1. The State of Health of Roman Republic to Imperial Roman Period Burials, from the Necropolis of Aquinum, Italy
RR Paine1, R Vargiu2, GR Bellini3, D Mancinelli4, P Santoro5 & A Coppa5
1Department of Soc. & Anthropology, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX; 2Istituto Italiano di Antropologia, Roma, Italy; 3Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici del Lazio, Italy 4 Dipartimento di Scienze Ambientali, Università de L’Aquila, Italy; 5Dipartimento di Biologia Animale e dell’Uomo, Università La Sapienza di Roma, Italy.
Introduction
The Aquinum necropolis is a Roman Republic- Imperial Roman period cemetery located just off of the motorway service area near the community of Casilina, Italy (Photos 1). The site is located in the Lazio region of Italy, south of Rome. The necropolis dates back to the the 2ndcentury BC to 2nd century AD. The Roman town of Aquinum is near the present day town of Casilina (Fig. 1).
The purpose of this presentation is to report on the frequency of skeletal lesions observed for 123 burials (51 males, 49 females, 7 adults of undetermined sex, and 16 sub-adults). We compare the lesion data from the Republic burials to Imperial period burials from the site of Urbino.
Results
Table 2. Frequency of skeletal lesions by sex and by group.
Sex (g)
DJD
periostitis
Cranial pitting OA
Trauma
Male (T)
50%
44%
7.8%
32.5%
12%
Female (T)
52%
13.5%
0.0%
41% 8%
Male (R)
47%
45% 9%
28.5%
Female (R)
12.5%
33.3%
Male (I)
80%
60%
40%
Female (I)
20%
100%
Background
The burials from the necropolis site of Aquinum represent a sample of burials that span the Roman Republic- Imperial Roman periods. The site was discovered as part of the Casilina East Service Area construction project in part sponsored by Autostrade (Photo 1). The remains were recovered as part of an archaeological contact project that included full osteological analysis of skeletal material. The skeletal material is of mixed quality. Some of the burials are very well preserved making the assessment of health and biological profile easy while other burials are very poorly preserved.
Photos. 5, 6 & 7. Tomb 15, from the Risti Fini area of the site, yielded a male years old showing skeletal lesions specific to leprosy. The burial dates to the Imperial Roman period (2nd & 3rd cent. AD). Skeletal lesions include periostitis of the lower tibia and fibula, fusion and periostitis of foot and hand bones.
T = Total Sample, R = Republic Romans I = Imperial Romans
n’s for these samples depends on skeletal elements for each group and sex.
Table 3. Frequency of lesions compared between the Aquinum and Ubrino samples.
Sex (g)
DJD
periostitis
Cranial pitting OA
Trauma
Male (R)
47%
45% 9%
28.5%
Female (R)
50%
12.5%
0.0%
33.3%
Male (I)
68%
41%
45.%
21%
Female (I)
55%
20%
37%
58%
20.%
Phalanges of the hand and feet showing cupping, resorption and fusion.
This maybe one of the older examples of Leprosy in Italy & Europe, Mariotti et al., 2005
offers a case for a 4th-3rd cent. BC Celtic skeleton with lesions specific to leprosy.
I = data from the Imperial Roman samples from the necropolis of Urbino, Italy
Paine et al., 2009). R = Republic Romans from the site of Aquinum. The Urbino sample size
is 71 adults.
Table 1. Frequency of individuals showing skeletal lesions by sex and by Roman period.
Sex
Total (100)
Republic (90)
Imperial (10)
Tomb 58 Republic (13)
Male (51)
65%
62%
80%
100%
Female (49)
53%
52%
60%
Conclusions
The Fisher’s exact test was employed to determine the difference in lesion frequencies by sex between Republic and Imperial Romans recovered from the Casilina and Urbino necropoli.
Several lesion frequencies are significantly different at p = 0.01 for the Casilina and Urbino burials.
There is less significant difference for Osteoarthritis p = DJD p =
There are no differences in the frequency of lesions specific to periostitis.
These results suggest that the health status for Romans changed over time resulting in an increase set of problems related to inter-personal violence and diet. Violence increased and the quality of food decreased over time.
The general state of health in the Republic period of Rome appears to be better than the Imperial. This may reflect the difficulty in maintaining the Empire by the common people as they served in the military and provided resources to support its expansion and maintenance. As we suggested in Paine et al., (2009) despite the considerable advantage that the Roman Imperial culture offered its citizens, it came at a very high price that appears to be reflected in numerous and common ailments seen in the Imperial burials.
Photo 1. A map of the necropolis site of Aquinum.
Figure 1. Location of the necropolis of Aquinum.
The purpose of the project was to examine each adult burial for skeletal lesions.
To report the frequency of lesions by sex we first determined how many adults were available for examination and of those how many of them had skeletal elements available for analysis.
Table 1. The number of males and females, and skeletal elements
examined for lesions, Aquinum.
Photo 9. An example of arthritic pitting on the articular surfaces.
Photo 10. Fractured ribs.
Trauma p = 0.001
Cranial pitting p = 0.001
Cranial pitting p =
Females
Males
Cranium
Orbital region
Long bones
Vertebral bones
Joint surfaces
Male (51) 38 11 43 40 42
Female (49) 30 8 41 29 37
Photo 2. Roman Tomb, Republic period.
Photo 3. Tomb 58A-O, mass grave, from the Roman Republic period.
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There are 8 males and 5 females in this tomb. 100% of them show skeletal lesions and 37.5% of the males show signs of trauma, 20% of the female show trauma defects.
Photo 11. Typical single burial unit, Male, 30 years old, from the Republic period.
Photo 12. Tomb 83, Republic period burial, female age
37-43 years, with burial offerings.
Photo 4. Tomb 58A-O, mass grave.