Dr Paraskevi Tritsaroli               M.H. Wienerlaboratory for Archaeological Science, ASCSA

The ‘commoners’ of Provincia Macedonia through the lenses of bioarchaeology

The Roman Empire was a remarkably diverse and multiethnic state, characterized by intensified interaction and increased mobility among the heterogeneous groups of people who comprised its population. Within this highly interconnected world, diverse political, socioeconomic, cultural and environmental tensions were at play leading to the development of new social identities and structures, but also to a change in people’s living standards. Being at the interface of the social and biological sciences, the discipline of bioarchaeology has substantially contributed to our understanding of past life experiences through the contextual study of the human skeleton. Available osteological data from the Roman period suggest variations in health and lifestyle among the diverse groups of people being gradually incorporated to the constantly expanding empire.

Under this framework, we examine three archaeological populations from the Roman Province of Macedonia (Greece), a hitherto understudied region and period. The first, comes from the necropolis of the city of Dion, the Macedonian’s religious center and federal shrine, that became a colony in 32/31 BC. The second, was unearthed from a burial site excavated in Pontokomi-Vrysi (1st-4th c. AD) located in thesemi-mountainous and relatively remote from the main networks of trade and communication region ofthe westernmost provincial administrative district of Upper Macedonia. The third, comes from the cemetery excavated in the archaeological site of Nea Kerdylia-Strovolos (1st-4th c. AD) once belonging to a coastal community residing in close proximity to the port of Amphipolis and the Via Egnatia.In this talk, we present the preliminary results of our ongoing comparative analysis. The aim of this approach is to explore the life and death-ways and by extension the identity and social complexity of communities that lived under different administrative (colonies vs free cities, villages) but also environmental conditions. We integrate skeletal and dental palaeopathological and isotopic data with funerary evidence and use them as proxies for health, everyday activities, diet and socioeconomic status. We hope that such a holistic study will not only fill a gap in bioarchaeological research in the Graeco-Roman world but also enhance our understanding of the social history of Macedonia after its incorporation into the Roman Empire.

Paraskevi (Voula) Tritsaroli studied archaeology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (1998). She holds an MSc (2000) and a PhD (2006) from the National Museum of Natural History in Paris as a fellow of UNESCO and the A.G. Leventis Foundation. She was a post-doctoral fellow at the M.H. Wiener Laboratory for Archaeological Science in 2005-2007 and at the Groningen Institute of Archaeology (the Netherlands) in 2020-2022. Currently, she is part of the ‘Phaleron Bioarchaeological Project’ at the M.H. Wiener Laboratory for Archaeological Science (ASCSA); at the same time she is actively involved as bioarchaeologist in interdisciplinary research projects by collaborating with various institutions in Greece and abroad. Her research focuses on the social and cultural dimensions of mortuary practices in Greece through time. She has published on numerous skeletal collections from Greece ranging from prehistory to the post-Byzantine period. Between 2007 and 2016 she worked as contract archaeologist at the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports.

Chryssa Vergidou holds a Bachelor's degree in History, Archaeology and the History of Art (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH)), an MSc in Human Osteology and Funerary Archaeology from Leiden University, 2016. In 2024 she obtained her joint PhD degree in Bioarchaeology from the Groningen Institute of Archaeology (GIA) and The Science and Technology in Archaeology and Culture Research Center (STARC) of The Cyprus Institute. Her research focuses on theorising dietary preferences in Roman Macedonia and on conceptualizing how different social groups in the province experienced life under the Roman Empire through the osteological and bio-chemical analysis of skeletal remains. In parallel with her academic steps, she worked as a professional archaeologist in excavations and projects carried out by Greece’s Ministry of Culture. At the same time, she has been involved in survey projects and systematic excavations carried out by Cambridge and Groningen Universities. Finally, she worked professionally as a bio-archaeologist at the Ephorate of Antiquities in Kozani, Greece.