Resurrecting Pompeii (20 page)

When I started to work on this material in 1986, it was seen to be of minimal value by most contemporary scholars. It was apparent that any study would be an improvement on leaving this neglected collection to further deteriorate. The research design for this project had to be developed with respect to the limitations of the sample and the site. It was also constrained by a very small budget, which limited the amount of time that could be spent in the field and the laboratory work that could be undertaken. As a result, the majority of the work was based on gross observations and measurements. Such data provide the most important basic information that can be obtained from any skeletal sample and are a prerequisite for any further analyses, such as DNA or stable isotope analysis.

The project was designed to construct a population pro file in order to address questions about the sample of Pompeian victims. One of the key aims was to test the commonly held assumption that the sample of victims would be biased towards the old, the infirm, the very young and women.
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In the absence of complete skeletons available for study, I decided to concentrate on statistical studies based on large numbers of particular bones. This obviously influenced the nature of the research questions. The bones selected for study were chosen for their ability to provide specific information. For the determination of sex, the best skeletal indicators are the pelvis, femur, humerus, skull and teeth. Age-at-death was based on pelves, teeth and skulls. Another issue that was addressed was whether the sample of victims reflected a heterogeneous population, as suggested by ancient writers who described the inhabitants of Pompeii and the surrounding region.
²³
The bones chosen for population studies were skulls, pelves, femora, humeri and tibiae. Because the skeletons were disarticulated, the femur was chosen as the most reliable single long bone for the reconstruction of height.

The most useful skeletal indicators for each feature under study could then be employed as controls for the determination of population norms for the other bone types in the Pompeian sample. For example, because of its biological function, the pelvis is the most reliable indicator of sex. Other bones, such as the femur, humerus and skull, also reflect sexual dimorphism but the degree of difference between males and females can vary between populations due to cultural and genetic differences. By using the most useful sexual marker as a baseline, it was possible to establish the sex-related parameters for other bones in the Pompeian sample.

The first priority of this study was to obtain the maximum amount of information from a large sample of different individuals. Initial long bone measurements and observations were carried out on left bones to ensure that each bone represented one individual. Where possible, this work was also carried out on samples of bones from the right side. Observations from both sides are particularly important for the determination of frequencies of postcranial non-metric traits and supposed stress markers, such as tibial flattening or platycnemia. Such traits appear to be side related in certain populations. Due to time and access restrictions, it was not possible to complete both sets of observations and measurements on all bones.

The first task was to organize the material into a form where it could be used. The disarticulated bones in the Sarno Baths were sorted into groups of skulls, mandibles, sacra and left and right long and pelvic bones. Bones that were not likely to provide useful information in terms of the aims of this study were placed in separate piles. Bones with evidence of pathological changes were segregated from the rest of the skeletal material. In some cases it was possible to reconstruct individual bones from fragments on the basis of pathological change, as in the case of the skulls of individuals with hyperostosis frontalis interna (Chapter 8). The unboxed bones in the Forum Baths had already been sorted, though it was necessary to separate left and right long bones. The conditions inside both the Sarno and Forum Baths meant that bones had to be recleaned each field season.
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Labelling the skeletal material under investigation involved some consideration. Evidence of the remains of labels from previous examinations of the skeletons suggested problems for long-term projects. A number of skulls display large numbers painted directly onto the frontal bone. These probably date from nineteenth-century investigations.
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This method of labelling is obviously durable but tends to obscure certain anatomical features, which makes scoring some of the non-metric traits problematic. Also, modern practice requires that any method of labelling is reversible, especially with regard to skeletal remains. Disfiguring skeletal material in this way would now be seen as a sign of disrespect (Chapter 11). There was a lack of clearly defined labels dating to Nicolucci’s study. This was deplored by D’Amore
et al
.
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as it meant that they could not remeasure the bones he used in his work. D’Amore
et al
.
²⁷
used adhesive paper labels. This suited their purpose of a one-season study. By the time I commenced my research, the adhesive had mostly failed and it was impossible to associate labels with specific bones. This limited comparisons with previous studies on the bones to general trends rather than specific cases.

I initially used tie-on tags for the long bones as this form of identi fication is less time consuming than painting numbers onto a treated area of the bone surface. After the discovery of a mouse with a penchant for paper inhabiting the femur pile, I decided that numbers applied with Indian ink on a cleaned bone surface coated with clear nail varnish would be more likely to survive from one season’s study to the next. Each bone was marked with small numbers in a place that would not be too apparent and would not obscure any diagnostic features. The nail varnish was used so that marking was reversible as it could be removed with acetone, leaving no trace of ink on the bone. This method of identification was used for all the bones under examination.
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As mentioned above, the available sample of skeletons was considerably smaller than the number of discoveries claimed in the archaeological literature. It was not possible to select a sample as a percentage of the total since the exact number of individuals excavated was not known. For this reason I decided to examine the largest representative sample for each type of bone.

Almost all the bones stored in the Forum and Sarno Baths were inspected during the course of cleaning, which permitted assessment of the scope of the remains. As it was not logistically possible to fully record all the available Pompeian skeletal material, I decided to concentrate on the Forum Bath sample for the majority of skull and long bone studies. There were several reasons for this choice. First, I thought that the bones in the Forum Baths would provide a good random sample that I had not chosen. Comparison with the cranial and long bone remains in the Sarno Baths suggested that the Forum Bath sample was representative of the Pompeian material that had been recovered. Second, the Forum Bath bones were specially chosen for their completeness. Many of the Sarno Bath bones were incomplete and a number of the skulls had been deformed by the pressure of the ash under which they had been buried. Third, it would be possible to make a general comparison with the results of the 1979 study of the Forum Bath collection. In addition, these bones required less preparation for examination as they had been cleaned previously
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and were stored in conditions which did not require the same amount of annual cleaning as the Sarno Bath bones. Finally, the Forum Baths provided a more desirable working environment since there was a table and some access to artificial light.

It is dif ficult to assess the exact number of individuals that are housed in the two bath buildings. The sample in the Sarno Baths appears to be strongly biased towards cranial remains. It would be very time-consuming to attempt to establish a minimum number of individuals from the skulls as many of them have been broken into small fragments which have been scattered about the building. At least 360 individuals could be identified from the combined crania in both the Forum and Sarno Bath collections. One possible explanation for the higher representation of skeletons by cranial rather than other remains is that the skull was the part of the skeleton most easily recognized by excavators that were not schooled in anatomy. Another is that the skull was considered the most important bone by nineteenthcentury anthropologists (see Chapters 3 and 9) and that other, or post-cranial, skeletal remains were not thought worthy of preservation. A possible problem that could be associated with this skewing was whether the skull sample chosen for analysis was comparable to the samples chosen for other bones. The sample sizes chosen for each type of bone, however, were large enough to be statistically significant. In addition, the analysis suggested that there was enough consistency between the results to generally dismiss sample bias between bones as a problem.

The sample also seems to be strongly skewed towards adult bones with a total absence of neonatal bones and few young juveniles. Under-representation of neonates and infants is a recognized problem in archaeology and is thought to primarily result from small and fragmentary bones either being ignored as they are not recognized by excavators or disintegrating in the ground prior to excavation.
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The method of storage also appears to be a contributory factor for the absence of neonatal skeletal remains and the relative scarcity of young juvenile bones. This notion is supported by the comparative frequency of juvenile bones in collections of skeletons that have been left
in situ
for display purposes and the number of juveniles represented in the collection of casts (Chapter 10)

I decided to concentrate on issues associated with adult bones to circumvent the problem of a sample biased against juvenile remains. Juvenile skulls, teeth and pelves, however, were recorded to give an indication of the proportions of different age groups represented in the available sample. These particular bones were chosen because they were useful for the determination of juvenile age-at-death. Also, sufficient numbers of each bone were available for examination to provide a representative sample of the age spectrum of Pompeian victims stored on the site.

All the pelves in the Sarno Baths collection were examined. All the available teeth and as many skulls as possible from both stores were studied. While juvenile skulls were not sexed or used for the metric study, they were examined for epigenetic traits (see Chapter 9).

Two groups of skeletons from the Insula of the Menander that were supposedly
in situ
were to be studied as a control sample of intact individuals (see Chapter 1). It soon became clear that the main group of about ten bodies had been tampered with for display purposes by people with limited anatomical knowledge and that the individuals had been, in effect, disarticulated. The other group of two bodies was not complete.

A range of basic measuring instruments was employed, such as vernier callipers, spreading callipers and an osteometric board.
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The choice of measurements was based on a survey of the then current literature. It should be noted that the
Standards for Data Collection from Human Skeletal Remains
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was not published when these data were collected. Nonetheless, measurements and observations were recorded in sufficient detail to enable them to be applied to this sample. The main criterion for each measurement taken was that it would yield information about sex, height, age-at-death, pathological alteration of bone, or population affinity.

A problem that is frequently associated with the metric analysis of archaeological bones is that they tend to be incomplete or eroded as a result of post mortem damage. The areas around the landmarks on bones, which are used to define measurements, are often damaged and a certain degree of guesswork may be required to make a measurement. An assessment of reliability or confidence level in each measurement would therefore be prudent, although it is not often undertaken in skeletal studies. The scoring system that was employed for this study also acted as a reflection of the degree of preservation of the bones.

One of the major concerns in dealing with this sample was whether it was representative of the Pompeian victims or was biased towards the more robust bones, which are generally associated with males (see Chapter 6). If the sample were found to be representative, there was still the problem of whether the more gracile bones, generally assumed to be associated with females, were more likely to be incomplete. This would pose a problem for making valid conclusions from certain types of analysis, such as multivariate statistical analysis, which have a limited capability for dealing with incomplete data sets (see below). I worked on the quantification of bone preservation with a statistician using cranial measurements as an example of how this problem, which came to be known as the ‘crumble factor’,
³³
could be assessed.

All the bones that were used in the investigation were described by a series of measurements and observations. The accuracy of each measurement was dependent on the completeness of the bone and the ease of location of specific landmarks. To quantify this, a four-point scoring system of confidence, or V-score, was assigned, based on that employed by Howells for cranial measurements. The value of the use of V-scores can be demonstrated from an inspection of the three-dimensional graphs for the V-scores of each of the cranial measurements. These are standard measurements that are used to describe the dimensions and shape of the skull.
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The three-dimensional graphs display the frequency distribution of each measurement in the sample, along with the associated degree of confidence.

Certain measurements, such as glabello-occipital length (Figure 5.4),
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the frontal chord
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and parietal chord,
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were found to be highly reliable, whereas measurements like maximum cranial breadth
³⁸
and maximum frontal breadth
³⁹
(Figure 5.5) were demonstrably less accurate. Bizygomatic breadth (Figure 5.6)
⁴⁰
produced few results that were better than guesses.

It is also apparent that for the majority of measurements, for example, glabello-occipital length, nasio-occipital length
⁴¹
and maximum cranial breadth, there is no appreciable bias towards robust bones in relation to the