








































Bioarchaeology International 
Volume 3, Number 1: 58–77 
DOI: 10.5744/bi.2019.1008

Copyright © 2019 University of Florida Press

Beyond Individual Lives: Using Comparative 
Osteobiography to Trace Social Patterns 
in Classical Italy
John Robba*
aDepartment of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3DZ UK
*Correspondence to: John Robb, Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street,
Cambridge CB2 3DZ, UK

e- mail: jer39@cam . ac . uk

ABSTRACT Osteobiographical studies have usually focused upon investigating an individual’s life experience. However, we 
can also understand variation in the shape of the life course itself as an object of study: Are there common pat-
terns for how lives unfold within a society? Are there events or experiences that channel life courses? This ap-
proach to the life course can be adopted for ancient as well as for modern lives. A key element here is developing 
new methodologies for characterizing and comparing how lives develop through time, for instance, by ordering 
biological data in sequence, looking for time- structured patterns in them both by eye and through multivariate 
statistics. This article presents an initial exploration of this problem, using skeletal and archaeological data on 
47 adults from the fifth to third centuries B.C. at Pontecagnano, an urban site in Campania, Italy. The results 
show both the importance of gender in the life course and the effects of different kinds of physical stress, prob-
ably due to specialization in labor. The result is not discrete categories of people but fuzzy envelopes of life 
possibilities.

Keywords: biography; gender; work; Italy; Etruscan; specialization; life course

Los estudios osteobiográficos se han enfocado generalmente en la investigación de la experiencia vital del indi-
viduo. Sin embargo, también podemos comprender la variación en la forma del curso mismo de la vida como 
objeto de estudio: ¿existen patrones comunes (que demuestran) cómo se desarrollan las vidas (individuales) den-
tro de una sociedad? ¿Existen eventos o experiencias que canalizan los cursos de vida? Esta aproximación al 
curso de la vida puede ser adoptada tanto para las vidas ancianas como las modernas. Un elemento clave (en 
esto) es el desarrollo de nuevas metodologías para caracterizar y comparar cómo se desarrollan las vidas a través 
del tiempo, por ejemplo al ordenar datos biológicos en secuencia y buscar en ellos patrones estructurados en el 
tiempo tanto (visualmente/por vista) como a través de estadísticas multivariadas. Esta investigación presenta 
una exploración inicial de este problema utilizando los datos esqueléticos y arqueológicos de 47 (cuarenta y si-
ete) adultos del 5o al 3er siglo a.C. en Pontecagnano, un sitio urbano en Campania, Italia. Los resultados dem-
uestran tanto la importancia del género en el curso de la vida como los efectos de diferentes tipos de estrés físico, 
debido con toda probabilidad a la especialización laboral. (Esto no resulta) en categorías discretas de personas 
sino en sobres difusos de posibilidades de la vida.

Keywords: biografia; género; trabajo; Italia; Etrusco; especialización; curso de vida

Received 31 July 2018
Revised 28 January 2019

Accepted 28 January 2019



Robb 59

Social Process, Human Life Courses, 
and Osteobiography

Human lives are not mechanical or deterministic, but 
neither are they simply concatenations of random 
events. Instead, they have a temporal structure; ear-
lier events shape the possibilities of later ones. This is 
abundantly clear in familiar, everyday examples: an 
educational opportunity, the death of a parent, a preg-
nancy, or a serious health episode can shape some-
one’s entire subsequent life trajectory. Moreover, as 
natives of our own culture we often have a conscious 
sense of how different kinds of people have distinct 
events, opportunities, and life tracks. Patterning in the 
actual lives people lead often exists in the context of 
cultural narratives about how the “normal” human 
life span is supposed to go, even if many people do not 
achieve the ideal “good life.” Tracking any cohort, 
whether a formal long- term cross- sectional study or 
your high school graduating class on Facebook, shows 
both how recurrent life patterns emerge from social 
process and how any individual life has its own tra-
jectory, sometimes taking quite unexpected direc-
tions. If we think of lives as vibrant lines extending 
themselves through time, they do not follow a rigid 
channel, but nor do they zoom off in random direc-
tions. Instead, as they wander through the possibility 
spaces their social and historical setting affords them, 
they unfold in loose skeins or bundles.

The temporal structure of human lives has been 
studied principally in fields such as public health, so-
ciological life- course studies, and biography (see Ho-
sek and Robb, this issue). These studies bridge the gap 
between individual lived lives and macro- patterns in 
society as a whole. At the other end of the pole, eth-
nographers often use narratives of individual lives, 
taking a single informant’s story as a microhistory ex-
posing social issues (see Hosek, this issue). Novelists 
do so as well; for example, Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the 
d’Urbervilles both explores the effect of gendered 
events upon an individual woman’s life story and 
shows how Tess stands for women as a category within 
a patriarchal society. In bioarchaeology, osteobiogra-
phy can accomplish similar goals, letting us assemble 
facts into life narratives and highlighting the continu-
ity or coherence among all the facts of a human life 
over time. The key concepts are reviewed above (Ho-
sek and Robb, this issue) but can be mentioned here 
(see also Boutin et al. 2012; Saul and Saul 1989; Stod-
der and Palkovich 2012). Throughout life, the body as 
a physical structure is constantly changing in response 
to age and environment (Agarwal and Beauchesne 
2011). Thus, as advocated in the life- course approach, 
its history can be read as a record of the stresses and 
risks experienced at different ages (Agarwal 2016; 

Glencross 2012). Reciprocally, people interpret changes 
in their bodies as signifiers of social age, which may 
be more important than chronological age (Appleby 
2011; Sofaer 2011); indeed, they often go beyond inter-
preting their bodies, intervening directly and inten-
tionally to modify them or changing their activities 
in ways that alter their bodies. The body can thus be 
considered as material culture, as something shaped 
by the ongoing course of social life (Sofaer 2006). This 
line of thought has been developed archaeologically 
principally in the idea of childhood, adulthood, and 
old age as culturally understood stages of life (Appleby 
2011; Halcrow and Tayles 2011; Lewis 2007; Sofaer 2000), 
but it is also clear that the overall normative biography 
forms a powerful cultural narrative (Robb 2002).

But osteobiography has almost always remained at 
the level of the individual, telling a single life story 
(with rare exceptions; see Barrett and Blakey 2011). It 
has tackled questions of the shape of human lives only 
by asserting, explicitly or implicitly, that the individ-
uals studied are typical of their time, or group, or class 
or gender, and thus their life story also tells us some-
thing about their social world. This is useful, but we 
could go much further. Some key questions are:

• Within a human life, are there systematic patterns 
in how earlier events affect later events?

• Within a group, are there recurrent patterns in how 
lives unfold— what events people experience, when 
they experience them, and what their effects are?

• Do people in different groups (genders, classes, eth-
nicities, occupations, religions, etc.) experience dif-
ferent lives? If so, why?

To answer these, we need to approach osteobiogra-
phy differently. Osteobiography has typically involved 
writing individual lives in as much detail as possible. 
But we can also go “meta,” lining up osteobiographies 
side by side to examine how individual individual lives 
are when we aggregate them, how much they really do 
form tight bundles adhering to narrow life paths or 
wander loosely through life’s possibilities. Intuitively, 
we might expect to observe people’s lives being played 
out within fuzzy envelopes, neither tightly determin-
istic nor unstructured, perhaps with distinct tracks for 
people differentiated by category and social position 
or by major life choices such as going to university or 
experiencing a major illness. But is this really so?

Although new territory for bioarchaeology, such is-
sues have been explored in fields such as sociological 
life- course studies(Heinz and Krüger 2001). Such 
studies, however, give us mostly reassurance that the 
shape of human lives is an intellectually important 
problem worth studying; bio archae ol o gi cal data are so 
different from the data sociologists use that by and 



Beyond Individual Lives60

large we have to devise our own methods rather than 
borrowing them from other fields. This article is an at-
tempt to do so. Interestingly, this requires thinking 
not only about statistical methods but about pictures 
as well. Osteobiographies involve assembling complex 
arrays of quite different kinds of data. It is not only the 
values but the relations between them in multivariate 
space that are most telling. To make them comprehen-
sible, we need to simplify the data carefully and group 
them in a way that reveals both patterns and variation. 
While exploratory multivariate statistics such as clus-
tering or network analysis could be used, we need to 
integrate categorical, ordinal, and numerical data, and 
usually any individual is missing at least some data. 
The alternative approach used here is to accept this as 
an imaginative challenge and to experiment with new 
graphs or charts for visualizing human lives.

This article argues that individual human lives have 
shapes or courses and that the shape of human lives 
in themselves may be important and informative when 
studied in the aggregate. It presents a first try at ex-
ploring the comparative study of the human life course 
in a past society. Using data from 47 adults from the 
ancient city of Pontecagnano (fifth– third centuries 
B.C.), I try to outline some common life patterns. The 
analysis is exploratory. It succeeds in outlining some 
possible variation in how men’s and women’s life 
courses unfolded, but more importantly, its real goal 
is to raise the possibility of this kind of approach and 
to stimulate further work on it.

Pontecagnano: Life and Death in an  
Early Urban Society

The town of Pontecagnano is located in southern Italy, 
near the Tyrrhenian coast south of Naples and Salerno 
(Fig. 1). It was founded around 800 B.C. and has been 
continuously occupied since then. Its Oscan-speaking 
population was formed of native Italic peoples, but with 
strong influence from both Greeks and Etruscans. The 
town’s social structure and culture changed substan-
tially between the eighth and third centuries B.C. as it 
became increasingly urban, class- based, and integrated 
with the larger Mediterranean world. In the period 
studied here the town was almost a kilometer square, 
with a fortification wall, a dense grid street plan, a 
sacral area, artisan neighborhoods, residential areas, 
and multiple extramural cemeteries (Alfano et  al. 
2006). Until its takeover by Rome in the third century 
B.C., the town participated fully in the cultural koine 
of the pre- Roman Classical world (d’Agostino 1974). 
Over the last 50  years, classical remains from Pon-
tecagnano have been extensively excavated, particu-
larly the cemeteries, with substantial bio archae ol o gi cal 
work done (Cencetti 1989; Fornaciari et al. 1984, 1986; 

Lombardi Pardini et al. 1984, 1992; Mallegni et al. 1984; 
Eduardo Pardini et al. 1983; Elena Pardini et al. 1982; 
Petrone 1995; Robb et al. 2001; Scarsini and Bigazzi 
1995; Serritella 1995; Sonego 1991; Sonego and Scarsini 
1994). This study analyzes a homogeneous sample of 
skeletons from a period of about 10 generations between 
the fifth and earlier third centuries B.C.

In understanding the biographies of these people, 
two features of social context are critical. First, gen-
der was a key organizing principle of classical culture. 
Classical gender was mostly binary; it was tied closely 
to biological sex, and it conditioned many aspects 
of adult life (Foxhall 2013; Robb and Harris 2013:chap-
ter 4 and references therein). In Pontecagnano burials, 
for instance, with a few exceptions there is generally 
good agreement between skeletal sex and the stereo-
typical “male” and “female” grave goods (see below). 
Males and females officially became adults between 
about 15 and 20  years of age, upon marriage for 
women and when legally recognized as a man around 
18 for men (Golden 2003); however, they probably be-
gan to engage in adult work before this as their capa-
bilities allowed. Second, like most or all sizable 
classical towns, Pontecagnano was class- stratified; its 
cemeteries reveal a range of wealth. The samples here 
comprise mostly the lower- middle range of society; 
while they do not contain the wealthiest individuals, 
they consist of people buried in the normal way with 
standard rites, which usually consisted of burial in a 
simple pit or tile- covered grave with a few inexpensive 
grave goods, mostly ordinary pottery vessels. A size-
ble classical town such as Pontecagnano had a com-
plex division of labor, with a wide range of specialized 
workers and craftspeople. Many people’s work regimes 
would have involved generalized or varied tasks, par-
ticularly farmworkers and unskilled laborers. But doz-
ens of job specializations were known in both Greek 
and Roman society; even in a small city such as Pon-
tecagnano, specialized workers would have included 
porters, stone masons, builders, potters, tile and brick 
makers, weavers, tailors, shoemakers and other leath-
erworkers, smiths and metalworkers, carpenters, car-
ters, mule drivers, herders, cooks, and merchants of all 
sorts of goods. Some people buried here may also have 
engaged in specialized work done elsewhere, for in-
stance, sailors. Some of these occupations were en-
gaged in by both free people and enslaved people. 
Women in the classical world often carried out gen-
dered tasks associated with the household, including 
heavy work such as carrying water; they were norma-
tively associated with spinning and weaving. But they 
are also known to have carried out activities such as 
running businesses, and poorer women often did 
agricultural labor. These two factors suggest that 
we should expect some differentiation in life courses, 
both from gender and from the specific activities they 



Robb 61

Figure 1. Location of Pontecagnano within southern Italy, ca. 500– 300 B.C.

performed. Indeed, the two factors intersected; 
throughout the ancient world, men engaged in a much 
wider range of specialized jobs than did women (Fox-
hall 2013:96– 101).

Materials and Methods

Analytical strategy for comparative 
osteobiography

The analytical strategy needed for comparative oste-
obiography is straightforward, even if some aspects 
present challenges for skeletal data. A first principle is 

keeping all data within their context: any individual 
in our data sets must be seen relative to all the others, 
leading us to constantly alternate between outlining 
a general pattern and asking how an individual under 
study relates to it. A second principle is sequence, ar-
ranging events within each life in temporal order. In 
historical or sociological biographies with well- dated 
life records, this may be done with precision. With 
skeletal data we normally have to arrange events in 
bucket categories such as childhood and adulthood, 
without ordering events within these intervals. In this 
study, data were assigned to broad stages of the life 
span (Table 1). This included not only biological data 
but archaeological data as well; funerary treatment 



Beyond Individual Lives62

reveals a social response following the moment of 
death.

In analyzing the data, two questions are key:

1.  At each stage of life, do the data reveal discrete 
groupings into people whose lives were situated dif-
ferently? Or do they reveal a continuum of varia-
tion, or no patterned variation at all?

2.  How do events or groupings at earlier life stages in-
fluence events or groupings at later life stages?

Statistically, one could imagine exploring these 
questions formally using exploratory multivariate anal-
yses (as indeed is sometimes done with sociological 
data). However, as a preliminary foray it is appropri-
ate here to use a straightforward, more intuitive com-
bination of traditional descriptive statistics, simple 

inferential statistics such as chi- square and t- test anal-
yses, and visual representations.

Materials and skeletal methods

Detailed osteobiographical data on people from Pon-
tecagnano were collected by the author in the Museo 
Nazionale di Antropologia, Firenze, in 1991 and 1992. 
While hundreds of skeletons from the site have been 
studied (Cencetti 1989; Fornaciari et al. 1984, 1986; 
Lombardi Pardini et  al. 1984, 1992; Mallegni et  al. 
1984; Eduardo Pardini et al. 1983; Elena Pardini et al. 
1982; Petrone 1995; Robb et  al. 2001; Scarsini and 
Bigazzi 1995; Serritella 1995; Sonego 1991; Sonego and 
Scarsini 1994), to exclude the effects of historical 
change, the skeletons chosen for analysis here include 
a homogeneous sample from the later fifth to early 

Table 1. Selected skeletal data for moments in the human life span, listing indicators used in this study.

Life Stage Data Groupings Used in Table 2 and Figure 7

Birth Sex (assigning social gender) (Buikstra and Ubelaker 1994; 
Workshop of European Anthropologists 1980)

Male, female

Childhood Enamel hypoplasia, total number of lesions observed on all teeth  
in dentition macroscopically using strong oblique light  
(Goodman and Rose 1991)

1 lesion, 2– 3 lesions, 4+ lesions

Cribra orbitalia (Buikstra and Ubelaker 1994) Present / absent

Stature achieved by adulthood; estimated using all available long 
bones (Trotter and Gleser 1958)

Lower ¼ of male or female range, middle of male or 
female range, upper ¼ of male or female range

Adult life Traumas as evidence of life risks, identified macroscopically 
(Ortner and Aufderheide 1991; Ortner and Putschar 1981; for more 
detail on trauma in this collection, see Robb 1997)

Present/ absent

Dental disease (caries, antemortem tooth loss) Presence/absence

Schmorl’s nodes, number of vertebrae affected (Ortner and 
Putschar 1981)

0, 1– 4, 5– 7, 8+

New bone growth (Ortner and Aufderheide 1991; Ortner and 
Putschar 1981; cf. Weston 2012)

“periostitis”: present/absent anywhere in the skeleton 
“tibial periostitis”: present/ absent in the tibia(s)

Arthropathies as evidence of habitual activity (Rogers and 
Waldron 1995; Rogers et al. 1987; cf. Waldron 2012)

“osteoarthritis”: presence or absence of marginal bone 
proliferation, porosity and eburnation 
“eburnation”: presence or absence of eburnated surfaces

Entheseal variation as evidence of habitual activity (recorded as 
grades of expression between 1 and 5, with average entheseal score 
used to characterize overall skeleton) (Hawkey and Merbs 1995; 
Robb 1998) (cf. Fig. 2)

Mean entheseal score, grouped into lower ¼ of male or 
female range, middle of male or female range, upper ¼ 
of male or female range

Traits potentially related to specialized activity (see text for 
explanation)

“specialized activity: presence/ absence of several 
relevant traits”

Death Age at death, representing longevity and mortality as conditioned 
by social factors (Buikstra and Ubelaker 1994; Workshop of 
European Anthropologists 1980)

Decade of age at death

Treatment at death Total pottery vessels deposited in the grave (Fig. 6, Table 2:  
0 vessels, 1– 5 vessels, 6+ vessels)

0 vessels, 1– 5 vessels, 6+ vessels

Grave goods other than pottery Presence or absence of grave goods other than pottery 
Presence or absence of specifically “female” ornaments 
Presence or absence of specifically “male” objects 
(weapons, armour, strigils) 
Presence or absence of other objects



Robb 63

third centuries B.C. Only skeletons well enough pre-
served to afford mostly complete data were used, and 
only skeletons with a full range of data collected by a 
single observer were used. To maximize the biograph-
ical information available, only adult skeletons were 
included in this analysis. A wide range of data were 
collected: sex, age, stature, and pathologies, non- 
pathological variations, and signs of activities. De-
tails of data collected and the relevant standards used 
are presented in Table 1.

It is important to realize that, to some extent, this 
study uses legacy data which reflects the state of the 
field in the early 1990s. This is evident in what is not 
included: although most modern osteobiographies 
would include light stable isotopic and ancient genetic 
data, these data are not available here. For some other 
methods, either data collection standards or interpre-
tations have moved on substantially, and consequently 
these data are omitted here (e.g., studies of biodis-
tance using metrics and nonmetrics; interpretations 
of activity based upon external bone measurements 
rather than scan data; pelvic observations once con-
sidered related to parturition). Many basic standards 
have changed relatively little (e.g., for aging, sexing, 
stature estimation, macroscopic recording of linear 
enamel hypoplasia, presence of activity- related skele-
tal variations, and trauma). Observation and record-
ing of most paleopathologies remain commensurate, 

even as interpretations of some have changed. The 
most rapidly developing methodologies are for enthe-
seal markings (Fig.  2), with some researchers using 
ordinal categories analyzed statistically (Hawkey and 
Merbs 1995; Weiss 1999, 2007) and others using the 
“Coimbra” system (Henderson et al. 2016). Even these 
efforts fail to reflect the biological complexity of mus-
cle attachment sites, and a satisfactory solution has yet 
to be reached (Villotte and Knüsel 2013). The data pre-
sented here use standards similar to the former, re-
sulting in ordinal grades expressing the full range of 
morphological variation at an entheseal site (Robb 
1998). Although in some cases one might employ up-
dated standards in a study designed today, the data 
selected for analysis here are those that are stable and 
commensurate with standards used today, and they 
serve effectively to illustrate the approach pioneered 
here. Perhaps the biggest shift in methods and interpre-
tation since 1990 involves issues raised by the “osteo-
logical paradox” (Wood et al. 1992); the extent to which 
skeletal phenomena may be age- related is fundamental 
to biography and has been taken into consideration 
throughout the interpretations presented here.

Analyzing the data collected presents other chal-
lenges. Some data lack standardized or conventional 
forms of analysis (e.g., does one tabulate osteoarthri-
tis by joint surface, by bone, or by joint?). In this study, 
data are analyzed contextually in ways most effective 

Fig. 2. Example of standards used to record entheseal marking variation for the common extensors origin, 
lateral epicondyle of distal humerus. Grade 1: no trace of marking visible (not illustrated). Left to right: Grade 2: 
small facet is visible; rim of facet is finely rugose and may be indistinct in places, and surface of facet is 
smooth. Grade 3: facet is larger and well bounded on all sides; rim may be slightly raised, and surface is 
smooth or finely rugose. Grade 4: facet is large, covering much of the surface of medial epicondyle; surface 
may be rugose or rugged, and border is unclear due to rugosity or surface destruction. Grade 5: osteophytes; a 
small protuberance below the edge of the medial epicondyle may be present.



Beyond Individual Lives64

for this sample and question. For example, both enamel 
hypoplasia and Schmorl’s nodes were very common 
in this group, and simply registering them as present 
or absent does little to highlight variation among in-
dividuals; tabulating the number of lesions or using a 
range of incremental bins proved more revealing. 
Similarly, it seems probable that, in this collection, 
periosteal deposition on the tibia resulted partly from 
different causes and had a somewhat different distri-
bution than periosteal deposition elsewhere in the 
skeleton, and thus the two were analyzed separately. 
Such methodological judgments need to be grounded 
in the specific nature of each sample analyzed.

Bodies shaped by work: Signs of labor

One category of data proved particularly important to 
this project. Work and activity are one fundamental 
route by which social position and identity intervene 
in a person’s life story; they also deeply shape the evi-
dence of the body (Capasso et al. 1999; Jurmain 1998; 
Jurmain et al. 2012; Kennedy 1989, 1998; Merbs 1983; 
Robb 1994; Sofaer 2006; Weiss 1999). This is true above 
all for historical contexts in which there was a highly 
specialized division of labor but most people still per-
formed strenuous manual work. It is no surprise that it 
was Victorian physicians such as W. A. Lane (Kennedy 
1989) who began to recognize occupationally induced 
morphologies, fractures, arthropathies, and patholo-
gies. Similar conditions characterized life in ancient cit-
ies such as Pontecagnano. As this insight would suggest, 
in the skeletons under study it was common to en-
counter people with highly idiosyncratic patterns of 
functional modifications, arthropathies, entheseal 
changes, and gross morphology. These skeletal signs 
were often markedly different or unique, rather than 
simply extreme manifestations of conditions common 
to many people, suggesting that at least in some cases, 
they must represent some functionally stressful activ-
ity that affected a few individuals to a great extent 
and others little or not at all. To take one example, sev-
eral individuals in this sample displayed strongly lat-
eralized eburnation and asymmetry in the cervical 
vertebrae, which suggested that the neck was habitu-
ally compressed sideways. This would be compatible 
with habitually carrying a heavy load such as a block of 
stone, a bale of goods, or an amphora on one shoul-
der, with the neck and body bent sideways to stabilize 
the load and keep the center of gravity over the base 
of the spine.

Trying to identify the specific activities that led 
to such bodily changes is rarely possible, particularly 
as such skeletal variations almost never respond solely 
to activity (see recent overview by Jurmain et  al. 
2012). But, given the range of specialized manual 

occupations known in ancient cities, we should ex-
pect that many people in Pontecagnano habitually 
performed stressful, specialized labor, and this would 
result in skeletons with marked, idiosyncratic pat-
terns of pathology and functional change. This is a 
classic example of something osteologists can read-
ily intuit while studying a collection but for which we 
have no developed methods for analyzing systemati-
cally. Standard protocols exist for recording data on 
entheseal markings, osteoarthritis, and some func-
tional variations such as supernumerary facets in 
joints. But many observable, possibly functional vari-
ations have never actually been studied, and those 
that have been studied respond to multiple causes. 
To take an example, Schmorl’s nodes are small le-
sions on vertebral bodies where bone has resorbed 
around a herniated intervertebral disk; they may re-
flect axial loading or spinal trauma, and they are 
sometimes but not always associated with lower back 
pain. Some authors consider Schmorl’s nodes sim-
ply an age- related degenerative symptom (Buikstra 
and Ubelaker 1994:121) even though they are often 
seen in young adults; others cautiously admit that 
they may be related to work and activity stress (Jur-
main 1998:166), while yet others consider them 
clearly related to mechanical stress (Capasso et  al. 
1999:38; Mann and Murphy 1990:52) or to vertebral 
morphology (Plomp et  al. 2012, 2015). Clinical re-
views suggest that they are multifactorial in origin, 
but functional loading is one important factor, par-
ticularly in younger patients (Kyere et al. 2012; Mattei 
and Rehman 2014). To add a layer of complexity, in-
formation about social process may reside in multi-
variate patterns, and hence simply tabulating single 
indicators such as one particular activity- related trait 
is usually insufficient. Essentially, we need a way to 
characterize people based upon a close reading of 
the texture of variation in their overall skeleton, and 
without regarding any single trait as diagnostic of 
activity.

In this study, however, simply as a proof of concept, 
a simple, direct approach has been taken. Using the 
general type of evidence considered to be potential 
signs of activity (Capasso et al. 1999; Dutour 1986; 
Kennedy 1989; Merbs 1983), skeletons were identified 
as likely to have performed some specialized form of 
labor, based upon several observations (Fig. 3):

• Idiosyncratic arthropathies, such as localized ebur-
nation: for instance, one skeleton displayed bilat-
eral eburnation on the articular surface of the 
coronoid process of the ulna, suggesting stressful 
forces pulling upon the forearms at full extension. 
Similarly, several skeletons displayed ankylosis of 
the first rib and sternum.



Robb 65

• Functional modifications: Besides nonmetric traits 
such as facets around the joints such as hands, feet, 
and hips suggesting habitual positions (Finnegan 
1978; Trinkaus 1975), examples include articular 
facets between the spinous processes on lumbar 
vertebrae (Kacki et al. 2011) and accessory facets 
within the shoulder capsule. Other examples in-
clude functional modifications such as interdental 
grooving probably related to craft activity.

• Morphological changes such as marked asymme-
try in the thorax or vertebrae.

• Idiosyncratic entheseal changes (e.g., places where 
specific muscle insertions departed markedly from 
the general pattern both within the skeleton and for 
the sample as a whole).

In most cases, several of these factors were used to-
gether in categorizing somebody as potentially a spe-
cialized worker. Traumas, pathologies, and variations 
probably pathological in origin were excluded from 
use in this categorization; while they are analyzed be-
low, they were not taken into account in assessing 

(a)

Figure 3. Examples of skeletal features considered potentially related to specialized activity: (a) eburnation, dens, C1 (3805); (b) interdental 
grooving between multiple upper teeth (3805); (c) spur at insertion of lateral pterygoid muscle, mandible (4065); (d) ankylosis of manubrium and left 
first rib (4021); (e) osteophyte limiting motion at coronoid process of left ulna (4040); (f) bilateral extension of proximal articular surface onto 
anterior surface of clavicles (4040); (g) broadened iliac crest with markedly rugose insertion of erector spinae (4040); (h) eburnation, head of first 
metatarsal (4040).

(a) (b)

(c)

(d)



Beyond Individual Lives66

“specialist” status so as to be able to compare them to 
“specialization” without autocorrelation. Schmorl’s 
nodes were also excluded from this categorization, as 
they occurred very commonly rather than idiosyn-
cratically throughout the sample, suggesting a differ-
ent pattern of causation (see below). As a method, this 
essentially formalizes a close reading of the skeleton, 
rather than rigorously collecting “hard” data in the 
traditional way. It does not claim to provide an iron-
clad diagnostic of specialized forms of labor (since 
there may be other causes behind the observed varia-
tions, and many specialized forms of work may not 

have left distinctive skeletal signatures); it also will 
bear some relationship with age, as some of the diag-
nostic signs of habitual activity patterns develop and 
become more distinct with age (this is controlled for 
below). But it is difficult to see any other way of ad-
dressing at least semi- systematically the patterned 
variation in activity indicators that the collection dis-
plays. At the level of preliminary exploration at-
tempted here, it provides a rough- and- ready first 
means of characterizing variation in complex traces of 
habitual activity. If it provides promising results, more 
sophisticated methods may be developed.

Figure 3. (Continued )

(e) (f)

(g)

(h)



Robb 67

The First Moment of a Social Biography: 
Birth, the Assignment of Gender, and Its 
Life Consequences

Most aspects of birth are not accessible to us for these 
people. We can, however, see one social response 
to birth: assigning a gender to the newborn. People 
were ascribed a gender immediately at birth (Foxhall 
2013:50). Bioarchaeologists usually consider sex as a bi-
ological given, in contrast to culturally defined gen-
der. We cannot assume a priori that in every society, 
gender is mapped directly onto biological variation 
(Geller 2017; Hollimon 2011; Sofaer 2013). However, in 
Classical society, gender was closely aligned with mor-
phological sex; it was considered mostly binary; and 
it was accompanied by strong expectations about gen-
dered work and comportment. It is specifically for 
these reasons that I view biological sex here as a reli-
able proxy for social gender. Treating sex in this way 
allows us to see being born as a biological male or fe-
male here as the first moment in an individual’s so-
cial biography, a social categorization placing the 
newborn on a particular social track.

This act had profound consequences throughout 
the life span. Women and men had quite different 
kinds of lives at Pontecagnano (Tables  2 and 3). 
Among childhood indicators, there is little difference 
in enamel hypoplasias; while cribra orbitalia is more 
frequent among women, this may indicate differing 
metabolic demands rather than social conditions. 
Gender differentiation is most marked in adult indi-
cators of behavior. Men systematically had higher 
levels of Schmorl’s nodes, traumatic injuries, perios-
titis (both generally and in the tibia), osteoarthritis 
(both generally and in eburnation), and entheseal 
markings (Table 3). Some of these differences may be 
ascribable to age, as there are proportionally more 
older males in the sample, but the male- female differ-
ence in age at death is not statistically significant 
(p = 0.342). More importantly, in women, these de-
generative and accumulative indicators tend to occur 
in older individuals, but among men they often occur 
in men who died in their twenties. This suggests that 
the rate of wear and tear differed, with men’s bodies 
exposed to stress and risk earlier and at a faster rate 
than women.

Men’s and women’s deaths were also responded to in 
different ways. Women tended to be buried with more 
grave goods than men. Moreover, when women were 
buried with things other than pottery these tended to 
be ornaments, while men tended to be buried with 
weapons, blades, elements of armor (typically a large 
metal belt), or strigils (a personal body- grooming 
 accessory used in male- only world of the gymnasium). 

These choices of grave goods are virtually stereotypi-
cal of gender imagery in the classical world (see Vida 
Navarro [1992] for similar patterns in earlier periods at 
Pontecagnano). Moreover, women received the most 
grave goods if they died in young adulthood, while 
men were more likely to be buried with goods if they 
died at older ages, perhaps reflecting increasing wealth 
or authority (Gnoli and Vernant 1982). This suggests 
that the narratives used to make sense of lives may 
have differed for women and men.

Childhood

Childhood must have been an important time of life, 
but in this sample there is little evident association be-
tween indicators of childhood health, suggesting that 
the experience of childhood may not have differed sys-
tematically in important ways. Nor do we observe a 
clear relationship between hypoplasia, stature, cribra 
orbitalia, and biological or social events later in life. 
There are several obvious reasons for this. First, this 
sample represents a relatively homogeneous social and 
economic stratum; classical towns such as Pontecag-
nano had extremes of wealth and poverty, but they 
are not represented specifically in this sample. Sec-
ond, in an ancient town such as Pontecagnano, while 
better- off people could shield their children from 
some risks of harm and malnutrition, the ability to 
control many health risks such as illness was limited. 
For example, malaria was endemic in southern Italy 
until recent drainage works, and would have affected 
all sectors of ancient society. As cribra orbitalia could 
result from several such conditions, this may be why 
it does not correlate with social markers. Third, some 
people may have shifted their status over their life-
time (e.g., people who were born enslaved but became 
free). Moreover, this sample includes only people who 
lived to adulthood. It therefore does not contain pri-
mary evidence for one role childhood played in shap-
ing the biography— the people dying as children who 
never made it to adulthood.

Becoming Impaired

Did physical impairment play a role in channeling 
people’s lives? The sample includes three male individ-
uals with conditions that might have affected their 
social presence or ability to work. The most marked 
case (3720) had a congenital deformity (humerus 
varus) that made his right arm 50 mm shorter than his 
left; he died in his twenties, with severe eburnation in 
his right shoulder joint, implying some long- standing 



Beyond Individual Lives68

Table 2. Biographical data on 47 adults from Pontecagnano (fifth to third centuries B.C.), colored according to categories used in analysis, 
and sorted by sex, life span, and Schmorl’s nodes. Data are sorted by sex, then age, then Schmorl’s nodes.

Childhood Adult Experience Life Span Treatment at Death

N
um

be
r

Se
x

H
yp

op
la

si
a

C
ri

br
a

St
at

ur
e

Sc
hm

or
l’n

od
es

Tr
au

m
a

Pe
ri

os
tit

is

Ti
bi

al
 p

er
io

st
iti

s

O
A

Eb
ur

na
tio

n

En
th

es
ea

l s
co

re

Sp
ec

ifi
c L

ab
or

20
–3

0

30
–4

0

40
–5

0

50
–

To
ta

l P
ot

s

To
ta

l g
oo

ds

To
ta

l n
on

-p
ot

s

N
on

-p
ot

s 
(c

at
eg

or
y)

3838 f 6 y 170.6 0 n n n n n 1.75 n y N n n 0 0 0 none

4094 f 3 1 152.7 0 n n n n n 2.23 n y N n n 1 1 0 none

3748 f 3 155.3 0 n n n 2.38   y N n n 0 3 3 ornaments

4017 f 2 n   0 n n n n n 2.18 n y N n n 6 11 5 ornaments

4019 f 2 n 154.6 0 n n n n n 2.18 n y N n n 14 21 7 ornaments

4059 f 4 y 157.6 5 n n n n n 2.36 n y N n n 0 0 0 none

4105 f 4 n 148.8   n n n n n 1.97 n y N n n 1 1 0 none

4106 f 3 y 160.9   n y y n n 2.08 n y N n n 3 3 0 none

4083 f 1 n     n n n n n 2.06 n y N n n 5 5 0 none

3499 f 3 y 158.5 0 y y y n n 2.79 n y y n n 7 11 4 ornaments

4013 f   n 160.8 0 n n n n n 2.65 n y y n n 2 3 1 ornaments

4045 f 1 n 151.5 1 n y y n n 2.28 n y y n n 0 1 1 ornaments

4020 f   153.0   n y y n n 2.57 n y y n n 1 1 0 none

4065 f 3 n 152.7 0 n n n y y 3.26 y y y y n 0 0 0 none

4035 f   157.4 0 n n n n n 2.82 n y y y n 0 0 0 none

4026 f 1 y 158.3 1 n y n y n 2.92 n y y y n 0 0 0 none

4034 f 1 y 154.7 5 y y n n n 2.51 n y y y n 1 2 1 ornaments

4084 f 2 144.3   n y n y n 3.27 n y y y n 0 0 0 none

4033 m 3 n   1 n y y n n 1.87 n y N N n 0 1 1 other

4085 m 3 n 166.8 2 y y y n n 2.52 y y N N n 0 0 0 none

3720 m 1 n 157.2 5 n n n y y 2.16 n y N N n 2 3 1 other

4093 m 3 y 169.8 8 y y y n n 2.39 n y N N n 0 0 0 none

4040 m 0 n 168.1 10 n n n y y 3.32 y y N N n 0 4 4 weapon

4029 m 3 y 165.0 11 y y y n n 2.47 n y N N n 0 0 0 none

4027 m 1 n 167.0 11 y y y y n 3.12 n y N N n 0 0 0 none

4016 m 4 n 170.2   y n n n n 2.54 n y N N n 1 1 0 none

3801 m 2 n 155.6   n n n y n 2.11 y y N N n 10 10 0 none

4037 m 2 n 172.7 0 n n n y n 3.33 n y y N n 1 1 0 none

4038 m 0 n 162.7 0 y y y n n 2.4 y y y N n 3 4 1 weapon

4051 m 3 n 163.0 0 y y n y y 2.7 y y y N n 0 2 2 armour

4025 m 3 n 169.9 1 y y y y y 2.61 n y y N n 0 0 0 none

3805 m 2 n 168.7 4 n y n y y 3.59 y y y N n 3 3 0 none

4028 m   168.2 0 n y y y n 3.14 n y y y n 0 0 0 none

4046 m 3 y 167.2 0 y y y n n 2.92 y y y y n 0 2 2 weapon

4021 m 2 170.8 0 n y y y y 3.14 y y y y n 0 1 1 strigil

4058 m 2 n 164.2 2 n y y y n 3.6 y y y y n 0 0 0 none

4043 m 1 n 166.5 3 y y n y n 3.09 y y y y n 0 0 0 none

4015 m 4 164.6 3 y n n n n 2.82 n y y y n 1 3 2
armour, 
strigil

4039 m 4 n 167.1 7 n y y y y 3.07 n y y y n 1 3 2 weapon



Robb 69

shoulder dysfunction (Fig. 4). He had Schmorl’s nodes 
in five vertebrae, implying an active physical regime, 
and was buried with normal rites, including for some 
reason an iron nail in his burial. A second individual 
(4025) had a probable subluxation of the right hip, 
which may have affected his gait. He also suffered 

traumas to the left ulna and radius and to his eighth 
thoracic vertebra, all healed; he died in his thirties and 
was buried without goods. The third (4029) suffered a 
fractured right femur midshaft that healed well but left 
his right leg angulated medially by about 15 degrees 
and 24 mm shorter than his left, probably affecting his 

Childhood Adult Experience Life Span Treatment at Death
N

um
be

r

Se
x

H
yp

op
la

si
a

C
ri

br
a

St
at

ur
e

Sc
hm

or
l’n

od
es

Tr
au

m
a

Pe
ri

os
tit

is

Ti
bi

al
 p

er
io

st
iti

s

O
A

Eb
ur

na
tio

n

En
th

es
ea

l s
co

re

Sp
ec

ifi
c L

ab
or

20
–3

0

30
–4

0

40
–5

0

50
–

To
ta

l P
ot

s

To
ta

l g
oo

ds

To
ta

l n
on

-p
ot

s

N
on

-p
ot

s 
(c

at
eg

or
y)

4012 m 2 y 160.3 7 n n n y n 2.82 n y y y n 5 5 0 none

4100 m 3 n 162.4 7 n y y y y 3.23 y y y y n 0 0 0 none

3733 m 1 n 175.6 10 n n y y 2.99 y y y y n 2 2 0 none

4018 m 2 n 166.6   y y y y y 2.82 y y y y n 0 0 0 none

4047 m 1 n 169.8 0 y y y y y 3.13 y y y y y 0 1 1 weapon

3533 m 0 n 166.6 0 y y y y y 2.83 y y y y y 1 2 1 armour

4042 m   165.2 10 n y n n n 2.99 n y y y y 0 1 1 other

4102 m 3 n 168.6 11 n y y y n 3.04 n y N n n 4 4 0 none

Table 3. Gendered differences in skeletal markers.

Stage of Life Biographical Marker Females Males

Childhood Enamel hypoplasia 0– 1 lesions: 4
2– 3 lesions: 8
4+ lesions: 4

0– 1 lesions: 8
2– 3 lesions: 16
4+ lesions: 3

Cribra orbitalia 7/14 (50%) 4/25 (16%)

Stature Mean 155.7 Mean 166.4

Adult experience Schmorl’s nodes 4/13 individuals (31%) 18/26 individuals (69%)
Mean vertebrae affected 
per person: 0.92

Mean vertebrae affected 
per person: 4.35

Trauma 2/18 (11%) 14/29 (48%)

Periostitis 7/18 (39%) 21/29 (72%)

Tibial periostitis 4/18 (22%) 17/28 (61%)

OA 3/17 (18%) 20/29 (69%)

Eburnation 1/17 (6%) 12/29 (41%)

Entheseal score Mean: 2.46 Mean: 2.85

Specialized labor 1/17 (6%) 15/29 (52%)

Life span Life span 20– 30: 9 (50%) 20– 30: 9 (32%)
30– 40: 4 (22%) 30– 40: 5 (18%)
40– 50: 5 (28%) 40– 50: 11 (39%)
50+: 0 (0%) 50+: 3 (11%)

Response to death Total pots Mean: 2.28 Mean: 1.17

Total other goods Mean: 1.22 Mean: 0.66

Total goods Mean: 3.50 Mean: 1.83

Kinds of other goods Ornaments Weapons, armor, strigils, a 
few  miscellaneous objects



Beyond Individual Lives70

gait. He also had cribra orbitalia (unusually for a male 
in this sample), strong entheseal markings for his age, 
11 vertebrae with Schmorl’s nodes, and a healed blade 
cut to his right orbit. He died in his twenties.

All three men clearly had a high risk of injury and 
physical stress, and none survived beyond his thirties, 
placing them at one end of the spectrum of adult male 
experience (see below) and suggesting perhaps that 
ordinary social life did not treat them kindly. On the 
other hand, all three men were buried in a more or 
less “normal” way, and the life risks they ran were not 
unique to them but shared with other men. This sug-
gests that they were not categorically excluded or 
stigmatized; as Laes (2018) comments for the Roman 
period, people with such impairments may have expe-
rienced pain and been socially marked or disadvan-
taged, but they would also have been integrated into 
everyday social life.

Adulthood: Women’s Life Paths

The Pontecagnano women in this sample seem a ho-
mogeneous group, at least skeletally (Table 2; Fig. 7). 
They display relatively few pathologies, traumas, or ad-
aptations to marked physical stress. They clearly ex-
perienced serious life risks, as many of them died 

relatively early in adulthood. It is possible that some 
died in childbirth, but we cannot prove this. Their 
burials, however, give us some idea of the normative 
biography for women. Many women dying young had 
simple burials. For example, 4094 stands for many of 
them; a small, gracile woman, she died between 18 and 
22 years of age and was buried with a single pot. But 
while 4019 had a similar life trajectory, her burial re-
veals both more wealth in life (if the gold and silver 
ornaments she wore in death belonged to her) and a 
more ostentatious expression of grief in the willing-
ness to sacrifice such wealth permanently. The three 
women who had relatively lavish grave goods all died 
relatively young (4017 and 4019 in their twenties, 3499 
between 30 and 35). Classical sources suggest that 
motherhood was an important component of women’s 
identity, and it may be that such ceremonial expres-
sions react to a “bad death” (Gnoli and Vernant 1982), a 
sense of losing this opportunity; perhaps they mark a 
woman dying without children (daughters, or sons who 
might marry) to whom she could pass on her personal 
gendered wealth. In contrast, older women generally 
received relatively simple burials. Classical women are 
often shown in art as authoritative matriarchs at the 
center of a family (Leader 1997); it seems likely that 
women’s age was valued, but it was expressed in ways 
other than burial.

Figure 4. Congenital “humerus varus” condition, 3720: (a) right and left humeri; (b) proximal epiphysis, 
left humerus.

(a) (b)



Robb 71

Fig. 5. Relationship between average entheseal scores and age at death. 
Top chart: women. Bottom chart: men.

There were also variations from this common path-
way. Some may reflect individual variation. Individ-
ual 4084 was a very small woman (144.3 cm) with 
enamel hypoplasias reflecting two severe episodes of 
stress in childhood. She survived until her forties; 
when she died, she had osteoarthritis in her cervical 
vertebrae, a healed periosteal lesion on her left femur, 
an enthesopathy on her right bicipital tuberosity, and 
hyperostosis frontalis interna. None of these necessar-
ily speak of a life of poverty or marginality. Other 
variations probably reflect work patterns. While Clas-
sical women, particularly among the poor, routinely 
did physical work including farm and industrial work, 
they performed specialized jobs less often than did 
men. Three women in this group (3838, 4059, 4015) 
display a pattern of early death with many hypopla-
sias, cribra orbitalia, and/or reduced stature, perhaps 
suggesting particular poverty. Given how rare it is for 
women in this group to display Schmorl’s nodes, it is 
striking that 4059 had five vertebrae affected by them 
before she died between 18 and 22; this may mark her 
as performing especially heavy work. In contrast, 4065 
appears the best candidate for a woman undertaking 
specialized work. She displays osteoarthritis in her 
hands, feet, and neck (the latter with eburnation), but 
not her back, suggesting that it is not simply due to 
age- related degeneration. Her entheseal markings are 
idiosyncratically varied, with particularly marked 
common extensors and flexors bilaterally, and, inter-
estingly, marked insertions for the lateral pterygoid 
muscles. Her left first metacarpal displays a 10 mm 
palmar outgrowth at its base which may be due to a 
functional extension or a poorly healed avulsion frac-
ture. These may suggest that she habitually engaged 
in some specialized activity before she died in her for-
ties, perhaps some craft production. Interestingly, 
neither she nor 4059 were accorded particular burial 
treatment. This may suggest that, while particular 
forms of women’s work may have been valued, phys-
ical work per se did not form part of a woman’s iden-
tity in the same way it did men’s.

Adulthood: Men’s Divergent Life Paths

The Pontecagnano male skeletons seem both “busier” 
and more varied, in complicated ways. The effect of 
age is surprisingly minimal. We might expect both 
age- related phenomena such as osteoarthritis and le-
sions such as traumas and periosteal deposition (which 
accumulate in the skeleton over time) to show a clear 
relationship with age at death— a version of the “oste-
ological paradox” (Wood et al. 1992). Indeed, this is 
the case with dental disease (caries and antemor-
tem loss) in this sample, which clearly progresses with 
age. But systematic screening shows no significant 

relationship between most of the skeletal features con-
sidered here and age in males. The only exception is the 
average entheseal score, and even this is much less 
closely associated with age in men (r2 = 0.264) than it 
is in women, among whom it shows a quite close rela-
tionship (r2 = 0.723) (Fig. 5). While entheseal marking 
increased with age in all men, in some men this hap-
pened gradually, while others began experiencing no-
ticeable entheseal changes as soon as they achieved 
adulthood, if not before; the age at onset is confirmed 
by men dying in their twenties with high entheseal 
markings (Fig. 5). The same thing can be seen with 
Schmorl’s nodes. Interestingly, there seems to have 
been a difference between males with five or fewer 
Schmorl’s nodes (principally involving lumbar verte-
brae, perhaps for biomechanical causes [Plomp et al. 
2012, 2015]) and those with more than five which im-
plies substantial thoracic involvement (Fig. 6). Overall, 



Beyond Individual Lives72

Table 4. Schmorl’s nodes in men from Pontecagnano. Gray = skeletal 
evidence of possible specialized labor. Black = none. * = buried with 
grave goods other than pottery.

Number of Thoracic 
and Lumbar Vertebrae 
with Schmorl’s Nodes

Dying 
20– 30

Dying 
30– 40

Dying 
40– 50

Dying 
50+

0 4037 4038*
4051*

4021*
4028
4046*

3533* 
4047*

1 4033* 4025
2 4085 4058
3 4015*

4043
4 3805
5 3720*
6
7 4012

4039*
4100

8 4093
9
10 4040* 3733 4042*
11 4027

4029
4102

Fig. 6. The number of vertebrae affected by Schmorl’s nodes in males; red shows individuals flagged as 
possibly performing specialized labor, blue shows individuals not flagged as such. Asterisks mark individuals 
buried with grave goods other than pottery vessels.

in the Pontecagnano sample, while some men dy-
ing older may have accumulated these lesions with 
age, others clearly experienced extensive spinal damage 
before dying in their twenties (Table 4). Skeletal de-
generation, thus, did not simply mirror age. Some 
men may have followed high- impact lifestyles that 
placed heavy general stress upon the skeleton from the 
very beginning of adulthood, while others followed 
lower- impact lifestyles in which wear and tear accu-
mulated more gradually.

But who were these men? Which pathway they trav-
eled may have had some relation to their occupation. 
Ancient cities such as Pontecagnano had complex di-
visions of labor, with a wide range of recognized, full- 
time occupations for males, most involving physical 
labor. Here, about half (15/29) of the male skeletons 
were identified as potentially having performed spe-
cialized work using the criteria described above. As 
noted above, this is merely an approximate, suggestive 

categorization, but it helps to identify those skeletons 
with unusual, potentially activity- related features. 
“Specialization” has a complex relationship with 
Schmorl’s nodes (recall that the two were separated 
analytically here as variables independent from each 
other). The distribution of Schmorl’s nodes in men is 
clearly bimodal (Fig. 6): 16 men had 0– 5 lesions, while 
10 had 6– 11 lesions. Men with no or few Schmorl’s 
nodes were more likely to be “specialists”; men with 
many Schmorl’s nodes were more likely not to be “spe-
cialists” (Fig. 6). This suggest that some men habitually 
performed activities placing generalized stress upon 
the back, while others performed physically forceful 
but much more specific activities.

A few examples can give a human sense of such pat-
terns. At one pole are individuals such as 4027, 4029, 
4093, and 4102, who died young showing signs of hard 
physical labor. For example, by the time he died be-
tween 20 and 25 years of age, 4027 already had strong 
entheseal markings for his age (particularly torso 
musculature such as the erector spinae), 11 vertebrae 
marked by Schmorl’s nodes, and osteoarthritis in his 
spine, neck, and acromia, not to mention having bro-
ken five right ribs which were probably fractured in a 
single episode and subsequently healed. In such cases, 
ongoing entheseal damage, joint degeneration, and 
minor back injuries were unlikely to have caused their 
deaths directly, almost all traumas observed were 
healed, and their early age at death probably bespeaks 
other life risks in addition to these stresses, suggest-
ing hard or hazardous lives. Men such as these, dying 
in their twenties with heavily stressed skeletons, were 
often buried without grave goods.

At the other pole are individuals such as 3533, 4021, 
4028, and 4047. These men show signs of specialized 
work regimes, lived relatively longer lives, and were 
buried with prestigious objects. For example, 4021 died 
in his forties with no Schmorl’s nodes or trauma, but 
he displays highly varied and idiosyncratic enthesop-
athies, unilateral eburnation marking lateral compres-
sion of the neck, asymmetry of the thorax with slight, 
hardly noticeable scoliosis, strongly asymmetrical 



Robb 73

arms, and ankyloses of the first ribs and sternum. He 
also had time to develop generalized periostitis and 
moderate osteoarthritis in the spine and shoulders. He 
was buried with a strigil, a reference to the urban, so-
cially aspirational masculine culture of the gymna-
sium (Robb and Harris 2013:chapter  4). Five or six 
other men in the sample display similar patterns. We 
must be cautious about interpreting relations between 
possible work specialization and age at death, as some 
of the evidence for work patterns (entheseal markings 
and arthropathies) becomes more distinct and legible 
with advancing age. But at least some younger men’s 
skeletons show that differentiated activities could leave 
traces in the skeleton already from early adulthood. 
At death, men identified as possibly performing spe-
cialized work may have been buried more often with 
weapons, armor, or strigils (Table 2). One might expect 
athletic equipment such as strigils to be associated 
with younger men rather than with men in their thir-
ties, forties, and fifties, and there is no clear association 
between being buried with weapons or armor and 
skeletal evidence of actual violence (Table 5). Instead, 
these grave goods probably refer to ideals of masculin-
ity and to social identity or community position.

But before we simply divide Pontecagnano males 
into laborers crushed by toil and upwardly mobile 
craft specialists, it is worth looking at variations too. 
We may perhaps identify generalized workers living 
to old age; for instance, 4042 lived into his fifties with 
no particular signs of activity beyond 10 Schmorl’s 
nodes. Conversely, some men with “specialized” skel-
etons died in early or middle adulthood. Individual 
4051 died in his thirties with no Schmorl’s nodes but 
with an unusual pattern of activity markers. He habit-
ually flexed his head, creating an articular facet for 
the occipital on C2; this was accompanied by a button- 
like callosity on the back of the sacrum, hyperflexion 
in his hips (with extension of the articular surface on 
to the anterior neck of the femurs) and ankles (with 
well- expressed hyperflexion facets on both distal tib-
iae), alteration of the shape of the left patella, and 
strongly lateralized arms with eburnation at the right 

acromion. His three broken ribs may not have been re-
lated to whatever activities created this suite of skele-
tal changes. He was buried with a large metal belt (a 
high- status male object related to armor) and some 
hooks. The body of 3085 was marked above all by ac-
tivity in the mouth and head region, shown by dental 
grooving between many teeth (something almost 
unique in this group), the development of two separate 
wear planes on his anterior teeth, strong development 
of the temporal muscles, and osteoarthritis evidencing 
downward pressure on the left side of the neck. This 
was accompanied by eburnation in the manual pha-
langes, general osteoarthritis in the neck, thoracic 
spine, and elbows, and periostitis in the right fibula 
and right olecranon fossa. When he died in his thirties 
he was buried with three pottery vessels. Such varia-
tions suggest that men’s life paths were not rigid or cat-
egorical tracks but fuzzy envelopes of possibilities.

How far can we go in interpreting life paths among 
these men? Some skeletons offer few hooks on which 
to hang a biographical narrative. Individual 4028, who 
died in his forties with active periostitis in his lower 
legs and enthesopathies at the insertions of his left glu-
teus maximum and adductor magnus, was buried 
without grave goods. Such men either followed other 
patterns of activity or did not trigger the biological 
processes creating clear skeletal data. Others offer, if 
anything, too much information. Individual 4038 is 
not particularly large (162 cm), and his skeleton is not 
marked by Schmorl’s nodes or by particularly devel-
oped entheseal markings. It is not clear why both his 
humeral shafts are bent outward by 5– 10 degrees. But 
he shows old fractures of his lower right third molar 
and left clavicle, and his skull shows a clear perimor-
tem trauma from a strong blow to the left parietal with 
some blunt instrument, creating a blown- out circular 
perforation with internal beveling, radiating fractures, 
and no signs of healing (Robb 1997: Fig. 5.3). When he 
died in his thirties, 4038 he was buried with three pots 
and an iron blade. Perhaps the most dramatic skele-
ton is 4040 (see Robb 1994). He was a young man who 
lived until 25– 30. Even in his short adult life, he had 

Table 5. Grave goods and trauma in Pontecagnano males

Trauma Related to Violence

None Possible Probable

Grave goods related 
to violence or 
masculinity

None 16 individuals 4027 (ribs) 4016 (cranial) 
4029 (cranial)

Possible 4021 (strigil) 
4047 (knife)

3533 (boxer’s fracture; 
metal sheet)

Probable 4015 (metal belt, strigil) 
4021 (strigil) 
4039 (blade) 
4040 (point)

4051 (ribs; metal belt) 4038 (cranial, 
perimortem; blade) 
4046 (cranial; point)



Beyond Individual Lives74

acquired a long suite of skeletal changes. These in-
cluded strongly marked entheses for his age and ver-
tebrae with 10 Schmorl’s nodes, but also many more 
specific markers: severely worn anterior teeth, enthe-
ses showing very strong flexion and abduction of both 
arms, an osteophyte on the coronoid process limiting 
flexion of his left ulna, strong flexion of the fingers, 
enthesopathies at the insertion of erector spinae, an-
kylosis of the third and fourth thoracic vertebrae, a 
button- like callosity on the posterior sacrum, eburna-
tion of the head of right first metatarsal, and flattened 
heads of the metatarsals. These do not all have to refer 
to a single activity or occupation, but they form a 
unique set in this group, and they also show that spe-
cialized activity may have involved very forceful physi-
cal stress and may be evident already in early adulthood. 
When he died, 4040 was buried with an iron lance 
point, a fibula, and a pendant made from a boar tooth.

Imagining Ancient Lives

This article is experimental; it will have succeeded if 
it gives the reader the sense of having encountered the 
people of Pontecagnano as people rather than as skel-
etons and if it gives a sense of both the common pat-
terns and the different tracks their lives followed as 
they unfolded. I have intentionally tried to write in 
terms a historian or anthropologist might use to 
talk about people rather than terms an osteologist 
would use to talk about skeletons. Much as Barrett and 
Blakey (2011) have done with enslaved Africans in 
early New York, I have also tried to juxtapose multi-
ple osteobiographies to give a sense of the major issues, 
challenges, or range of life experience people had.

In interpreting these people’s lives, I have tried to 
walk carefully between two extremes. One is over- 
formalizing— for instance, by trying to rigidly typolo-
gize skeletons into formally defined groups. Biological 
data always have variation due to multiple causes, 
and assigning individuals to categories automatically 
moves everything else we know about them into the 
background, simplifying our understanding of them. 
The other extreme is over- concretizing. Osteobiogra-
phy traditionally focuses upon adding as much detail 
as possible about individual subjects. It is tempting to 
imagine 4016 as a well- off and attractive young woman 
dying before her marriage or in childbirth, or 4065 as 
an older woman sitting at a loom. Individual 4059 
could be a dependent or a slave, hauling heavy jugs of 
water for a large household all day, with 4027 her male 
equivalent, toiling at backbreaking unskilled labor. 
Individual 4051 squats, head bent intently and legs 
akimbo, over his workbench or potter’s wheel, while 
4040 hauls at the oars of a galley. All of these are 

entirely plausible for the historical context and skeletal 
data; none of them are the only possible pictures the 
data allow. But beyond the risk of drawing unwar-
ranted conclusions, focusing upon single individuals 
and their individual stories loses the sense of how hu-
man lives unfolded generally within this community.

When we juxtapose many biographies, what really 
emerges is the texture of social process. At Pontecag-
nano, children were placed on gendered tracks at 
birth, giving them different life chances and risks. 
These gendered pathways were conditioned not merely 
by biological difference but above all by social differ-
ences regarding ideas of the life trajectory and activi-
ties appropriate to male and female lives. Childhood 
seems not to have had a strong influence on adult tra-
jectory, provided one survived it. Physical limitations 
did not place individuals outside the range of ordinary 
activity and burial. Once they reached adulthood, 
women had more homogeneous life paths. There is 
some differentiation both in terms of evident wealth 
and physical stress, but there are not marked dis-
continuities among the women in this sample. Their 
deaths were most marked in terms of gender and 
wealth in early adulthood; physical work seems not to 
have been a strongly salient part of their identity as it 
was among men. Men’s lives were more differentiated, 
and they seem to have become so immediately from 
the onset of adulthood, if not before. If there were 
strong or rigid categories, they may have been legal or 
political (e.g., servitude or economic dependency) 
rather than simply mapped on to activity regime, and 
are invisible to us now. What we see, instead, is a spec-
trum. Some men performed stressful general labor, 
and many of them died young. Some men probably 
performed specialized labors, and they may have had 
a greater chance of living longer and being buried with 
markers of masculinity, social aspiration, or position. 
But it would be misleading here to speak of rigid so-
cial differences, for example between artisans and la-
borers; even within this small sample from a limited 
segment of the social spectrum whose lives were far 
more similar than they were different, we see men ex-
emplifying all variants on these possible tracks.

Life tracks provide fuzzy, non- deterministic enve-
lopes rather than narrow pathways. They should leave 
statistical patterns in large samples. In small samples, 
as we lose the ability to nail down correlations statis-
tically, we gain the ability to think about the people we 
study as individuals. Hence a map of our subjects’ life 
courses shows tendencies, bundles of trajectories, but 
also a tangle of interweaving lives (Fig. 7). These rep-
resent the result of not only social position but also bi-
ological variation, contingency, and social movement. 
And there is no reason to suppose that these histories 
would not have been discursively available to people 



Robb 75

in ancient societies, at least as ideals of normative lives 
and the situated histories of how far individuals were 
able to negotiate the challenges they faced.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the Museo Nazionale di Antropolo-
gia, Firenze, for permission to study the skeletons 
from Pontecagnano, and to colleagues who helped 
with that research: Vitaliano Rossi, Caterina Scarsini, 
Renzo Bigazzi, Fiorenza Sonego, and Luca Lazzarini. 
Sarah Inskip and Piers Mitchell provided helpful ad-
vice on this manuscript. Nick Zair provided linguistic 
advice. All errors and misinterpretations remain my 
own. Funding for data collection was provided by 
the Wenner- Gren Foundation for Anthropological 
Research; theoretical concepts involved were partly 
developed under the aegis of Wellcome Trust Collab-
orative Grant (Collaborative Grant 200368/Z/15/A). 
I am very grateful to several anonymous reviewers 
whose thoughtful and detailed comments have sub-
stantially improved the manuscript.

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