Living at the outskirts of the roman empire after the fall. A study of 5th century Bavarian burials

Abstract

The long lasting transformation process from the Roman Imperial Age to Early Middle Ages reaches its zenith in the 5th century AD. The present study focuses on southern Bavaria during this specific time period, which up to that point was incorporated into the Roman Empire as the province Raetia Secunda. All known existing anthropological data were collected and examined in order to provide an overview of a momentary anthropological understanding for this time period. The study is augmented by additionally-conducted anthropological and strontium isotope analyses on skeletons from four recently-discovered contemporary cemeteries to provide information on the health and living conditions of the past local populations there. However, results show that anthropological data for this time and region are rare and therefore generalized conclusions based on anthropological information are seldom possible. Nonetheless, it is interesting to note that an increase in body height near the end of the 5th century, as well as differences in the frequency of stress markers, were observed in the small cemeteries investigated. Furthermore, strontium analysis showed that in contrast to the late Roman period, immigrants from areas with high strontium values were detected near the end of the 5th century.