骨骼与历史:古代地中海地区食谱与健康研究的新方法

Bones and History: New Approaches to the Study of Diet and Health in the Ancient Mediterranean

在古典时期的社会、文化和医学史中,现代科学为历史学家提供了大量帮助。传统历史材料和研究方法无法提供量化估算所需要的内容。对纸草学证据的谨慎运用,已经从个案研究中获得了有价值的知识。但对古代世界食物与营养的研究最有帮助的新方法还是人类骨骼遗存分析。有两种骨骼分析方法,一种是微量元素分析,另一种是骨骼结构中的稳定同位素分析。在罗马,一项对公元1世纪晚期到3世纪的大量骨骼样本的分析研究正在进行中。

In the social, cultural and medical history of classical antiquity, modern science has a great deal to offer the historian. The traditional historical materials and methodology cannot provide what is needed for a quantitative assessment. The careful use of papyrological evidence has yielded valuable information from individual case studies. But the best prospects lie with human skeletal remains. Two kinds of skeletal analysis are relevant. The first is trace-element analysis. The other involves analysis of stable isotopes of elements in the bone structure. A pilot study is in progress involving a large skeletal sample from the late 1~ st to the early 3~ rd centuries.