some portions of pork in Roman Colchester…

Yesterday (9th January), Dr Sophie Hay Tweeted a photo. of a portable Roman sundial in the form of a ham, dating to the late 1st century AD, which was discovered in 1755 at Herculaneum. Herculaneum was the Roman town destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, along with Pompeii. This Tweet was such a coincidence, as we have recently written on this blog about the Trust’s two recent finds of pork from Roman Colchester, ie the pig’s head bones from our site within the Williams & Griffin store in 2014 and the special dish of pork bones from a Roman burial at the Flagstaff House complex in late 2016. Dr Hay also recently Tweeted a photo. of a Roman fresco depicting a household shrine with a pig’s head (at Terzigno). Just before Christmas, ‘Following Hadrian’ (Carole Raddato) Tweeted a photo. for the winter festival of Saturnalia, of a Roman fresco (from Pompeii) showing a pig being taken to slaughter or for sacrifice. See an image of the Roman ham sundial, known as the ‘prosciutto di Portici’, at http://isaw.nyu.edu/exhibitions/time-cosmos/objects/portable-sundial-ham and read about it at https://archive.org/stream/Gnomonica.StudiSiStoriaDellaGnomonica.ParteTerza/art28_djvu.txt .

Apparently, ancient Rome created a pork-based cuisine and there are several Latin words for pork: ‘porcus’ is the Latin word for pig; ‘aper’ for wild boar; and ‘porca’ for sucking-pig. Ham was ‘perna’. (‘Norcineria’ is the Italian word for a pork butcher.) The name of the Italian dry-cured ham, prosciutto, derives from the Latin words pro and exsuctus (the verb exsugere means ‘to extract [moisture’]). In The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Rome (edited by Paul Erdkamp, 2013), it is observed that ‘… Although meat did not dominate ancient diets … pork, when available and affordable, was a favoured food for the Romans … Consequently, pork dishes dominate meat recipes, such as those of Apicius …’. The Roman emperor Diocletian issued an edict on prices which includes pork food products *. There is a marble funerary relief of a pork butcher at work dating to about the 2nd century, from Rome, which includes a pig’s head (now at the Cleveland Museum of Art): see an image of this at http://library.clevelandart.org/node/173151 . 

Roman authors Pliny and Varro describe the Roman pig industry. Pigs were easy to feed and rear and produced meat and other products such as intestines and feet, lard and blood, grease for wheels, bristle, and pigskin/hide, and were also used for sacrifice and funerary food offerings. Pliny recorded 52 uses of and observations on fat, and observed that Roman cuisine included 50 flavours of pork (see the The social archaeology of food: thinking about eating from prehistory to the present, by Christine A Hastorf, 2016). Read about Roman pigs and wild boars in Pliny’s Natural History, book 8, chapter LXXVII, at www.masseiana.org/pliny.htm#BOOK%20VIII . Pigs were also associated with death and rebirth, with the celebration of weddings and Saturnalia, and with the gods Silvanus and Mercury: pigs would also be sacrificed to ‘Mother Earth’ (Tellus Mater or Terra Mater) at funerals.

Colchester Archaeological Report 12: Animal bones from excavations in Colchester, 1971-85 (CAR 12) is a study of the faunal remains which the Trust recovered during our large area excavations in Colchester in 1971-1985. Pork was popular at Colchester thoughout the Roman period, as shown by the quantities of pig bones which we recovered from sites within the town wall. Sites representing the early Roman fortress at Colchester produced high levels of pig bones and the Roman soldiers here clearly favoured pork, especially sucking-pig. The same evidence has been produced at other early Roman military sites in Britain, such as at Caerleon, Fishbourne, Exeter, Leicester, Cirencester, and York. (Interestingly, there is a Roman piglet from Bocoreale which was killed but preserved whole by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79: sucking-pig was the favourite Roman form of pork.) Outside the town wall, we recovered high levels of pig bones at the site of the probable Romano-British church by the Maldon Road roundabout, which seems to have been the venue for funerary feasts.
Read CAR 12 in our online archive at http://cat.essex.ac.uk/ .

The Trust’s two recent finds of Roman pork represent food (dating to AD 60) and a funerary offering (we date the burial to the late 2nd-mid 3rd century AD or a bit later). The funerary offering of meat is rare and the burial which included it would also have been close to the Roman circus, which seems to have been built in the early 2nd century AD and in use for about 150 years, until towards the end of the 3rd century. The site of Colchester’s Roman circus represents, of course, the only known Roman circus in Britain, so this is a remarkable burial indeed.

The images show our two recent finds of pork from Roman Colchester (the pig’s head bones and the funerary offering) and the fresco from Pompeii: photo. by Carole Raddato, generously published for free use at www.flickr.com/photos/carolemage/23530545350/in/photolist-qNrFYF-pRADpC-qvAxkZ-oEU26H-oCV8Wh-oBDf1u-qw3ksS-qKEiyN-omCMDC-aycpPV-oD2r22-aygaEj-qNwvNG-ayf7zh-pRANsN-ayg2dY-omDMyH-odUZ2Z-aygbN9-aydpp4-ayfm5E-nWrB28-qNwsiL-GXs6Ns-LePPKg-aydrUk-aydvYH-aydgCv-ayghrG-ayg1D5-ozxHuy-oBiFAV-ayg6pN-ayfZKs-FD71Vz-b8TKHp-ayf59b-aydALg-aydkQT-sms7ZC-s4Ao5K-snY7jH-GXs2J5-GXs7zN-GUqKN2-syfrTg-BRjckL-qDt1S6-B7srmA-Qfdx7y .

* From Diocletian’s edict:
‘… Item of butcher’s meat …
Pork …                                                  one Italian pound   12 [denarii] …
Ficatum (hog’s liver enlarged by fatting, the best)  id.   16
Lard, the best                                                                id.    16
The best bacon ham of Westphalia or the Cerdagne   id.   20 …
Pigs’ feet – the belly and inwards to be sold at the
same price as pork                                                       id.    4
An isicium (or fresh sausage) of one ounce, made of pork   2 …
Lucanicae (seasoned and smoked sausages), made of pork   id.   16 …’ – the Edict of Diocletian fixing a maximum of prices throughout the Roman empire A.D. 303, translated by W M Leake, published by John Murray (1826).

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