Resurrecting Pompeii (37 page)

Regardless of whether skeletal lead content has any fertility-related implications, lead levels in bones can still provide useful information about a society with a partially lead-based technology.
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It was not possible to determine lead levels in the Pompeian skeletal sample as there was no way to account for diagenesis, such as the potential leaching of lead into or out of the bones during the period in which they were buried.

Bisel examined samples of cortical bone, taken in most cases from the tibia, of 138 skeletons. Soil samples were analyzed for diagenetic purposes and concluded that, for the majority of cases, there was no reason to believe that the lead levels she observed in the bones were the result of anything other than exposure or ingestion during life. She did not find any correlation between age and lead levels in her sample. To test the assertion that significant levels of lead in the bodies of a large portion of a population would have resulted in increased sterility, a lower birth rate and a higher incidence of stillborn infants, Bisel attempted to find some correlation between bone lead levels and parity in women (see below). The Herculanean mean lead level for males was higher than that obtained for females. The higher lead level in the bones of the Herculanean males may have been a reflection of gender-based occupational differences but there was insufficient evidence to provide proof. There was no apparent separation into distinct social groups.
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Bisel surveyed the ancient literature and the physical evidence in an attempt to establish possible sources of lead contamination and the extent of lead usage in the Roman world. She cited Ovid, Plautus, Celsus and Pliny the Elder for the various medicinal and cosmetic applications of lead in the Roman world, as well as the use of lead acetate to sweeten wine. Apparently, lead was used for the treatment of eyes, ulcers, fissures of the anus and haemorrhoids and, when mixed with vinegar, was employed to create a fairer complexion.
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Bisel also mentioned Vitruvius ’ reservations about the use of lead for water pipes to indicate that the Romans were aware of the dangers of exposure to lead. Bisel noted that the employment of lead pipes at Herculaneum and other towns in the region of Mt Vesuvius would not have presented a significant health risk to their inhabitants. The hardness of the water in this area meant that the interior of the water pipes was coated with a deposit of calcium carbonate, which provided a barrier against the lead. The people most in danger of lead ingestion would have been those directly involved in mining, smelting and the manufacture of lead objects.
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Bisel estimated parity by applying Angel ’s technique, which was based on the now discredited assumption of a direct correlation between the degree of distortion to the dorsal rim of the pubic symphysis and the number of pregnancies that had come to term.
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Bisel calculated the mean number of births from the 37 adult women she examined to be 1.69. She claimed that this level of parity would not enable the population to be maintained and argued that this problem would have been exacerbated by the additional loss of individuals as a result of stillbirth or juvenile mortality. The mean number of babies born to women over the age of forty was determined to be 1.81. Bisel considered that women in this age group would be no longer able to bear children. The correlation between the observed lead levels in bones and parity was found to be very weak. This led her to consider other explanations for the apparent low birth rate, such as the practice of abortion, contraception, homosexuality and abstinence.
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Capasso also invoked changes to the pubic symphysis, as well as the preauricular region to establish the fertility of the sample of 40 female pelves he studied. He concluded that the mean number of births per woman was between 2 and 2.7 and that the total number of pregnancies that had come to term for women who were aged between 45 and 50 years and, apparently at the end of their fertile period, was between 4 and 5.
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While Henneberg and Henneberg also interpreted so-called pits of parturition on the dorsal surface of the pubic symphysis as indicative of the number of children a woman had borne, they used a different method to establish the fertility and birth rate for the ancient Pompeian sample. They calculated the total fertility rate on the basis of a series of assumptions, including a stationary population with a death rate that was reciprocal to newborn life expectancy. They arrived at a result of between 6 and 7 children being born to each woman surviving to menopause, with more than half of these failing to reach sexual maturity.
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The notion of establishing fertility rates for the ancient Pompeian and Herculaneum populations is very appealing but, unfortunately, these figures are not credible as none of the described skeletal techniques can provide this information. It is unfortunate that a number of scholars persist in using socalled pits of parturition to determine fecundity despite the fact that most academics would not consider them to be a reliable indicator (see Chapters 1 and 6). Further, it is unlikely that the Hennebergs’ assumption that the
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79 population of Pompeii was stationary is correct (see Chapter 4). It is, therefore, not possible to develop any arguments about the demography of these sites based on any of this work.

Establishment of lifestyle is a very optimistic branch of skeletal identi fication and scholars are often required to stretch the evidence to provide interpretations. It is largely based on the premise that habitual use of bones and muscles can cause specific development that may give some indication of the activities that the individual engaged in during their life. Interpretation is stymied by the fact that a number of different activities can produce similar skeletal alteration or development. It is therefore extremely important to have a good knowledge of the cultural context of the skeletal sample under investigation but, even with that knowledge, it is difficult to isolate a single cause for the majority of changes. Most archaeological material would be better served by documentation of observed skeletal modification with a suggested range of possible activities that could have produced such alterations rather than just one explanation. The problems associated with attempting to establish status from archaeological skeletal material are discussed in Chapter 1.
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These studies are difficult enough to justify with complete skeletal preservation so no attempt was made to undertake such a study on the compromised Pompeian sample.

Both Bisel and Capasso attempted reconstructions of the lives of various individuals in the Herculaneum skeletal samples that were available to them. A few of the cases that Bisel presented have already been discussed in Chapter 1. These and reconstructions of the health, occupation and status of several others were published posthumously by her daughter.
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Two of the female victims studied by Bisel were considered to have been prostitutes on the basis of observed changes to the pubic region of their pelves. Similar skeletal alterations were alleged to have been visible on the pelvis of a modern American prostitute. Both individuals presented with very degenerated pubic symphyses and small bony outgrowths along the ventral surface of the rami.
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The suggested career path of these individuals is rather spurious, especially since it is based on a random observation on one individual from an entirely different cultural context. No proof is presented to justify why these changes would be indicative of the activities of a prostitute.

A more convincing case is mounted for industrial use of the teeth of an immature individual. An adolescent with a suggested age of about 16 years was observed to have worn right central and lateral maxillary incisors. Based on ethnographic analogy, the wear pattern was found to be consistent with that observed on the teeth of fishermen who hold the bobbin of cord with their teeth when they make repairs to nets. Well-developed musculature was claimed to provide corroborative evidence.
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Capasso identified 18 cases of what he considered to be evidence of industrial usage of anterior teeth in the sample he studied. Like Bisel, he interpreted the wear as consistent with that produced from working with paraphernalia associated with fishing. He argued that fishing was a male-dominated industry and since 15 of these individuals presented as male, his conclusion was further supported.
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Tooth wear can result from habitual activities, like industrial or recreational use of teeth. Activities that could produce distinctive wear patterns include the use of teeth to assist in mending or breaking threads, the holding of nets, opening hard objects or, in more modern populations, clenching around a pipe. The patterns for particular usage are consistent and, especially if one knows the culture of the population under investigation, can be recognized and interpreted with a fair degree of confidence.
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Nonetheless, such interpretations must be made with due caution as there can be more than one cause for specific wear patterns.

Capasso identi fied one of the skeletons that he examined as that of a boxer because it displayed pathology that he considered to be consistent with a long-term practitioner of this sport.
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This individual was described as a very robust male of about 35 to 40 years of age. The skeleton displayed a number of healed injuries, including fractures of the rib, the nose and the fifth left metacarpal, as well as evidence of a number of traumatic insults to the right side of the body. These injuries, the fractured metacarpal in particular, led Capasso to the conclusion that this person engaged in violent activities during their life. The fractured nose, with a deviation towards the left side, was argued to be typical of the type of injury sustained by boxers. Capasso illustrated this point with an ancient bronze image of a boxer with a broken nose and a radiograph of a modern boxer with a nasal fracture.
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He also suggested that bony changes observed on the hands, especially on the metacarpals and phalanges, was consistent with continuous use under force of the flexor muscles of the fingers. Of all the evidence presented, perhaps the changes to the hands could probably be argued to support this hypothesis, but it should be noted that this individual had numerous other healed injuries, for example to the left tibia and right femur, that could not be specifically related to a pugilistic career. The broken nose is hardly compelling evidence as they are not solely produced by suddenly meeting with a fist. The evidence of trauma on this individual does not necessarily reflect professional activity and could be explained as the result of a number of other activities or events.

While reconstruction of the lives of victims is an extremely attractive proposition, these few examples highlight the limitations associated with interpretation of the skeletal record for this purpose.

Despite the dif ficulty in obtaining more than a vague indication of general health from the skeletal record, especially that of the disarticulated Pompeian sample, it is still possible to gain some insight into the health status of the Campanian victims.

The evidence indicates that there was no apparent skewing towards people with infirmity in the Pompeian sample, which is consistent with the findings in the Herculaneum skeletal sample. There appears to be regional continuity in stature from antiquity to the modern era and the height difference between males and females indicates that these individuals were not exposed to major stresses in the form of poor nutrition and illness in the growing years. Cases of healed trauma and healing porotic hyperostosis suggest that the individuals in the sample had robust immune systems, though the dental data indicate that there may have been some underlying health problems in the form of systemic infection or more serious soft tissue pathology. The presence of DISH and hyperostosis frontalis interna demonstrates that individuals were able to survive long enough to succumb to these age-related disorders.

It would have been preferable if the Pompeian skeletal sample had not been disarticulated with the resultant loss of information. The identification of various disorders, like brucellosis and tuberculosis in the Herculaneum sample highlights this, as entire skeletons are required for diagnosis. Regardless, the compromised Pompeian sample not only yielded results that corroborated a number of the findings from Herculaneum but it also provided evidence of the presence of disorders not observed in the Herculaneum sample, most notably the substantial number of cases of HFI. Hyperostosis frontalis interna proved to be a very important discovery because the frequency of its occurrence in the sample is comparable to that in a modern Western population. This suggests that Pompeian lifespans were probably comparable to those in modern Western populations. This is important to note as there is a tendency for scholars to kill off our ancestors at relatively young ages, probably because of their expectations. Age-at-death results, which are based on techniques that systematically underage, as age is diffi- cult to establish for adult skeletons, are supported by the use of life tables that provide mean ages-at-death. These are always depressed by the rate of infant mortality. Of equal importance, the frequency of occurrence of HFI supports the notion that the Pompeian skeletal sample reflects a random sample of a normally distributed population.

The lack of observed cases of HFI in the Herculaneum sample invites further investigation. There are a number of possible explanations for this. One is that there may be significant differences between the samples of victims at these sites, either because they reflect different populations or because they experienced the lethal stage of the eruption in different ways. The latter explanation is unlikely as it would be difficult to argue that the Herculaneum experience of the event would have spared large numbers of older females. Another possible explanation for the difference in the observed number of cases at the two sites is that this disorder may have not been identified by researchers studying the Herculaneum sample. HFI is not readily apparent on complete skulls, and while Capasso did x-ray every individual that he studied, it is not easily detected on this medium.

The disparities between the results of the work of different scholars who have worked on the Herculaneum sample, most notably Bisel and Capasso, indicates that there is a need for further examination of this material, using standard techniques.

Lifestyle indicators are notoriously dif ficult to identify and interpret. The Pompeian sample was too compromised to enable a study to be undertaken and the results of such work on the Herculaneum sample can be questioned.