Diet, Disease, and Death in Medieval Romania

Author

Jenna Mackenzie Spears Watson, University of Tennessee, KnoxvilleFollow

Orcid ID

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4771-2673

Date of Award

8-2024

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Anthropology

Major Professor

Amy Z. Mundorff

Committee Members

Dawnie Wolfe Steadman, Anneke Janzen, Thomas Crist

Abstract

During the Late Medieval and Early Modern period Romania was made up of three principalities: Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldavia. Wallachia and Moldavia experienced periodic rule by the Ottoman Turkish Empire between the 14^th – 19^th centuries and were feudal agricultural societies with landed nobility, peasants, and slaves. A long history of imperial occupation and feudalism widened social, economic, and political gaps between the classes, which may have resulted in differential access to food resources or intensified pre-existing barriers to resources. Lower-status individuals likely had more exposure to environmental and occupational hazards and limited access to adequate nutrition leading to differential health outcomes between privileged and marginalized groups along the lines of age, sex, and social status.

This research explored how age, sex, social class, and diet influenced patterns of stress and frailty in human populations using skeletal assemblages from three sites in northeast Romania dating between the 14^th and 18^th centuries: Suceava, Palatul Cnejilor and Schitişor. This research used bioarchaeological methods, historical sources, archaeological context, and carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis to 1) determine patterns of skeletal stress in these populations, 2) explore the dietary composition of these populations, and 3) assess how dietary isotopes, age, sex, and social status influenced patterns of non-specific skeletal stress. I hypothesized that there would be a difference in lesion frequencies between sexes and social classes, individuals were consuming a majority C₃ diet with some C₄ inputs with dietary differences between sexes and social status, and given age, sex, and social status, dietary composition will play an important role in experiences of physiological stress. The findings of this dissertation suggest that there were no significant differences in experiences of stress between males and females or sites, nor any significant mortality bias for any of the non-specific stress lesions. However, there were significant dietary differences between lower-status (Palatul Cnejilor and Schitişor) and higher-status sites (Suceava) with lower-status sites consuming more C₄ crops, which also corresponds to higher frequencies of dental disease at these sites. This suggests either social status or some other aspect of living at these sites was predictive of experiencing dental disease.

Recommended Citation

Watson, Jenna Mackenzie Spears, "Diet, Disease, and Death in Medieval Romania. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2024.
https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/10423