ANCIENTROMANS
The period of dominance of the Roman Empire in Europe and the Mediterranean is one of the key epochs in the historical development of this part of the world. The structural political, social and economic changes caused by Roman dominance had a significant impact on the demographic and population structure of the local populations, the changes in dietary habits and the occurrence and spread of infectious diseases. With the aim to obtain a clearer and more detailed picture of these processes this project will conduct a comprehensive study of human remains and material culture from ten Roman period sites from the territory of Croatia including archaeological-chronological contextualization, conventional bioarchaeology, carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes analysis, organism lead level analysis, and ancient DNA and pathogen DNA analyses. This project will for the first time systematically investigate Roman period populations from Croatia at the local and regional levels using a holistic approach and most advanced analytical techniques with most of the analyses carried out in laboratories in Croatia. The proposed study will fundamentally change our knowledge about the Roman period inhabitants of Croatia which represents a huge step forward in Roman period archaeology not only in Croatia, but also in the wider European and Mediterranean contexts.
