Food at the heart of the Empire: dietary reconstruction for Imperial Rome inhabitants
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(2020) 12:244
ORIGINAL PAPER
Food at the heart of the Empire: dietary reconstruction for Imperial Rome inhabitants Flavio De Angelis 1 & Sara Varano 1 & Andrea Battistini 2 & Stefania Di Giannantonio 2 & Paola Ricci 3 & Carmine Lubritto 3 & Giulia Facchin 4 & Luca Brancazi 5 & Riccardo Santangeli-Valenzani 4 & Paola Catalano 6 & Valentina Gazzaniga 7 & Olga Rickards 1 & Cristina Martínez-Labarga 1 Received: 24 January 2020 / Accepted: 4 September 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract This paper aims to provide a broad diet reconstruction for people buried in archaeologically defined contexts in Rome (first to third centuries CE), in order to combine archaeological and biological evidence focusing on dietary preferences in Imperial Rome. A sample of 214 human bones recovered from 6 funerary contexts was selected for carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis. The baseline for the terrestrial protein component of the diet was set using 17 coeval faunal remains recovered from excavations at Rome supplemented by previously published data for the same geographic and chronological frames. δ13C ranges from − 19.9 to − 14.8‰, whereas δ15N values are between 7.2 and 10.0‰. The values are consistent with an overall diet mainly based on terrestrial resources. All the human samples rely on a higher trophic level than the primary consumer faunal samples. Certainly, C3 plants played a pivotal role in the dietary habits. However, C4 plants also seem to have been consumed, albeit they were not as widespread and were not always used for human consumption. The environment played a critical role also for Romans of lower social classes. The topographical location determined the preferential consumption of food that people could obtain from their neighborhood. Keywords Imperial Rome . Diet . Carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes . Ancient Romans
Introduction Imperial Rome was one of the largest cities of Europe (Scheidel 2007; Lo Cascio 1994), and feeding its population was a severe concern for political authorities. Demographic surveys witness a peak in both urban and suburban Roman
populations during the Imperial Age (first to third centuries CE, herein indicated by the capitalized word “Empire,” whereas the uncapitalized word “empire” refers to the geographical boundaries, as suggested by Boatwright et al. (2011)), revealing that about one million people lived in the city or within 50 km. Nearly 17% of the Italian population was
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-020-01194-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Flavio De Angelis [email protected] 1
Centre of Molecular Anthropology for Ancient DNA Studies, Department of Biology, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Via della Ricerca Scientifica 1, 00133 Rome, Italy
2
Collaborator Servizio di Antropologia, Soprintendenza Speciale Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio di Roma, Rome, Italy
3
Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie Ambientali, Biologiche e Farmaceutiche, Univ
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