Skeletal Health in Medieval Societies: Insights from Ancient Bone Collagen Stable Isotopes and Dental Histology

Abstract

Traditionally, the study of human skeletal remains from ancient backgrounds (bio-archaeology) has examined skeletal size and shape in relation to written historical records or made interpretations based upon the archaeological record in order to contextualise the biology of once-living people. The unique and irreplaceable value of ancient skeletal remains means that more invasive or destructive methods of analysis are undertaken less often. However, recent advancements in micro-scopic, biochemical, and biomolecular techniques increasingly open up new possi-bilities for reconstructing human skeletal growth and physiology at the cell level from small amounts of tissue, thus greatly minimising the destruction to skeletal remains. In this chapter, we provide selected examples of bioarchaeological studies that use a range of technical approaches to examine the effect of medieval socio-economic status (SES) on skeletal health, disease, and adult bone develop-ment (e.g. [6]). This chapter focuses on medieval bone tissue, but we also extend analyses to medieval human dental remains in the latter part of the chapter. We pres-ent both hard tissue types because teeth are often the only part of a skeleton that survives without damage due to their highly mineralised outer enamel coating. Furthermore, some aspects of lifestyle in the past leave a record in adult teeth that cannot otherwise be inferred from adult bone (e.g. weaning from permanent teeth). In other cases, analyses of both teeth and bone can be combined to gain novel insights into past human skeletal growth (also see Chap. 3).