Progress Review: Family Life in the North: The Women and Children of Housesteads - Paige Maunder

The debate over whether women and children were present in Roman military communities has been contested since the early days of Roman frontier scholarship. Over the previous two decades, archaeologists have made great progress towards proving the likely existence of women and children in these communities, but the question of how they may have contributed to military life remains. This chapter analyses the small-finds evidence from Housesteads, a Roman fort along Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland, to determine whether women and children were present in this community and what roles they may have fulfilled. The small-finds evidence will be analysed using Excel and ArcGIS to explore where and when women and children may have been present at Housesteads, while a close object analysis of artefacts of particular significance will provide further details of domestic life on the frontier. An analysis of the inscriptional evidence from the site will add further depth, demonstrating that women took on leadership roles in the extramural community at Housesteads. Despite assertions by the Roman authors that women and children were a liability, the evidence from Housesteads demonstrates that they took an active role in community life, providing entertainment, food, and other goods, as well as the stability and emotional support associated with close familial relationships.