analysis, magnetic susceptibility and petrography, by Rob Ixer, Philip Potts, Peter Webb and John Watson
Appendix VII. Necklaces: additional data, by Alison Sheridan and Ann Woodward "

Coombe, P., Henig, M., with Adams, K., Gilmour, B. and Pearce, J., (2020) ‘The Gloucester hoard of Roman bronze’, Britannia 51

A cache of Roman copper-alloy fragments was discovered, apparently carefully layered in a pit, in a field in Gloucestershire by metal detectorists in 2017. The assemblage comprises around 5kg of metal pieces, predominantly box fittings, but also smaller items of personal use such as a fourth century belt buckle, a 3-strand bracelet, a spoon, and a coin (a nummus of Crispus). Most remarkable are the sculptural fragments, including several pieces of life-size statuary and the complete statuette of a dog with fine incised decoration, and part of an incised bronze inscription panel. This article considers the original form of the statuary, and the use and deposition of the cache. It is proposed that these fragments represent the remains of the accoutrements of a temple or shrine, in the local area, perhaps dedicated to Diana Venatrix, and that they were removed and deposited together in the late fourth century.