13th October 2011, 12:28 PM
deadlylampshade Wrote:Surely the "foreigners" shouldn't be a surprise, or am I missing something here? You only have to look at the Roman Legionary and Auxilliary units to see where the "outsiders" come from...but I wouldn't be surprised if I've missed the point...xx(
It's not that foreigners in England or in Rome (or anywhere else in the Empire) are a surprise, it's that most people in the Empire acculturated and we have little archaeological evidence of people buried with the trappings of another culture. So isotope analysis is (at least for my work in Rome) the only way to find immigrants who weren't commemorated as such on tombstones. Once we find the bodies of immigrants, we can ask questions like: Were their lives worse than those of the locals? You'd think that they were, since the immigrants were more likely to be slaves, but the data on disease don't support a difference in health or lifestyle at this point. That's why I and others are looking for/at immigrants in the Empire - histories tell us they existed, but we know precious little about their lives.