The potential and challenges of constructing a bioarchaeology of care for a person with leprosy in the late medieval period

Summary

Everybody suffered ill health at some point during their lives in the past. In late medieval England (12th-16th centuries AD) historical data suggest the availability of care and treatment of disease, but it is unknown how many, and which, people got access to care. There is also little direct evidence of specific care seen in skeletal remains beyond trepanation, amputation, and dentistry. Using the ‘Index of Care’ (IoC; Tilley and Cameron 2014), this paper describes bone changes of leprosy in a middle aged man from a late medieval leprosy hospital that functioned in Chichester, Sussex, England. Potential ‘disability’ (life experience) is assessed through applying signs and symptoms to the man, based on the bone changes, and attempting to construct a model of care. Likely and uncertain interpretations of the data are provided, along with type of care that would have been needed for the ‘patient’. It is emphasised that the IoC is a more objective method to use for inferring care, every person experiences even the same diseases in different ways and would not necessarily have required the same kind of care. ‘One size cannot fit all’; a personalised approach through an osteobiography is recommended.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Building a Bioarchaeology of Care

Keywords

Spatial Coverage