Archaeobotanical evidence of food plants in Northern Italy during the Roman period
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Archaeobotanical evidence of food plants in Northern Italy during the Roman period Giovanna Bosi1 · Elisabetta Castiglioni2 · Rossella Rinaldi1 · Marta Mazzanti1 · Marco Marchesini3 · Mauro Rottoli2 Received: 16 April 2019 / Accepted: 30 January 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract This paper is a review of the seeds/fruits obtained from about one hundred Roman period archaeological sites (ca. 3rd century bc to 6th century ad) located in Northern Italy. The types of deposit involved are various, and come from residential, productive and other structures (A sites), and cemeteries and cult areas (B sites). The aim of this study is to highlight the seeds/ fruits of food plants that have been found in the Roman archaeological sites in this area. Only cultivated and wild plants that, according to Latin literary sources, were used for food are considered. The result is a list of about one hundred plant taxa. There are four principal categories: cereals, pulses, fruit s.l. and vegetables/spices. Moreover, finds of “bread” were recorded in several sites. The subdivision of most detailed data into four chronological phases (“Romanization”/Republican Age, Imperial Age, Late Roman, Late Antiquity) shows clearly the evolution of plant food consumption that attained maximum complexity during early Imperial times and progressively changed and fragmented in subsequent periods. Keywords Seeds/fruits · Food plants · Literary sources · Roman period · Northern Italy
Introduction The Romans in Northern Italy In the 4th and 3rd centuries bc, in addition to Veneti and Ligures, various Celtic populations were present in Northern Italy in the central part of the Po Valley. The Romans had various contacts with these peoples, above all for trade (Curina et al. 2015). Communicated by C. C. Bakels. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-020-00772-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Giovanna Bosi [email protected] 1
Laboratorio di Palinologia e Paleobotanica, Dipartimento di Scienze della Vita, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Viale A. Allegri 9, 42121 Modena, Italy
2
Laboratorio di Archeobiologia, Musei Civici di Como, Via Vittorio Emanuele II, 97, 22100 Como, Italy
3
Laboratorio di Palinologia e Archeobotanica, Centro Agricoltura Ambiente “G. Nicoli”, Via Marzocchi 17, 40017 S. Giovanni in Persiceto, Italy
By the end of the 3rd century bc, the Romans governed nearly all the Italian peninsula, including a large part of Cisalpine Gaul (David 2002), the ancient name of Northern Italy. Based on the archaeological data, it can be deduced that the Roman colonisation took place gradually, but with precise planning (Curina et al. 2015). During the 2nd and 1st centuries bc, after the Second Punic War, the area was completely subject to Roman domination. Different methods of conquest (which, in any case, were neither rapid nor painless) were used north and so
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