Women’s Costume and Feminine Civic Morality in Augustan Rome

Augustus claimed that the moral decay of the Roman Republic was especially due to Roman women who had forsaken their traditional role of custos domi (‘preserver of the house/hold’). In reforming feminine morality, Augustus created a new pictorial language that troped the feminine body as a ‘moral sign’ of civic morality and authorized a distinctive costume for women. Sebesta investigates the relationship between women’s garments, the female body and the Roman concept of feminine civic morality.     

The Ideology of the Eunuch Priest

Roller explores the evidence for eunuch priests who castrated themselves to honour the Great Mother Goddess Cybele. While the custom of sacred eunuchism originated in Phrygia (in central Turkey), such priests are best attested in Greek and Roman society, where they were viewed with disgust and loathing because of their asexual condition and because they adopted the dress, hairstyles and mannerisms of women. The negative reactions to the eunuch priest rest on an unspoken assumption of the superiority of masculine appearance and of the inviolability of appropriate gender roles for men and women.     

Heritage Formulation in Overtly Politicized Environments: A Commentary

Archaeology undertaken in overtly politicized environments creates situations and data that archaeologists are not positioned to control either in the moment or in perpetuity. This commentary examines the five diverse, revealing case studies that appear Archaeologies 2.2 and 3.1 and identifies the underlying dynamics that can create both an ethical burden for archaeologists and potentially charged, even dangerous, situations for others. These include archaeological heritage management demands and failures; contrary heritage valuation; restriction of associations with potential heritage resources; balancing archaeological research goals against local economic, political and social aspirations; and the complex trans-border reality of archaeologically identified societies that complicates heritage deployment in modern contexts. Whether or not activist engagement or outcomes are part of our practice or intention, there is no such thing as a value-free archaeological outcome.