The Science of Roman hiSToRy 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 noTeS on conTRiBuToRS luca Bondioli is director of the Sezione di Bioarcheologia at the Museo delle Civiltà— Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico “L. Pigorini,” in Rome, Italy. His recent research interests have focused mainly on advanced methodologies and techniques for information retrieval from fossil/ archaeological human bone in an evolutionary, functional, and population perspective. He has worked on a variety of paleoanthropological topics focusing on dental maturation, radiographic applications in the fossil record, and skeletal biology of Roman remains. He is involved in Early Pleistocene fieldwork in Buia (Eritrean Danakil). michael g. camPana is a computational genomicist at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park and Conservation Biology Institute. His research uses ancient DNA data for the study of disease and animal populations through time. PRofeSSoR oliveR e. cRaig specializes in biomolecular archaeology, specifically the recovery of proteins, lipids, and DNA from ancient skeletal remains and archaeological artifacts to provide insights into past human activities. His particular interests lie in temporal transitions and variability in human diets, cuisine and subsistence practices, and the impact that dietary changes had on social evolution, health, and the environment. Oliver is interested in combining a broad range of analytical techniques to study palaeodiet but particularly stable isotope analysis of human bone and organic residue analysis of food remains on ceramics. He directs the BioArCh centre at the University of York. PeTeR gaRnSey is Professor Emeritus of the History of Classical Antiquity at Cambridge. His current interests include the history of political thought, comparative systems of penal law, and Roman society and culture, with special reference to skeletal evidence. ReBecca gowland is an Associate Professor in Bioarchaeology at Durham University. Her research interests include the inter-relationship between the human skeleton and social identity; health and the life course in the Roman World; palaeopathology; and social perceptions of the physically impaired. She has co- edited (with Christopher Knusel) Social Archaeology of Funerary Remains (2006) and (with Lindsay Powell and William Southwell- Wright) Care in the Past: Archaeological and Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2016), and has co- authored (with Tim Thompson) Human Identity and Identification (2013). She has published over 40 scholarly articles in books and peer-reviewed [ ix ] [ x ] noTeS on conTRiBuToRS journals, including the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Antiquity, Britannia, and the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology. Kyle haRPeR is Senior Vice President and Provost and Professor of Classics and Letters at the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275– 425 (2011) and From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013). His current work is on the demographic and environmental history of late antiquity: Princeton has just published his third book, The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire. Roy J. King is an Associate Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Stanford University. He has published widely on the modern DNA archaeogenetics of the Mediterranean Region, with particular interest in both the spread of the Neolithic across Europe and, more recently, models of Late Bronze Age/Archaic Greek colonization of the Eastern and Central Mediterranean. michael macKinnon is Professor of Classics at the University of Winnipeg. As an archaeologist he has worked at over 60 sites throughout the Mediterranean. His particular interests focus upon the role of animals within ancient Greek and Roman societies, as drawn from the integration of zooarchaeological, ancient textual, and iconographical evidence. michael mccoRmicK studies the fall of the Roman Empire and the origins of Europe. He is the Francis Goelet Professor of Medieval History at Harvard University, where he chairs the Initiative for the Science of the Human Past (SoHP: https://sohp.fas.harvard.edu/). His books include the prize- winning Origins of the European Economy (2002) and Charlemagne’s Survey of the Holy Land (2011); he recently led the first multiproxy scientific and historical reconstruction of climate under the Roman Empire (Journal of Interdisciplinary History 43 (2012)). He edits the free, student-created online Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilizations (http://darmc .harvard.edu/), and is active archaeologically in France and Spain. TRacy PRowSe is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at McMaster University. Her research integrates stable isotope and osteological analysis of human remains to investigate weaning, diet, and migration in Roman period populations. walTeR Scheidel is the Dickason Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Classics and History, and a Kennedy- Grossman Fellow in Human Biology at Stanford University. The author or (co- )editor