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Vindolanda and the Dating of Roman Footwear

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2011

Carol Van Driel-Murray
Carol Van Driel-Murray
Affiliation:
Amsterdam Archaeological Centre, University of Amsterdam, [email protected]
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Extract

It is not widely appreciated that the Roman presence in North-West Europe radically transformed a number of basic technological processes, marking a fundamental break in native traditions at a mundane level which must have profoundly affected people's everyday experience. Archaeologically, amongst the more eye-catching innovations are the changes in the methods of skin processing and the manufacture of footwear. It is becoming increasingly evident that, prior to the Roman conquest, the native peoples of North-West Europe were unfamiliar with the techniques of vegetable tanning. Skins were treated with oils and fats or by methods such as smoking, and they continued to be processed in these ways in regions beyond the Roman frontiers. Since none of these curing methods results in permanent and water-resistant leather, artefacts made of animal skin will only survive under exceptional environmental conditions, such as extreme dryness (e.g. in Egypt), salinity (e.g. in the salt mines of Hallstatt), or in peat bogs, where a sort of secondary, natural tanning process has taken place. In contrast, true tanning using vegetable extracts gives a chemically stable product, resistant to bacterial decay, which survives well in damp, anaerobic conditions. The Classical world appears to have been conversant with vegetable tanning from about the fourth century B.C., but where this knowledge originated and how it spread is as yet unclear. As a direct result of this technological innovation, leather goods first become fully visible in the archaeological record of North-West Europe from the start of the Roman occupation. Shoemaking is equally affected by Roman practices, with the appearance of a variety of distinctive footwear styles which are technologically and stylistically unrelated to earlier, native types. The most obvious introductions are hobnailed shoes and sandals, but even the single-piece shoes (carbatinae) which are technologically similar to pre-Roman native footwear are totally different in concept (FIG. 1, No. 10).

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Britannia , Volume 32 , November 2001 , pp. 185 - 197
Copyright
Copyright © Carol Van Driel-Murray 2007. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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