East Asian skeleton discovered in Vagnari Roman Cemetery

[Melvadius]

The Independent reports on the discovery of a skeleton which significantly provides DNA evidence of an east-Asian origin in this individual's maternal line.

 

The evidence cannot point to precisely where or even how many generation previously but is interesting for all that and finally provides concrete evidence of Sino-Roman contact which, although mentioned in literature and indicated by coin finds. It has been hard to 'prove' direct rather than indirect trade only contacts through the archaeological record up to now even if as seems probable, from the location and associated burial evidence the individual was a slave on the Imperial estate, it does provide the possibility of other individuals from further away than the near east having entered the Empire during its long history - some may even ahve had ambassadroial credentials as suggested by the article's title.

 

Some key quotes from the full article follow:

 

A team of researchers announced a surprising discovery during a scholarly presentation in Toronto last Friday. The research team, based at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, has been helping to excavate an ancient Roman cemetery at the site of Vagnari in southern Italy. Led by Professor Tracy Prowse, they

Edited January 28, 2010 by Melvadius

[Melvadius]

Science daily has published some further information on this discovery and mentions that:

The results will be presented at the Roman Archeology Conference at Oxford, England, in March, and published in the Journal of Roman Archaeology.

 

In case anyone may wish to consider attending this conference this year it is being held as a joint conference of the Roman Archaeology Conference IX along with the Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference XX and is being held at University of Oxford, 25 March to 28 March 2010. The conference rotates between different Universities often but not always at joint venues; I attended a previous joint event a few years back and it is a good venue to hear presentations, on the TRACs side, on some of the latest theoretical work (often but not always by younger archaeologists doing their Masters Degree) while the RAC conference provides a series of more formal presentations which can include reports on recent major research projects such as this DNA research.

 

Further details of the conference in cluding abstracts of papers due for presentation can be found here.

Edited February 4, 2010 by Melvadius