The Female Athletic Costume at the Heraia and Prenuptial Initiation Rites
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5010473 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nancy Serwint (0000-0003-4249-3811, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1993 |
| Volume | 97 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 403-422 |
| Publication date | 1993-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Journal of Archaeology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-9114 • E-ISSN: 1939-828X |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.2307/506363 |
| OpenAlex | W2323553982 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 13 |
| References cited | 1 |
The quadrennial festival of the Heraia at Olympia provided one of the few attested venues for girls to participate in athletic competitions in Greece during the Classical period. One of the most unusual features recorded for the Heraia was the athletic costume worn by the participants, a short chiton affixed to the left shoulder leaving the right shoulder and breast bared. Since the literary sources treating other contemporary athletic festivals do not mention this garment, the dress was perhaps unique to the Heraia ritual. Previous examinations of this athletic costume have attributed its derivation to the dress worn by the Amazons, Artemis, and Atalanta. A closer investigation of the Heraia outfit, however, reveals that it was inspired by the ἐξωμίς, a garment worn by men engaged in strenuous activity. The appropriateness of the ἐξωμίς as an iconographic source for the Heraia running dress becomes clear if the festival of Hera is correctly interpreted as a prenuptial female initiation rite. Cross-cultural studies of social puberty rituals in premodern societies identify a common feature of such rites: the initiate adopts characteristics of the opposite sex and, in many instances, wears clothing regarded as typical of the other gender. The assumption of traits associated with the opposite sex allows the initiate to return to the necessary state of primordial totality, thus facilitating the passage from childhood to adulthood
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Clothing · Period (music) · Political science · Rite · Rite of passage · Sociology · Visual arts · Anthropology · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · History · Law · Martial Arts: Techniques, Psychology, and Education · Sports, Gender, and Society
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| Unique citing works | 13 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.52 |
| Citation span | 2001 - 2023 (23) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 13 |