A Macroscopic Investigation and Analysis of Trauma Among Late Post-Medieval Adult Male Individuals of St. Michael's Litten, Chelsea Old Church and St. Benet Sherehog

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In post-medieval England (1500s–1800s), the rise in industrialization and urbanization provides an opportunity to analyze a potential glimpse of how adult male individuals lived daily life in England. This study looks at the potential etiological factors, types of trauma observed and found in the three selected dataset cemeteries of the Chichester Skeletal Assemblage, Chelsea Old Church, and St. Benet Sherehog. The results presented that the most common type of trauma amongst adult male individuals concluded being accidental trauma followed by intervertebral disc herniations (also known as Schmorl’s nodes), with equal and proportionate amounts of the number of individuals from the cemeteries being greatly afflicted with work-related and accidental trauma. The least prevalent, yet present in all cemetery data sets of traumas was interpersonal violence, followed last by surgical interventions in which no individuals from the Chichester Assemblage that were selected from this set presented evidence of medical or therapeutic intervention. Overall, the results shed light on the effects of the impact that diverse work conditions, economies, and lifestyles had on adult males. This study can be further expanded to more geographical areas, cemetery populations, time periods, and demographic groups.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39612.0