Dress and Identity in Early Roman Southwest Italy

Dress was characteristically part of social discourse in antiquity, and it played an important role in self-presentation and the lived reality of people. Clothing contributed towards the definition of aspects of the wearer’s identity, such as ethnic affiliation, gender, age, and status, often all at once and recognisable immediately. It communicated in a non-verbal way. Those who dressed the same expressed a group identity and a sense of community; dress could also highlight the wearer as excluded from a dominant group and identify the ‘other’. Equally, a transformation in dress behaviour could signal a significant change in identity signalling.

Map of southern Italy showing the location of Campania and Lucania and sites studied in the project. Map by H. Goodchild.

This project, led by Prof. Maureen Carroll, investigates the relationship between ethnic identity, social status, and dress behaviour among indigenous population groups in southern Italy at a pivotal time of cultural tensions when Rome was expanding its territorial control and political influence in this region in the fourth century B.C. Southern Italy, as a region with great ethnic diversity and fluctuating populations of Italic, Greek, and Roman origin, presents an ideal opportunity to explore how people in this period expressed and negotiated their identities through distinctive clothing.

The primary focus of this study on dress are figural wall paintings in the tombs of individuals and families of elite status in Campania and Lucania, as well as figural scenes on red-figure ceramic vessels made in these regions in the fourth century B.C. These 'portraits' are our window on the dress behaviour of south Italian populations, and they reveal identities conveyed by people whose lives were subject to transformation and discontinuity. From the evidence captured in such images, it is clear that these peoples wore clothing that intentionally distinguished them from their neighbours with whom they might be in competition and from the Romans with whom they were in conflict. The depictions, therefore, are a valuable tool for exploring ethnic and cultural identities of the period that otherwise elude us, due to the lack of contemporary textual sources. Figural images on contemporary painted ceramic vases as well as surviving dress accessories provide further insight. Metal clothing accessories, such as fasteners, brooches, and belts also survive in some assemblages of grave goods, representing another strand of evidence that is important in the absence of textiles.

Tomb painting of a woman from Cumae (Campania).

Photo Bridgeman Images.

Tomb painting of a woman from Capua (Campania).

Photo M. Carroll.

Tomb painting of a couple from Paestum (Lucania).

Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The project was funded by the Leverhulme Trust from March 1st 2023 to May 31st 2024 (EM-2022-009). Results of the research have been presented, for example, at the University of Cambridge, University College London, the University of York, and the Institutum Romanum Finlandiae in Rome. Various publications are in press and in preparation (July 2024), but a synopsis of some of the main findings is provided below.

Project Aims & Objectives

The project aimed to a) identify distinctive Italic clothing traditions by studying the depictions of dress worn in the paintings and to determine how they varied from region to region and from city to city; b) ascertain whether the tomb portraits reflect gendered roles through clothing and actions; and c) explore how progressive Roman encroachment on independent territories in this part of Italy might have intensified the expression of powerful regional identities that were expressed visually. The objective was to demonstrate how iconographic sources are a valuable tool for exploring ethnic and cultural identities of the period expressed through dress, especially in view of the dearth of surviving textiles and the lack of texts.

Project Results

A crucial aspect of the research was the personal inspection and evaluation of tomb paintings in museums and finds depots, as well as the painted vases and dress accessories from graves. Material from Cumae, Capua, Afragola, Nola, Sarno, Pontecagnano, and Paestum has been evaluated. This has resulted in a clear picture of clothing development and it illustrates the value of studying dress as a medium of self-expression.

On the basis of pictorial sources and material culture from grave assemblages of the fourth century B.C. in southwest Italy, it is clear that the identities of the indigenous elites were expressed through clothing and dress accessories on a relatively local, rather than on a large scale or ‘national’, level. It was predominantly women who were expressing local identities, while men's costumes appear to have been more broadly similar throughout the region. The images painted in tombs for perpetuity indicate that women were the primary bearers of local identities in funerary representation and in life. Women and girls throughout the fourth century wore their local clothing, conservatively sustaining and perpetuating traditional dress identities that may have been passed on maternally through the family or clan rooted in a community and audience of peers and others of the same origin. The diversity in clothing on a community level demonstrates that ancient Greek and Roman historical sources referring to the population groups in southwest Italy under large ethnic umbrella names do not accurately reflect the collective identities apparent in the archaeological record.

Coloured drawing of a woman from Nola depicted in a chamber tomb on Via Seminario, ca. 340-330 B.C. Drawing by M. Kays.

Together with students from the Department of Archaeology at the University of York, detailed illustrations of dress, based on the (sometimes fading) paintings were produced, and a reconstruction of the elaborate and multi-layered female clothing from Cumae was made. This experiment, in particular, was invaluable in understanding individual items of dress, how they fit together, and what they might have conveyed.

Reconstructed dress of an elite woman of the late fourth century B.C. from Cumae, modelled by Lucy Frattasi at The King’s Manor, University of York. Photo M. Carroll.

The project has tracked transformations in identity signalling through dress, moving from distinct, but varying, south Italian ethnic and local identities in the fourth century B.C. to a standardised Roman cultural identity in the early third century. This was characterised in some tomb paintings by the adoption of the toga as a statement of Roman male civic and social belonging. Women’s distinctive local clothing, however, still persisted in the early third century, but thereafter painted funerary portraits all but disappear in Campania and Lucania and regional clothing identities are no longer evident in the archaeological and pictorial record.

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