Work in Life and Death: The nauicularii of Italy

Epigraphic media produced by and for occupational tradespeople is an area that, despite the relative quantity of surviving evidence, is not addressed adequately in current scholarship. Epigraphic evidence produced during the Roman empire was set up in many different places and for many different reasons, and a greater understanding of the use of epigraphic media by non-elite and occupational groups is necessary to help us understand why and how a noticeable portion of the empire’s population chose to identify or were identified with their occupations through this media. This seminar analyses the use of nauicularius, ‘ship-owner’, in and on different types of epigraphic media in the first two centuries AD. The seminar highlights the civic and the honorary contexts of nauicularius in different Italian towns, as well as addressing the funerary context where occupational titles appear relatively regularly. In doing so it aims to highlight the different contexts and locations where occupational titles appear.