Roman (Other Keyword)
1-21 (21 Records)
Since the 1950s, zooarchaeologists have noticed that the expected number of each skeletal element varied from the recovered frequencies. Determining the reason for such variation is an important aspect of zooarchaeological research. Several approaches to understanding skeletal part frequencies are current, including density mediated attrition and differential transport. One method of interpreting skeletal part frequencies that is underused in studies of complex societies involves food utility...
Archaeobotanical Remains from the Roman Harbor Vada Volaterrana (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We present preliminary botanical data and interpretations from the ancient Roman harbor of Vada Volaterrana, located in the modern province of Livorno, Italy. The harbor was supported by a network of structures immediately surrounding the port at Vada's San Gaetano site. A 2015 GPR survey identified a series of rectangular buildings of unknown purpose in...
Coins of the McGhee Collection (2016)
Coins in the ancient world provided a medium for the propaganda of rulers and other influential individuals. Analysis of coins alongside an understanding of their historical context can reveal their significance. In 2014 the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History received a donation of assorted Greek, Roman, and Byzantine coins from Ambassador George C. McGhee. This project analyzes and catalogues these coins by translating their inscriptions and interpreting their images to determine...
Evaluating Socio-economic Status at Maasplein, Using Food Utility Indices (2017)
A number of researchers have inferred socioeconomic status using zooarchaeological data in contexts suggested by artifacts to reflect a particular status level. Cuts of meat that are of relatively high yield ("utility") should be more economically valuable than low yield parts. A model of carcass-part utility assumes that people of high socioeconomic status will preferentially acquire greater relative frequencies of high yield parts than people of low status. The model is applied to the Roman...
Exploring Economic Priorities of Protohistoric Communities: Case studies from Northeastern North America and Roman Britannia (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Perspectives from the Study of Early Colonial Encounter in North America: Is it time for a “revolution” in the study of colonialism?" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. This paper will explore the response of prehistoric communities who rapidly become consumers in continent spanning economies. Using as case studies the Maritime Peninsula of Eastern North America in the 17th century AD and the northern...
Exploring the Roman Occupation and Abandonment of Salemi, Sicily: The Cistern at Largo Cosenza (2015)
Excavations in Salemi, Sicily have discovered a large, bell-shaped cistern dating from the 1st century BC to the 1st century AD. This feature appears to be contemporaneous with a large mosaic floor identified nearby in 1893. The Roman cistern contained a wide variety of domestic debris attesting both the economic interconnectivity and independence of this site. This paper discusses the use and abandonment of the cistern, contextualizing the site within the broader, western Sicilian region. ...
Feasting with the Dead: Preliminary Analysis of Faunal Remains at the Put Dragulina Roman Cemetery (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Put Dragulina, a Roman cemetery site dating between 100 AD and 300 AD, was excavated as part of rescue projects during 2011 and 2017 in Trogir, Croatia. At least 84 individual graves were excavated with associated burial goods. Along with the recovery of human remains, over 250 fragments of animal bone were recovered. This poster presents the identification...
Feeding the Troops?: Patterns of Agricultural Production in the Macrobotanical Remains of Nabatean-Late Roman sites in the Wadi ath-Thamad, Jordan (2015)
The macrobotanical record from Khirbat ez-Zona, a Late Roman castellum, reveals a pattern of crop refuse that does not fit the grand narrative of Roman agricultural practice or previous studies of contemporaneous military structures in the region. The Eastern Mediterranean witnessed a considerable boom in both population and agricultural productivity during the Late Roman period. This productivity can reflect the practices of an empire from religious ritual and pilgrimage, to preparation for...
Finding millet in the Roman World (2016)
Examining the evidence for millet in the Roman empire, during the period, circa 753BC-610AD, presents a number of challenges: a handful of scant mentions in the ancient surviving agrarian texts, several frescoes, only a few fortuitous preserved archaeological finds and limited archaeobotanical and isotopic evidence. Ancient agrarian texts note millet’s ecological preferences and multiple uses but disparage its lowly status. Recent archaeobotanical and isotopic evidence has shown that millet was...
Food for Thought? The Use of Ceramic “Baby” Bottles in Roman Britain (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Motherhood" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since the mid-nineteenth century in Britain, a small collection of Roman spouted ceramic vessels have been assigned the functional description of “infant feeders” or “baby bottles,” primarily through their recovery from infant and child burial contexts. Vessels of this type have been recorded from across the Roman Empire, yet in Britain they are relatively...
Investigating The Ancient Port Of Sanitja, Menorca (2016)
Their strategic location in the Mediterranean caused numerous cultures, empires, and countries to fight over and conquer the Balearic Islands of modern-day Spain. In the ancient world, Menorca - the easternmost island of the Balearics - was influenced or conquered by the Minoans, Carthaginians, Romans, and Vandals, respectively. Prior to the Romans’ arrival, the native Baleares were known for their skills with the sling and were hired as mercenaries throughout the Mediterranean. The...
The Many Roles of Roman Dogs (2017)
The Romans had a strong interest in the natural world. Their relationships with animals extended from animals as food source to animals as exotic curiosities and everything in between. Dogs held a complicated position for the Romans, filling a wide range of roles. For example, dogs could be companions, war weapons, street cleaners, or victims of sacrifice. This variety shows how dogs were conceptualized sometimes as individuals and pets, sometimes as pests, and other times as powerful and almost...
Many Roman Bazaars: exploring the need for simple computational models in the study of the Roman economy (2015)
The study of the Roman economy is a battlefield of sometimes conflicting archaeological and historical models. Each model argues for different factors as the driving forces of the Roman economy. Yet the model authors rarely make explicit how their descriptions of the functioning of Roman trade can be abstracted as concepts that allow comparison with other models. Moreover, the development of these descriptive models has not gone hand in hand with the development of methods that allow for them to...
An Osteological and Isotopic Assessment of Diet at Ancient Corinth and Ancient Paphos (2018)
Corinth and Paphos were two key centers of the ancient Mediterranean during the Hellenistic and Roman eras. While the commercial and political lives if these communities have been studied, less is known about aspects of day to day life such as diet and health. Here we present some insights based on paleopathology and collagen stable isotope analysis. This study (n = 275 individuals for Paphos; 94 individuals for Corinth) suggests populations that were under a certain amount of stress. Mean...
Overview of two seasons in the Roman and Neo-Punic settlement of Zita (Zyan), southern Tunisia (2015)
After Carthage was destroyed by Scipio Africanus Minor (Aemilianus) in 146 BCE, the Punic settlements that it controlled were occupied by the Romans. Exporting wine, olive oil, garum (a sauce made of the fermented intestines of small fish), and purple dye (of Bolinus brandaris and Hexaplex trunculus shell-fish), the eastern Maghreb continued to flourish. Many of the ancient monuments in modern Tunisia date to the centuries following the Roman conquest, until the center of power shifted to the...
The Sepulchral Symbolism and Workshop Comparison of the Raptus of the Sabines Sarcophagus and the Metilia Acte Sarcophagus (2013)
International Journal of Archaeology Fred A. White, The Sepulchral Symbolism and Workshop Comparison of the Raptus of the Sabines Sarcophagus and the Metilia Acte Sarcophagus, International Journal of Archaeology. Vol. 3, No. 1, 2015, pp. 1-7. doi: 10.11648/j.ija.20150301.11 The sarcophagus illustrating the story of the Sabine Women is believed to have been obtained in Rome between 1900 and 1904 by Alfred Emerson, Professor and Chair of Classical Archaeology at Cornell University and the...
Tragedy for Pompeii: Triumph for Archaeology (1997)
In A.D. 79, early one afternoon in August, a volcano to the north of the Roman city of Pompeii began an eruption that continued through the night. When the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius was finished, more than 20,000 people had been killed, and entire cities were lost (Time-Life Books 1992:10). Although this tragedy cost the lives of many people, through the archaeological record we can recover valuable information about the civilization and appreciate how these people lived. In this essay, I am...
The Uncertainty of Sailing: "Hidden" Coin Hoards from Late Imperial Roman Shipwrecks (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Innovative Approaches to Finding Agency in Objects" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. When reading first-hand accounts of shipwrecks in the late Imperial Roman world, the authors describe the apparently common custom of tying their wealth around their necks as a vessel founders. Therefore, one might expect non-religious coin hoards to be a rare find on shipwrecks from this date. However, not only have coin...
The Value of 3-D Models in the Classroom (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster demonstrates the pedagogical value of 3-D models of ancient artifacts for teaching ancient history. I produced 3-D replicas of two examples of Herzog’s tesserae, with permission of the museums that hold the original artifacts, to teach classes about Roman material culture, ancient Mediterranean slavery, and Roman freed persons. The 3-D models...
Warrior Queen and Sacred Goddess: The Name Boudicca, "Victorious Woman," on Gravestones and Roman Writings, from Iberia to Gaul to Britannia to Germania. (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Monuments and Statues to Women: Arrival of an Historical Reckoning of Memory and Commemoration", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. How does archaeology record the name of a warrior queen, goddess, and ordinary woman? Photos record the evolution of a sacred name across Europe. Variations of the Celtic name Boudicca ("Victorious Woman" or "Victoria") appear on gravestones and in Roman writings across a...
Your Horse Is a Donkey! Identifying Domesticated Equids Using ZooMS (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Horses (Equus caballus) and donkeys (Equus asinus) play essential roles in human culture and economy. Unlike most other domesticates, horses and donkeys can produce hybrids. Mules, offspring of female horses and male donkeys, have been found in archaeological contexts across the Old World. Written sources describe the choice of horse, donkey, or mule as...