Social inequality and difference in the ancient Greek world: bioarchaeological perspectives

[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]

This volume, with its focus on the Greek world from the Early Iron Age through Late Antiquity, represents a welcome addition to the University Press of Florida’s bioarchaeology series. As editors Anna Lagia and Sofia Voutsaki emphasize in their introduction, the discipline of bioarchaeology is already well established in Aegean prehistory, but the possibility of contextualizing bioarchaeological data from later periods with rich literary, epigraphic, and iconographic sources holds great promise (4–5). The volume takes a deliberately broad view of inequality, encompassing not only economic inequalities of wealth, income, or consumption, but also differences related to “age, gender, kinship, status, ethnicity, and provenance” (6).

The first three papers address theory and methods in bioarchaeology. Arguing that “health,” “well-being,” and “quality of life” are often vaguely defined in bioarchaeological publications, Sam Cleymans advocates for terminology that is either more specific, like “stress” (which may or may not create skeletal lesions) or that gestures towards the complex social factors that affect the human experience of health (“health-related quality of life”). Practices like care for individuals with disabilities may help archaeologists grasp the nuances of well-being in specific cultural contexts.

Sandra Garvie-Lok’s chapter draws upon nitrogen and carbon isotopes from bone collagen to assess dietary variation across different socio-economic groups, between sexes, and over time. Published isotope data from Early Iron Age through Late Roman sites are synthesized in a series of tables and plots (color would have improved the legibility of the figures; 65–68, Figs. 3.2–3.4). Although clear patterns are elusive and the sample sizes of several studies are quite small, Garvie-Lok notes some interesting trends. These include lower average δ¹⁵N values in Early Iron Age populations when compared to Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman ones, suggesting shifts in subsistence practices, and higher average δ¹³C values in northern Greece, perhaps due to greater consumption of C4 plants such as millet in this region. Isotope values do not appear to vary consistently between sexes or across different socioeconomic status groups in the same cemetery (insofar as these can be tentatively reconstructed from mortuary archaeology). As Garvie-Lok indicates, interpretation of these data is not straightforward. Different parts of the human body reflect dietary composition at different life stages, with collagen from ribs reflecting diet in later life, collagen from the femoral shaft more indicative of diet in childhood, and dentine showing dietary shifts across the life course. Carbon and nitrogen isotope values for the same species of plants and animals may vary greatly based on local conditions and agricultural practices, making it critical to contextualize human isotope values with those from relevant archaeobotanical and faunal samples. Given these caveats and the fact that dietary practices are culturally mediated, archaeologists and historians should be wary of interpreting high δ¹⁵N values as unambiguous evidence for a diet high in animal protein and therefore heightened well-being (Bowes 2024:357–58).

Christina Papageorgopoulou’s contribution discusses how paleogenomic analysis can inform the study of population movements, genetic admixture, kinship, and ancient disease, while emphasizing the need to avoid conflating genetic variation with cultural identity. Though aDNA has been employed rarely in the study of historical Greek periods, Papageorgopoulou references several ongoing studies with a paleogenomic component, including ΑΠΟΙΚΙΑ, which studies Archaic to Hellenistic human remains from Tenea in the Corinthia and the Corinthian colony of Ambracia, and the CityLife project, which focuses on urban living in Thessaloniki from 300 BCE to 1500 CE. This contribution is less explicitly concerned with inequality than other chapters, but aDNA analysis suggesting diverse geographic origins or differing levels of genetic relatedness could be profitably compared with other bioarchaeological indicators or with grave type or assemblage to gain a more nuanced understanding of variation across a given population.

The volume’s next section comprises regional case studies that investigate various axes of social differentiation. Reine-Marie Bérard assesses age differentiation in the Archaic cemeteries of Megara Hyblaea in Sicily, using grave type and length to identify subadult burials in cases where no bioarchaeological analysis of remains was conducted. Interestingly, Italic fibulas are found exclusively in subadult graves, though the total number of burials with fibulas is small. Bérard suggests that children interred with both Italic fibulas and Greek pottery might have possessed a “mixed” ethnic identity in life and perhaps represent the offspring of Greek and indigenous parents. While this is one possibility, it is not the only explanation: fibulas could have been adopted for use in child burials for ritual reasons without a direct ethnic connection to Italic populations.

Questions of hybridity and exchange in Greek colonial contexts also interest Carrie Sulosky-Weaver and Britney Kyle, who approach biological affinity in cemetery populations in Sicily and Albania through the measurement of cranial nonmetric traits (the presence or absence of certain skeletal anomalies on the skull). This method is nondestructive and inexpensive, making it an appealing alternative to aDNA analysis, although nonmetric traits can be influenced by environment as well as genetics. Further issues arise when attempting to use nonmetric traits as “indicators of ethnicity,” as the paper’s subtitle puts it: as the authors stress, not only is genetic descent not necessarily contiguous with ethnic identity, but substantial cross-Mediterranean gene flows likely existed prior to Greek colonization. The authors conduct multivariate analysis of fourteen Sicilian and five Albanian cemetery populations, including burials that date to before and after the foundation of Greek colonies. The Sicilian populations are divided by the authors into “Greek” and “non-Greek” groups (although the asymmetrical plot produced by optimal scaling analysis appears to show that these groups are fairly internally heterogeneous; 170, Fig. 6.6 top). In Albania, there are fewer distinct groupings, perhaps suggesting greater genetic mixing between Greeks and Illyrians. Nonmetric traits, this time dental rather than cranial, are also employed in Efthymia Nikita and her coauthors’ analysis of kinship at the cemeteries of Akraphaia in Boeotia, where rescue excavations uncovered hundreds of burials ranging in date from the Late Geometric to the Early Byzantine period. Perhaps due to the wide chronological range of the burials or to the elimination of nonmetric traits on many samples due to preservation issues or dental wear, only one cluster of graves exhibits greater genetic relatedness than would be predicted by a random distribution. The paper’s appendix, which explains in detail the spatial statistics employed in the analysis and reproduces the entire R code, will be useful for those attempting similar methods.

Two contributions focus on Attica, where the tension between political equality for freeborn citizen males under the Classical Athenian democracy and inequalities predicated on wealth, status, and gender have generated much discussion and debate (Foxhall 2002, Ober 2017, Taylor 2018 and 2024, van Wees 2024). Eleni-Anna Prevodorou and her colleagues discuss a small subset of human remains from the Archaic cemetery at Phaleron, which is most well known for the presence of violent perimortem trauma on many skeletons. Twenty-six individuals who were interred in slab-covered pit graves, cist graves, and larnakes (as opposed to the simple pit graves most common at the site) are assessed for multiple paleopathologies and stress markers. One notable finding is the remodeling of bone in the sinus regions and on the ribs of many individuals, suggestive of chronic respiratory disease that could be related to occupational pollution (206–09, 214). Although the authors stress the preliminary nature of their conclusions, the chapter effectively demonstrates the interpretive possibilities that will be introduced by full analysis of the Phaleron burials. With a larger sample, correlations between grave type, location, age, sex, and skeletal lesions may become more apparent.

Anna Lagia and Lisa Steige consider trends in stature, long-bone length, and sexual stature dimorphism (the difference in estimated stature between males and females) for Attic populations spanning the Submycenaean period to Late Antiquity. Stature has long been used as a proxy for nutrition and standard of living by ancient historians (Morris 2004:717, Kron 2005), and recent research on modern populations suggests that stature is more closely correlated with income inequality than overall income (Bogin et al. 2017). While it is tempting to equate higher stature with better health and lower levels of inequality, stature is a product of a complex combination of genetic and environmental factors, and it is also sensitive to childhood disease burden and survivor bias (the death of poor children from deprivation before they reach adulthood may mean that adult statures appear higher than they would in cases of less pronounced inequalities) (Boix and Rosenbluth 2014:4–5, Bowes 2024:350–53). Sexual stature dimorphism is also a thorny metric. Lagia and Steige point to high sexual stature dimorphism as an indication of higher standards of living, arguing that since men mature more slowly, they are more likely to obtain less of their potential stature under adverse conditions (246–47). However, it has also been proposed that high sexual status dimorphism may suggest differential protection of males from stressors — in other words, that males are more sheltered from disease or receive better nutrition than females (Liston 2012:132–33). It is interesting that a high average stature and high sexual stature dimorphism in Classical Athens can be contrasted with a high average stature and lower sexual status dimorphism in Archaic Thessaloniki (265). This might imply that a relatively high standard of living for males in Classical Athens was accompanied by poor nutrition or increased stress for females.

In the only contribution focusing exclusively on Roman Greece, Paraskevi Tritsaroli and Dimitra Michael compile published bioarchaeological data from the provinces of Macedonia, Achaea, and Crete, comparing stature, stress markers, and isotope values. They find much diversity between sites, though rural populations on average have worse dental heath than urban ones. Their preliminary results also hint that cemeteries in colonies may have a greater incidence of cribra orbitalia and poorer dentition than those in free cities.

The volume concludes with two response papers. Geoffrey Kron advocates for the importance of stature data for writing economic and social history. He then turns to the long entanglement of biological anthropology and scientific racism in the United States and Europe, with some attention to the history of Greek archaeology, before drawing attention to the revival of pernicious concepts of biological race in some aDNA research and its popularization (on these topics, see also Parmenter 2023 and Duray 2025). In the final chapter, Jane Buikstra, a founding figure in the discipline of bioarchaeology and a principal investigator on the Phaleron Bioarcheological Project, articulates future directions for bioarchaeological research in the Eastern Mediterranean, highlighting topics such as childhood and identity, the social meaning of cremation, and the structural violence that institutionalized inequalities may wreak on human bodies. The study of entheseal attachments to understand occupational activity, which is not discussed in this volume but has already yielded interesting results at Phaleron (Karakostis et al. 2021), is another promising area for further work. Buikstra underlines the need to consider the representativeness of bioarchaeological samples, articulate clear hypotheses, conduct rigorous statistical testing, and carefully weigh alternative explanations for observed phenomena. For example, nonmetric traits are often shaped by age and sex as well as degree of genetic relationship, and stature is affected by both genetics and environment (a fact which could be acknowledged in other contributions in the volume that favorably compare the mean stature of ancient Greek populations to nineteenth-century Europeans: 266–67, 346–48).

This volume will be a valuable resource for ancient historians and archaeologists seeking to understand the current state of bioarchaeology in Early Iron Age through Late Antique Greece and its applications to research questions focused on inequality and social difference. Many chapters present helpful and up-to-date syntheses of available data or provide exciting glimpses into the work of ongoing projects. Papers are largely accessible to non-specialist readers, although the terminology used occasionally requires specialist-level familiarity with human anatomy (for example, “os acromiale is a separate epiphyseal ossicle at the acromion resulting from the non-fusion of the ossification centers of the anterolateral acromial process,” 212). Authors are generally careful to provide archaeological and historical context for data derived from human remains. While more work remains to be done, this book thus represents a positive step towards the fuller integration of the archaeological sciences into the study of post-Bronze Age Greece. It effectively illustrates bioarchaeology’s key role in clarifying the full range of ancient Greek experience.

Authors and titles

1. Introduction (Sofia Voutsaki and Anna Lagia)
2. In Sickness and in Health: Health-Related Quality of Life in Bioarchaeological Research (Sam Cleymans)
3. Stable Isotopes: Examining Ancient Greek Diet and Identity in Environmental and Biological Context (Sandra Garvie-Lok)
4. Reconstructing Population History through Paleogenomic Analysis (Christina Papageorgopoulou)
5. Untimely Death: Funerary Treatment and Status of the Subadults in the Cemeteries of Megara Hyblaea (Late 8th to Early 5th Century BCE) (Reine-Marie Bérard)
6. At the Intersection of Biology and Identity: Nonmetric Traits as Indicators of Ethnicity in Greek Colonial Contexts (Carrie L. Sulosky Weaver and Britney Kyle)
7. Unwritten Histories of Ancient Athens: The People of the Phaleron Cemetery (Eleni-Anna Prevedorou, Jane E. Buikstra, Hannah Liedl, Lukas Waltenberger, and Aliya R. Hoff)
8. Using Stature, Long-Bone Length, and Sexual Stature Dimorphism to Evaluate Socioeconomic Inequalities in Ancient Athens (Anna Lagia and Lisa Steige)
9. Kinship Patterns in Ancient Greece: Preliminary Bioarchaeological Insights from Boeotia (Efthymia Nikita, Chelsey Schrock, Victoria Sabetai, and Elena Vlachogianni)
10. The Bioarchaeology of Health and Status in Roman Greece: State of Knowledge and Future Directions (Paraskevi Tritsaroli and Dimitra Ermioni Michael)
11. Response: Anthropometry, Stature, and Social Inequality in Ancient Greece (Geoffrey Kron)
12. Response: Bioarchaeology of the Eastern Mediterranean; Plans and Prospects (Jane E. Buikstra)

References

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Boix, C. and Rosenbluth, F. 2014. “Bones of Contention: the Political Economy of Height Inequality.” American Political Science Review 108.1: 1–22.

Bowes, K. 2024. “The ‘Health Problem’ in Roman Economic History: A Prolegomenon.” In Models, Methods, and Morality: Assessing Modern Approaches to the Greco-Roman Economy, edited by S. C. Murray and S. Bernard, 345–80. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Duray, A. 2025. “‘The Peculiar Hellenic Alloy’: Carl Blegen’s Narrative of Greek Racial Development in Context.” American Journal of Archaeology 129.2: 149–80.

Foxhall, L. 2002. “Access to Resources in Classical Greece: The Egalitarianism of the Polis in Practice.” In Money, Labour and Land: Approaches to the Economies of Ancient Greece, edited by P. Cartledge, E. E. Cohen, and L. Foxhall, 209–20. London: Routledge.

Karakostis, F. et al. 2021. “New Insights into the Manual Activities of Individuals from the Phaleron Cemetery (Archaic Athens, Greece).” Journal of Archaeological Sciences 131: 105415.

Kron, G. 2005. “Anthropometry, Physical Anthropology, and the Reconstruction of Ancient Health, Nutrition, and Living Standards.” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 54.1: 68–83.

Liston, M. A. 2012. “Reading the Bones: Interpreting the Skeletal Evidence for Women’s Lives in Ancient Greece.” In A Companion to Women in the Ancient World, edited by S. L. James and S. Dillon, 125–140. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

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van Wees, H. 2024. “The Athenian Working Class: Scale, Nature, and Development.” In Voiceless, Invisible, and Countless in Ancient Greece: the Experience of Subordinates, edited by S. D. Gartland and D. W. Tandy, 127-54. Oxford: Oxford University Press.