The popular classes of the Roman Empire did not make funerary banquets or they were with daily food, according to a study

VALENCIA, 25 Aug. () –

The popular classes of the Roman Empire they did not make funeral banquets or they made them with everyday food, according to a study published in the journal PLOS ONE that compares biomolecular, anthropological and archaeozoological data, as reported by the University of Valencia (UV) in a statement.

Research staff from the UV, the Institut Català d’Arqueologia Clàssica (ICAC) and the Universitat de Vic-Universitat Central de Catalunya (UVic-UCC) have reconstructed the composition of funeral meals in a necropolis in the western part of the Roman Empire (Plaza de la Villa de Madrid, Barcelona).

The work shows that the popular classes did not always comply with the law in terms of holding funeral parties. Those responsible for this research have commented that although the transit to the afterlife was a key social milestone in ancient Rome, the foods consumed during funeral meals were mainly staples of everyday life.

The team that has carried out the study has discovered a high degree of similarity between the types of meat that were commonly consumed and those that were offered at funeral banquets, “suggesting that the importance of the journey to the afterlife was not enough to compensate for the use of more expensive food in them“, the UV has pointed out.

Thus, he has stated that “contrary to what is expected of the pompous Roman funerary meals, it seems that the common population did not have a great party and used the same common foods as during daily life for banquets”. Among these there were mainly pork and beef, followed by goat and chicken..

The investigation has specified that there were not many exotic foods, or wild animals, or aquatic foods and it shows that most of the burials did not even present food offerings and that the families did not hold banquets of any kind despite the fact that these rituals were stipulated by law.

“We have been able to show that ordinary people did not always follow the law regarding funeral parties and when they did, they spent few economic resources on funeral meals“, explained Domingo C. Salazar García, lead author and CIDEGENT researcher at the University of Valencia.

“Money is money, and whatever the importance of the afterlife in ancient Roman society, clearly the priority was living people. Micro-resistances to established unreasonable rules were already present at that time.”

The UV has exposed that the beyond of the Roman religion was the milestone that had to be reached after death by complying with various funerary rituals. Part of them consisted of funerary offerings, banquets and animal sacrifices carried out to guarantee the protection of the divinities and the memory of the deceased.

The academic institution has added that “little is known of its composition, apart from what is shown in written sources.” In the study carried out, these funerary banquets are investigated “through a direct approach, analyzing the isotopes of human and animal collagen, as well as studying human skeletal remains and the archaeozoological ensemble present in the necropolis”.

DIFFERENTIAL TREATMENT

The researchers’ isotope analysis of almost a hundred human and faunal specimens, combined with the osteological study of human remains (age, sex and health status) from the burials and faunal remains of funeral meals and offerings has released “new ideas” about the royal “splendour” of banquets and a possible differential treatment of the deceased that would perpetuate social differences in the afterlife, the UV has insisted.

The research has combined traditional archaeozoological and anthropological techniques with biomolecular archaeology, studying the composition of stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen in animal foods and human bones. Using this multiproxy approach, the researchers reconstructed the composition of the funeral banquets from actual meals and foods that the deceased had regularly consumed during his lifetime.

The University of Valencia has recalled that in Ancient Rome there were different social strata and that wealth and political status “were of paramount importance in the social hierarchy”. In the Villa de Madrid necropolis, the buried humans were mainly people with limited purchasing power.

“We know this both from the simple typology of the burials, and from the anthropological study that indicated a very low life expectancy in this population.“, has stated Xavier Jordana, physical anthropologist and associate professor at the UVIC-UCC who analyzed the human skeletal remains.

The experts have added that it is “difficult” to extrapolate to the site if the social hierarchy was translated into the symbolic world of the afterlife, but they have detailed that the study documents “a high consumption of meat by adult men during their lives and a greater presence of offerings in the burials of adult men”.

“These differences in ritual and diet probably show sexual inequalities during life that could be extrapolated to the afterlife through burial rituals. It is evident that one of the ways in Roman society to express economic and social differences was through funeral food rituals.“, has added the main author Lídia Colominas, Ramón y Cajal researcher at the Institut Català d’Arqueologia Clàssica.

“FIRST VISION”

This first study isa first glimpse of the wealth of information that the combination of biomolecular analysis and traditional archaeozoology and anthropology can reveal about social structuresymbolic behavior and the afterlife related to dietary practices and funeral banquets”, the same sources have highlighted.

Thus, they have stated that a more detailed analysis of the strontium isotopes could provide information on the individual origin; proteomics and micro-remains of dental calculus, on unusual foods and vegetables consumed by the deceased in life, and DNA on his ancestry.