Mobility, mortality, and the middle ages: Identification of migrant individuals in a 14th century black death cemetery population

Abstract

(2013) 'Mobility, mortality, and the middle ages : identication of migrant individuals in a 14th century black death cemetery population.', American journal of physical anthropology., 150 (2). pp. 210-222. Further information on publisher's website:http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.22194 Publisher's copyright statement: This is the accepted version of the following article: Kendall, E.J., Montgomery, J., Evans, J.A., Stantis, C. and Mueller, V. (2013), Mobility, mortality, and the middle ages: Identication of migrant individuals in a 14th century black death cemetery population. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 150 (2): 210-222, which has been published in nal form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.22194. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. ABSTRACT Mobility and migration patterns of groups and individuals have long been a topic of interest to archaeologists, used for broad explanatory models of cultural change as well as illustrations of historical particularism. The 14th century AD was a tumultuous period of history in Britain, with severely erratic weather patterns, the Great Famine of 1315-1322, the Scottish Wars of Independence, and the Hundred Years' War providing additional migration pressures to the ordinary economic issues drawing individuals to their capital under more stable conditions. East Smithfield Black Death Cemetery (Royal Mint) had a documented use period of only 2 years (AD 1348(AD -1350, providing a precise historical context (~50 years) for data. Adults (n = 30) from the East Smithfield site were sampled for strontium and oxygen stable isotope analyses of tooth enamel. Five individuals were demonstrated to be statistical outliers through the combined strontium and oxygen isotope data. Potential origins for migrants ranged from London's surrounding hinterlands to distant portions of northern and western Britain. Historic food sourcing practices for London were found to be an important factor for consideration in a broader than expected 8 7 S r / 8 6 S r range reflected in a comparison of enamel samples from three London datasets. The pooled dataset demonstrated a high level of consistency between site data, divergent from the geologically predicted range. We argue that this supports the premise that isotope data in human populations must be approached as a complex interaction between behavior and environment and thus should be interpre...

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