Patterns of Mobility during the Iron Age and Roman Periods in Apulia, Italy.

Summary

Archaeological and historical evidence indicates that the end of the Iron Age in southern Italy was characterized by political and social upheaval associated with a series of battles between the Roman Republic, indigenous Italian groups, Greece, and Carthage. The outcome for many local populations in southern Italy after the Samnite, Pyrrhic, and Punic wars was the subjugation of local populations, a decline in settlement size and density, and the confiscation of land by the expanding Roman Empire.

This paper explores patterns of migration between the Iron Age and Roman periods, particularly childhood migration, through the isotopic analysis of teeth from the Iron Age (7th - 5th c. BCE) sites of Botromagno and Parco San Stefano (n=30) , and the Roman Imperial (2nd - 3rd c. CE) site of Vagnari (n=54). Archaeological evidence from Vagnari indicates that this was an Imperial Estate owned by the emperor and run by local administrators. This raises the question of who lived on this estate - were they descendants of subjugated local Iron Age populations, or were they outsiders brought in by the conquering Romans to work on this estate?

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• On the Move: Archaeological Approaches to Children and Childhood

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Spatial Coverage