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

在罗马帝国鼎盛时期，罗马城面积为14平方公里，城墙内居住着75万至100万人口，另外还有50万至75万下层罗马人居住在城墙外的郊区。本论文项目的主要研究目的是利用帝国时期墓地可以帮助我们了解人口，移民，饮食和疾病的信息，以便将帝国时期罗马下层阶级的生活状况置于一个空前增长和人口密度的时代。在帝国时期，郊区和城市人口的高峰将给郊区及其下层居民带来巨大的压力，以容纳额外的住房，基础设施和墓地。罗马帝国郊区的生活据说是拥挤、不卫生、暴力和贫困的。虽然通过文献资料已经重建了罗马人的平均饮食，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，因为特定食物资源具有稳定碳（13C/12C）和氮（15N/14N）同位素的诊断比率。重点将是确定人们正在消费什么食物，以及按阶级和性别获得食物的差别。将对所有个人进行目视评估，以寻找饮食不足、生长中断、牙病以及结核病和麻风病等传染病的证据。如果古罗马人食用大量谷物，他们就会面临蛋白质卡路里营养不良和维生素缺乏症的风险，比如坏血病和佝偻病。生活在郊区的罗马人属于社会下层，他们的工作需要大量的体力劳动，这可以从他们的骨骼上看出来。古典学者争论罗马帝国时期城市人口的增长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。这些种群的样本将被分析锶同位素比率（87Sr/86Sr），这反映了当地的地质情况，因此可以用来研究古代种群的居住和迁移。这个项目更广泛的影响是，通过将生物考古分析添加到用于重建古罗马人日常生活的历史和考古信息中，将会出现一幅更完整的下层郊区生活图景。在罗马历史上，当人口达到顶峰的时候，研究城市主义的潜力是巨大的。在古代欧洲最大的城市中心调查移民、饮食和疾病，将有助于制定一种新的城市发展模式，并更深入地了解普通人的困境。这项研究有助于研究生的培养，以及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。

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.