Funding awarded for Roman research project in the Department of Archaeology

Professor Maureen Carroll has been awarded grants from the British Academy and the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies for her research project ‘Exploring Production, Consumption and Living Conditions on the Roman Imperial Estate at Vagnari (Puglia)

The project is an interdisciplinary and collaborative programme of archaeological research that focuses on industrial and agricultural production and the exploitation of human and natural resources in the central village of a vast rural estate in south-east Italy that personally belonged to the Roman emperors. The excavation aims to gain insight into the socio-economic complexities and conditions of living and working on this imperial estate from the first to the fourth centuries A.D.

After a successful first season in 2012, Professor Carroll’s team of students and specialists from the University of Sheffield will focus in July 2013 on exploring the buildings and manufacturing provisions in the settlement and analysing the regional and imported commodities at the site.

In a parallel and collaborative project, Professor Tracy Prowse of McMaster University (Canada) is excavating and studying the skeletal remains in the neighbouring cemetery of the labourers, tenants and slaves of the village in order to retrieve essential evidence for the life expectancy, health, and physical mobility of the population.