Ancient World Seminar: Anna Moles (Groningen University), "Towards a Social History of Life at Roman Knossos: Integrating the Skeletal Data"

Abstract

This talk takes a social history approach to interpret life in the past at the site of Knossos, Crete, across the temporal transitions from the Hellenistic to Roman periods and into Late Antiquity. It considers how major social changes impacted the daily lives of people at the fundamental level of their health, diet, and activities as determined from the human skeletal remains. These changes include urban development and decline, the changing levels and types of mobility and connectivity that Crete had within wider Mediterranean networks (both in terms of migrants and intensified trade connections), and the changing social and political status of the city through time. It also looks at the changing of the internal societal dynamics in these impacts over time with evidence for social inequality in terms of wealth or status, as well as demographic inequalities by age or gender. These interpretations of life in the past are made by bringing together different lines of evidence and integrating skeletal and stable isotopic analyses within the broader archaeological and historical context.

About the speaker

Anna C. Moles is Assistant Professor of Mediterranean Archaeology and Human Osteoarchaeology at the University of Groningen, having worked previously as the Assistant Director of the Irish Institute of Hellenic Studies at Athens. She completed her PhD, entitled Urbanism and its impact on human health: a long-term study at Knossos, Crete, at University College London, with MA and MSc degrees from the Universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh respectively. She conducted the skeletal data collection for this work at the Knossos Research Centre of the British School at Athens and has held studentships from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, British School at Athens and Onassis Foundation. Her research uses both the study of human skeletal remains and stable isotope analysis to investigate the impact of large-scale social, economic and political changes on past health and lifeways.