Monumentalising identities Presenting dress, gender and identity in funerary portraits in the Roman north-west

This dissertation examines the impact of the integration of the far north-western provinces into the Roman Empire on the (self-)representation of people through clothing, hairstyles, jewellery, and accessories. It focuses on the adoption, adaptation, rejection, or invention of new dress elements in dress, employing the concept of anchored innovations - the ways in which people relate and then embed ‘new’ things into their pre-existing traditions, beliefs and ambitions - to understand the dynamics of cultural change. Funerary portraiture serves as the primary evidence, as a medium of public representation designed by and for local communities, which offer an insight into local views on status, cultural, ethnic, and gender identities.
The study reveals differing views on gender norms between Italy and the far north-west, and illustrates the flexibility of the gendered meaning and use of objects. Regional diversity in response to Roman influence becomes apparent from the remarkable rarity of the toga in the far north-west, as opposed to the Rhineland and other parts of the Roman empire. Yet while the toga is rare in the far north-west, the synthesis (the Roman dining costume) indicates a familiarity and acceptance of Roman cultural practices of both men and women, particularly in Roman Britain.
By far the most dominant form of dress in the far north-west is the local innovation known as Gallic dress. The local origin and distribution of this dress style, however, does not represent a rejection of Italian-Roman culture. A tension between local and empire-wide trends, and the creative ways in which people combined references to the local and Roman within their appearance, is apparent in the Gallic tunic. The widespread adoption of Gallic dress coincided with the decline of fibulae, rendering the once common objects obsolete. This abandonment signalled a significant change in appearance, though it does not necessarily imply the demise of ethnic identities.
In hairstyles, veiling, and bonnets, we observe varying levels of “Roman-ness” as a distinguishable aspect in dress, with bonnets most clearly illustrating a differentiation between Roman and local dress in the provinces. This indicates that innovations occurred across a spectrum of Roman-ness and were met with different levels of acceptance.