486 Kathryn Lomas
at Este, Altino, Treviso, Vicenza, and several other sites—have yielded votive figurines
and embossed bronze tablets, many of which represent female deities, priestesses, or
worshippers (Pascucci 1990; Maggiani 2002). A series of bronze disks from Treviso, for
instance, depicts a female deity, and tablets from the important sanctuary of Reita at
Baratella near Este depict both the goddess herself and female worshippers. Depictions
of women are also found on embossed or incised bronze vessels known as situlae,
which were produced and traded throughout the Alpine area, and on some tombstones.
Despite the amount of evidence and its diversity in both context and chronology, these
representations of women are very formulaic. Most depict them as wearing a tunic,
sometimes with a shawl draping the head and upper body (Pascucci 1990: 146–52),
and, on other occasions, as bareheaded and with loose hair. Some wear boots and a heavy
belt, occasionally with a large and elaborate necklace or collar and/or a disk-shaped
headdress, all of which seem to have been marks of high social status (Fogolari
1988: 164–9; Pascucci 1990: 146–52; Gambacurta and Zaghetto 2002: 286–96).
Examples of all of these items have been attested from female tombs, suggesting that
the representations are not just iconographic convention but have some basis in the
actual dress of Venetic women, at least before the fourth century. These depictions are
clearly gender-specific, but we may also be able to define them as ethnically specific
representations of both womanhood and “Venetic-ness” (on appearance and gender
identities, see Stig Sørensen 1991).
A more complex problem arises when we consider the evidence from the Hellenistic
and early Roman periods, up to the end of the first centuryBC. Although it seems highly
unlikely that the women of the region continued to dress in the manner of the archaic
period, visual representations of women continue to present them as wearing modified
forms of traditional dress. Men, in contrast, are presented in contemporary dress, par-
ticularly after the Roman conquest of the region. A series of 18 tombstones from Padua
illustrates this point (Bandelli 2004; Lomas 2011). The earlier examples, dating from the
sixth to the third centuriesBC, show both men and women in the traditional form—men
are depicted as warriors driving a chariot or mounted on horseback, while the women
who sometimes accompany them wear the wide belt, straight tunic, and disk headdress
of the elite Venetic woman. The later examples, dating to the first centuryBC, show a
sharp contrast in the way men are depicted. Although they still ride in a chariot (horses
and chariots being a symbol of elite status in the region), they are now shown as civilian
passengers, driven by a charioteer and wearing a Roman-style tunic and toga, rather than
as armed warriors. Women, in contrast, still wear the cloak, wide belt, and headdress—the
traditional symbols of female status. The latest example, the late first century gravestone
of M’ Gallenius and his wife Ostiala Gallenia (Lomas 2006; 2011: 19–22), is even more
complex. It has an inscription that is laid out in traditional Venetic form, around the
upper and right-hand margin of the stone, but which is written in Latin. Gallenius’ name
is given in Roman form as “M’. Gallenius, M’.f.,” while his wife’s name is given in local
form, with a personal name as well as anomen. This was usual for women in the Veneto,
who traditionally had both an individual and family name, but rare for Roman women,
who did not, at this date, usually have a personal name, but were known by the feminine
form of the familynomen(Untermann 1961). There seems, therefore, to be a signifi-
cant gender difference in how ethnicity and social status was represented. The adoption
of new symbols of status following the Roman conquest—the toga, the use of Latin,