INTRODUCTION TO THE SESSION “DISABILITY AND CARE IN MEDIEVAL TIMES: A BIOARCHAEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 22/03/2021

In the past, illness, in all its diversity, occupied a major part of persons’ daily life. To deal with diseases, injuries, pain, deformities and bad life conditions, caused by environmental and/or social status, placed significant demands on individuals, their families and their communities. Moreover, it had a range of repercussions for religious beliefs and practice. Contemporary material culture and documents containing information on medicinal, surgical and spiritual treatments for pathologies reveal that in the past (as in the present) the restoration and maintenance of health - or, more simply, ‘how the sick was cared for’ - was a priority for the people of this time. This introductive talk opens a dedicated session which offers an archaeological focus on questions of ‘disability and care’ in Medieval times. It offers a brief overview of Medieval health and disease, culture and chronology as a basic framework in which to locate the papers that follow. This session has the aim to explain the logic, to drive the order in which the papers are presented, and to provide a focus group among researchers from several disciplines. The final goal is to discuss both why we (the organisers) believe this session to be important, and the ways in which it might contribute to a better understanding of everyday, hitherto undocumented, life in this period.


Author(s): Micarelli, Ileana (Sapienza Università di Roma, Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Antichità; Sapienza Università di Roma, Dipartimento di Biologia Ambientale) - Tafuri, Maryanne (Sapienza Università di Roma, Dipartimento di Biologia Ambientale) - Tilley, Lorna (School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University)