Spokespersons:

Carmen Alfaro Giner carmen.alfaro@uv.es

Eleni Zimi zimi@phl.uoc.gr

Many fields of archaeology, ancient history, philology and epigraphy have made contributions to the study of Romanisation and identity within and beyond the Empire. This study group will enter this discourse and it will review and correlate with the vast topic via evidence of clothing and dress-code. It will investigate the provenance, the original use, the intrusion, and the transformation of elements of costume over long periods of time, from the Iron Age until Late Antiquity, and beyond the borders of ancient Rome. The research carried out will focus on issues of ethnicity and the mutual cultural relations between peoples expressed through clothing. To mention an example, the function of the Roman toga in social and ethnic identity formation is exemplary: To a male wearer, it was the supreme proof of being a Roman citizen. People wearing the toga are depicted with apparent pride, both in the heartlands of the Empire and in the provinces, with the specific objective of identifying the wearer as Roman. But what made the toga distinctively Roman? And how was it used far away from the centre of the Empire? Equally, the barbarian dress, the braca (trousers), was formerly seen as an ethnic marker, and the barbarians from the north were called gens bracata in contrast to the Roman gens togata. But later trousers were incorporated into the Roman military and administrative dress as a useful element.

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Study Group B has held a conference on

"Political Power and Apperance - Luxury and Dress in the Roman Empire and its Provinces" on November 4, 2010, at Valencia (connected to Purpureae Vestes IV).

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