Doctoral Dissertation Improvement - The Effects of Urbanism in Imperial Rome (31BC-324AD): A Bioarchaeological Study of Migration, Diet, and Disease

博士论文改进——罗马帝国城市化的影响（公元前31年-公元324年）：移民、饮食和疾病的生物考古学研究

• 批准号: 0622452
• 负责人: Dale Hutchinson
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-09-01 至 2009-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0622452&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Improvement; Effects; Urbanism

By the height of the Roman Empire, the 14 km2 city of Rome had a population of between 750,000 and one million people living within its walls and an additional 500,000 to 750,000 lower class Romans living just outside the city walls in an area called the suburbium. The primary research objective for this dissertation project is to take advantage of the information that Imperial period cemeteries can contribute to our knowledge of demography, migration, diet, and disease in order to contextualize the living conditions of lower-class Romans during the Imperial period, an age of unprecedented growth and population density. A peak in both suburban and urban populations during the Imperial period would have put great pressure on the suburbium and its lower-class residents to accommodate additional housing, infrastructure, and cemeteries.Life in the Imperial Roman suburbium was by all accounts crowded, unsanitary, violent, and impoverished. Although the average Roman diet has been reconstructed through literary sources, stable isotope analysis provides a reliable way to reconstruct past diets based on samples from skeletal tissue. This technique can determine the contribution of marine resources to a mostly terrestrial diet because specific food resources have diagnostic ratios of stable carbon (13C/12C) and nitrogen (15N/14N) isotopes. The focus will be on determining what foods are being consumed as well as differential access to food by class and gender.Visual assessment will be made of all individuals for evidence of dietary deficiencies, growth disruptions, and dental disease and infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and leprosy. If ancient Romans were consuming large amounts of grain, they were at risk for protein-calorie malnutrition as well as vitamin deficiency diseases such as scurvy and rickets. Romans living in the suburbium were among the lower classes of society and held jobs that required significant amounts of physical labor, the results of which might be seen in their skeletons.Classical scholars debate whether the increase in the urban population of Rome in the Imperial period resulted from a natural increase in Italic peoples or from the influx of foreigners and slaves. Samples of these populations will be analyzed for strontium isotope ratios (87Sr/86Sr), which reflect local geology and thus can be used to examine residence and migration in ancient populations.The broader impact of this project is that by adding bioarchaeological analysis to the historical and archaeological information that has been used to reconstruct the daily lives of ancient Romans, a more complete picture of lower-class suburban life will emerge. The potential for studying urbanism at a time in Roman history when the population was at its peak is vast. Investigating migration, diet, and disease in the largest urban center in ancient Europe will aid in the formulation of a new model of urban development and a deeper understanding of the plight of the common people. This study assists in graduate student training and in the collaboration of individuals interested in ancient urbanism from the perspectives of both the social sciences and the humanities.

在罗马帝国的鼎盛时期，罗马这座14平方公里的城市有75万至100万人口居住在城墙内，另有50万至75万下层罗马人居住在城墙外一个名为“地下城”的地区。 本论文项目的主要研究目标是利用帝国时期墓地可以有助于我们了解人口统计学，移民，饮食和疾病的信息，以了解帝国时期下层罗马人的生活条件，这是一个前所未有的增长和人口密度的时代。在帝国时期，郊区和城市人口达到高峰，这给罗马帝国和下层居民带来了巨大的压力，他们需要容纳更多的住房、基础设施和墓地。 虽然罗马人的平均饮食已经通过文献来源重建，但稳定同位素分析提供了一种可靠的方法，可以根据骨骼组织样本重建过去的饮食。这项技术可以确定海洋资源对主要是陆地饮食的贡献，因为特定的食物资源具有稳定的碳（13 C/12 C）和氮（15 N/14 N）同位素的诊断比率。 重点将是确定消费的食物以及按阶层和性别获得食物的差别，将对所有个人进行视觉评估，以确定饮食不足、生长障碍、牙病和结核病和麻风病等传染病的证据。如果古罗马人消耗大量的谷物，他们就有可能患上蛋白质-热量营养不良以及维生素缺乏症，如坏血病和佝偻病。居住在古罗马的罗马人属于社会的下层，他们从事的工作需要大量的体力劳动，这些劳动的结果可能会在他们的骨骼中看到。古典学者争论帝国时期罗马城市人口的增加是由于意大利人的自然增长还是由于外国人和奴隶的涌入。 将对这些人群的样本进行锶同位素比率分析（87 Sr/86 Sr），反映了当地的地质情况，因此可以用来研究古代人口的居住和迁移。该项目的更广泛的影响是，通过将生物考古学分析添加到用于重建古罗马人日常生活的历史和考古学信息中，一幅更完整的下层社会郊区生活的图景将会浮现。研究罗马历史上人口高峰时期的城市化的潜力是巨大的。考察古代欧洲最大城市中心的移民、饮食和疾病，将有助于制定新的城市发展模式，并更深入地了解普通民众的困境。这项研究有助于研究生的培训，并从社会科学和人文科学的角度对古代城市主义感兴趣的个人的合作。