The fifth chapter details an especially elite investment in the Subura’s residential fabric and the emergence of Christian communities in the fourth century CE, after Constantine passed the Edict of Milan in 313. Several churches are evident in the upper Subura on the Cispian hill, most notably a basilica built by the bishop Liberius. The general orientation of the Subura valley thus began to shift away from the lower portion closer to the Forum and toward its upper extents.

Includes a discussion of solution chemistry, leading to the preparation of analytical standards for chemical analysis. It explains the calculation of errors in calibration procedures and the use of quality assurance procedures more generally.

Chapter 4 describes the appearance of plant and animal domesticates on the plateau, such as millet, sheep, goat, and horse. Models for the appearance of these domesticates are evaluated. Mortuary evidence is discussed, and its articulation with emerging identities considered.

The sixth chapter details the sudden appearance of Mary in the Subura’s landscape during the fifth century with Sixtus III’s construction of S. Maria. It argues that Sixtus used the basilica to proclaim his support for the new orthodox belief in Mary as theotokos, to condemn the heretical beliefs against her, and to invalidate Jews and Judaism, which would have been present in the Subura itself, among other areas of the city. After its construction, the basilica of S. Maria sparked the emergence of a new local significance based on the ideal Christian woman.

The introduction sets out how to investigate precarity, defined as uncertainty emerging from structural inequalities. A qualitative approach is needed to capture not just inequality’s depth but people’s lived experiences. The introduction positions the book in relation to current macroeconomic approaches to the Roman world, and to prior attempts at writing bottom-up history. It shows the need to humanize and historicize inequality, addressing its human-scale impacts specifically in the Roman world, and it defines a conceptual toolbox derived from feminist studies, development economics, and the material turn.

Discusses the use of techniques based on the absorption of visible and near-visible light to identify the molecular species present in the sample. These techniques are also known as vibrational spectroscopy, since they involve the interaction of electromagnetic radiation around the visible wavelengths with the molecular bonding orbitals of the sample.

Chapter 1 describes the Tibetan plateau in terms of its geography, ecology, modern subsistence systems, its climate and its changes through time, and, importantly, its linguistic diversity.

Chapter 6 explores the emergence of social inequality, prestige, and status through the lens of mortuary data from sites on the eastern plateau. Here, status and prestige appear to be based upon access to long-distance trade and the acquisition of weapons and costly exotic goods.

Reviewing evidence from suburban workers’ cemeteries in Rome, tombstones of gladiators in Roman Gaul, and pottery from Roman York, this chapter asks what care for certain people and bodies reveals about what people living precariously cared about. Whereas most studies that chart non-elite social worlds in the Roman empire have highlighted the vertical relations of patronage or have reproduced the normative frameworks of family and work, this chapter traces alternative, horizontal social formations emerging from lives lived in precarity.

Gives a brief history of analytical chemistry, followed by a consideration of the special issues posed by the analysis of archaeological material. It also emphasizes the importance of quality assurance in analytical chemistry.

The eighth and final chapter focuses on the restoration of residential occupation to the Argiletum – absent since Domitian – and Paschal I’s investment in the area during the eighth and ninth centuries. Paschal explicitly tied S. Maria to the flanking sister churches of S. Praxedis and S. Potentiana, unifying them in a physical and conceptual hierarchy of virginity and virtue. Several welfare centers attest to renewed foot traffic along the valley, while the construction of several elite houses within Domitian’s old forum shows a desire among elites to be connected to the Subura’s processional thoroughfare.