Imperialism and Physiological Stress in Rome, First to Third Centuries A.D.

Abstract

Killgrove presents new bioarchaeological perspectives on life in middle Imperial Rome (first–third centuries A.D.). She challenges the core versus periphery models for understanding migration, diet, and disease and questions whether life in urban Rome and the metropolitan area was good with access to resources and sociopolitical capital–or whether life was a “pathopolis” with infectious disease, poor sanitation, and low quality food resources. She compares archaeological and historical narratives with bioarchaeological data and her own work at two cemeteries, Casal Bertone and Castellaccio Europarco to broaden baseline understandings of physiological stress. There is diversity in biological stress levels, however, and much remains to be unearthed to understand the etiology of this diversity. Killgrove explores the explanations for why certain groups, some of them lower class groups, had higher frequencies of physiological stress, citing lead exposure, poor sanitation, and lack of access to clean water and high quality food sources to explain these patterns. This contribution is among a handful of pioneering bioarchaeological investigations of imperial Rome that challenge previous dichotomizing views of life in Rome in the core versus the periphery. Most critically, she integrates the important component of class to the different effects of life under imperial rule.