Ancient bones reveal the hidden health cost of city life

A new analysis links Roman city life to health damage in central and southern England, based on the analysis of 646 skeletons.

The results point to city growth, not Roman rule alone, as the key driver of stress markers found in bones.

The study was led by Rebecca Pitt, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Reading. 

Her team tracked how early hardship left marks on skeletons, especially in mothers and children under four years old.

The researchers studied health patterns following Rome’s arrival in AD 43 and the growth of urban settlements.

Missing burial evidence

Iron Age communities in Britain often did not bury adults in tidy cemeteries, so researchers seldom find complete skeletons.

That shortage matters because intact burials placed in the ground offer the clearest chance to score health markers.

Fragmented burials and limited remains make the Iron Age a tough baseline for measuring what changed under Roman urban life.

Health impacts in early life

The research was focused on children who died before 3.5 years of age. During this early stage of development, bones still grow quickly and record setbacks.

The team paired those small skeletons with adult females of childbearing age to see whether stress patterns lined up across generations.

To keep the comparisons accurate, the researchers avoided far-northern and western sites that faced constant frontier warfare.

The DOHaD hypothesis, short for Developmental Origins of Health and Disease, links early exposures to later disease risk. It also leans on epigenetics, chemical tags that change gene activity.

In the study, that sensitive window ran from conception to about age two, when growth and immune defenses form fast.

Illness seen in bones

Pitt’s team used palaeopathology, reading disease traces on bones, to track infections and vitamin shortfalls in young skeletons.

One sign was dental enamel hypoplasia, grooves in tooth enamel from childhood disruption, seen far more often in cities.

The experts also documented bone infections associated with recurring disease and cribra orbitalia, a condition marked by porous bone in the eye sockets.

Health damage of city life

The sample included 372 children and 274 adult females. The team compared Iron Age, rural Roman, and urban Roman sites.

Among children, 26% showed signs of disease in the Iron Age, compared with 61.5% in urban Roman cemeteries.

In cities, 28.8% of adult women showed bone changes linked to vitamin deficiencies, compared with just 1.1% in the Iron Age.

Rural Roman remains showed slightly higher exposure to pathogens, but the overall health profile did not differ from Iron-Age villages.

Farms and small settlements spread people out, which likely reduced day-to-day contact with contaminated water and crowded housing.

Children in rural Roman settlements had more bone infections than those in the Iron Age, suggesting higher exposure without the extreme crowding of cities.

Cities harmed growth

For babies with measurable long bones, a Z-score flagged growth faltering in 51.9% of urban cases.

Urban neighborhoods likely meant closer contact, dirtier air, and fewer options when food or money ran short.

Could dense housing, smoke from hearths, and shared wells help spread respiratory infections when food and money ran short?

Urban lead exposure

The study links urban stress to lead in pipes and cookware, a metal common in Roman town infrastructure.

The World Health Organization warns that young children may absorb several times more lead than adults.

In bones, that kind of exposure may show up as vitamin-related changes, and infants are especially vulnerable during rapid growth.

Traces of illness in bones

“Mothers and infants are underrepresented in historical accounts,” said Pitt, and bones can speak for them.

Infant bodies reflect both their own infections and the health of the mother during pregnancy and nursing.

Adult female skeletons can show long-term stress and heavy work, while their children capture the earliest exposures.

Some child bones showed changes tied to low vitamin D or vitamin C, and a few carried signs consistent with tuberculosis.

Bioarchaeologists read these lesions cautiously. Infection, diet, and even normal growth can leave similar traces on bone.

To reduce bias, the team excluded high-status burials with lavish goods, since wealth often buffers families from stress.

Roman society and city life

Urban centers brought new rules and sharper class divides into daily life.

The rural pattern suggests many communities adopted some Roman goods yet kept local foodways, housing, and burial practices.

That pushes back against simple stories of conquest, and it hints that health depended on location as much as politics.

Gaps in evidence

Skeletal samples mainly represent people who died young or sick, so they cannot describe everyone who lived.

Bones seldom record short-lived fevers, and many infections are fatal before leaving any trace, potentially masking major urban outbreaks.

Taphonomy, the way soils and time alter remains, shapes which bodies survive for analysis.

Health in modern cities

Ancient city living reveals a crucial message: early conditions can affect health for decades.

Modern families also face polluted air and high living costs, and those pressures can shape children before birth.

Public-health efforts that cut toxins and support nutrition early can reduce risk, even when families face tight budgets.

By combining infant and adult female remains, the study adds a clearer baseline for Iron-Age health and city risk.

Future work can extend tests with more rural cemeteries, chemical pollution measures, and careful attention to who gets buried.

The study is published in the journal Antiquity.

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