The approximately two thousand burials in the Portus Necropolis, a skeletal sample that is exceptional for its numbers and the preservation of the remains, have for several years been the subject of an anthropological investigation that has made significant contributions to knowledge about humans in the Roman Age. By analyzing the skeleton, the anthropologist can reconstruct the individual’s biological profile, and then obtain information on the entire population. In fact, thanks to its mineralized tissues, the skeleton permanently stores all the information about the person’s life, thus becoming a true archive of biological data that offers the opportunity to read the signs left both by mild and transient diseases (such as enamel hypoplasia) and by more serious and chronic ones. In addition to basic morphological analyses, through investigations of the chemical composition of bones and teeth, studies were carried out on the sample’s genetic composition, the individuals’ origin, their dietary and biocultural habits, and the group’s health. All this has yielded evidence of a biological melting pot, in which most of the individuals, about 67%, are of local origin, while the remaining 30% come from other parts of the Empire. The diet appears to be characterized mainly by resources from the land (vegetables and meat), but enriched with high-protein foods probably of marine origin (fish). The health-related issues that emerged include, by way of example, the presence of rickets among infants (who make up 35% of the sample – an exceptional figure in an archaeological sample), while male adults show a high incidence of exostoses of the meatus acusticus, a pathology also known as “surfer’s ear,” characterized by an anomalous formation of bony growths in the outer ear canal, for which a possible association with fishing, an activity practised mainly by men, is suggested. Interestingly, as an example of intervention for curative purposes, an adult individual shows signs of evident amputation of part of a femur; the man survived the intervention as may be seen from the stump that shows signs of the cut and the bone healing reaction.
Information that may be obtained from the morphological analysis of the skeleton
Exostosis of the meatus acusticus
Dental enamel hypoplasia on the external surface of two teeth