topmenu
Reenactors groups
Roman
Roman Enemies
Other Organizations

Suppliers
Armors
Helmets
Swords
Shields
Other

RomanHideout Documents and various
News Archive
Reviews
Visual Armamentarium
POI download
Metal Detecting
RH Awards
WWII Archive
Search

Documents
Publications
Archives
How to...
Books

Roman sites
Miscellaneous

Archelogical sites

Other sites
Various
Forums
News
Events
Roman Movies
Games

Contact Us
Who We Are
Link to Us
Advertising
Privacy

Get the live news feed

Get RSS news feed
Get RSS news feed

 

 

Investigating the life in Rome through the tomb remainings
Paola Catalano speak about the cultural path from archeology to antropology: "the majority of the population was poor as in a Third World's country. Food was poor in proteins."
December 7th, 2006

Rome - Since 1998 more than 5,000 burials were discovered in the Rome area, and the analysis can tell us much about the hygienic conditions in the ancient Rome.
"The low protein food was normal at that time, so the human aspect is similar to what is nowaday visible in the Third World's countries" says Paola Catalano in an interview released to Il Tempo local newspaper.
Most of the burials, about 2,200 have been discovered while excavating the new railway track between Rome and Naples along the Via Collatina. These tombs can report to us a huge amount of data about the demographic in ancient times.
In the Augustan time there were in Rome more than 1 million people, but the hygienic conditions were fair and it was easy the diffusion of infective deseases.

"In about 50% of the burials we don't find any object together with he body, but this doesn't reveal if the guy was rich or poor, moreoften rich people were building big monumental tombs to show their status. When we find a new tomb, we try to understand the causes of the death and this allow us to discover many things about his life."
In the past years also many important findings were done, as example in 1995 was discovered the only roman mummy, the "Grottarossa child" now exposed in the Museo Nazionale Romano.

© 2000-2007 LMB   -  Last Update: 15-lug-2007