Department Member, Classics
Thesis Title: Remember me when I am gone away: An Examination of the representation of Gender in the material culture of Archaic Etruria
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Edward Herring
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About
My doctoral research examined the activities and roles of men and women in central Italy from 600-480 BC, primarily through their representations in artistic material. My methodology involved examining the body language and gestures of men and women in the various activities they undertook in order to evaluate the relationships between characters in figurative art. I also employed Alfred Gell’s ‘art and agency’ theory in order to objectively analyse the likely viewer/user and patron of differently contextualised objects. This enabled an understanding of how these images would have been ‘read’ and the insights they contained about those who produced them. This approach allowed for a re-evaluation of Etruscan couples and women. It included the first ever comprehensive analysis of Etruscan male identity. Additionally I evaluated the evidence chronologically and regionally which led to the first analysis of how gender identities changed over the time period considered and how they varied in different regions of Etruria.
