Tatiana Ivleva has a special interest in the study of provincial corporeal culture in its various embodiments, ranging from personal dress adornments made of copper alloy and glass to the epigraphic visibility of sexual and other relationships. As a material culture specialist of the Roman frontier and provincial regions, her research showcases the power of the everyday objects in disentangling the past activities of the inhabitants at the edges of the Roman world. Her publications include Embracing the Provinces: Society and Material Culture of the Roman Frontier Regions (2018) and papers on migration and mobility, family formations in the Roman army, and experimental archaeology. Tatiana is Visiting Research Fellow at Newcastle University, UK.
Rob Collins is a specialist of Roman frontier studies and small finds, with a particular focus on late antiquity, and his research explores themes of identity, place, and regionality. His monograph, Hadrian's Wall and the End of Empire (2012), was the first comprehensive study of a late Roman frontier. Other publications include Hadrian's Wall 2009-2019 (2019), Roman Military Architecture on the Frontiers (2015), and Finds from the Frontier (2010). Rob is a Lecturer at Newcastle University, UK.
Un-Roman Sex explores how gender and sex were perceived and represented outside the Mediterranean core of the Roman Empire. The volume critically explores the gender constructs and sexual behaviours in the provinces and frontiers in light of recent studies of Roman erotic experience and flux gender identities.
1. Venus' mirror: reflections of gender and sexuality in the Roman Empire
Part I: Seeing (beyond) sex
2. On a knife-edge: an image of sex and spectacle from Roman north-west Europe
3. More than just love and sex: Venus figurines in Roman Britain
4. His and hers: magic, materiality, and sexual imagery
Part II: Representations and performance of the feminine (or is it?)
5. Barbie-bodies and coffee beans: female genital imagery in the Mediterranean and the north-west provinces of the Roman Empire
6. Female status and gender on Roman frontier in Britain: between representation and reality
7. Dressed for death? A study of female-associated burials from Roman-period Slovenia
Part III: The stuff of "man"
8. Coming out of the provincial closet: masculinity, sexuality, and same-sex sexual relations amongst Roman soldiers in the European north-west, first-third centuries A.D.
9. The phallus and the frontier: the form and function of phallic imagery along Hadrian's Wall
10. Egyptian faience flaccid phallus pendants in the Mediterranean, Near East, and Black Sea regions
11. Roman and un-Roman sex