Peter Garnsey

Isotopic and dental evidence for infant and young child feeding practices in an imperial Roman skeletal sample

This study integrates isotopic, palaeopathological, and historical evidence to investigate infant and young child feeding practices in a Roman period (1st to 3rd centuries AD) skeletal sample from the Isola Sacra necropolis (Rome, Italy). Stable isotope analysis of bone collagen from 37 rib samples indicates that transitional feeding began by the end of the first year and weaning occurred by 2-2.5 years of age. Both delta(15)N and delta(13)C data clearly show the trophic level effect associated with breastfeeding. Childhood diet is investigated using dental pathology data in the deciduous dentitions of 78 individuals aged between 1 and 12 years. The presence of calculus, caries, and tooth wear in young children suggests that individuals were provided complementary foods and other items that impacted their dental health at an early age. The isotopic and dental data are generally consistent with the historical evidence from the Roman period with respect to the general timetable of weaning and the character of complementary foods. This is the first study to integrate isotopic and deciduous dental pathology data to explore infant and young child feeding practices in the Roman world.

Stable isotopic evidence for diet at the Imperial Roman coastal site of Velia (1st and 2nd Centuries AD) in Southern Italy

Here we report on a stable isotope palaeodietary study of a Imperial Roman population interred near the port of Velia in Southern Italy during the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. Carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analyses were performed on collagen extracted from 117 adult humans as well as a range of fauna to reconstruct individual dietary histories. For the majority of individuals, we found that stable isotope data were consistent with a diet high in cereals, with relatively modest contributions of meat and only minor contributions of marine fish. However, substantial isotopic variation was found within the population, indicating that diets were not uniform. We suggest that a number of individuals, mainly but not exclusively males, had greater access to marine resources, especially high trophic level fish. However, the observed dietary variation did not correlate with burial type, number of grave goods, nor age at death. Also, individuals buried at the necropolis at Velia ate much less fish overall compared with the contemporaneous population from the necropolis of Portus at Isola Sacra, located on the coast close to Rome. Marine and riverine transport and commerce dominated the economy of Portus, and its people were in a position to supplement their own stocks of fish with imported goods in transit to Rome, whereas at Velia marine exploitation existed side-by-side with land-based economic activities.

Water-related occupations and diet in two Roman coastal communities (Italy, first to third century AD): correlation between stable carbon and nitrogen isotope values and auricular exostosis prevalence.

The reconstruction of dietary patterns in the two Roman imperial age coastal communities of Portus and Velia (I-III AD) by means of stable isotope analysis of bone remains has exposed a certain degree of heterogeneity between and within the two samples. Results do not correlate with any discernible mortuary practices at either site, which might have pointed to differential social status. The present study tests the hypothesis of a possible connection between dietary habits and occupational activities in the two communities. Among skeletal markers of occupation, external auricular exostosis (EAE) has proved to be very informative. Clinical and retrospective epidemiological surveys have revealed a strong positive correlation between EAE development and habitual exposure to cold water. In this study, we show that there is a high rate of occurrence of EAE among adult males in both skeletal samples (21.1% in Portus and 35.3% in Velia). Further, there is a statistically significant higher prevalence of EAE among those individuals at Velia with very high nitrogen isotopic values. This points to fishing (coastal, low-water fishing) as the sea-related occupation most responsible for the onset of the ear pathology. For Portus, where the consumption of foods from sea and river seems to be more widespread through the population, and where the scenario of seaport and fluvial activities was much more complex than in Velia, a close correlation between EAE and fish consumption by fishermen is less easy to establish.

Rome and Italy

Augustus had started the process of making Rome, as a matter of policy, a worthy capital of the world. Travelling to Rome, city of wonders in a land of wonders, was a special experience. In the world of thinking, speaking and writing, Rome was the centre too, the norm and exemplar of Antonine cities. The architecture of Rome was the greatest of its wonders. The cities of Italy in the Augustan period had functioned as channels of horizontal and vertical social mobility. In the Antonine period, moreover, there was more to economic life than landowning. The nature of production in Italy in this period constitutes one of the most problematic sets of questions in ancient economic history. In the Flavian and Trajanic period, the evidence suggests a burgeoning of the cash-crop based, villa-centred, agrarian economy which had characterized the rural landscape of large parts of Italy since the middle Republic.

The Background to the Grain Law of Gaius Gracchus

One of the measures carried by Gaius Gracchus in the course of his first tribunate in 123–2 B.C. provided for the regular sale of grain to citizens of Rome at the price of 6⅓ asses per modius. Gracchus also, presumably by the same law, provided for the construction of state granaries. The sources for the law are meagre. None of them is contemporary, and those later writers who do comment on the law furnish few details. What is known of its content is conveyed in a brief sentence from Livys Epitomator supported by a scholiast on Ciceros pro Sestio , and in a few words of Appian. The Epitomator and Scholiast give the price at which the grain was sold.

Cities, Peasants and Food in Classical Antiquity: Mass diet and nutrition in the city of Rome

INTRODUCTION In this paper I investigate the diet and health of the mass of Romes inhabitants. This is not a subject that has roused much interest among historians. The provenance of the foods that poured into the city of Rome, the ‘decline’ of Italian agriculture and the rise of provincial production, the growth of state intervention in the food supply of Rome, the public distribution system ( frumentatio ), its birth, development and periodic breakdown, its organization and politics – all these issues have been fully investigated and debated. But the discussion has more or less petered out at Romes ports, warehouses, distribution points and rubbish dumps (notably, the mountain of broken oil-containers that is Monte Testaccio). The plebs frumentaria , once it has received its (unmilled) grain, has faded from view; while the group or groups of non-recipients have never come into focus. My object in this paper is to take the matter of the food supply of Rome into the area of food consumption, concentrating on ordinary Romans. But who were the ordinary Romans of Rome? It is an integral part of my argument that the social structure of the population of Rome is essential background to any study of the nutritional status of its residents. Most Romans, most of the 750,000–1,000,000 residents of the city, were poor, but there were different levels of poverty.

Coinage, society and economy

From the last decades of the second century to the first decades of the fourth, the economy of the Roman world without doubt suffered the aftershocks of the violent tremors that shook the empire, most of them of a military and political nature. The Roman economy has left behind a large body of material evidence which it has become possible to study more systematically in recent decades thanks to advances in archaeology and epigraphy. This evidence consists of artefacts that have resisted the passage of time: coins; pottery and what can be deduced from it, such as the products transported and sometimes stored in the amphorae-wine, oil and garum. The prosperity of the towns often also has a sumptuary dimension, and bears witness to the structural imbalances in the Roman economy and society. For an economy in which building has always been one of the most prosperous activities, investments in cities are always considered to be a positive sign.

Taxatio and Pollicitatio in Roman Africa

Numerous inscriptions from different parts of the Empire, and particularly from North Africa, testify to the munificence of the urban aristocracy. By munificence I mean the spending of wealthy individuals on, for example, monuments or projects of construction of one sort or another for their cities, or handouts of money, food or other commodities to their fellow-citizens. The significance of munificence from an economic viewpoint can be readily appreciated: it would not be an exaggeration to say that the prosperity of the cities rested in large part on the generosity of their leading citizens. In this paper, however, I will be concerned with some of the political and institutional implications of munificence. If the cities were financially dependent on their aristocracies, then the possession of wealth and the willingness to spend would clearly hold the key to both the acquisition and the retention of power. At the same time, we might expect some form of public control to have been exerted over aristocratic spending. In this connection, it may be significant that much of the expenditure of which we have record was incurred by individuals when they assumed magistracies or priesthoods or entered the local council. When would the wealthy have more readily submitted to financial levies than in the context of election victories? On the other hand, would it have been necessary to exact contributions from successful politicians, who would perhaps have shown their gratitude—and self-esteem—without any prompting through some form of public expenditure ? If any were inclined to hesitate, would they not have responded when reminded of the liberality of their predecessors ? In fact, it is not difficult to show that the dictates of the law, the weight of custom, and personal considerations and motives are all relevant; to determine the relative importance of the three factors is a more formidable task.

Emperor, Senate and magistrates

The relationship between emperor and Senate was always the result of the tension between what the majority of senators thought the emperor should be, and what he really was, or could become: princeps or dominus. Vespasian, for instance, had been a senator for more than thirty years. In Britain the reason for the appointment of a iuridicus was probably the predominantly military duties of the consular legates, at least under Vespasian and Domitian. Only in Italy were things changed to any significant degree, first by Hadrian and later by Marcus Aurelius. Despite the establishment of the eleven regiones by Augustus, Italy had no real territorial subdivisions. Hence it also had no officials who could take on the duties of regional governors, and as a result all the inhabitants of the cities of Italy had recourse only to the magistrates of Rome when they sought judgement on matters outside the competence of the municipal magistrates.

The new state of Diocletian and Constantine: from the tetrarchy to the reunification of the empire

In 293, two soldiers, Constantius Chlorus and Maximianus Galerius, were raised to the purple as Caesars. The diarchy was transformed into a tetrarchy. With the partition into four areas, the western parts to Maximian and Constantius Chlorus, the eastern to Diocletian himself and Galerius, the centres of decision were brought closer to the more critical frontier zones. It was an attempt to resolve a structural problem in a large territorial Byzantine empire. To strengthen the new regime a new legitimation of imperial power was devised: one that exploited a particular religious climate, while at the same time aiming to trace its roots in the Roman tradition. The administrative reforms, which were connected with the reorganizations of the army, of taxation and even of the coinage, were an effective response to danger from without and to the threat of disintegration. The main feature of Aurelians reform was the division of the existing provinces into smaller territorial entities.