ABSTRACT
Men, women, and children were all trafficked in Late Antiquity and throughout the early Middle Ages. Although the experiences of trafficking and enslavement were similar for all in that victims, regardless of their sex, met with violence, intimidation, coercion, and deception as a result of the dehumanization and commodification of abductees, the conditions of those experiences were nevertheless gendered. Sexualized violence against women and children remained a looming and perpetual threat in late antique and early medieval human trafficking activities that adult men generally did not face. While this fact should come as no surprise to anyone, the importance of this observation lies in continuity; the dangers of exploitation and violation for trafficked women and children remained a predictable constant that linked the slave trade of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages to the sex trafficking networks of the late Middle Ages and the early modern period.
