Brickstamps as Evidence For Economic Agency of Women in the Roman World
Abstract
This research essay examines how stamped Roman bricks provide epigraphic evidence of women’s economic participation in the ancient world. Unlike other literary sources where women are portrayed primarily as moral exempla of domestic virtue, stamped bricks reveal them as active participants in ancient Rome’s building and construction economies.
The close analysis of stamps originating from the brick estates of Domita Lucilla, Plotina Augusta, and Acilia Malliola, demonstrates how women of both senatorial and imperial rank not only owned the estates and production facilities, but also managed their commercial distribution. The inclusion of their names, estate (ex praedis), brickyard location (figlinae), and workshop managers (officinatores) on the front face of the bricks served as quasi-public declarations of ownership, legal personality, and economic authority.
Functioning as everyday monuments, instrumentum domesticum, women’s brickstamps travelled beyond their private estates into Rome’s urban fabric where their names were embedded into the city’s walls and architecture. In this way, they served as a ‘counterpoint’ to the literary silence, revealing a structured and large-scale industry in which they exercised managerial control through their delegated labour networks.
Even with the patriarchal constraints, these women displayed both overt and influential economic agency. Their bricks turned Rome’s infrastructure into long-lasting evidential archives of female participation in commerce, law, and production and in doing so left behind one of the most concrete and continuous datasets of women’s roles in the ancient Roman economy.
Essay
Brickstamps as Evidence For Economic Agency of Women in the Roman World
Introduction
Roman brickstamps are a unique and distinct body of ancient Roman epigraphic record and evidence. Unlike monumental honourific or funerary epitaphs which generally emphasise familial values of domesticity, civic accolades, virtues and dynastic loyalty, brickstamps, besides their functional and practical purpose, served as working, living and travelling records of estate ownership, organisation and production in Rome’s building and construction economies. Their wide circulation across Rome’s building industry, meant the name of female estate owners were visible on public display, revealing women’s authority, fiscal contribution and agency.
This essay will explore how stamped bricks contribute to our understanding of the economic identities of women, both senatorial and imperial classes, in ancient Rome. It will focus on three (3) brickstamps by Domitia Lucilla[1], Plotina Augusta[2], and Acilia Malliola[3] and their contributions by way of estate ownership, brick production and ultimately the commercial supply of bricks throughout Rome.
To analyse these brickstamps, broad principles of inscription analysis including attention to formulae, abbreviations, layout, material, and context were used.
What Brickstamps Reveal That Other Sources Do Not: Epigraphic Evidence as a ‘Counterpoint’ To Literary Silences
A typical stamp carried three (3) pieces of information – detail on estate ownership (ex praedis), brickyard location or district (figlinae) and workshop manager or foreman (officinatores).
Once viewed as an ancient handicraft, the production and distribution of stamped bricks by senatorial and imperial women can now be directly tied to large-scale industry. The inclusion of their names and other details in a minimum of one and up to four lines of text served as their brand, signalling to their audience, presence, identity, quality and accountability of workwomanship. This impressed detail permits them to serve as a counterpoint to ancient literary silences on the economic role of women in Rome. Helen[4] observed that stamped Roman bricks were no less branded than amphorae which were routinely stamped with figlinae and fundus or dominus.
Ancient Roman literary sources including discussions by Cicero[5], Pliny the Younger[6] and Seneca[7], rarely describe women as being economic actors in the Roman establishment. Instead, their works emphasised women’s moral exemplae ofvirtue, piety and domesticity. For example, in de Officiis Cicero frowns upon small, retail trade and commerce, describing them as ‘vulgar’, ‘sordid’ and ‘disgusting’[8], especially if it was ‘sin magna et copiosa’.[9]
In this way, brickstamps bridge the gap and silence between literary representation of women’s economic agency and serve as an evidentiary correction source of elite ancient literary bias.
Women’s Agency as a Legal Assertion and Personality
Under Roman Law[10], women were permitted to own property, but their actual role could be contested. In a society where tutores largely exercised control, it is contended that stamped bricks with female names inscribed on them asserted that ‘this estate, this brickyard, these products belong to domina’ functioning as a quasi-public legal notice, projecting and demonstrating a woman’s independent legal personality.
In some instances, the owner’s name, was marked explicitly as domina and the consular year was included[11] providing for precise chronological placement. Pre-123 AD[12], the consular year was absent often had to be deduced from the information stamped. Circa 123 AD there was an upsurge in the stamp marking of bricks and this saw the inclusion of the consular year on brickstamps.[13]
Modern scholars suggests that brickstamps reveal an industrial process of scale and standardisation as a distinct and long-lasting evidential dataset within the ancient urban Roman economy.[14] Specifically with the inclusion ex praedis and officinatores, like ‘repeated messages’[15], demonstrating the systematic and structured nature of brick production[16] an institutional and not accidental activity performed by women. It is estimated that over the first three centuries CE of the 150 known owners of figlinae around fifty were owned by women.[17]
Monumentality for Everyday
Inscriptions on altars, honourific statues and funerary epitaphs were generally commissioned or installed as a tribute to city elites. Their intention being largely for ritual viewing. Brickstamps on the other hand, were practical marks, and because of their ubiquity, served Rome as an everyday monumentality, a form of instrumentum domesticum.
Stamped bricks were objects with mass circulation and presence as distinct from honourific and funerary monuments and commemoratives which were in situ dedications. They travelled from a woman’s praedis and figlinae and were then used to build Rome and capture a role and function which would otherwise be invisible.
By entering their names into this economic system of commercial trade, the role and prominence was on display in the everyday walls and buildings, at street-level, re-used in the Aurelian Wall[18], Porticus Margaritaria[19] and the Roman skyline.
Women’s Names in the Urban Fabric and Economy of Rome
In the first and second centuries CE Roman building and construction economies were extremely dependent on the production of bricks on a large scale[20] with much of the production concentrated on elite estates in the lower Tiber Valley[21] near clay deposits, kilns and transport routes to both the Tiber and Portus rivers[22].
The material form, layout and archaeological context meant that for bricks, text was stamped into unfired clay before firing in a kiln. Once fired, bricks left the estate and entered the Roman building economy and the built environment.
The stamp appeared on the broad face[23], ensuring it was both visibly embedded in Rome’s architectural fabric especially when it remained unplastered. The varied findspots of stamped bricks confirms their public visibility and dissemination across Rome.
Stamped bricks have been found in the walls of the Pantheon, Aurelian Wall and the Serapeum at Ostia. Female-named stamps have been found in the Aurelian Wall[24] and abundantly in Portus/Ostia[25] demonstrating that women’s bricks were not confined to their private estates but circulated more broadly across significant Roman public structures.
Like the role context of circulation plays in numismatics, so too does circulation play an essential role in understanding a brick audience. Bricks, like coins, circulated widely and made women’s authority, participation and economic agency more visible to a wide urban population and economy. Builders, legal authorities and the general Roman public were the audiences for stamped bricks underscoring them as vehicles for the projection of women’s identity and participation in the Roman economy and not just as legal markers used in ownership or quality disputes.
Authority and Ownership as Evidence of Women’s Commerce
The use of praedis in the stamp title identifies ownership and projects legal ownership. It immediately asserts ‘who controls production’. In the case of Domitia Lucilla the Younger, Plotina Augusta and Acilia Malliola these estate owners are women and foregrounds them as the explicit economic principals of brick estates.
Additionally, the inclusion of their names authenticated production as it was not included for mere symbolic reasons, but rather was juridical and financial in nature, with Roman Law permitting women sui iuris[26] to hold property and manage estates.
Domitia Lucilla, mother of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, together with her family, the Domitii, the most prominent family in brick manufacturing, saturates stamped brick production in the Tiber Valley during the first and second centuries AD.[27]
For example, CIL XV 630, dated c. 140-150 CE was produced at figlinae Terentia in a workshop managed by Statia Primilla.
EX FIG(linis) TERNT(ianis)
DOM(itiae) LVC(illae)
PORT(u) LIC(ini)
OP(us) DOL(iare) STAT(iae) PRIM(illae)
From the Terentian brickyards of Domitia Lucilla, the Portus Lucini warehouse, brick-product of Statia Primilla.[28]
Consisting of four lines on terracotta clay brick, Domitia’s ownership is clearly stated as is the delegated authority to Statia Primilla, a female and likely a slave or possibly a freedwoman. The presence of a female workshop manager, alongside that of an elite female estate owner, seems especially significant in this period and probably not a common occurrence with female officinatrices estimated to represent only six percent of the total.[29]
The findspot of CIL XV 630 is noted as being Rome, supporting the working assumption that bricks produced by women were used beyond the confines of their private praedis.
Setälä[30] identifies this CIL XV 630 as one of the rare cases of female-to-female economic collaboration – a demonstration of a layered female-to-female network within the labour hierarchy and a possible complication to the assumption that officinatores were always male slaves or freedmen.
Similarly, Plotina Augusta an imperial female and the wife of Emperor Trajan, is recorded as a brick estate owner. Although she is better known from her appearances on coins and other urban benefactions[31], CIL XV 702,19 records her estate ownership, with an associated workshop foreman recorded as Marcus Valerius Priscus, a slave or freeborn male.
There are two (2) lines of letters on terracotta clay brick:
EX PR(aedis) PLOTIN(ae) AVG(usta)
M(arcus) VAL(erius) PRISC(us) OFF(icinator)
From the estate of Plotina Augusta, Marcus Valerius Priscus workshop manager.[32]
CIL XV 702,19, dated c. 105–123 CE which was during the reign of the Emperor Trajan.[33] It is likely that CIL XV 702,19 likely produced at figlinae Quintianae where Plotina’s estates were situated. It has a recorded findspot of Bononia[34] a distance from its workshop.
Acilia Malliola, is identified as the domina in CIL XV 2225. Acilia is from the eminent senatorial gens Acilia[35] and provides the prevue that female ownership of brick estates was not confirmed to imperial households.
The two (2) lines on the terracotta clay brick are:
EX PR(aedis) ACIL(iae) MALLIOLAE.
OFIC(ina) FELICIS
From the estate of Acilia Malliola, workshop of Felix.[36]
Figure 1: Rectangular clay brick with orbiculus stamp produced in Tiber Valley c. 140 – 160 CE.
CIL XV 2225, dated between c. 140-160 CE.[37] The geographical location of Acilia’s praedia cannot be identified exactly except that it was probably situated along the Tiber Valley or in the suburbium of Rome.[38] The workshop was managed by Felix, likely a slave[39].
Together these three brickstamps show women as owners of brick production estates, with an integrated procurement, production and distribution system that supplied the Roman built environment.
The Managerial Chain – Female Authority but Delegated Management
Each of the brickstamps pairs a female estate owner with an officinatores. These workshop managers were either slaves or freedpersons. They performed the duty of an intermediary in the production process and as Becker[40] posits this hierarchical labour organisation reveals how women’s agency was exercised through organised and well-structed networks of dependent labour, where the authority remained female, but management was delegated.
The presence of this managerial chain, authenticates production and provides accountability to the product, further systematising the industrial organisation of brick production[41] by women.
This confirmatory evidence should not be seen as a quaint irregularity but rather a consistent, recurrent and reproduceable feature of elite female authority, property management thereby presenting their roles as structural and incorporated and not an exception.[42]
Interpretative Cautions and Limitations
The existence of these brickstamps demonstrates that women’s economic agency was real, albeit delegated to officinatores. The record however is incomplete. The case studies show women owning and producing bricks specifically in the Tiber Valley and Portus corridor.
In fact, most stamps come from this region, meaning the sample of evidentiary record is overrepresented by that region. It is possible that women owned estates in other areas, but without archaeological recovery they remain silent and invisible. Notwithstanding this the absence of further female stamped bricks from other areas is not evidence of no other female estate ownership.
Additionally, depending on the structure, bricks were often plastered over, with stamps becoming visible only when walls either eroded or when they were re-used. In this way, whilst stamped bricks were circulated widely, not all audiences could or would have noticed them.
Therefore, it is important to acknowledge that visibility and legibility today is largely due to erosion or re-use and not because they were intentionally displayed. This has the effect of complicating the argument that women’s work was on ‘public display’ intentionally, but it does not dismiss it as a source of evidence of their economic role and contribution.
Conclusion
The inclusion of women’s names on stamped bricks provides the clearest epigraphic evidence and material for their economic agency in the Roman world.
Their presence supports the composite roles and identities they held in ancient Rome and when taken together, inscriptions show the multi-layered identities they had as wives and mothers[43], dynastic symbols[44] and proprietors and producers.[45]
But, even as estate owners, women still faced restrictions and limitations as they did not have unfettered economic agency and financial freedom like men. In this way, economic agency is best viewed as being exercised within Roman patriarchy, not beyond it.
Nonetheless, by acknowledging these restrictions and limitations, rather than ignoring them, an overstatement of women’s economic independence is avoided while at the same time recognising their active contribution and participation in Rome’s economic life and economy.
Stamped bricks turned Roman structures into archives and provide sufficient primary evidence that women of the senatorial and imperial elite owned, organised, branded and sold brickstamps at scale in ancient Rome.
Bibliography
Modern Works
Alho, T. and Leppänen, V. (2017) ‘On Roman brick stamps and the Latin –(a)es genitive’, Pallas, 103, pp. 87–93.
Becker, H. (2016) ‘Roman women in the urban economy: occupations, social connections, and gendered exclusions’, in Turfa, J. and Budin, S. (eds) Women in antiquity: real women across the ancient world. London: Routledge, pp. 915–931.
Berdowski, P. (2007) ‘Some remarks on the economic activity of women in the Roman Empire: a research problem’, in Berdowski, P. and Blahaczek, B. (eds) Haec mihi in animis vestris templa: Studia Classica in Memory of Professor Lesław Morawiecki. Rzeszów: Institute of History, University of Rzeszów, pp. 283–298.
Braito, S. (2020) ‘The domina Acilia Malliola in an Updated Reading.’, Tyche Beitrage zur Alten Geschichte Papyrologie und Epigraphik Band 35, 2020.
Caldelli, M.L. (2015) ‘Women in the Roman world’, in Bruun, C. and Edmondson, J. (eds) The Oxford handbook of Roman epigraphy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chausson, F. (2005) ‘Des Femmes, Des Hommes, Des Briques: Prosopographie Senatoriale et Figlinae Alimentant le Marche Urbain’, Archeologia Classica Vol. 56: 225-267.
Helen, T. (1975) Organization of Roman brick production in the first and second centuries A.D.: an interpretation of Roman brick stamps. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia.
Gardner, J. F. (1999) ‘Women in business life: Some evidence from Puteoli’, in P. Setälä and L. Savunen (eds) Female Networks and the Public Sphere in Roman Society. Acta Instituti Romani Finlandiae, 22 Rome: Institutum Romanum Finlandiae, pp. 11–27.
Loven, L.L. and Rantala, J. (2019) ‘The invisible women of Roman agrarian work and economy’, in Rantala, J. (ed.) Gender, memory and identity in the Roman world. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp. 89–103.
Pfeiffer, G. J., Van Buren, A. W., and Armstrong, H. H. (1905) ‘Armstrong Stamps on Bricks and Tiles from the Aurelian Wall at Rome’, Supplementary Papers of the American School of Classical Studies in Rome Vol. 1 pp. 1-86.
Platner, S. B. (1929) A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome. Ashby, T. (2015) ed. Cambridge University Press.
Setälä, P. (2002) ‘Women and brick production: some new aspects’, in Setälä, P., Berg, R., Hälikkä, R., Keltanen, M., Pölönen, J. and Vuolanto, V. (eds) Women, wealth and power in the Roman Empire. Rome: Institutum Romanum Finlandiae.
Vuolanto, V. (2019) ‘Public agency of women in the later Roman world’, in Rantala, J. (ed.) Gender, memory and identity in the Roman world. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp. 41–62.
Webb, L.M. (2024) ‘Women, wealth and power in the Roman Republic’, Omnibus.
Museums
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Collections. Accessed September 2025, https://www.ashmolean.org/collections-online#/
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. Médailles et Antiques. Accessed September 2025, https://medaillesetantiques.bnf.fr/ws/catalogue/
Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge. Collections. Accessed September 2025, https://harvardartmuseums.org/collections
Podcast
Cooley, A. and Masséglia, J. 2015. The Building Bricks of an Empire, AshLI Project Podcast 6. Accessed via YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXVjpVZVocc&t=7s
Websites
Geography and Economy of the Imperial Properties in the Roman World. n.d. https://patrimonium.huma-num.fr/documents/apcd103887
Footnotes
[1] CIL XV.630.
[2] CIL XV.702,19.
[3] CIL XV.2225.
[4] Helen 1975: 21.
[5] de Officiis. 150-151.
[6] Epistulae. 4.19 and 7.19.
[7] Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium. 94.1.
[8] de Officiis. 150.
[9] de Officiis. 151.
[10] Caldelli 2015: 588.
[11] CIL XV.447 and CIL XV.531.
[12] Bloch 1959: 237.
[13] Debate on why is unsettled, with Bloch (1959) suggesting it is probable that Hadrian’s government imposed this requirement to assure buyers that bricks had been kept sufficiently long in storage before use.
[14] Setälä 2002: 45; Caldelli 2015: 444-446; Becker 2016: 920-922.
[15] Cooley and Masséglia 2015: The Building Bricks of an Empire. AshLI Project Podcast 6.
[16] Helen 1975: 22-25.
[17] Caldelli 2015: 588.
[18] CIL XV.737.
[19] Planter 2015: 423
[20] Helen 1975: 22-25.
[21] Located north of Rome, between the city of Veii / Fidenae.
[22] Setälä 2002: 119.
[23] Helen 1975: 15.
[24] Ibid 18.
[25] Harvard Art Museums n.d.
[26] Ibid 10.
[27] Helen 1975: 100.
[28] CIL XV.630 (Patrimonium).
[29] Caldelli 2015: 589.
[30] Setälä 2002: 107-109.
[31] Caldelli 2015: 588-589.
[32] CIL XV.702,19 (Patrimonium).
[33] Reigned from 98 – 117 CE.
[34] Modern day Bologna.
[35] Braito 2020: 242.
[36] CIL 15.2225 (Medaille et Antique inv.52bis.3809).
[37] The late Hadrianic and Antonine period.
[38] Braito 2020: 242.
[39] The omission of a typical tria nomina likely indicates a Felix was a slave. Onomastics in brickstamps help to distinguish slaves from freedmen. Cadelli 2015: 445; Helen 1975: 88-89; Setälä 2002: 145-147.
[40] Becker 2016: 925.
[41] Ibid 20.
[42] Helen 1975: 22-25.
[43] Present on funerary epitaphs.
[44] Represented with honourific statues.
[45] Through their impressed names on stamped bricks.