Roman Children’s Shoes Reflected Status
The Italian notion of la bella figura, or looking good, stretches back to the Ancient Roman times – or so it would seem thanks to recent research that reveal Roman children wore shoes that reflected their parents’ social status.
‘Live Science’ reports on the research presented by Elizabeth Greene of the University of Western Ontario at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America in Seattle, suggests that Roman children dressed to reflect their parents’ status in society from very young ages. Greene drew her conclusions after she and her colleagues examined more than 4,000 shoes recovered from the Vindolanda Roman fort at Hexham, Northumberland in northeast England.
Generations of soldiers and their families called Vindolanda their home. The shoes of children living at the military outpost between the 1st and 4th centuries AD come in many styles.
Greene traced where the children’s shoes were found at the site. She discovered that the fancier footwear was uncovered in areas inhabited by those families higher up the social scale. Tiny, elaborate, formal shoes were located in the home of the prefect of the Ninth cohort of Batavians while simple shoes were found in the barracks.
Leather sandals woven in complex patterns are likely to have been worn by the children of the fort’s highest-ranking members. Miniature ornate moccasins made of a single piece of leather with holes along the edges known as ‘carbatinae’ were found in the centurions’ quarters, indicating that the officers could afford sophisticated footwear for their children. Smaller versions of the basic marching boot worn by soldiers in the Roman army are thought to have been worn by their offspring.