Projects
HD-TEC: The impact of childhood Diet on adult Health, comparing three Portuguese archaeological collections: Tomar, Estremoz and Crato
Funded by FCT: 2020.02110.CEECIND
Ongoing
This study will provide significant novel perspectives on the effects of childhood diet at different life history moments (during breastfeeding, weaning and post-weaning) on adult health, at both the individual and population level. Since archaeological collections are a good model to study diet and health without the confounding factor of modern medicine, the childhood diet of adult skeletons from late medieval archaeological collections (Tomar, Estremoz and Crato) will be reconstructed and compared with skeletal indicators of health. To do so, stable isotopes will be analysed from teeth formed during the first years of life of these individuals. This study will highlight the importance of archaeological sciences to understand the evolutionary relationship between diet and disease at a time when the supply of effective antibiotics is under threat.
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More information here.
InOsteo: Interdisciplinary Approach to the Osteological Collection from the Military Hospital of St. George's Castle (17th-18th centuries), Lisbon
Funded by FCT: 2022.03576.PTDC
Ongoing
This project marks a pioneering study that integrates six disciplines (osteology, archaeology, history, chemistry, paleoparasitology, and genomics) to gain deeper insights into the health of the military in the past and how they were cared for.
The interdisciplinary team on this project combines several specialities (from the natural sciences to the humanities) that will work together to achieve the study's objectives: 1) Identify parasites and pathogens affecting soldiers' health; 2) Relate mass graves with possible epidemics; 3) Identity taking medication and other treatments; 4) Get to know hospitals and medical treatments better; 5) Get to know military life better.
Knowing that health can be reflected in skeletal indicators of physiological stress and skeletal lesions, this project combines osteological, archaeometric and historical analyses to investigate the relationship between diet, health, and treatments in military hospitals in the 17th and 18th centuries.
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The Impact of Diet and Health on Bone Stable Isotope Ratios: A Comparative Study
Funded by the University of Kent
Completed
This study combined osteological and archaeometric analysis providing novel perspectives on the synergy between diet and health exploring stable isotope analysis. It was intended to assess whether stable isotope analysis can be used as a tool to study the impact of diet on the individuals’ susceptibility to pathogens.
Individuals with unspecific generalised infections potentially had less access to animal protein than those without lesions. Still, no signs of protein catabolism were observed in the bones without lesions but the same was not true to bone growths that grew during or after the disease. The increase in δ15N seen in active lesions, when compared with δ15N from non-lesion regions on the same long bone, may be a consequence of altered protein metabolism.
These results suggest that different diets may be linked to an individual’s susceptibility to pathogens and that intra-bone stable isotope variation may be related to different diets and/or metabolism during or after the disease.
Please send a message for further information or collaborations.