‘The Insignia of Women’: Dress, Gender and identity on the Roman funerary monument of Regina from Arbeia

The current study focuses on the Roman gravestone of a British woman named Regina who died in the second half of the second century at the Roman fort of Arbeia (South Shields) at the mouth of the Tyne and was commemorated by her Palmyrene husband. The paper examines the Latin and Aramaic inscriptions on Regina's gravestone, the depiction of her ethnic clothing and bodily adornment, and the portrayal of the deceased as a woman skilled in wool-working, in order to contextualize and understand the important messages the monument conveys about physical mobility, ethnicity, social standing and gender relationships on Rome's northern frontier.