Objectives: Bioarchaeological investigations of sex-based differences in the prevalence of dental pathological lesions, particularly caries, have drawn considerable attention, and out of this work, two dominant models have emerged. Traditionally, the first model interprets sex-related patterns in caries as a product of gendered differences in diet. A more recent model interprets a generally higher propensity for caries prevalence in females in light of reproductive ecology. To test the hypothesis that females have higher risk of caries in accordance with reproductive ecology, we examined and analyzed caries prevalence and other potentially synergistic oral pathological lesions in a late medieval (A.D. 1300-1500) Italian archaeological sample.Materials and methods: We examined sex-and age-related prevalence in caries and other oral pathological lesions in a late medieval Italian skeletal assemblage excavated from Villamagna consisting of 38 females and 37 males (n = 1,534 teeth). We examined age-and sex-related patterns in six dental traits: antemortem tooth loss, caries, calculus, periapical inflammation, tooth wear, and periodontitis.Results: Significant age-related increases in antemortem tooth loss, caries, calculus, and tooth wear were observed in both males and females. However, there was a lack of expected sex differences in oral pathological lesions, with instead older males exhibiting significantly more antemortem tooth loss and corrected caries than females.Discussion: Results are discussed in relation to the ethnohistoric context of medieval rural dietary practices as well as biomedical salivary literature, which suggest that dietary changes throughout the life course may have facilitated trade-offs that buffered females from higher rates of dental pathological lesions. K E Y W O R D Sbioarchaeology, caries, dental anthropology, reproductive ecology, saliva

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Objectives: Degenerative joint disease in the spine is heavily influenced by genetic, environmental, and epigenetic factors, as well as exacerbated by physical activity and injury. The objective of this study was to investigate the multivariate relationship between known predictors of degenerative joint disease in the spine, such as age and sex, with mortuary indicators of economic access such as grave inclusions, burial location, and burial type. Materials and Methods: The presence and severity of vertebral osteophytosis (VO) and vertebral osteoarthritis (VOA) was recorded for the vertebral columns of N = 106 adult individuals from the Late Medieval period at the rural monastery of San Pietro at Villamagna in Lazio, Italy (1300-1450 AD). Multiple skeletal indicators of degenerative joint disease, morphological sex, and age were compared with differences in mortuary treatment across four regions of the spine. Results: There are marked differences in severe joint disease outcome between groups with more and less economic access. Relative risk ratios suggest that males and females with less economic access have elevated risk for VO and VOA in specific spine regions, although this effect is reduced among females. Discussion: Current research on the consequences of economic and social inequality point to the important role of economic inequality in shaping disease outcomes. Our results suggest that biocultural effects of reduced economic access at the intraclass level may increase vulnerability to the downstream effects of risk exposure (e.g., biomechanical injure, physical activity, biochemical imbalance), and ultimately increase the risk and prevalence for severe degenerative disease outcomes in medieval Italy.

It is a commonplace assumption that the medieval cities were ‘ruralized’ by the presence of vegetable patches, fields, and livestock. Historians and archaeologists have often taken evidence for agricultural cultivation in urban spaces as indicators of the breakdown of medieval urban fabric and economies, but urban gardens were not simply by-products of decline or devolution. They were created because people living in the city wanted fresh fruits and vegetables and dedicated space to grow them. The evidence from Italy makes clear that residential properties with access to cultivated spaces were controlled by urban elites, both private and ecclesiastical. The study of these urban vineyards, vegetable patches, and fields, through their textual and archaeological records, provides us a small window on to shifting social structures within medieval cities, the rises and falls in small-scale markets, and emerging ideals of charity. The combination of property documents with letters, narrative chronicles, and a considerable amount of recent urban archaeology make it possible to observe urban food provisioning in early medieval Italy and to relate the phenomenon of urban gardening with shifting power structures in the city.

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Finally, the early chapters on the timing and locations of assemblies finds another similarity with continental experience in the extent to which even the most powerful kings ruled from Wessex and rarely ventured beyond the Thames save in the exceptional circumstances of campaigns and treaties, this an indicator of the thinness of 'fiscal' lands outside Wessex. Within Wessex assemblies were predominantly held in royal vills, outside Wessex in civitates. Interestingly, in neither case were locations chosen for their ecclesiastical significance. The key desiderata were ease of access via the road system and the ability of a site to support an extended visit by some 200-600 attendees.For the most part I have cavils not criticisms and even then not many. I was struck by the lack of discussion of the extent to which tenth-century Anglo-Saxon assemblies were or were not grafted onto or modelled on ecclesiastical councils. And I remain somewhat unconvinced by Roach's tendency to minimize the importance of specific borrowings between England and the Ottonians, the Flemish, and the West Frankish Carolingians. Roach rightly points out that whereas historians usually see England as borrowing from the continent, the reverse might also have been true (as, perhaps, in Fleury's liturgical dramatizations). But Edgar's reign does mark a sharper break in political discourse than one might glean from Roach's account, and that discourse is unimaginable without This book is an absolute treat, delicious in its detail, surprising in just how much a tree's view of medieval history can reveal about people. Paolo Squatriti's research on the rise of the chestnut, a tree little cultivated in the Roman period yet a major crop for medieval Italy, identifies the convergences between the worlds of men and woodlands. It is written with humour and intelligence, and nearly each page contains a discovery about botany, biology, cuisine or legal practice.Squatriti's expertise in the social and political value of natural resources, developed over many years working on water, shines here in the study of the culture of the chestnut. In his preface (pp. x-xi), he describes this book as microhistory, taking a small subject and seeing how it sheds light on 'old chestnuts' of Italian social and economic 378 Book reviews Early Medieval Europe 2015 23 (3)

Urban Gardens and GardenersGrowing your own food in early medieval Italy was both a necessity and a luxury. To feed a family, you needed land to grow things on. Sometimes you found that land in the ruins or abandoned lots next to you. And sometimes those ruins and that garden plot were prestigious and highly valued. Property documents from tenth-century Rome reveal a bustling city, living and working around its past. In 965, Leo, a priest of the church of SS. Quattro Coronati, located on the Caelian hill, and Helena, daughter of Petrus and Ursa, sold to Crescentius, son of Petrus: a whole two-story house roofed with tiles, 1 with a courtyard in front of it, in which there is a pergola and a well and a marble stair. And also a large garden next to it and behind it. Wholly planted with vine. With different fruiting trees, and likewise the ruins 2 with use of water, and with all of the things pertaining to them, located in Rome, Regio 2, next to the Decennias [i.e. marshland in the southeast of the city]. And between the boundaries on two sides are public roads, one to the Porta Metrovia, the other to the Lateran Palace next to Decennias. On the third and fourth sides . . . and prepared ground of the monastery of the holy martyr of Christ Erasmus, and a vineyard, in which is the slope of the heirs of Ursa, of good memory. 3 4 On the Caelian Hill and other cultivated properties there, see p. 88, Chapter 3. 5 'inter Iohannem . . . archidiaconum summae sanctae Apostolicae Sedis et praepositum venerabili diaconiae sanctae Dei genitricis Mariae domin[ae nostrae] quae appellatur Noba, consentientem sibi cuncto clero et serbitores eidem venerabili diaconiae, et te diverso Leonem humilem religiosumque presbiterum venerabili diaconiae sanctorum martirum Cosme et Damiani quae ponitur in Via Sacra . . . condutionis titulo. Idest domum solarata

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