Many cultures view feet as unclean, yet the Romans chose foot iconography for many ornaments. My research topic is the role played by feet and footwear in Roman cosmology and how far these concepts applied to the north-western provinces. This paper will explore what we can learn from foot-shaped artefacts about the identity, and beliefs, of the people who owned them using the example of jugs where the handles terminate in a human foot or feet. Such jugs form part of a series of case-studies of foot-shaped artefacts that constitute my doctoral research. The full corpus of 1,322 foot-shaped objects assembled for my study includes lamps, shoe-brooches, oil flasks, knife/razor handles, amulets, rings, stamp matrices, furniture feet, carvings of footprints, foot-fragments from statues, and human footprints in ceramic building materials. First, some background details of the foot-handled jugs will be given, then details of the theoretical approach, and methodology, adopted. A detailed discussion of the findings will follow, before summing up the many meanings of Roman foot-shaped artefacts.

Roman foot-handled jugs date from the late first to the third centuries AD (Hoss 2020: 67) and are made from copper alloy, with the exception of one ceramic jug from the Roman potteries in Berg en Dal (Tassinari 1973: 139). The copper alloy jugs were beaten from sheet metal (Szabó 1981: 57), with the handle cast separately and soldered on (Mustaţă 2017: 120; Hoss 2020: 66). Handle moulds were found in a metal-worker’s workshop in Tartus, Syria (Héron de Villefosse 1900: 318). This study catalogued 79 examples, 24 of which are represented by detached handles only. The jugs come in two slightly different shapes (Tassinari 1973: 135). The ‘occidental’ group is tall and slender, with an extended cylindrical lower body (Figure 1), while the body of the ‘oriental’ variety is ovoid (Crummy 2015). The western-type jugs are all very similar in size and shape, with the only differences being whether the feet are bare or shod, left, right, or a pair (Radnóti 1938: 167; Tassinari 1973: 136).

The theoretical approach adopted for this study is one of ‘bricolage’, rather than purism. Preucel concludes that ‘there can be no single, self-contained theory of material culture’ (2006: 257) and Hodder (2005: 68) suggests that a general unified theory of material culture should be regarded with some scepticism. The consistency test for this theoretical bricolage approach is whether it works consistently in relation to the research objectives; that is, it enables a better understanding of things that are too complex for any single philosophy or social theory (Olsen 2010: 14). Studying the meaning of Roman foot-shaped artefacts is certainly complicated.

Since some Roman representations of feet and footwear, including jug handles, are used in votive and apotropaic ways, it was necessary to consider theories around object agency, a hotly debated concept, due largely to the question of whether objects can have intentionality. This study would argue that objects used as ex votos were perceived by the users as having an influence on the gods, and apotropaic objects were regarded as having a protective effect. From a pragmatic point of view, this adds up to an acceptance of object agency. However, more nuanced approaches have been developed.

Hoskins affirms that ‘asking questions about the agency of objects has led to the development of a more biographical approach’ (2006: 77), pointing out that Gell (1998: 11) suggests a more active model of an object’s biography, in which the object may not only assume a number of different identities, but may also ‘interact’ with those who look at it, use it, and try to possess it (Hoskins 2006: 76). Hoskins identifies two dominant forms of object biography, the second of which begins with historical or archaeological research and tries to ‘interrogate objects themselves by placing them in a historical context’ (2006: 78). This approach has been useful for interpreting the symbolism of some foot-handled jugs since it provides a method to reveal the relationships between people and objects (Joy 2009: 540). Indeed, in her paper on foot-handled jugs, Tassinari (1973: 132) discusses the idea of a ‘curriculum vitae’ for them, by which she means the steps for reconstructing their lives: finding their place of origin, date of manufacture, and establishing their movements across the Roman Empire.

Another theoretical approach which proved useful for studying the significance of Roman foot-handled jugs is ‘contextual archaeology’, since the symbolic and social meaning of Roman artefacts is ‘not inherent and immutable, but rather determined by past actions and contexts’ (Eckardt 2002: 27). Tilley (2001: 260) states that an object’s meaning ‘is created out of situated, contextualized social action which is in continuous dialectical relationship with generative rule-based structures forming both a medium for and an outcome of action’. In other words, an artefact is given significance when it is used by a person or group for a particular purpose.

Hodder explains that the first stage of the ‘contextual archaeology’ procedure is:

He then defines ‘meaningful pattern’ as ‘that showing statistically significant similarities and differences’ (1987: 6) and ‘context’ as ‘the totality of the relevant environment’ and ‘all those associations which are relevant to its meaning’ (1992: 13). The relationship between an object and its context is both complex and dialectic, as the context ‘gives meaning to and gains meaning from the object’ (Hodder 1992: 13). This approach may be criticized for its partial reliance on semiotics, but it has proved useful for this study because it fed into how the data were recorded and analysed.

Understanding foot-shaped artefacts as part of a social code, and their historically specific significance, calls for a detailed examination of the cultural context of their usage (Eckardt 2002: 28). In order to explore the meanings of artefacts in depth, Eckardt argues that ‘we must first select artefacts that may be of social or cultural significance, and then compile a corpus, map their distribution, and examine their contexts’ (2014: 2). In her 1973 study of Roman jugs with a handle ending in feet, Tassinari (1973: 128–130) outlines an artefact study method that produces an ‘identity card’, which includes, as far as possible, the date and place of discovery, context, dimensions, state of preservation, a detailed description, photographs, and drawings.

This project, therefore, assembled data for a corpus of 79 jugs with handles ending in human feet, or handles detached from such jugs, from published sources and museum collections. Details of the published foot-shaped artefacts were obtained through a systematic literature review, beginning with the 40 jugs in Tassinari’s study (1973). To this was added information from various museum catalogues (Radnóti 1938; den Boesterd 1956; Menzel 1966; Fiumi 1977; Faider-Feytmans 1979; Szabó 1981; Kohlert-Németh 1990; Nenova-Merdjanova 1998; Sedlmayer 1999; Pozo-Rodríguez 2001; Mustaţă 2017), archaeological reports (Forster and Knowles 1913; Liversidge 1958; Vanvinckenroye 1984; Pirling and Siepen 2006; Crummy 2011; Crummy 2015; Hoss 2020), other studies (Barthel and Kapf 1907; Nagy 1945; Bonnamour 1977; Sanie et al. 1980; Ruprechtsberger 1985; Spânu et al. 2016), and the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) online database.

The corpus details were entered into a Microsoft Access database since this permits the inclusion of images and allows the material to be sorted according to a variety of criteria such as findspot, map coordinates (where available), material, size, chirality, date, and type. Some of these criteria are those advocated by Hodder (1987: 6) as the first stage of a ‘contextual archaeology’ approach. The greatest benefit of this method was that it facilitated the observation of chronological, spatial, and depositional distribution patterns. Distribution maps were created using QGIS software.

The most crucial field in the database for this study was the ‘find-setting’, a term chosen to avoid the ambiguity of the word ‘context’ in archaeology. The author decided on the following categories for the find-settings of foot-handled jugs:

Classifying find-settings proved problematic, since the categories, especially ‘urban’, and ‘military’, are quite broad and tend to lump sites together, due to a lack of precise recording, although this may be necessary to create sufficiently large numbers of artefacts (Eckardt 2005:144) to gain a representative sample, so that biases inherent in small samples can be lessened. There is also a danger that the find-setting categories are used for convenience, or are historically derived (Eckardt 2002: 29), which could impact on the accuracy of any analyses. It is possible to modify find-setting categories ‘in order to incorporate material culture patterns as well as possible regional or status differences’ (Eckardt 2002: 30). In fact, ‘water’ was a later addition to the find-setting categories, after it was discovered that so many of the jugs were found in watery settings. This contextual approach helps to facilitate a focus on patterns of usage and deposition, and thus to interpret the social significance of Roman foot-handled jugs.

This paper has presented a case study of foot-handled jugs as an example of Roman foot-shaped artefacts, exploring their social significance through the theoretical approaches of contextual archaeology and object biography. This discussion is based on a catalogue of 79 jugs or detached handles which were found across the northern areas of the Roman Empire. The relative rarity of Roman foot-handled jugs compared with other types (Szabó 1981: 63) may have rendered them more valuable. Thus they are appropriate markers of status. Many of these jugs appear to have been of ritual significance, being used in funerary and sanctuary contexts, and as votive deposits, possibly because the depiction of feet on the handles represents deities (Croom 2010: 74). Religious symbols, such as the feet of divinities, are common on objects found in hoards (Millett 1994: 100), so this may be why the foot-handled jugs were considered appropriate containers for, and components of, valuable hoards. The feet may, as with other Roman foot-shaped artefacts, have performed an apotropaic function.

The symbolism of Roman artefacts in the form of feet and footwear is varied and multi-layered. It is unnecessary to consider ‘deposition in the ground or in wet places as either sacred or profane’, since these actions were probably ‘invested with significance in both spheres’ (Millett 1994: 104). The ritual use of Roman foot-shaped artefacts may be evidenced by specimens from graves, temples or shrines, and deposited in watery contexts. The author’s research includes a corpus of 1,322 foot-shaped objects across 12 different types. Of these, 44% of those with a known find-setting, and 26% of all foot-shaped objects in the corpus come from a ritual setting, be it funerary, religious, or watery. It is, of course, necessary to be aware of a bias towards these find-settings, since objects are more likely to survive when carefully deposited, rather than become fragmented or be melted down and recycled. Nevertheless, the evidence we have does point to the reasonably common deposition of foot- and shoe-shaped artefacts in ritual settings.

While some foot-shaped artefacts may be mere novelties, many of them were chosen to display power, wealth, and status. Some were religious offerings or added to the preparedness of the dead for the journey to the Underworld. Foot-shaped objects were regarded as having apotropaic properties, seen most clearly in amulets. This paper has, through the example of jugs whose handle terminates in human feet, demonstrated how ubiquitous, polysemous, and important representations of feet were in Roman life.