Since modern excavations began in the 1960s, the site of Vindolanda on Hadrian’s Wall has revealed some of the most extraordinary and often unique archaeological finds from any Roman site. Dr. Elizabeth Greene has been a part of the team organized by the Vindolanda Trust researching the site for almost twenty years and will share some of the highlights of that research in this talk. Following on the first talk in this series on the site of Vindolanda and its frontier landscape within the region of Hadrian’s Wall, this talk will focus on Dr. Greene’s research on the objects and implements of daily life that help us understand the people who populated this site nearly two-thousand years ago. The presentation focuses on Dr. Greene’s work on the collection of thousands of archaeological shoes and leather objects from the site and contextualizes this material within the context of social change on a dynamic Roman frontier.

Dr. Elizabeth M. Greene is Canada Research Chair in Roman Archaeology and Associate Professor at the University of Western Ontario. She earned her PhD from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Department of Classics and has taught in the Classics Department at Western for 10 years. Her excavation and research specialize in the Roman provinces and frontiers, with particular focus on Roman Britain and the dynamic military communities that inhabited the frontiers of the northwest provinces. Dr. Greene has been part of the archaeological team at Vindolanda since 2002 and led the excavations in the North Field area of the site for a decade. She is currently the principal investigator of the Vindolanda Archaeological Leather Project and co-director of the Vindolanda Field School. Her research has been funded extensively by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council Canada and the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation. Her archaeological research has been published in international venues since 2012, much of which focuses on the social role of women, children and families in Roman military communities. Dr. Greene has been a national lecturer for the Archaeological Institute of America since 2014 and has given talks to local societies across the USA and Canada. She is also a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists and her research is regularly featured on podcasts, radio, online and print media. Dr. Greene has been a member of the AIA since graduate school and has advocated for archaeology and the AIA in several roles in both local societies and at the national level.