Parasites plagued Roman soldiers at Hadrian’s Wall

It probably sucked to be a Roman soldier guarding Hadrian's Wall in the third century AD. W.H. Auden imagined the likely harsh conditions in his poem “Roman Wall Blues“, in which the soldier laments the wet wind and rain, “lice in his tunic and a cold in his nose.” We can now add chronic nausea and bouts of diarrhea to his list of likely problems due to parasitic infections, according to a new paper published in the journal Parasitology.

How previously reportedArchaeologists can learn a lot by studying the remains of intestinal parasites in ancient feces. For example, in 2022 we reported on the analysis of soil samples taken from a stone toilet found among the ruins of a luxurious villa of the 7th century BC near Jerusalem. This analysis revealed the presence of parasite eggs from four different species: whipworm, bovine/pork tapeworm, roundworm and pinworm. (This is the earliest mention of roundworms and pinworms in ancient Israel.)

Later that year, researchers from the University of Cambridge and the University of British Columbia analyzed Remains from an ancient Roman ceramic pot excavated from the site of a 5th-century AD Roman villa in Gerace, a rural area of ​​Sicily. They identified the eggs of intestinal parasitic worms commonly found in feces, providing strong evidence that the 1,500-year-old pot in question was most likely used as a chamber pot.

Other previous studies have compared fecal parasites found in hunter-gatherer and farming communities, revealing dramatic changes in diet as well as changes in settlement patterns and social organization coinciding with agricultural developments. This latest paper analyzes sediment collected from the sewers of a Roman fort in Vindolandalocated south of the defensive fortification known as Hadrian's Wall.

An antiquarian named William Camden described the existence of the ruins in a 1586 treatise. Over the next 200 years, many people visited the site, discovering a military bath in 1702 and an altar in 1715. Another altar found in 1914 confirmed that the fort was called Vindolanda. Serious archaeological excavations at the site began in the 1930s. The site is best known for the so-called Vindolanda tablets, among the oldest surviving handwritten documents in Britain – and for opening 2023 of what looked like an ancient Roman dildo, although others argued The phallus-shaped artifact was most likely a spindle used for spinning yarn.