The 'Isola Sacra Project'

by Luca Bondioli & Roberto Macchiarelli

Soprintendenza Speciale al Museo Nazionale
Preistorico Etnografico 'L. Pigorini', Roma, Italy

In the 1970's, the Archaeological Superintendency of Ostia proposed a program of land reclamation in the zone of Fiumicino-Isola Sacra, near Rome. This created the preconditions for an archaeological research project designed to revise and integrate the available evidence for the Imperial Roman necropolis of Isola Sacra (2nd-3rd cent. AD), still not completely excavated.

Isola Sacra (about 23 km west of Rome) is located between the urban centres of Ostia Antica and Fiumicino (Pavolini, 1983). It consists of a stretch of land in the delta of the river Tiber, which was transformed into an island in connection with the construction of the port of Trajan (Testaguzza, 1964, 1970; Mannucci, 1996).

The necropolis, distributed for 1.5 km along the ancient road connecting Ostia and Portus, contains inhumations and cremations of the population from the nearby city of Portus Romae, one of the most important sea harbours of the Mediterranean basin during the Classical period.

As a result of the complex and diverse funerary practices of the Roman period, the necropolis of Isola Sacra is composed of a wide variety of burial structures, ranging from simple interments in sand ('tombe dei poveri') to monumental multiple tombs. Single interments of different kind (e.g., in sand or wooden coffin, amphora, bustum sepulcrum, terracotta sarcophagus, 'cappuccina') are interspersed among burial structures of different dimensions, which contained both single and multiple burials (formae, arcosolium, pit/kiln, colombarium, sarcophagus) (Angelucci et al., 1990; Baldassarre et al., 1996).

The necropolis was originally brought to light between 1925 and 1940 by the archaeologist G. Calza, through intensive excavations that recovered monumental tombs hidden by the gradual encroachment of sand in the area (Calza, 1940).

Starting in 1973, systematic excavations were conducted in the cemetery by the Archaeological Superintendency of Ostia, the University of Rome 'La Sapienza', and the University Institute of Oriental Studies of Naples (Baldassarre, 1978, 1980, 1984, 1987, 1990; Pellegrino, 1984; Baldassarre et al., 1985, 1996).

The first phase of this new research (1973-82) focused on the recovery of skeletal remains belonging to approximately 1,000 individuals that had been previously discovered by Calza within the monumental multiple tombs. However, according to the tradition of Calza's time, these remains were not collected, but instead were haphazardly scattered on the floors of the tombs with no regard for anatomical relationships.

A number of skeletal elements (mainly crania) representing 64 individuals were selected from this sub-sample based on their degree of preservation, and were subsequently used for preliminary morphological analyses by the Department of Animal and Human Biology at the University of Rome 'La Sapienza' (Argenti and Manzi, 1988; Manzi and Sperduti, 1988; Manzi et al., 1989, 1991, 1997; Sperduti and Manzi, 1990).

A second phase of excavation (1988-89) yielded another significant number of skeletons from undisturbed single and multiple burials scattered among the monumental structures, all in an excellent state of preservation and completeness.

In 1992, thanks to a joint invitation from the Archaeological Superintendency of Ostia and the Department of Animal and Human Biology at the University of Rome 'La Sapienza', the scientific responsibility for the organisation, restoration, documentation, and systematic study of the entire sample was entrusted to the Anthropology Section of the National Prehistoric Ethnographic 'L. Pigorini' Museum of Rome, which has subsequently developed the so-called 'Isola Sacra Project' (Bondioli et al., 1993, 1994, 1995; Macchiarelli, 1995; Bondioli and Macchiarelli, 1997a, b).

The skeletal series from Isola Sacra now includes the remains of approximately 2,000 individuals of both sexes and from all age groups (Sperduti, 1995). Qualitatively and quantitatively, this represents one of the most significant skeletal collections from Mediterranean Europe for the Classical period.

Ironically, the amount of human paleobiological information available for Classical antiquity is insignificant in relation to the complexity of biocultural problems still open for discussion (Catalano et al., 1997), and particularly with respect to the richness of the existing archaeological, historical, and literary evidence (see Garnsey, 1988; Morris, 1992). For this reason, the extensive study of the odontoskeletal remains of the inhabitants from Portus Romae could produce (we hope) new and significant evidence for assessing the still obscure aspects of the lives, habits, and deaths of the 'ancient Roman people'.

In addition to the Anthropology Section of the National Prehistoric Ethnographic 'L. Pigorini' Museum of Rome, numerous Italian and foreign scientific Institutions are currently contributing the 'Isola Sacra Project'.

The main objectives of the 'Isola Sacra Project' are:

1. the organisation, cataloguing, and conservation of the entire collection;
2. the tentative reconstruction of individual skeletons within the sub-sample originally excavated by G. Calza;
3. the macro- and microscopic study of the diagenetic processes of bone and dental tissues;
4. the estimation of odontoskeletal biological characteristics, patterns of morphological and morphometric variation, models of growth, as well as the assessment of paleogenetic, paleonutritional, paleodemographic, paleoepidemiological, and paleopathological characteristics of the Portus Romae population, as represented by the Isola Sacra odontoskeletal sample;
5. the extensive application of high-tech investigative methods in paleobiology;
6. the development of original analytical protocols;
7. the elaboration of reference models suitable for paleobiological investigation;
8. the publication in CD-ROM format of the entire corpus of data and images collected;
9. the elaboration of scientific multimedia products intended for teaching purposes.

Within this framework, preliminary population-level results on the Isola Sacra collection are already available on the following major research topics: paleodemography (Salomone et al., 1995; Sperduti, 1995; Sperduti et al., 1995); paleonutrition (Grupe et al., 1997; Prowse et al., 1997); paleopathology (Sperduti et al., 1997d, e); growth (Ferrino et al., 1995a, b, 1996a, b; Sperduti et al., 1997a, b, c); cranial and dental size variation (Macchiarelli, 1994; Macchiarelli and Sperduti, 1994, 1998); age-related bone changes (Salomone et al., 1997a, b); bone histology (Savorè et al., 1997a, b); dental histology (Bondioli and Macchiarelli, 1998; Geusa et al., 1995, 1996a, b, 1997c; Rossi et al., 1995, 1996, 1997a, b, c, d); molecular biology (Garagna et al., 1997; Yang et al., 1997).

DIGITAL ARCHIVES OF HUMAN PALEOBIOLOGY