Infantile scurvy as a consequence of agricultural intensification in the 1st millennium BCE Etruria Campana

Abstract

The 1st millennium BCE in Italy was a time of agricultural intensification of staple cereal production which shaped sociocultural, political, and economic spheres of pre-Roman groups. The lifeways and foodways of the Etruscans, the greatest civilization in western Europe before Roman hegemony, are traditionally inferred from secondary written sources, funerary archaeology, archaeobotany, and zooarchaeology. However, no direct data extrapolated from the study of human skeletal remains are available to evaluate the extent to which agricultural intensification and decreased dietary diversity impacted health and the expression of skeletal indicators of metabolic disease. Macroscopic and radiological analyses were conducted on an archaeological skeletal sample of non-adults (n = 29) recovered from Pontecagnano (southern Italy) dating to the Orientalizing period (730–580 BCE). This allowed us to identify five cases of scorbutic non-adults and to assign diagnostic values to skeletal lesions of scurvy that have not been previously described in the literature. The onset of scurvy in the examined sample is related to the increased reliance of Etruscans on crops lacking vitamin C in this period of agricultural intensification. The skeletal expression of scurvy varied among the non-adults, with differences in location and disease severity; these were interpreted considering the age-at-death of the individuals coupled with feeding behaviors and interindividual variability.

Diets, stress, and disease in the Etruscan society: Isotope analysis and infantile skeletal palaeopathology from Pontecagnano (Campania, southern Italy, 730–580 BCE)

“…In the context of linking diet to evidence for nutritional deficits or disease, the bone collagen δ 15 N values of three non-adults (PC4475, PC4684, PC4689, age range 1.5–2.5 years) with evidence of scurvy are of particular interest ( Table 1 , [ 37 ]). Individuals PC4475 and PC4684 exhibited δ 15 N levels consistent with the adult diet ( Table 3 ), rather than conforming to the expected weaning trophic level.…”

“…This implies that the child’s feeding behavior relied on C 3 resources with very limited access to animal food sources in the months prior to death. We argue that for these three scorbutic infants, sociocultural factors linked to weaning practices might have been the underlying cause for the onset of scurvy during the time of socioeconomic changes witnessed in the Etruscan Orientalizing period as discussed in a companion paper [ 37 ]. Successfully breastfed infants should not suffer from scurvy, as breast milk provides a good source of vitamin C during the first six months of postnatal life although vitamin C concentration in the milk is positively correlated to its incorporation in the maternal diet [ 190 ].…”

“…Once adequate nutrition is resumed and/or the physiological state or disease episode is overcome, neutral carbon and nitrogen balances in the body are restored [ 38 , 75 , 76 , 211 , 212 ]. We can, therefore, hypothesize the incremental dentine profiles of these three scorbutic children reflect different stages of lesions, i.e., active versus healed stage, since the progression of scurvy-lesions observed amongst these non-adults refers to both stages [ 37 ].…”

“…However, we also provide skeletal age based on long bone measurements [ 162 ] for comparison ( S1 Table ). Signs of skeletal lesions as listed in Table 1 were recorded for both adults and non-adults in previous research [ 36 , 37 ].…”

“…Aspects of life and health conditions among Etruscans are reconstructed from osteoarchaeological studies mostly based on adults (for an overview [ 48 – 60 ]). However, recent efforts have started to shed light on the social roles of non-adults, funerary practices, and the burdens of health and disease [ 37 , 61 – 65 ].…”