Centro de Administração e Políticas Públicas

Project Title:
Urbanization and health in the transition between medieval and modern ages in Portugal: An assessment of indicators of morbidity and mortality of skeletal remains from different Portuguese cemeteries

Start and End of Project:
2014 to 2021

Chief Investigator:
Prof. Susana Garcia

Research Team:

Partners:

Consultants:

Summary:

Urbanization in terms of human history is relatively recent and its impact on human health is still under investigation. A higher concentration of people sharing the same environment has the potential to increase the spreading of pathogens. But at the same time in towns care givers (e.g. physicians or health institutions) were present which could buffer the disease burden. The perils in rural or urban environments are different as the subsistence challenges are also different. In urban settings people could be more vulnerable to respiratory infections but in rural settings life could be more physically hazardous, increasing the risk of fractures. To live in a small town or in a big city can also be diverse in terms of health risks. Towns have the potential to represent either the better or the worse of the rural and the urban world.
The study of populations in transition is not new to Anthropology. For example, Cohen and Armelagos (1984) studied the cost on health of the transition to agriculture and Swedlund with also Armelagos in 1990 dedicated a book to disease in populations in transition. In Portugal in the transition between the medieval and post-medieval period a major event occurred, the Portuguese discoveries. With the discoveries new products were introduced in Portugal but also new pathogens with important impacts on health.
The main goal of this proposal is to assess health and disease patterns in different Portuguese communities from the transition between the Medieval and the Post-medieval period. The idea is to apply the same methods to large samples in order to gain a more comprehensive insight about health and disease in the past. The samples under study comprise, in a first moment, a large assemblage from São Martinho, Leiria (n=200) from the 13^th to the 16^th century and from Largo do Carmo, Lisbon (n=250) from the 15^th to the 18^th century, but other samples from other contexts are planned to be incorporated in the project. Until now these samples were partially study academically (e.g. Benisse, 2005; Gaspar, 2013; Veiga, 2013; Garcia, 2007) and some results were already published (Codinha, 2002; Garcia e Cardoso, 2009; Garcia 2005/2006; Garcia, 2012). The frequency and prevalence of non-specific stress indicators, non-specific infections, and specific infectious and non-infectious diseases will be recorded and compared between samples. Reconstruction and comparative analysis of demography profiles, skeletal growth patterns and adult stature will also be carried out.