Rattus went to Rome!

One of the best things about working in academia is attending conferences. The EAA or the European Association of Archaeologists is one of the biggest conferences around - this year 5,000 (yes, five thousand!) archaeologists descended on Rome for the 30th EAA meeting. From the RATTUS project, Ele and Michelle flew to Rome to take part and David attended the conference virtually. The EAA took place over 3 days across the Sapienza University Campus. To give you an idea of scale, up to 70 sessions were running in parallel! Such a huge conference means that there is always something engaging to see, no matter what your interests are. Of course, the downside is that often you miss things due to scheduling… and that’s exactly what happened to Michelle and I because our sessions were on at exactly the same time! So we’ll have to split the writing of this post. 

Michelle and Ele at Sapienza University of Rome

Building on work I (Ele) did for my PhD, I was the lead organiser for Session #1061 Appreciating the Archaeological Value of Preserved Faeces using Multifaceted Methods and it went really well! We filled our assigned room and had around 40 people in attendance all to hear about different ways of analysing old poo in the archaeological record. One of my favourite things about the session was that we heard talks from people using so many different techniques - microscopy, lipids, DNA (including me), proteomics, radiocarbon dating, CT scanning - all sorts! After the talks, we had a room discussion and are considering starting a working group, so if you’re a coprolite person, let me know and I’ll add you to the list. 

One of Ele’s slides showing faecal concretions from cesspits in Coppergate

Over to Michelle:

At exactly the same time, in another building on campus, Session 151: The Beasts Among Us: A Closer Look at Synanthropic Human-Animal Relations in the Past, was beginning.  We had a good number of attendees, and after a slightly precarious start due to tech issues (aren’t there always!) we got into the flow.  It was my first time chairing a hybrid session, and so getting to grips with making sure each new presentation was shared online took a bit of remembering, but we got there.

We had some really interesting papers that showcased how varied synanthropy is (living with or close to humans and benefiting from our spaces), with papers on insects, rodents, cats, and even a palaeo-synanthropic niche in the late pleistocene.  My paper was titled Moving House(mouse): A look at Microfaunal Assemblages and the Anthrodependant Niche in Anatolia.  David’s paper also went well, although it was our one big technology hiccup as it was an online presentation, so unfortunately he was moved to the end of the session to let the tech wizards do their thing, and it eventually went really well.  EAA was definitely the largest conference I’ve ever attended and I was surprised (not really surprised) at how many people I knew that were there.  

Photos of the University campus

David's title slide

We couldn’t write a blog about Rome and not talk about the weather. In the UK this year we haven’t had a hot summer, the average temperature in August 2024 was 21 °C. Arriving in a humid 36 °C Rome was a shock to the system for us northern Europeans. However, so courageous are we that the adventure started with a 300-mile round trip to Pompeii! It was the first time either of us had visited the famous Roman city that was obliterated, but wonderfully preserved, by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. Coming from my archaeological background, it is so hard to look at these amazing buildings and actually register that they are 2,000 years old. Some of the structures are in better condition than buildings less than 100 years old!

Pompeiian pavements

After the conference, we explored some of the highlights of Rome. We spent hours walking around the Colosseum. We admired the perfectly preserved gate numbers that acted as the Roman solution to crowd control. Only 4 entrances to the Colosseum don’t have a number. One of these was for the Magistrates and another for the Emperor and the Vestal Virgins. The remaining two were the Gate of Life, from which the Gladiators entered, and the Gate of Death, where dead animals and Gladiators were removed from the amphitheatre. On a tour, we learnt that “Colosseum” was not the original name for the structure. Instead, the Romans would go to the “Flavian Amphitheatre” to see Gladiators fighting each other and exotic animals. The name “Colosseum” apparently came from a repurposed colossal 30 m Bronze statue of Nero which towered over the amphitheatre from the second century CE. 

Michelle and Ele at the Colosseum

We moved across to the Forum Romanum next door and I now understand the term “archaeological park” and there is no better way to describe it! It was brilliant to walk over the same floors as the politicians, administrators, and artists of ancient Rome. It was quite funny to see huge piles of Roman column chunks. If they had been found in the UK any of those pieces could be in a museum somewhere, but here they were just added to a big pile of other pieces.

A huge pile of bits of ancient Roman pillars

Other highlights included the Trevi Fountain, Piazza Garibaldi, Capitoline Hill, and the food, but this has turned into me just bragging about sight-seeing, so I’ll wrap this up! We had a great time catching up with old friends and meeting new ones in Rome. If you attended, hopefully you had a good time too! 

A selection of the delicious food Rome has to offer