Article2016

Child Health in Five Early Medieval Irish Sites: A Multidisciplinary Approach

Mario Novak · Rachel Howcroft · Ron Pinhasi

38 citations0/0 files storedInternational Journal of Osteoarchaeology

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Studies Archaeology and ancient environmental studies Paleopathology and ancient diseases

Abstract

Abstract With the aim to reconstruct child health in five early medieval (5th–12th c. CE) Irish sites, an osteoarchaeological study of three biological stress indicators – cribra orbitalia, linear enamel hypoplasia (LEH) and periostitis – has been conducted on 229 skeletons. In addition, Irish early medieval written sources testifying on child health during this period were consulted. These data were furthermore combined with the results of stable isotope analyses (nitrogen and carbon) conducted on subadult bone specimens. Cribra orbitalia was found in 27.5% of the studied individuals (48.6% of subadults were affected), with only two cases active at the time of death. The prevalence of LEH per individual is 63.5% (78.9% in subadults and 59.7% in adults). The age ranges of LEH formation vary between 1.9 and 4.8 years for the maxillary teeth and between 1.8 and 6.2 years for the mandibular teeth. Periosteal inflammations were recorded in over one third of the studied subadults (36.2%) with six cases active at the time of death. The stable isotope results suggest a diet based on terrestrial food sources, with little or no marine input. The presented data strongly suggest that most of the individuals were exposed to a high level of physiological stress during their childhood, and as such does not support the so called ‘osteological paradox’ hypothesis. The observed disturbances were probably caused by a synergistic effect of various biological and socio‐cultural factors. Although the historical records indicate certain differences in diet and lifestyle between social classes and the sexes, this study showed that the children of all ages had poor health in all social classes across a wide geographical location for the full time period of the early medieval. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 38 citations exist upstream.

References

1994Standards for Data Collection from Human Skeletal Remains 2003Identification of Pathological Conditions in Human Skeletal Remains 1990Skeletal age determination based on the os pubis: A comparison of the Acsádi-Nemeskéri and Suchey-Brooks methods 1985Chronological metamorphosis of the auricular surface of the ilium: A new method for the determination of adult skeletal age at death 1963The human skeleton in forensic medicine 1985Ectocranial suture closure: A revised method for the determination of skeletal age at death based on the lateral‐anterior sutures 2001Developmental juvenile osteology.1992The Osteological Paradox: Problems of Inferring Prehistoric Health from Skeletal Samples [and Comments and Reply]

Cited by

2018The Backbone of Europe 2020Sex-related morbidity and mortality in non-adult individuals from the Early Medieval site of Valdaro (Italy): the contribution of dental enamel peptide analysis 2024Perspectives on anemia: Factors confounding understanding of past occurrence 2021The Life Course of a Standard-Bearer: A Nonroyal Elite Burial at the Maya Archaeological Site of El Palmar, Mexico

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.