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The Greek colonial expansion of the early 1st millennium BC spread people, goods, art, ideas and lifestyles across the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. The relationships between the mother-cities and colonies were multidirectional, profitable for both entities, and in some cases the colonies preceded the motherland in terms of cultural and political developments. Within this context the reconstruction of dietary habits can shed significant light on these interactions, as food in ancient Greek societies was regarded as a marker of ethnic and cultural differentiation. To address pending questions about subsistence in ancient colonies, we apply the established method of stable isotope analysis in human bone collagen to present the diet in the colony of Ambracia, from its occupation phase (archaic era) up to its destruction (Hellenistic era). Ambracia was founded by the city of Corinth in 625 B.C. on the banks of the river Arachthos in western Greece. The geostrategic location, at the crossroad of southern and northern Greece, made the colony a melting pot of cultural and commercial exchange particularly during the classical period (480-323 BC). Our dataset consists values of stable isotope ratios of carbon and nitrogen (δ15N, δ13C) from bone collagen of 158 human skeletons from the western cemetery of ancient Ambracia. Preliminary results show that terrestrial animal protein played a pivotal role in the dietary habits of the population with a lesser contribution of C3 plants and marine resources. Our findings will be correlated with literary evidence and other dietary studies in total period datasets from ancient Greek colonies. Our observations aim to delineate the dietary shifts during the colonization process and shed light on the intensely debated subject of daily life during the second Greek colonization in mainland ancient Greece.

EAA 2022: Abstract

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