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The Science of Roman History Biology, Climate, and the Future of the Past The Science of Roman History Biology, climaTe, and The fuTuRe of The PaST Edited by Walter Scheidel PRinceTon univeRSiTy PReSS PRinceTon & oxfoRd Copyright © 2018 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR press.princeton.edu All Rights Reserved ISBN 978- 0- 691- 16256- 0 Library of Congress Control Number 2017963022 British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Miller Printed on acid- free paper. ∞ Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 conTenTS List of Illustrations and Tables · vii Notes on Contributors · ix Acknowledgments · xiii Maps · xiv Introduction 1 Walter Scheidel chaPTeR 1. Reconstructing the Roman Climate 11 Kyle Harper & Michael McCormick chaPTeR 2. Archaeobotany: The Archaeology of Human- Plant Interactions 53 Marijke van der Veen chaPTeR 3. Zooarchaeology: Reconstructing the Natural and Cultural Worlds from Archaeological Faunal Remains 95 Michael MacKinnon chaPTeR 4. Bones, Teeth, and History 123 Alessandra Sperduti, Luca Bondioli, Oliver E. Craig, Tracy Prowse, & Peter Garnsey chaPTeR 5. Human Growth and Stature 174 Rebecca Gowland & Lauren Walther chaPTeR 6. Ancient DNA 205 Noreen Tuross & Michael G. Campana chaPTeR 7. Modern DNA and the Ancient Mediterranean 224 Roy J. King & Peter A. Underhill Index · 249 [ v ] illuSTRaTionS and TaBleS Maps 1. Western Mediterranean. xiv 2. Eastern Mediterranean. xv 3. Northwestern Europe. xvi Figures 1.1. TSI (Total Solar Irradiance) from 14C. 19 1.2. TSI from 10Be. 19 1.3. Volcanic sulfates: GSIP2. 20 1.4. Estimated global volcanic forcing (negative watts per square meter). 21 1.5. Volcanic events: ice core and tree rings. 22 1.6. Temperature anomaly. 22 1.7. Precipitation totals (mm) in Northeastern France, Northeastern and Southeastern Germany. 25 1.8. Temperature anomaly (°C vs. 1961– 1990). 26 1.9. Temperature reconstruction from Spannagel Cave δ18O. 27 1.10. δ13C from Sofular Cave. 30 1.11. The complexity of Mediterranean hydrological change (50 BCE– 600 CE). 33 4.1. Age-at-death distributions of Velia Porta Marina (I– II cent. CE; N=297) and Isola Sacra (I– III cent. CE; N=526). 131 4.2. The survival trend through the age- cycle follows the theoretical model at Velia but not at Isola Sacra. 132 4.3. Spatial distribution by sex and age- at- death at Herculaneum. 133 4.4. Nitrogen and carbon isotopic delta values and presence of cribra orbitalia in the adult sample from Velia (I– II cent. CE; N=74) do not show a significant correlation. 137 4.5. Nitrogen and carbon isotopic delta values and presence of diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis (DISH) in the adult sample from Velia (I– II cent. CE; N=85) show a positive correlation. 137 4.6. Decreasing levels of bone representation affect the osteoarthritic frequency, with different grade of bias across the joints. 139 [ vii ] [ viii ] illuSTR aTionS and TaBleS 4.7. Cortical thickness of the femoral diaphysys of the individual Velia 70 (above left; right femur), compared with data from a reference collection ( bottom left). 143 5.1. Comparison of femoral length between Roman and Anglo- Saxon populations in England. 184 5.2. Long bone length plotted against dental age for a sample of Romano- British and Anglo- Saxon skeletons. 190 5.3. Vertebral body height for the cervical vertebrae. 191 6.1. Diagram of the polymerase chain reaction. 208 7.1. Y chromosome gene tree of major haplogroup relationships and estimated ages in thousands of calendar years based on single nucleotide substitutions detected while resequencing ca. 10 million nucleotide bases in each of the globally representative individuals. 234 Tables 1.1. Physical characteristics of Alpine glaciers. 23 1.2. Speleothem series. 28 1.3. Lake records. 31 4.1. Approximate collagen formation times in femoral bone based on the radiocarbon tracer experiments. 148 5.1. The regression formulae developed by Trotter and Gleser for estimating stature from the femur. 178 5.2. Stature from Romano- British skeletons calculated using the anatomical method, a range of commonly used regression techniques, and a newly developed population- specific regression method for Roman Britain. 181 5.3. Comparison of mean femur length between Romano- British and Anglo- Saxon cemeteries in Southern and Eastern England. 184 Chapter one Reconstructing the Roman Climate Kyle Harper & Michael McCormick Climate and the Science of Antiquity Environmental history, as a subfield, is now more than a generation old. Tradi- tionally, it has focused on the changing relationship between human societies and the natural world, in both physical and biological dimensions. It has over- lapped and connected with related fields such as agrarian history, landscape archaeology, geography, and the study of historical demography and infectious disease. From Braudel to Horden and Purcell, the labors of environmental his- torians have yielded a much clearer understanding of both the enabling power of the natural world and the constraints it imposes. At the center of the field, it might be suggested, has been an effort to describe how the imperative of extracting energy from the environment has shaped human societies and how, in turn, human societies have exploited and reshaped physical and biological environments in their search for fuel, food, and water. In the case of Rome, environmental history has built on the traditional study of “the Mediterranean” as a geographical and ecological region.1 The need to understand the particularities of the zone at the core of the Roman Empire has been primary. From there, study has branched into the exploration of ancient food production, with work spanning from the history of specific crops to the classic work on famine and food shortage by Peter Garnsey.2 Water systems— from rural irrigation to the monumental urban hydraulics— have often figured prominently in the study of the Roman environment, given the delicacy of water management in the many semiarid regions of the Empire.3 Forests were once a major theme and are becoming so again, as historians consider how the Ro- mans met their voracious demand for fuel and construction materials.4 Soils, [ 11 ] [ 12 ] Chapter one too, once received attention from historians, although interest has unfortunately abated in recent decades.5 Human biology has occasionally been placed at the center of environmental history, for instance in the work of Walter Scheidel or Brent Shaw on disease and mortality, or the contributions of Robert Sallares on the history of malaria.6 In short, ancient environmental history has sought to fulfill the challenge issued by the Annales school to write histoire totale— to consider human societies in all their material dimensions.7 Perhaps the area where the “science of antiquity” is most dramatically changing our understanding of the ancient environment is the study of the paleoclimate.8 In the last decade or so, climate history has been revolutionized by the discovery and synthesis of new data from unexpected sources. Partly as a by-product of our urgent need to understand anthropogenic climate change, the recovery of paleoclimate records— allowing reconstruction of natural cli- mate variability and change into the deep past—is a boon to the enterprise of environmental history. The global climate system, at some level, frames all the systems and mechanisms that are of concern in environmental history. Where we previously knew next to nothing for ancient history about the backdrop of climate change, recent and ongoing scientific investigations have begun to pierce the veil and illuminate the underlying conditions in which ancient so- cieties developed. The importance of climate in a traditional society is easy to grasp, particularly in societies enmeshed in the favorable but predictably unpredictable precariousness of the Mediterranean.9 So is the scholarly deli- cacy of demonstrating precise and rigorous causal connections between envi- ronmental conditions and historical change.10 In exploring the impact of climate change on ancient societies, and the responses of those societies to the environment, it is essential to state at the outset that both climate change and social impact are complex and multidi- mensional phenomena that usually cannot be reduced to unilinear cause and effect. Climate change can take many different forms, each with impacts that may differ depending on the circumstances and resilience of the society that experiences them.11 Changes that have negative consequences in one region may affect other regions more positively. With respect to both temperature and precipitation, it is not only the absolute amount of variation that matters. The timing of these variations could be more or less favorable to particular crops and animals in particular places. Extreme variations could be negative as well as positive: too much wetness can promote blights of crops and ani- mal disease. Speed of change counts as much as timing. In general, slow and gradual climate change is considered less damaging because farmers and pas- toralists could adapt to it more easily. The nature of change itself can play a role: unidirectional, or fluctuation back and forth, and fluctuation at different rhythms can modify how climate change affects society. Finally, the clustering of climate events or change can make a big difference. Given the built- in pre- cariousness of the
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