TRAC 2013 Conference Proceedings

1. British Penannular Brooches: A New Approach

Anna Booth, University of Leicester (alb43@le.ac.uk)

Penannular brooches are a simple form of dress fastener that were used in Britain for an exceptionally long
period of time—from the late Iron Age, through to the Roman and Early Medieval periods. This lengthy
chronology offers a valuable and almost unique opportunity to examine longer-term changes and continui-
ties across all three periods. However, many previous studies have ignored these possibilities. Instead they
have tended to focus only on the later types—leading to an unbalanced approach dominated by the preoc-
cupations of Early Medieval archaeology. This has created the perception that penannulars had a straight-
forward evolutionary development that contributed to the survival of Celtic culture in some regions during
the Roman period. However, the rapidly growing body of evidence does not support this idea. In fact we are
presented with a very different picture of a highly complex and only semi-insular development, which stands
in deep contrast to the simplistic sequences proposed in most previous studies. This paper suggests that we
need to take greater account of this complexity and reassess the importance of the earlier development of
this brooch type. It also proposes that engagement with the increasing body of theoretical work on bodily
adornment is key to enabling a more nuanced approach that moves us away from the idea that appearance
are simply an external manifestation of a single, static form of identity, and instead recognises it as a dynamic,
complex, and often conflicted process.

2. Playing Identities: Board Games Accessories and their Role in Cultural Transformations
Marko A. Janković, University of Belgrade (markojankovicc@gmail.com)

Most of the 250 gaming boards, counters, and dice discovered in various contexts throughout the province
of Moesia Superior have been used as a handy illustration of different types or as a description of everyday
life of the Romans. Even the fact that the great part of these 250 pieces was found in burial contexts did not
encourage engagement with such objects; they were simply neglected and considered trivial.
When we speak of cultural changes, contacts and new identity constructions and negotiations, we usually
speak of monumental buildings, burial customs, epigraphic monuments or even luxurious objects, but only
a small portion is dedicated to small finds, and almost never to objects used in leisure and everyday life. Such
objects, or games, were never archaeologically confirmed in the periods before the Roman conquest, so
we can assume that they represent a Roman fashion, or at least, the fashion that emerged at the same time
as the Roman administration and military units. Acceptance of such innovations and changes in everyday
routines and the practice of leisure time could be a path for observing the social changes of the Moesian
populations. Some of the objects found in Moesia, show that we are not dealing with simple mimicry of
Roman fashions, but also with local inventions within the assemblages of Roman material culture. The distri-
bution and quantity of board game accessories attest to their popularity and importance in everyday life of
Moesia and within different social environments, and as such, deserve a review of their role in social relations
and cultural changes within the provincial communities in the imperial context.

3. Sexual Identity/ies and Roman Lamps: Exploring Iconography of Human Sexual Activity and
Mythological Erotic Pursuits on Terracotta Mould-made Lamps
Sanja Vucetic, University College London (sanja.vucetic.11@ucl.ac.uk)

Traditionally, lamps have been used for dating purposes and little attention has been given to their icono-
graphic reliefs. Due to lamps’ association with mass-production, sexual imagery decorating lamp discs have
typically been viewed as having lesser significance than those found on vases and wall-paintings. As these
small objects were distributed and used across the Roman world and accessible for an extended period of
time, to wide social strata, their sexual imagery can be invaluable to the study of sexual identity formation in
different regional contexts within the Roman world. I will present the findings from the first systematic study

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