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Geographies and Archaeologies of Health
and Disease
The intention of this group is to use a
variety of methodologies to investigate
their common interests. The disciplines
are bioarchaeology, history and
historical geography, giving rich
perspectives on key themes in
ill-health: bodies, environment, place.
The physical implications of disease are
represented in the work of Professor
Charlotte Roberts and Professor
Peter Atkins. Roberts has
considered health and disease in Britain
from prehistory to the present using
skeletal evidence and has integrated
this data with social, political and
economic contexts. They have both
written extensively on tuberculosis:
Roberts on the disease generally and
with specific reference to skeletal
evidence; Atkins on documentary
evidence of tuberculosis as a zoonotic
disease spread through the food supply.
Their future plans remain focused on
bodies-diseases-environments.
Professor Atkins will continue
with his research on the intersection of
systems of food provision and the
history of medicine. He is presently
writing two books resulting from his
Wellcome Research Leave Fellowship, and
is planning two further edited books and
a journal special issue. He is also
extending his conceptual work on food
history and is keen generally to press
the role of social theory in the history
of medicine.
Professor Roberts is
investigating disability in the past
using a multidisciplinary approach, and
has a strong interest in developing her
research on air quality and health from
prehistory to the post-medieval period.
She is writing a book on the
bioarchaeology of leprosy funded by the
Leverhulme Trust as a Major Research
Fellowship, and has an AHRC funded
project focusing on the health and
welfare of the people buried at the
early medieval site of Bamburgh Castle
in Northumbria. She has a NERC grant to
look at the biomolecular archaeology of
TB, along with Professor Terry Brown of
the University of Manchester. Using
ancient DNA analysis of bone samples
from skeletons showing tuberculosis the
research will analyse the strains of
tuberculosis prevalent through time in
Britain and parts of Europe, ultimately
comparing strains with data generated at
Arizona State University on skeletal
samples pre and post-contact. Professor
Roberts also has a British Academy
project on pre-Columbian syphilis in
Hull, using stable isotope analysis to
compare those people identified
treponematosis buried in the cemetery
compared to those without. Two other
projects are ongoing. First, Charlotte
is writing a Health of Medieval English
Women, jointly with Professor Anne
Grauer of Loyola University, Chicago,
and Dr Pam Graves of Durham University.
Second, she is the UK coordinator of a
project entitled the ‘Global History of
Health’. The aim of this is to document
the health and well-being of people from
prehistory to the early modern period in
Europe using a standard web based
recording system, integrating health and
disease data with
socio-cultural-ecological information.
There are strong methodological links
between Roberts’ work and the
bioarchaeological research of Dr Kirsi
Lorentz, who is an expert in the history
and archaeology of body-modification,
especially of practices of head-shaping
in the ancient Eastern Mediterranean.
Professor Jeremy Boulton’s
Wellcome-funded socio-demographical
project on ‘Death, disease and the
environment, 1747-1825’ (http://research.ncl.ac.uk/pauperlives/)
is intended as a street level
investigation of urban disease patterns.
It enables the testing of links between
environment and housing quality and the
incidence of infectious disease
suggested by John Landers. The method is
to use the detailed Sexton’s Notebooks
of the parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields
to uncover disease patterns at the
micro-historical level of the street and
family. One outcome of the project is to
map the causes of death given in the
Sexton’s notebooks on three detailed
contemporary street maps of the area
(1746, 1799, 1820) using GIS technology.
It is also be possible to link the
persons dying with the admission and
discharge books of the St Martin’s
Workhouse, already digitised as part of
an earlier project, which will, in many
cases, enable ‘patient histories’ to be
reconstructed. The data can be compared
at the both the macro and micro level to
the numerical data in the London Bills
of Mortality.
Since each entry supplies information
about the age, residence, cost of burial
and gender of the deceased, it is
possible to generate a very large amount
of data about the chronological, social
and spatial incidence of each of these
‘causes’ of death. It has been possible
to uncover the localised pattern of
whooping-cough deaths in the parish for
the years 1790-93. The disease
concentrated in particular locales in
the parish in any one year, including a
small outbreak in the workhouse nursery
during the mini-epidemic of 1790 (Figure
1). Future work will enable the
investigators to investigate
concentrations of diseases in particular
families, and to link data on social
status and age-specificity on to their
spatial incidence.
There will be two major outreach
elements of this sub-theme
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A major conference is being planned
by Professor Roberts, jointly
with Professor Jane Buikstra
of Arizona State University, on
‘Incarceration, Stigma, and
Infectious Diseases: Bringing the
Past to the Present.’ This will be
followed by a series of one-day
public symposia and a scholarly
collection of papers to be edited by
Roberts & Buikstra.
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Professor Boulton’s project,
in collaboration with the Museum of
London, will mount an interactive
gallery from 2009, which will put on
display a number of life histories
(from birth to death). An
interactive ‘guided tour’ of various
causes of mortality in the parish of
St. Martin in the Fields for
particular periods – e.g. where did
people die from a particular
disease? There will also be a public
exhibition (laminates of some life
and death histories with
accompanying clarifications) in the
crypt of St Martin’s Church, which
already houses a busy café. This
will be illustrated with pictures of
the London poor (e.g. by Laroon).
Figure
1
Figure 1 shows a simple map of the
built-up area of St Martin’s, with the
spatial incidence of whooping cough
1790-93 mapped crudely on (red dots for
1790, blue 1791, green 1792, purple
1793).
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