Wearing the Cloak contains nine stimulating chapters on Roman military textiles and equipment that take textile research to a new level. Hear the sounds of the Roman soldiers' clacking belts and get a view on their purchase orders with Egyptian weavers. Could armour be built of linen? Who had access to what kinds of prestigious equipment? And what garments and weapons were deposited in bogs at the edge of the Roman Empire? The authors draw upon multiple sources such as original textual and scriptural evidence, ancient works of art and iconography and archaeological records and finds. The chapters cover - as did the Roman army - a large geographical span: Egypt, the Levant, the Etruscan heartland and Northern Europe. Status, prestige and access are viewed in the light of financial and social capacities and help shed new light on the material realities of a soldier's life in the Roman world.

• Coverpage
• Titlepage
• Copyright
• Introduction and Acknowledgements
• Contents
• 1. Dressed for the occasion. C lothes and context in the R oman army
• 2. Purchase orders of military garments from p apyri of R oman E gypt
• 3. Clothing supply for the military. A look at the inscriptional evidence
• 4. The Roman M ilitary Belt
• 5. Linen-clad Etruscan Warriors
• 6. Fragments of Linen from Masada, Israel – the Remnants of Pteryges? – and Related Finds in Weft- and Warptwining including several Slings
• 7. A late Roman painting of a n Egyptian officer and the layers of its perception. On the relation between imagesand textile finds
• 8. Warrior costumes in Iron Age weapon deposits
• 9. Painting a Reconstruction Of rhe Deir E L-Medineh Portrait On A Painted Shroud and Other Soldiers from Roman Egypt
• Map
• Bibliography