HD-TEC

This study will highlight the importance of archaeological sciences in understanding the evolutionary relationship between diet and disease at a time when the supply of effective antibiotics is under threat.  

There is a bidirectional interaction across nutrition, infection and immunity. While good nutrition increases the immune system’s response, immune deficits following malnutrition early in life have been shown to persist for years. Still, nutrition implications for immune function beyond childhood have not been thoroughly investigated yet. 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 levels. 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 the life of these individuals.

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The main objective of this study is to determine if there is a link between childhood diet and adult health assessed by carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) isotope ratios from teeth increments of skeletons that retain evidence of disease: