Cemetery study reveals how daily life changed from the Iron Age to the Roman period

Phys.org ^ | October 15, 2024 | Sandee Oster

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...A total of 1,689 cremains were dated and studied, and they were categorized as belonging to one of three time periods: 364 to the La Tène Period, 113 to early Roman, and 1212 to the Imperial Roman period...

On average, individuals lived longer during the Roman Period than during the Iron Age, with far more cases of individuals reaching the age of 60 and above.

However, during both the Iron Age and Roman Period, females were more likely to die younger than their male counterparts, with over half the cremations for both the Iron Age and Roman Period representing females below 40 years of age.

It was also discovered that only Iron Age individuals showed signs of violence, likely the result of brawls, indicating that conflict was less common during Roman times.

While Roman individuals were less likely to have experienced violence in their lives and tended to live longer, they were also more likely to grapple with pathologies that included tooth loss, degenerative joints and spines, as well as sinusitis. It is not possible to say definitively if this increase in pathologies is directly linked to an increase in the average age of the population or due to physiological stress.

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