What doesnt kill you: Early life health and nutrition in early Anglo Saxon East Anglia
View/
Beaumont_et_al_Book_Chapter.pdf (886.7Kb)
Download
Publication date
2020Rights
© 2020 Springer. Reproduced in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. The final publication is available at Springer via https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27393-4.Peer-Reviewed
YesMetadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Early life is associated with high vulnerability to morbidity and mortality - risks which can be reduced in infancy and early childhood through strategically high levels of parental or alloparental investment, particularly in the case of maternal breastfeeding. Recent evidence has supported links between early-life health and care patterns and long-term population health. This growing body of research regarding the broader impacts of infant-parent interactions transcends a traditional partitioning of research into discrete life stages. It also highlights implications of childhood data for our understanding of population health and behaviour. Skeletal and environmental data indicate that the 5-7th century cemeteries at Littleport and Edix Hill (Barrington A), Cambridgeshire represent populations of similar material culture but contrasting environments and health. The high prevalence of skeletal stress markers at Littleport indicates a community coping with unusual levels of biological stress, potentially a consequence of endemic malaria present in the marshy Fen environs. In contrast, Edix Hill was an inland site which exhibited lower skeletal stress marker prevalence comparable to wider British data for the early medieval period. Early life patterns relating to diet and physiological stress at Littleport (n=5) and Edix Hill (n=8) were investigated through analyses of carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes from incrementally-sampled deciduous dentine. Meaningful variation in isotopic values within and between populations was observed, and should be a focus of future interdisciplinary archaeological childhood studies.Version
Accepted manuscriptCitation
Kendall EJ, Millard A, Beaumont J et al (2020) What doesn't kill you: Early life health and nutrition in early Anglo-Saxon East Anglia. In: Gowland R and Halcrow S (Eds.) The mother-infant nexus in anthropology. Switzerland: Springer Nature. 103-123.Link to publisher’s version
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27393-4Type
Book chapterCollections
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
ActEarly: a City Collaboratory approach to early promotion of good health and wellbeingEconomic, physical, built, cultural, learning, social and service environments have a profound effect on lifelong health. However, policy thinking about health research is dominated by the 'biomedical model' which promotes medicalisation and an emphasis on diagnosis and treatment at the expense of prevention. Prevention research has tended to focus on 'downstream' interventions that rely on individual behaviour change, frequently increasing inequalities. Preventive strategies often focus on isolated leverage points and are scattered across different settings. This paper describes a major new prevention research programme that aims to create City Collaboratory testbeds to support the identification, implementation and evaluation of upstream interventions within a whole system city setting. Prevention of physical and mental ill-health will come from the cumulative effect of multiple system-wide interventions. Rather than scatter these interventions across many settings and evaluate single outcomes, we will test their collective impact across multiple outcomes with the goal of achieving a tipping point for better health. Our focus is on early life (ActEarly) in recognition of childhood and adolescence being such critical periods for influencing lifelong health and wellbeing.
-
An Archaeometallurgical Study of Early Medieval Iron Technology. An examination of the quality and use of iron alloys in iron artefacts from Early Medieval Britain.This project presents a study of iron technology in Early Medieval (fifth to eleventh centuries AD) Britain through the examination of iron found in settlement contexts. This is a period characterized by significant cultural, political and social changes. The effect of these changes on iron technology has never been investigated on a large scale. Previous studies on iron focused either on individual sites or on single artefact types, and did not provide any clear multi-region interpretive framework. A longstanding problem has been in identifying the extent of usage of a key alloy: phosphoric iron. This research project examined iron assemblages from eight settlement sites of varying size, culture, economic and social status from across Britain. From each settlement a mixed assemblage of iron artefacts was sampled, including edged tools, items of personal adornment, construction materials, and craft tools. Analysis was by traditional archaeometallurgical techniques alongside SEM-EDS elemental analysis. Alloy usage, specifically relating to phosphoric iron, was examined and the manufacturing techniques assessed. It was shown that elemental analysis is the only reliable method to determine the presence of phosphorus in iron and demonstrated that the traditional phosphoric indicators as observed during optical microscopy are insufficient. Results were subjected to a series of comparisons based on settlement size, the inferred social status, and cultural affinities. The results demonstrate the high technological level of iron artefact production across the country. All areas had access to the full range of iron alloys and employed a highly developed range of smithing techniques. Phosphoric iron was a prevalent alloy in this period. Based on these results, a model of the Early Medieval iron industry is generated, suggesting a vibrant economy in which both local and traded irons were significant.
-
The Early Medieval Cutting Edge of Technology: An archaeometallurgical, technological and social study of the manufacture and use of Anglo-Saxon and Viking iron knives, and their contribution to the early medieval iron economy.A review of archaeometallurgical studies carried out in the 1980s and 1990s of early medieval (c. AD410-1100) iron knives revealed several patterns, with clear differences in knife manufacturing techniques present in rural cemeteries and later urban settlements. The main aim of this research is to investigate these patterns and to gain an overall understanding of the early medieval iron industry. This study has increased the number of knives analysed from a wide spectrum of sites across England, Scotland and Ireland. Knives were selected for analysis based on x-radiographs and contextual details. Sections were removed for more detailed archaeometallurgical analysis. The analysis revealed a clear change through time, with a standardisation in manufacturing techniques in the 7th century and differences between the quality of urban and rural knives. Analysis of cemetery knives revealed that there was some correlation between the knife and the deceased. Comparison of knives from England, Dublin and Europe revealed that the Vikings had little direct impact on England¿s knife manufacturing industry, although there was a change in manufacturing methods in the 10th century towards the mass produced sandwich welded knife. This study also suggests that Irish blacksmiths in Dublin continued their ¿native¿ blacksmithing techniques after the Vikings arrived. Using the data gathered a chaîne opértoire of the iron knife was re-constructed, this revealed that there was a specific order to the manufacture process and decisions were not only influenced by the cost of raw materials, the skill of the blacksmith and the consumer status, but also by cultural stimulus.
