ABSTRACT
Mounting evidence challenges the concept of ‘racial’ classification from skeletal remains and few scholars today would consider that there was any value in attempting to identify European ‘races’, as these almost certainly do not exist (Chapter 3). Nonetheless, there is still some information that can be gleaned about population affiliations from human skeletal remains. It was generally assumed that the Pompeian population was hetero-
geneous, since the town was a river port with a long history. As discussed in Chapter 4, literary evidence has been invoked to support this notion, like Strabo’s description of the different groups that occupied Pompeii over time. Similarly, Pliny the Elder stated that Campania had been inhabited by Oscans, Greeks, Umbrians, Etruscans and Campanians.1 The composition of the population would also have been affected by the colony of veteran Roman soldiers that was superimposed onto the population by Sulla as punishment for resisting Rome in the Italic War.2 An explanation would have to be sought if the population were found to demonstrate some degree of homogeneity. Various factors may have had an impact on the composition of the AD 79
population, including partial abandonment of the settlement as a result of the AD 62 earthquake and subsequent seismic activity in the final 17 years of occupation. It is possible that the sample of victims may not reflect the AD 79 population, depending on the time of the year of the eruption and whether it was possible for certain sections of the community to have more opportunity to escape prior to the lethal phase. The most recent evidence casts more than doubt on the generally accepted August date, which means that seasonal inhabitants would have returned to Rome after the summer (Chapter 4). The issue of Pompeian heterogeneity was examined by the collection of both metric and non-metric data, which were subjected to metric and non-metric analysis. While the contribution of DNA studies cannot be ruled out in the future, current research on the populations of the victims of the AD 79 eruption relies only on macroscopic analysis. Molecular biology has the potential to provide valuable insights into the
population affinities of the victims of the AD 79 eruption. DNA analysis has
been attempted on samples from both Pompeii and Herculaneum, but the results to date have been disappointing. The high temperatures to which the bodies were exposed at the time of death have been invoked to explain the poor preservation of nucleic acids in samples from the Herculaneum skeletons. Human skeletal remains from Pompeii have also yielded limited information due to poor DNA preservation. Nonetheless, these preliminary studies indicate that, at least in some cases, there is sufficient endogenous DNA to enable amplification and analysis.3
