Valentina Gazzaniga
Biographic Data
| ID | 141505 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Valentina Gazzaniga |
| GIVEN NAMES | Valentina |
| FAMILY NAME | Gazzaniga |
| SIGNATURE | GAZZANIGA V |
| AFFILIATIONS | Sapienza University of Rome |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2110-4856 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 20 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 13 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Childhood, Dentition and Wings of the Soul in Plato’s Phaedrus
Hippocrates’ teachings exerted significant influence on Athenian intellectuals, notably on Plato, who drew extensively from Hippocratic treatises. This article examines how Plato integrates Hippocratic medical concepts to construct a physiology and anatomy of the soul, modelled on the somatic processes of childhood growth – particularly the phenomenon of dentition. Focusing on key passages from the Phaedrus, the study highlights Plato’s intention…
The medical origins of a gender stigma
In Euro-Western medicine, pain is a concept that changes over time, absorbing knowledge and understanding from different eras and historical contexts. Therefore, transcending objectivity, pain takes on a central role regarding individual experiences, making any attempt at reification quite fleeting. Consequently, the goal of this study is not to define the history of pain but rather to examine how ancient medical views on pain, from Hippocrates t…
A Case of Developmental Dysplasia of the Hip with Dislocation from Ancient Rome
This study focuses on an individual from the southeastern area of the Roman Suburbium in Late Antiquity (3rd–5th centuries CE), whose skeleton was found in a multiple burial alongside five others. Osteological and CT imaging analyses revealed a significant developmental defect in the left hip, characterized by a shallow, flattened acetabulum and a hypoplastic or aplastic femoral head, with no evidence of infection or postmortem alteration. This r…
Commentary on Raphael’s The Transfiguration
Historical sources about Raphael’s death provide different hypotheses about its cause. Continuous fever is the only symptom described. Raphael’s lucidity in managing his last affairs exclude syphilis, made widespread by the French army. The same applies to malaria, which was endemic in Rome. Not even the reference to bloodletting helps us, 1 as it was a long-standing therapy to reduce fever. The most prudent hypothesis is an infectious disease. L…
Conceptualizing disabilities from antiquity to the middle ages
A Longobard osteobiography. A multi-proxy life history of an elderly woman from Castel Trosino (Italy)
The Longobard cemetery of Castel Trosino (Central Italy, c. 6th-8th CE) was excavated at the end of the 19th century, with more than two hundred burials recovered. Currently only 19 crania and a few mandibles are preserved. Among these crania, a case of trepanation is documented on an elderly woman (c. 50 y.o.): the medical treatment, or the condition that led to it, likely influenced her life history. A multidisciplinary investigation of the onl…
Communicating disease, care and healing. The role of medical inscriptions and patient reports in temple medicine from classical antiquity to the roman imperial age
The use of the term “irrational”, when interpreting ancient and contemporary medical systems, is generally based on a bipolar, perhaps two-party, ideological systematization. This is a perspective behind which there is a reifying ideology that defines medical knowledge based on divination and symbolic practices as “irrational”. Moreover, they are seen as systematized “beliefs”. However, this approach neglects the extent to which rituals permeate …
An unprecedented case of cranial surgery in Longobard Italy (6th-8th century) using a cruciform incision
The Longobard necropolis of Castel Trosino dates from the 6th to the 8th century CE. Among the tombs excavated, the skull of an older female shows the first evidence of a cross-shaped bone modification on a living subject. Macroscopic, microscopic, and CT scan analyses revealed signs of at least two sets of scraping marks. Specifically, SEM analysis shows that perimortem bone-scraping traces are present on the skull. Both healed and non-healed de…
Public hygiene and funeral rituals during the Risorgimento
Starting in 1865, regulations pursuant to public hygiene issued by the Unitary Government provided for administrative and political control of the funerary practice. Specifically, they regulated the management of cemeteries and the burials, increasingly drawing the funeral rituals from the control of the Church and of Catholicism, therefore secularising death for the construction of a new political religion. Hygiene became fundamental in order to…
Food at the heart of the Empire
This paper aims to provide a broad diet reconstruction for people buried in archaeologically defined contexts in Rome (first to third centuries CE), in order to combine archaeological and biological evidence focusing on dietary preferences in Imperial Rome. A sample of 214 human bones recovered from 6 funerary contexts was selected for carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis. The baseline for the terrestrial protein component of the diet was …
The edge of the Empire
This paper aims to define the dietary profile of the population of early medieval Rome (fifth-eleventh centuries CE) by carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis. This period was characterized by deep changes in the city's economic, demographic, and social patterns, probably affecting its inhabitants' nutritional habits. Carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis of bone collagen was used to detect the nutritional profile of 110 humans from si…
A remarkable case of gout in the Imperial Rome
This study is the result of a multidisciplinary approach and focuses on a case of considerable historical and medical interest. The work originally stemmed from findings at a funerary site in the area of Casal Bertone in Rome (Italy), regards an individual in a tomb identified simply by the number “75.” The skeletal alterations that were later discovered gave rise a debate among the members of the team. Challenges in identifying the pathology hav…
Feet and fertility in the healing temples
Anatomical ex-votos of feet have always been interpreted as representing the unhealthy part of the body for which patients were asking healing. However, according to the archaeological data and literary sources, another interpretation is also possible: the purpose of this article is to focus on the strong relationship between feet and fertility in the ancient world by cross-referencing the available archaeological evidence with the scientific dat…
Food at the heart of the Empire
This paper aims to provide a broad diet reconstruction for people buried in archaeologically defined contexts in Rome (first to third centuries CE), in order to combine archaeological and biological evidence focusing on dietary preferences in Imperial Rome. A sample of 214 human bones recovered from 6 funerary contexts was selected for carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis. The baseline for the terrestrial protein component of the diet was …
The edge of the Empire
This paper aims to define the dietary profile of the population of early medieval Rome (fifth-eleventh centuries CE) by carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis. This period was characterized by deep changes in the city's economic, demographic, and social patterns, probably affecting its inhabitants' nutritional habits. Carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis of bone collagen was used to detect the nutritional profile of 110 humans from si…
A remarkable case of gout in the Imperial Rome
This study is the result of a multidisciplinary approach and focuses on a case of considerable historical and medical interest. The work originally stemmed from findings at a funerary site in the area of Casal Bertone in Rome (Italy), regards an individual in a tomb identified simply by the number “75.” The skeletal alterations that were later discovered gave rise a debate among the members of the team. Challenges in identifying the pathology hav…
Feet and fertility in the healing temples
Anatomical ex-votos of feet have always been interpreted as representing the unhealthy part of the body for which patients were asking healing. However, according to the archaeological data and literary sources, another interpretation is also possible: the purpose of this article is to focus on the strong relationship between feet and fertility in the ancient world by cross-referencing the available archaeological evidence with the scientific dat…
Feet and fertility in the healing temples
Anatomical ex-votos of feet have always been interpreted as representing the unhealthy part of the body for which patients were asking healing. However, according to the archaeological data and literary sources, another interpretation is also possible: the purpose of this article is to focus on the strong relationship between feet and fertility in the ancient world by cross-referencing the available archaeological evidence with the scientific dat…
A remarkable case of gout in the Imperial Rome
This study is the result of a multidisciplinary approach and focuses on a case of considerable historical and medical interest. The work originally stemmed from findings at a funerary site in the area of Casal Bertone in Rome (Italy), regards an individual in a tomb identified simply by the number “75.” The skeletal alterations that were later discovered gave rise a debate among the members of the team. Challenges in identifying the pathology hav…
Public hygiene and funeral rituals during the Risorgimento
Starting in 1865, regulations pursuant to public hygiene issued by the Unitary Government provided for administrative and political control of the funerary practice. Specifically, they regulated the management of cemeteries and the burials, increasingly drawing the funeral rituals from the control of the Church and of Catholicism, therefore secularising death for the construction of a new political religion. Hygiene became fundamental in order to…
Food at the heart of the Empire
This paper aims to provide a broad diet reconstruction for people buried in archaeologically defined contexts in Rome (first to third centuries CE), in order to combine archaeological and biological evidence focusing on dietary preferences in Imperial Rome. A sample of 214 human bones recovered from 6 funerary contexts was selected for carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis. The baseline for the terrestrial protein component of the diet was …
The edge of the Empire
This paper aims to define the dietary profile of the population of early medieval Rome (fifth-eleventh centuries CE) by carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis. This period was characterized by deep changes in the city's economic, demographic, and social patterns, probably affecting its inhabitants' nutritional habits. Carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis of bone collagen was used to detect the nutritional profile of 110 humans from si…
Commentary on Raphael’s The Transfiguration
Historical sources about Raphael’s death provide different hypotheses about its cause. Continuous fever is the only symptom described. Raphael’s lucidity in managing his last affairs exclude syphilis, made widespread by the French army. The same applies to malaria, which was endemic in Rome. Not even the reference to bloodletting helps us, 1 as it was a long-standing therapy to reduce fever. The most prudent hypothesis is an infectious disease. L…
Conceptualizing disabilities from antiquity to the middle ages
A Longobard osteobiography. A multi-proxy life history of an elderly woman from Castel Trosino (Italy)
The Longobard cemetery of Castel Trosino (Central Italy, c. 6th-8th CE) was excavated at the end of the 19th century, with more than two hundred burials recovered. Currently only 19 crania and a few mandibles are preserved. Among these crania, a case of trepanation is documented on an elderly woman (c. 50 y.o.): the medical treatment, or the condition that led to it, likely influenced her life history. A multidisciplinary investigation of the onl…
Communicating disease, care and healing. The role of medical inscriptions and patient reports in temple medicine from classical antiquity to the roman imperial age
The use of the term “irrational”, when interpreting ancient and contemporary medical systems, is generally based on a bipolar, perhaps two-party, ideological systematization. This is a perspective behind which there is a reifying ideology that defines medical knowledge based on divination and symbolic practices as “irrational”. Moreover, they are seen as systematized “beliefs”. However, this approach neglects the extent to which rituals permeate …
An unprecedented case of cranial surgery in Longobard Italy (6th-8th century) using a cruciform incision
The Longobard necropolis of Castel Trosino dates from the 6th to the 8th century CE. Among the tombs excavated, the skull of an older female shows the first evidence of a cross-shaped bone modification on a living subject. Macroscopic, microscopic, and CT scan analyses revealed signs of at least two sets of scraping marks. Specifically, SEM analysis shows that perimortem bone-scraping traces are present on the skull. Both healed and non-healed de…
The medical origins of a gender stigma
In Euro-Western medicine, pain is a concept that changes over time, absorbing knowledge and understanding from different eras and historical contexts. Therefore, transcending objectivity, pain takes on a central role regarding individual experiences, making any attempt at reification quite fleeting. Consequently, the goal of this study is not to define the history of pain but rather to examine how ancient medical views on pain, from Hippocrates t…
A Case of Developmental Dysplasia of the Hip with Dislocation from Ancient Rome
This study focuses on an individual from the southeastern area of the Roman Suburbium in Late Antiquity (3rd–5th centuries CE), whose skeleton was found in a multiple burial alongside five others. Osteological and CT imaging analyses revealed a significant developmental defect in the left hip, characterized by a shallow, flattened acetabulum and a hypoplastic or aplastic femoral head, with no evidence of infection or postmortem alteration. This r…
Childhood, Dentition and Wings of the Soul in Plato’s Phaedrus
Hippocrates’ teachings exerted significant influence on Athenian intellectuals, notably on Plato, who drew extensively from Hippocratic treatises. This article examines how Plato integrates Hippocratic medical concepts to construct a physiology and anatomy of the soul, modelled on the somatic processes of childhood growth – particularly the phenomenon of dentition. Focusing on key passages from the Phaedrus, the study highlights Plato’s intention…
Sociology (7 works) · History (6 works) · Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Studies (5 works) · Archaeology (4 works) · Geography (4 works) · History of Medicine Studies (4 works) · Medicine (4 works) · Ancient history (3 works) · Classics (3 works) · Demography (3 works)