This groundbreaking book provides the first comprehensive look at how the latest advances in the sciences are transforming our understanding of ancient Roman history. Walter Scheidel brings together leading historians, anthropologists, and geneticists at the cutting edge of their fields, who explore novel types of evidence that enable us to reconstruct the realities of life in the Roman world.

Contributors discuss climate change and its impact on Roman history, and then cover botanical and animal remains, which cast new light on agricultural and dietary practices. They exploit the rich record of human skeletal material--both bones and teeth―which forms a bio-archive that has preserved vital information about health, nutritional status, diet, disease, working conditions, and migration. Complementing this discussion is an in-depth analysis of trends in human body height, a marker of general well-being. This book also assesses the contribution of genetics to our understanding of the past, demonstrating how ancient DNA is used to track infectious diseases, migration, and the spread of livestock and crops, while the DNA of modern populations helps us reconstruct ancient migrations, especially colonization.

Opening a path toward a genuine biohistory of Rome and the wider ancient world, The Science of RomanHistory offers an accessible introduction to the scientific methods being used in this exciting new area of research, as well as an up-to-date survey of recent findings and a tantalizing glimpse of what the future holds.

这本开创性的书首次全面审视了科学领域的最新进展是如何改变我们对古罗马历史的理解的。沃尔特-谢德尔（Walter Scheidel）汇集了处于各自领域前沿的顶尖历史学家、人类学家和遗传学家，他们探讨了使我们能够重建罗马世界生活现实的新型证据。

作者讨论了气候变化及其对罗马历史的影响，然后介绍了植物和动物遗迹，这些遗迹为农业和饮食习惯提供了新的线索。他们利用人类骨骼材料的丰富记录--包括骨头和牙齿--形成了一个生物档案库，保存了关于健康、营养状况、饮食、疾病、工作条件和迁移的重要信息。作为对这一讨论的补充，本书对人类身高的趋势进行了深入的分析，这是一般福祉的标志。本书还评估了遗传学对我们了解过去的贡献，展示了古代DNA如何被用来追踪传染病、迁徙以及牲畜和农作物的传播，而现代人口的DNA则帮助我们重建古代迁移，特别是殖民化。

罗马史的科学》为罗马和更广泛的古代世界开辟了一条真正的生物史之路，对这一令人振奋的新研究领域所使用的科学方法作了通俗易懂的介绍，并对最近的发现作了最新的调查，对未来的发展作了诱人的展望。