Bioarchaeological and Paleopathological Analysis of a Burial from the Late Roman Necropolis of Pianotta di Calatabiano (CT, Sicily)

This contribution focuses on the human osteological remains recovered from a tomb in the necropolis of Contrada Pianotta di Calatabiano (Catania, eastern Sicily). In antiquity, this fertile, water-rich land along the Via Pompeia connecting Messina to Syracuse was ideal for intensive agricultural exploitation. In the 1990s this site was subjected to an early archaeological investigation that brought to light the ruins of the baths of a mid-imperial era-built villa, whose stratigraphy dated the ultimate abandonment of the site to the end of the 5th century AD. Between 2014 and 2015 the excavation of the necropolis was carried out in an area that extends immediately north of the mouth of the river Fiumefreddo.