Women in Roman Military Bases: Gendered Brooches from the Augustan Military Base and Flavio-Trajanic Fortress at Nijmegen, the Netherlands

Abstract

Roman military bases were once regarded as strictly male domains with the only women living there being the senior officers’ wives. This view was challenged by studies that used material culture to identify women in Roman forts and interpret the roles they played. The best of this work considers both the multiple identities expressed through objects and the complexities of depositional and recovery processes. The article presented here fits into this recent development, as it investigates the presence of women in the Augustan military base and the Flavio-Trajanic fortress on the Hunerberg in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, by examining the spatial distribution of brooches (fibulae) associated with women. The distribution of female brooches is compared to that of military (male) brooches in order to highlight and interpret any significant patterns. While numbers are small, the quality of the contextual information allows for the examination of depositional and recovery practices. The paper also raises wider questions about the possibility of ‘gendering’ brooches.