Programme & Abstracts :: Registration Details :: Accommodation

THE CLOTHED BODY IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
17-19 January 2002

Lise Bender Jørgensen,
Dept. of Archaeology, Norwegian University of Science & Technology, Trondheim.

'Roman or Germanic? Warrior Dress as Expressions of Identities in Late Roman/Migration Period Europe'

Abstract:
What is at the bottom of our conceptions of Roman and Germanic dress? How do scholarly background, preconceptions, traditions and empirical data available mix to influence how we interpret empirical data? The clothing of Roman general Stilicho, depicted in an ivory diptych, is tradtionally seen by North European scholars as mainly Germanic with a few Roman features, displaying his mixed origins as the son of a Vandal father and a Roman mother. Romanists, on the contrary, view it as the typical dress of high Roman officials. How have such clashing ideas become established, remaining unknown to each other, and unchallenged, for decades? And which version is true? - Or is there a truth? Tracing the construction of knowledge, this paper discusses how Late Roman warrior dress was established in the past as well as the present, and how it has - or may have - been used to express various forms of identities: as Roman or Germanic, Christian or Pagan.