Science

Ancient Roman DNA Project

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• Freaky
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UPDATE (11/11/11) - Thanks to your generous donations, the Roman DNA Project is fully funded, just 11 days after launch!  I cannot express how much it means to me that dozens of you share my passion for the ancient Romans.

Our financial goal was to cover aDNA analysis of the 20 immigrants I found in previous studies.  Additional contributions are welcome, of course, and will help us test more samples and learn more about the lower-class Imperial Romans.

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In a nutshell, this project will be the first to study the DNA of ancient Romans to learn more about immigrants in the Empire and rewrite the history of everyday Roman life. Want more information? Read on!

What do skeletons tell us? At a basic level, each skeleton reveals key information about the person it used to belong to: whether the person was male or female, how tall he or she was, what age the person died at, and long-term diseases the person suffered from. This information can be gleaned from a skeleton simply by looking at it. But our bones and teeth hold additional information about the things we ate during our lives and the places we've lived. This information, though, has to be obtained through chemical analysis of isotopes and DNA. Each one of our physical bodies is formed by the food we eat, the activities we engage in, the geographies we have passed through, and the important milestones in our lives.

Why Romans? The Roman Empire has been studied for centuries through the histories of Livy and poetry of Vergil, through tombstones that proclaim a person's name and all-too-early age at death, through mausoleums chock full of artifacts. Only recently have anthropologists started studying the actual skeletons of ancient Romans, though, in an attempt to learn about the people who were never mentioned in the written record, who couldn't afford to commemorate their relatives' deaths, who didn't have jewelry and fancy pottery to bury with the deceased. All of our information about the Romans comes from wealthy, elite men of the upper class, or the 2% of the population that controlled the majority of the Empire. My research involves the other 98% - the lower classes and slaves who lived at the subsistence level. It's time to change our approach to Roman history by combining skeletal data on age, sex, height, disease, and diet of the lower classes with historical records, art, and artifacts.

What have you already learned through Roman bioarchaeology? Studying skeletons from Imperial-period cemeteries has started to give me new information about under-represented groups in Rome, like migrants, women, children, and slaves. My previous research project involved analyzing over two hundred skeletons from two lower-class Imperial-period cemeteries in ancient Rome. I used carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis to learn that most Romans were eating a diet made up of wheat, barley, and some aquatic resources, but that no one was eating exactly the same things. I also used strontium and oxygen isotope analysis to learn that about one-third of the people whose bones I studied immigrated to Rome after childhood. Surprisingly, the immigrants had a similar quality of life as the locals: they ate similar food, suffered from similar diseases, and died at similar ages.

What's this new project about? Isotope analysis showed me that one-third of the people were immigrants to Rome, but it couldn't tell me where people were from. Neither could archaeological evidence, since these people were of the lowest social class (many were likely slaves) and were not buried with grave goods. DNA from Roman skeletons has never before been sequenced but could help me immensely in learning the origin stories of the lower-class inhabitants of Rome. For this project, I will do ancient DNA analysis on as many of the immigrants as possible to learn more about their geographical origins and heritage.

How can I help? Skeletal analysis of ancient Romans is quite a new research area, and my project will be the first DNA analysis of people from the city of Rome. Ancient DNA analysis is an expensive endeavor, though, so I am seeking donors who share my vision of rewriting Roman history using modern technology. To thank you for your contribution to this exciting new line of research, I'm offering rewards that showcase the materials the Romans have given us: their skeletons. You will also be able to follow my progress through exclusive Twitter and blog feeds not available to the general public, getting real-time updates and learning the DNA results along with me.

I'm asking for $6,000 for this project, which will cover the cost of testing DNA from the 20 immigrants to Rome I found in my previous project. Of course, I would love to test additional individuals but recognize that testing the 100+ skeletons I have sampled is out of the realm of possibility. Still, any additional funding over the $6,000 goal will be put to good use: analyzing DNA from more Romans!  Be a part of the #SciFund Challenge and help me bring science to ancient Rome!