Population biology, diseases and mobility: Romans and Longobards in the post-classical era
A century after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Germanic People of Scandinavian origin known as Longobards raided from the North-East and settled in Italy for several decades (between 568 and 774 AD), strongly interacting and partly integrating with the local populations. The passage from being a military cast to the gradual fusion with the Romans laid the foundations for the birth and development of the Italian society in the following centuries. This project aims to apply a bioarchaeological and biomolecular investigation to frame the pattern of population biology, social organization, health status, and mobility at the transition between the Roman times and the early Middle Ages in Italy. We plan to assess the interactions between the Roman world and the later post-classical phases through the investigation of both Roman and Longobard skeletal series across the Peninsula. We will apply a bioarchaeological investigations coupled with isotopic and aDNA studies. Our understanding of the cultural background and underlying medical practices at the times will constitute the backbone of our analysis. In this perspective, the bioarchaeological investigation is able to examine levels of considerable complexity within our understanding of past human societies.