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How can we use material traces of past lives to understand sex and gender in the past?
Browsing All posts tagged under »brothels«
Dead babies still are bad evidence for a Roman brothel
Last year I asked the rhetorical question “Are dead babies good evidence for a Roman brothel?” My post rehearsed a number of reasons to be skeptical of the widely reported story about a Roman British site being described as a brothel. Centrally, I objected to the claim that Roman women had “little or no access […]
Sex work and archaeology
March 5, 2011
Why are brothels such a common focus of archaeologies of gender? This question was spurred by reading the most recent news coverage about research directed by Mary Beaudry of Boston University on artifacts recovered at the Mill Pond site during the “Big Dig”, massive excavations that were required to place freeways underground. Back in October […]
Are dead babies good evidence for a Roman brothel?
June 25, 2010
That’s the question raised by a BBC story about analyses of materials from an almost century-old excavation at a Roman villa in the Thames Valley. The data: remains of 97 infants, all of whom died close to birth. The coincidence suggests deliberate killing of newborn babies. Archaeologist Dr Jill Eyers said: “The only explanation you […]
Approaching sex through archaeology: celibacy and sex
May 8, 2010
By the last week of the third part of the course, students are finally ready to begin to address one of the major drawbacks of much of the archaeology of gender: the way it elides sexual practices and experiences. By juxtaposing archaeological, art historical, and documentary history approaches to sex work and celibacy, we leave […]
Ancient Bodies, Ancient Lives 
August 9, 2011
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