Roman occupation of Britain damaged the population’s health

The health of Britain's population deteriorated under Roman occupation, especially in urban areas.

There is a widespread belief that the Romans brought civilization and its many benefits to those they conquered, which is perhaps best illustrated The Life of Brian Monty Pythonin which John Cleese's character Reg asks: “Besides sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, fresh water systems and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?”

However, researchers have known for at least a decade that there is deteriorating public health in Iron Age Britain after the Romans conquered the area in 43 AD – and this the population flourished after their departure.

Now, Rebecca Pitt at the University of Reading, UK, studied 646 ancient skeletons, 372 of which belonged to children who were less than 3.5 years old at the time of death, as well as 274 skeletons of adult women aged 18 to 45 years. They came from 24 Iron Age and Romano-British settlements in south and central England, dating back four centuries before the arrival of the Romans until the fourth century AD when they left.

Pitt estimated the age of individuals based on the characteristics of the pelvis of adults and the teeth of children. Studying the experiences of potential mothers and babies together should provide a better understanding of the stressors affecting different generations under Roman occupation, she said.

“Environmental exposures during critical periods of early development can have long-term consequences for a person's health,” Pitt says, just as maternal health can affect a child's health.

Pitt examined bones and teeth and looked for abnormalities, such as lesions or fractures, that might indicate tuberculosis, osteomyelitis, or dental disease. She also used X-rays to study the internal structure of bones, which can reveal changes in bone development caused by malnutrition or a lack of vitamins C and D.

This showed that the negative health effects of Roman occupation were concentrated in the two major urban centers included in the study – the Roman administrative towns of Venta Belgarum, now Winchester, and Corinium Dobunnorum or Cirencester.

Overall, 81 percent of adult urban Romans had bone abnormalities, compared with 62 percent of people living in the Iron Age, but the Iron Age and rural Roman cohorts did not differ significantly. And only 26 percent of Iron Age children showed such effects, compared with 41 percent of children in rural Roman settlements and 61 percent in urban Roman settlements.

“One of the things that was really evident in non-adult urban residents was rickets, which means that people weren't getting enough vitamin D from sunlight,” Pitt says.

She suggests that these health effects, which lasted for many generations, were caused by new diseases that the Romans brought with them, as well as the class differences and infrastructure they caused, which led to limited access to resources for those lower on the social ladder, as well as overcrowded and polluted living conditions.

“My dad always jokes about Brian's lifebut the Romans had a very negative impact on our health, which affected many generations,” says Pitt.

Martin Millett at the University of Cambridge says the finding is interesting, and that the effect might even be underestimated if higher status people were buried who might be healthier, but he doesn't think it's necessarily a city effect.

“These urban centers are not huge medieval cities with deep poverty and huge population densities,” he says. “We may be seeing a growing differentiation between rich and poor. The Roman Empire had an economic and social system that meant the gap between rich and poor became larger over time.”

Richard Madgwick from Cardiff University, UK, also says the Roman legacy did not benefit everyone equally. “There was better hygiene, sanitation and medical know-how, but access to it? That's a completely different question,” he says. “The reality is that not everyone benefited and it took some time to reach different elements of society.”