On the border, across empires: A diachronic study of health, stress, and diet in Roman and Early Byzantine period individuals from Oymaağaç, Turkiye

Abstract

The rise and fall of empires throughout history oftentimes are reconstructed through the lens of geopolitically central nations and peoples. While these narratives are crucial to understanding historical transitions and transformations, they create a monolithic depiction of otherwise variegated and heterogeneous peoples and experiences. The decline of the Roman Empire remains a focus for scholars across disciplines, yet despite the growing corpus of archaeological research into post-Roman populations within the Western provinces, the transition of the Eastern Roman Empire into the Byzantine Empire is underexamined in material culture and physical remains. In addition to political transitions, Early Byzantine populations were also subjected to epidemic conditions and climatic changes that impacted urban and rural economy and health. In this study, age-at-death distributions, dietary proxies, and markers of physiological stress were compared between Roman (2nd-4th c. CE) (MNI = 206) and Byzantine period (7th-9th c. CE) (MNI = 71) adult individuals at Oymaağaç Höyük (northern Turkiye). This diachronic comparison of age demographics and disease rates provides information about a rural community’s response to a “post-Roman” world and the potential impacts this had on quality of life and longevity. While no differences in age-at-death were observed between periods, higher rates of some dentoalveolar lesions and lower rates of antemortem fracture and joint disease relative to the Roman period individuals show how the Byzantine community adapted to and transformed within broader political, economic, and climate changes in Anatolia.