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Darrera modificació: 2024-10-08
Bases de dades: Sciència.cat
Dittmar, Jenna M. - Inskip, Sarah A. - Rose, Alice K. - Cessford, Craig - Mitchell, Piers D. - O'Connell, Tamsin C. - Robb, John E., "Health inequality in medieval Cambridge, 1200–1500 CE", American Journal of Biological Anthropology, 185/2 (2024), e24993.
- Resum
- Health inequality is not only a major problem today; it left its mark upon past societies too. For much of the past, health inequality has been poorly studied, mostly because bioarchaeologists have concentrated upon single sites rather than a broader social landscape. This article compares 476 adults in multiple locations of medieval Cambridge (UK). Samples include ordinary townspeople (All Saints), people living in a charitable institution (the Hospital of St. John), and members of a religious order (the Augustinian Friary). These groups shared many conditions of life, such as a similar range of diseases, risk of injury, and vertebral disk degeneration. However, people living on charity had more indicators of poor childhood health and diet, lower adult stature, and a younger age at death, reflecting the health effects of poverty. In contrast, the Augustinian friars were members of a prosperous, well-endowed religious house. Compared with other groups, they were taller (perhaps a result of a richer diet during their adolescent growth period); their adult carbon and nitrogen isotope values are higher, suggesting a diet higher in terrestrial and/or marine animal protein; and they had the highest prevalence of foot problems related to fashionable late medieval footwear. As this illustrates, health inequality will take particular forms depending upon the specificities of a social landscape; except in unusual circumstances where a site and its skeletal samples represent a real cross-section of society, inequality is best investigated by comparison across sites.
- Matèries
- Història de la medicina
Arqueologia
- URL
- https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.24993
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