Care and the Disregard of Care in Medieval Ireland

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Mind the Gap: Exploring Uncharted Territories in Medieval European Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In recent years, bioarchaeologists have become interested in developing archaeologies of care. Their goal is to articulate evidence of disease/trauma/impairment on skeletons with social processes that shape healthcare and other forms of assistance. Realizing the full potential of this perspective requires deepening understanding of care as a social phenomenon and explaining why scholars have often disregarded care as an important social dynamic. This paper offers two steps toward developing an archaeology of care, using medieval Ireland as a case study. The first expands application of the perspective to a different type of archaeological data: animal bones. Zooarchaeological reports on "pathologies" are often little more than lists of conditions identified. This paper will examine how such data on the health of animals reflects changing social conditions in medieval Ireland. Second, the paper considers how inquiry into medieval Ireland has been impaired by disregard for care and how establishing care as an important social dynamic provides new insights.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Mind the Gap: Exploring Uncharted Territories in Medieval European Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23624