Rome’s urban history inferred from Pb-contaminated waters trapped in its ancient harbor basins

Delile, H., Keenan-Jones, D. , Blichert-Toft, J., Goiran, J.-P., Arnaud-Godet, F. and Albarède, F. (2017) Rome’s urban history inferred from Pb-contaminated waters trapped in its ancient harbor basins. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 114(38), pp. 10059-10064. (doi: 10.1073/pnas.1706334114) (PMID:28847928)

Abstract

Heavy metals from urban runoff preserved in sedimentary deposits record long-term economic and industrial development via the expansion and contraction of a city’s infrastructure. Lead concentrations and isotopic compositions measured in the sediments of the harbor of Ostia—Rome’s first harbor—show that lead pipes used in the water supply networks of Rome and Ostia were the only source of radiogenic Pb, which, in geologically young central Italy, is the hallmark of urban pollution. High-resolution geochemical, isotopic, and 14C analyses of a sedimentary core from Ostia harbor have allowed us to date the commissioning of Rome’s lead pipe water distribution system to around the second century BC, considerably later than Rome’s first aqueduct built in the late fourth century BC. Even more significantly, the isotopic record of Pb pollution proves to be an unparalleled proxy for tracking the urban development of ancient Rome over more than a millennium, providing a semiquantitative record of the water system’s initial expansion, its later neglect, probably during the civil wars of the first century BC, and its peaking in extent during the relative stability of the early high Imperial period. This core record fills the gap in the system’s history before the appearance of more detailed literary and inscriptional evidence from the late first century BC onward. It also preserves evidence of the changes in the dynamics of the Tiber River that accompanied the construction of Rome’s artificial port, Portus, during the first and second centuries AD.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Keenan-Jones, Dr Duncan
• Authors: Delile, H., Keenan-Jones, D., Blichert-Toft, J., Goiran, J.-P., Arnaud-Godet, F., and Albarède, F.
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Humanities > Classics
• Journal Name: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
• Publisher: National Academy of Sciences
• ISSN: 0027-8424
• ISSN (Online): 1091-6490
• Published Online: 28 August 2017
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2017 National Academy of Sciences
• First Published: First published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 114(38):10059-10064
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher