Understanding Resource Allocation and Dietary Stress through the Presence of Scurvy in Nonadults from Gać and Dzwonowo, Poland (Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Life and Death in Medieval Central Europe" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

As a result of the energy requirements related to growth and development, non-adults are more susceptible to biocultural change than adults, making them ideal proxies to examine environmental stress within a population. The village of Gać and town of Dzwonowo (fourteenth to sixteenth centuries) in Greater Poland provide a unique opportunity to examine the impact of biocultural stress on populations for which there is little historical or archaeological data. Shifting sociopolitical structures and climatic change during the Late Medieval period in Poland led to increasing social stratification and unequal access to resources. This study uses macroscopic lesions for scurvy to examine disease prevalence in juveniles and adolescents to compare socioeconomic status, access to resources, and dietary diversity between Gać and Dzwonowo. Nutritional status is not expected to differ substantially between sites, due to the generally undiversified medieval Polish diet based on grains and small amounts of meat and fish, with few fresh plant products. Preliminary findings suggest a scurvy prevalence rate of 10.4% for the village of Gać, a higher rate compared to contemporary Polish sites. This study aims to shed light on the biological consequences of social change in medieval Greater Poland. ***This presentation contains images of human remains.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Life and Death in Medieval Central Europe   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39192.0