Victoria Moses

VICTORIA C. MOSES, then a graduate student at University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, was awarded funding in April 2017 to aid research on ‘The Zooarchaeology of Early Rome: Meat Consumption in Public and Private Spaces,’ supervised by Dr. Emma Blake. During the Archaic period (8th-6th cent. BCE), Rome underwent rapid urbanization resulting in wide-reaching social effects. Urbanization and its connected social changes led to a redefinition of public spaces as new religious sanctuaries and political areas were built into the city. Instead of raising their own livestock as many did in the area prior to urbanization, many of the new city dwellers relied primarily on meat distribution from large-scale animal sacrifices. However, meat was also consumed in the home, as it had been prior to urbanization. This research uses zooarchaeology, or the study of animal bones from archaeological sites, from public and private spaces to investigate how meat consumption differed across newly urban spaces in Rome and what this means for Roman identity as the city was defined. The research includes several Archaic sites from in and around Rome. Support from facilitated research on domestic areas at Gabii (a neighboring city 18 km east of Rome), public spaces from two urban sanctuaries (the Area Sacra di Sant’Omobono in Rome and Veii-Campetti Southwest, a neighboring city 16 km northwest of Rome), and public, political space from the Regia in Rome.