Life and Death in Medieval Central Europe

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Life and Death in Medieval Central Europe" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The term “Central Europe” is a modern idea that has been adopted mainly out of convenience for historians. Most historians and archaeologists consider the region to include the modern-day nations of Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, and Hungary. To a lesser extent, the region also includes parts of Austria, Germany, and Romania. The general archaeological and historical records for Central Europe are overshadowed by the neighboring Western and Southern European regions. Part of this can be attributed to a long-term historical perspective during the twentieth century of the region being politically and economically “backward,” with an economy mainly centered around agriculture and extraction of raw materials. Despite these biases and the relative lack of data for the region during the Medieval period (eighth to fifteenth century), particularly regarding the lives of people in general, there remains sufficient information to suggest a high level of sociocultural complexity throughout the region. In this session we will combine studies across a wide spectrum of topics within bioarchaeology and mortuary archaeology, with a focus on providing representation of life and death in Medieval Central Europe, including mortuary patterns and concepts of death, mortality, health and nutrition, labor and physical activity, migration and mobility, and childhood.