Assaults and Abuse in Roman Britain: The Poetics of Violence Experienced by Women from the First to Early Fifth Centuries CE

The Claudian conquest of 43 CE and subsequent incorporation of Britain into the Roman Empire until 410 CE, caused a sea-change in the lives of the late Iron Age (first century BCE to first century CE) small-scale, agrarian communities. This chapter focuses on female skeletons with injuries and trauma (i.e. fractures and sharp-force weapons) caused by violent mechanisms, who have been excavated from urban, rural and military inhumation cemeteries from across Roman Britain (first to early fifth centuries CE). Violence was an everyday social tool in the Roman world, with females particularly vulnerable throughout the life course, because of their lower status regardless of wealth or family standing, and the use of violence to maintain social norms. The work draws on three approaches: Black Feminist Archaeology; a web of violence approach; and the poetics of violence. These are used to engage with the osteological data, because they recognise that different forms of violence exist within a society and these are connected (e.g. warfare and intimate partner violence), female bodies are where intersections of violence often play-out, and that the experience of being a woman in Roman Britain was incredibly diverse.