Shoes and Sandals

Abstract

This chapter examines the evidence for footwear from the Petrie Museum, in combination with comparative examples from other UK museum collections, to determine whether shoes had distinct cultural and social roles within Roman and late antique Egypt. First, the nature of the data set is discussed including methodological issues relating to the study of material from old collections. Topics then covered include footwear sizes, shoe decoration, deposition, and regionality. While there is no evidence, to date, that can be recovered regarding distinctions in decoration according to life course stages, decoration is proposed to have other functions, for example, apotropaic uses. Regarding deposition contexts, evidence from the presence or absence of wear is used to argue that some shoe types were made as burial items and never worn in life, and other possible depositional practices are also discussed. Regional and global fashions in Roman and late antique Egypt are then considered, putting forward evidence of ‘glocalization’ in the form of empire-wide shoe styles manufactured in materials indigenous to Egypt, such as reed. This also raises questions concerning the incompleteness of the archaeological record from other provinces in which such organic evidence is lacking.