Women’s Lives, Women's Voices: Roman Material Culture and Female Agency in the Bay of Naples

by: Longfellow, B. Swetnam-Burland, M.

Literary evidence is often silent about the lives of women in antiquity, particularly those from the buried cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Even when women are considered, they are often seen through the lens of their male counterparts. In this collection, Brenda Longfellow and Molly Swetnam-Burland have gathered an outstanding group of scholars to give voice to both the elite and ordinary women living on the Bay of Naples before the eruption of Vesuvius.

Using visual, architectural, archaeological, and epigraphic evidence, the authors consider how women in the region interacted with their communities through family relationships, businesses, and religious practices, in ways that could complement or complicate their primary social roles as mothers, daughters, and wives. They explore women-run businesses from weaving and innkeeping to prostitution, consider representations of women in portraits and graffiti, and examine how women expressed their identities in the funerary realm. Providing a new model for studying women in the ancient world, Women?s Lives, Women?s Voices brings to light the day-to-day activities of women of all classes in Pompeii and Herculaneum

List of Illustrations
Introduction. Negotiating Silence, Finding Voices, and Articulating Agency (Brenda Longfellow and Molly Swetnam-Burland)
Part I. Public and Commercial Identities
Chapter 1. Pompeian Women and the Making of a Material History (Lauren Hackworth Petersen)
Chapter 2. Women?s Work? Investors, Money-Handlers, and Dealers (Molly Swetnam-Burland)
Chapter 3. From Household to Workshop: Women, Weaving, and the Peculium (Lauren Caldwell)
Chapter 4. Buying Power: The Public Priestesses of Pompeii (Barbara Kellum)
Chapter 5. Real Estate for Profit: Julia Felix?s Property and the Forum Frieze (Eve D?Ambra)
Part II. Women on Display
Chapter 6. Contextualizing the Funerary and Honorific Portrait Statues of Women in Pompeii (Brenda Longfellow)
Chapter 7. Portraits and Patrons: The Women of the Villa of the Mysteries in Their Social Context (Elaine K. Gazda)
Chapter 8. “What?s in a Name?” Mapping Women?s Names from the Graffiti of Pompeii and Herculaneum (Erika Zimmermann Damer)
Chapter 9. The Public and Private Lives of Pompeian Prostitutes (Sarah Levin-Richardson)
Part III. Representing Women
Chapter 10. Women, Art, Power, and Work in the House of the Chaste Lovers at Pompeii (Jennifer Trimble)
Chapter 11. The House of the Triclinium (V.2.4) at Pompeii: The House of a “Courtesan”? (Luciana Jacobelli)
Chapter 12. Sex on Display in Pompeii?s Tavern VII.7.18 (Jessica Powers)
Chapter 13. Drawings of Women at Pompeii (Margaret L. Laird)
Epilogue. The Complexity of Silence (Allison L. C. Emmerson)
List of Contributors
Bibliography
Index

Women’s Lives, Women's Voices: Roman Material Culture and Female Agency in the Bay of Naples

by: Longfellow, B. Swetnam-Burland, M.

• ISBN-13: 9781477323588 / 978-1-4773-2358-8
• ISBN-03: 1477323589 / 1-4773-2358-9
• University of Texas Press, Austin, 2021