An Examination Of Sanitation And Hygiene Habit Artifacts Found aboard Vasa: Health, Sanitation, and Life At Sea In Seventeenth-Century Sweden

Author(s): Nathaniel R King

Year: 2016

Summary

Vasa was a 64-gun Swedish warship in the service of King Gustav II Adolf .  The vessel sank on its maiden voyage in 1628, taking at least 16 of the approximately 150 persons on board to the depths of Stockholm Harbor (Vasamuseet 2013; Vasa I 2006:36-55).  Amongst the cannon, figureheads, and skeletons are a collection of artifacts that can tell us how the crew lived, not just while aboard Vasa, but also ashore.  These artifacts include chamber pots, glass bottles, and other assorted health and sanitation artifacts.  This project seeks to examine the sanitation and hygiene artifacts recovered from Vasa and place them into the larger background of sanitary practices in Europe in the seventeenth century. 

Cite this Record

An Examination Of Sanitation And Hygiene Habit Artifacts Found aboard Vasa: Health, Sanitation, and Life At Sea In Seventeenth-Century Sweden. Nathaniel R King. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Washington, D.C. 2016 ( tDAR id: 434796)

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Keywords

Temporal Keywords
Seventeenth Century

Spatial Coverage

min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 873