The Bioarchaeology of Urbanization: The Biological, Demographic, and Social Consequences of Living in Cities [1st ed.] 9783030534165, 9783030534172

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xix
Introduction to the Bioarchaeology of Urbanization (Sharon N. DeWitte, Tracy K. Betsinger)....Pages 1-21
Front Matter ....Pages 23-23
Changing People, Changing Settlements? A Perspective on Urbanism from Roman Britain (Rebecca C. Redfern)....Pages 25-47
Ritual, Urbanism, and the Everyday: Mortuary Behavior in the Indus Civilization (Gwen Robbins Schug)....Pages 49-72
Urbanization and Parasitism: Archaeoparasitology of South Korea (Dong Hoon Shin, Min Seo, Sang-Yuck Shim, Jong Ha Hong, Jieun Kim)....Pages 73-89
Front Matter ....Pages 91-91
Dietary Variation in an Urbanizing City: A Temporal Analysis of Diet in Late Medieval London Using Stable Isotope Analysis (Brittany S. Walter, Sharon N. DeWitte, Tosha Dupras, Julia Beaumont)....Pages 93-117
Bioarchaeological Aspects of the Early Stage of Urbanization in Sigtuna, Sweden (Anna Kjellström)....Pages 119-145
Markets and Mycobacteria – A Comprehensive Analysis of the Infuence of Urbanization on Leprosy and Tuberculosis Prevalence in Denmark (AD 1200–1536) (K. Saige Kelmelis, Vicki R. L. Kristensen, Mette Alexandersen, Dorthe Dangvard Pedersen)....Pages 147-182
The Bioarchaeology of Urbanization in Denmark (Julia A. Gamble)....Pages 183-221
Frailty, Survivorship, and Stress in Medieval Poland: A Comparison of Urban and Rural Populations (Tracy K. Betsinger, Sharon N. DeWitte, Hedy M. Justus, Amanda M. Agnew)....Pages 223-243
Urban-Rural Differences in Respiratory Tract Infections in Medieval and Early Modern Polish Subadult Samples (Marta Krenz-Niedbała, Sylwia Łukasik)....Pages 245-272
Front Matter ....Pages 273-273
Colonial Urbanism: A Comparative Exploration of Skeletal Stress in Two Eighteenth Century North American French Colonies (Amy B. Scott, Marie Danforth, Sarah MacInnes, Nicole Hughes, Mattia Fonzo)....Pages 275-294
Eighteenth Century Urban Growth and Parasite Spread at the Fortress of Louisbourg, Nova Scotia, Canada (Mattia Fonzo, Amy B. Scott, Michael Duffy)....Pages 295-316
Exploring Patterns of Appositional Growth Amongst Urban Children (Rachel Ives, Louise Humphrey)....Pages 317-339
Childhood Morbidity and Mortality in Europe’s Industrial Era (Sarah Reedy)....Pages 341-377
Respiratory Stress at the Periphery of Industrial-Era London: Insight from Parishes Within and Outside the City (Derek A. Boyd)....Pages 379-402
Is the Pen Mightier than the Sword? Exploring Urban and Rural Health in Victorian England and Wales Using the Registrar General Reports (Gillian M. M. Crane-Kramer, Jo Buckberry)....Pages 403-433
The Nabataean Urban Experiment and Dental Disease and Childhood Stress (Megan A. Perry, Alysha J. Lieurance)....Pages 435-457
Reconstructed Weaning Ages in Urbanized Cities of Premodern Japan: Insight into the Relationship Between Employment and Fertility (Takumi Tsutaya, Yukari Kakinuma, Minoru Yoneda)....Pages 459-482
Front Matter ....Pages 483-483
What Lies Beneath Those Urban Settings? The Value of Bioarchaeology in Understanding the Complexities of Urban Health and Well-Being (Charlotte Ann Roberts)....Pages 485-510
Back Matter ....Pages 511-538

Citation preview

Bioarchaeology and Social Theory Series Editor: Debra L. Martin

Tracy K. Betsinger Sharon N. DeWitte  Editors

The Bioarchaeology of Urbanization The Biological, Demographic, and Social Consequences of Living in Cities

Bioarchaeology and Social Theory Series editor Debra L. Martin, Professor of Anthropology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV, USA

Bioarchaeology and Social Theory aims to publish research grounded in empirical and scientific analysis of human skeletonized remains (referred to as bioarchaeology) from a wide variety of ancient, historic and contemporary contexts. The interpretations utilize social theory to frame the questions that blend cultural, environmental and social domains so that an integrated picture emerges. In this series, scholars have moved bioarchaeology into new methodological and theoretical areas. Bioarchaeology is an exciting, innovative and relevant subdiscipline of anthropology and it is experiencing a fluorescence of application that has never been seen before. Bioarchaeologists are producing a body of scholarship that demonstrates the relevance of this kind of work for not only the unknown ancient past, but also for the present. Bioarchaeologists featured in this series are producing a body of scholarship that demonstrates the relevance of this kind of work for not only the unknown ancient past, but also for, in this case, known historical and contemporary practices. The biocultural approach encourages the use of multiple lines of evidence and this produces a more compelling and nuanced way of understanding human behavior in all of its complexities. Social theory bridges biological data with cultural processes such as power, ideology, symbols, meaning, social structures, agency, and identity. The series promotes studies that link past understandings with present-day problem solving. In addition, ethical and critical considerations of bioarchaeological research are also emphasized. Topics examined in this series include (but are not limited to) case studies that examine: • • • •

identity, human variation, racism, gender and sex, captives and slavery, warfare, conflict and violence, inequality and hierarchy, colonization and marginalization, industrialization and urbanization, social control, imperialism and subordination, migration and climate change.

This book series is indexed in SCOPUS. For inquiries and submissions of proposals, authors may contact Series Editor, Debra Martin at [email protected] or Publishing Editor, Christi Lue at [email protected] More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11976

Tracy K. Betsinger  •  Sharon N. DeWitte Editors

The Bioarchaeology of Urbanization The Biological, Demographic, and Social Consequences of Living in Cities

Editors Tracy K. Betsinger Department of Anthropology SUNY Oneonta Oneonta, NY, USA

Sharon N. DeWitte Department of Anthropology University of South Carolina Columbia, SC, USA

ISSN 2567-6776     ISSN 2567-6814 (electronic) Bioarchaeology and Social Theory ISBN 978-3-030-53416-5    ISBN 978-3-030-53417-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53417-2 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For my parents, Gary and Judith, who have always encouraged me in all things.  – TKB For Eric, Penelope, and Ulysses for supporting and encouraging me.  – SND

Series Foreword

A colleague once told graduates in his seminar that edited volumes were where book chapters went to die. As we in bioarchaeology know, absolutely nothing could be farther from the truth! Edited volumes are the energy bars that keep most of us going by providing provocative case studies from the most surprising places and on topics you could simply not have imagined. In this impressive and formidable collection of studies using data derived from bioarchaeological resources, the theme that winds through all of them is what was life like in early urban centers? From urban babies in premodern Japan to parasite loads in eighteenth century Nova Scotia and South Korea, to respiratory tract troubles in Poland, to Leprosy in Denmark, and to health problems in the North American French colonies, we see data-driven interpretations of what living in cities was like. Focusing on a wide range of topics associated with living in cities, this far-ranging, engaging, and richly imagined set of case studies provides a wealth of both intuitive as well as counterintuitive interpretations. Urban settings are discussed in all their definitional complexities and nuance. In some situations we see that cities actually made life better for people, and in others, not so much. Many of the chapters turn narratives about city living on their head by providing unique anthropological data sets to ask important questions about how well people are doing. And how well people are doing is sometimes best understood when comparing them to their rural counterparts. Are humans more or less resilient in urban settings? Are they more or less constrained? More or less adapted? Are cities themselves resilient? These and many more tantalizing questions are posed in these case studies and then answered often in surprising ways using multiple lines of evidence. This book fills an important gap in the bioarchaeology literature in that there are many more books that focus on small-scale societies or the transition between foraging and early farming societies. With 7 billion and counting people on the planet, the majority of which live in urban centers, this topic is crucially important in the here and now. Focusing on urbanization in all of its nuance and definitional complexities provides both challenges and opportunities for filling a huge gap in the

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Series Foreword

bioarchaeological literature while also providing lessons to those of us living in these postmodern times. Bioarchaeology may be a surprising place to look for answers to solving global issues around population increases and the massive migration of rural people into urban centers, but this volume makes clear that bioarchaeology provides important pieces to the puzzle. Bioarchaeology is on the vanguard of providing data on morbidity and mortality that is richly contextualized. These chapters provide ways of interpreting the data which look at multiple factors that place people at risk and the ways that these interact to place some people more at risk for illness and early death than others. There are positive aspects to cities that these case studies speak of. Standards of living are sometimes better and there are more possibilities for people to get the resources they need. However, the majority of the chapters demonstrate in great details how the morbidity load of some subgroups can be extraordinarily problematic. Collectively, these chapters provide something that very few other studies coming from historians, economists, and political scientists can and that is to provide rich and detailed contextualization of the time period, the environment, the diet, the labor patterns, and the factors that most affect who lives and who gets sick and dies. In addition there is time depth, cross-cultural perspectives, and fine-grained analyses that bring intersecting factors into focus. Covering urban centers dating form 5000 BCE to 1900 CE provides the broadest possible sense of historical trends. These studies also do something that many studies that only rely on health data cannot do and that is that these studies show the variability in effects across groups at risk. Series Editor, Bioarchaeology and Social Theory University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV, USA

Debra L. Martin

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to extend a heartfelt thank you to the Bioarchaeology and Social Theory Series Editor, Debra Martin, for her interest in and support of this project. We thank the editors, project coordinators, and editorial staff at Springer Press, including Teresa Krauss, Christi Jongepier-Lue, Nitesh Shrivastava, and Vignesh Viswanathan. We also thank the chapter authors for their patience, good humor, and excellent and timely contributions to the volume. We also thank the volume contributors for serving as internal reviewers. Thank you to the anonymous reviewers of our book proposal for insightful and helpful feedback that improved the scope of this volume. Finally, we are grateful to Charlotte Roberts for writing the concluding chapter of this volume.

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Contents

1 Introduction to the Bioarchaeology of Urbanization����������������������������    1 Sharon N. DeWitte and Tracy K. Betsinger Part I Early Urban Centers 2 Changing People, Changing Settlements? A Perspective on Urbanism from Roman Britain ��������������������������������������������������������   25 Rebecca C. Redfern 3 Ritual, Urbanism, and the Everyday: Mortuary Behavior in the Indus Civilization��������������������������������������������������������������������������   49 Gwen Robbins Schug 4 Urbanization and Parasitism: Archaeoparasitology of South Korea������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   73 Dong Hoon Shin, Min Seo, Sang-Yuck Shim, Jong Ha Hong, and Jieun Kim Part II Medieval and Post-medieval Cities 5 Dietary Variation in an Urbanizing City: A Temporal Analysis of Diet in Late Medieval London Using Stable Isotope Analysis��������   93 Brittany S. Walter, Sharon N. DeWitte, Tosha Dupras, and Julia Beaumont 6 Bioarchaeological Aspects of the Early Stage of Urbanization in Sigtuna, Sweden ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������  119 Anna Kjellström 7 Markets and Mycobacteria – A Comprehensive Analysis of the Influence of Urbanization on Leprosy and Tuberculosis Prevalence in Denmark (AD 1200–1536) ����������������������������������������������  147 K. Saige Kelmelis, Vicki R. L. Kristensen, Mette Alexandersen, and Dorthe Dangvard Pedersen xi

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Contents

8 The Bioarchaeology of Urbanization in Denmark��������������������������������  183 Julia A. Gamble 9 Frailty, Survivorship, and Stress in Medieval Poland: A Comparison of Urban and Rural Populations����������������������������������  223 Tracy K. Betsinger, Sharon N. DeWitte, Hedy M. Justus, and Amanda M. Agnew 10 Urban-Rural Differences in Respiratory Tract Infections in Medieval and Early Modern Polish Subadult Samples��������������������  245 Marta Krenz-Niedbała and Sylwia Łukasik Part III Premodern and Industrial Cities 11 Colonial Urbanism: A Comparative Exploration of Skeletal Stress in Two Eighteenth Century North American French Colonies�����������  275 Amy B. Scott, Marie Danforth, Sarah MacInnes, Nicole Hughes, and Mattia Fonzo 12 Eighteenth Century Urban Growth and Parasite Spread at the Fortress of Louisbourg, Nova Scotia, Canada����������������������������  295 Mattia Fonzo, Amy B. Scott, and Michael Duffy 13 Exploring Patterns of Appositional Growth Amongst Urban Children����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  317 Rachel Ives and Louise Humphrey 14 Childhood Morbidity and Mortality in Europe’s Industrial Era��������  341 Sarah Reedy 15 Respiratory Stress at the Periphery of Industrial-Era London: Insight from Parishes Within and Outside the City�����������������������������  379 Derek A. Boyd 16 Is the Pen Mightier than the Sword? Exploring Urban and Rural Health in Victorian England and Wales Using the Registrar General Reports����������������������������������������������������������������  403 Gillian M. M. Crane-Kramer and Jo Buckberry 17 The Nabataean Urban Experiment and Dental Disease and Childhood Stress������������������������������������������������������������������������������  435 Megan A. Perry and Alysha J. Lieurance 18 Reconstructed Weaning Ages in Urbanized Cities of Premodern Japan: Insight into the Relationship Between Employment and Fertility����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  459 Takumi Tsutaya, Yukari Kakinuma, and Minoru Yoneda

Contents

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Part IV  Conclusion 19 What Lies Beneath Those Urban Settings? The Value of Bioarchaeology in Understanding the Complexities of Urban Health and Well-Being����������������������������������������������������������������������������  485 Charlotte Ann Roberts Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  511

About the Editors

Tracy K. Betsinger is Professor of Anthropology at SUNY-Oneonta. She specializes in bioarchaeology, paleopathology, and mortuary archaeology. Her research focuses on examining the impacts of age, gender, social status, settlement patterns, and social identity and personhood on various aspects of health including disease, diet, stress, and trauma. She has worked extensively with medieval and post-medieval Polish skeletal remains as well as remains from the American Southeast. She recently co-edited two volumes: The Anthropology of the Fetus: Biology, Culture, and Society and The Odd, the Unusual, and the Strange: Bioarchaeological Explorations of Atypical Burials.  

Sharon  N.  DeWitte is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of South Carolina, Columbia. She specializes in bioarchaeology, paleodemography, and paleoepidemiology. She is particularly interested in the evolution, ecology, epidemiology, and the consequences of disease in past populations and the ways in which such research informs our understanding of disease in living populations. For over 15 years, her research has primarily focused on trends in health and demography before, during, and after the fourteenth-century Black Death in England. She is currently on the editorial board of Evolutionary Anthropology.  

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List of Contributors

Amanda M. Agnew  The Ohio State University Medical Center, Columbus, OH, USA Mette  Alexandersen  Department of Forensic Medicine, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark Julia  Beaumont  School of Archaeological and Forensic Sciences, University of Bradford, Bradford, UK Tracy  K.  Betsinger  Department Oneonta, NY, USA

of

Anthropology,

SUNY

Oneonta,

Derek  A.  Boyd  Department of Anthropology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA Jo  Buckberry  School of Archaeological and Forensic Sciences, University of Bradford, Bradford, UK Gillian M. M. Crane-Kramer  Department of Anthropology, SUNY Plattsburgh, Plattsburgh, NY, USA Marie  Danforth  Department of Anthropology and Sociology, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS, USA Sharon N. DeWitte  Department of Anthropology, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA Michael Duffy  Department of Biology, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada Tosha  Dupras  Department of Anthropology, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA Mattia  Fonzo  Department of Anthropology, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada

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List of Contributors

Julia A. Gamble  University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada Jong Ha Hong  Institute of Korean Archaeology and Ancient History, Kyunghee University, Seoul, South Korea Nicole  Hughes  Department of Anthropology, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada Louise Humphrey  Centre for Human Evolution Research, Department of Earth Sciences, Natural History Museum, London, UK Rachel Ives  Centre for Human Evolution Research, Department of Earth Sciences, Natural History Museum, London, UK Hedy M. Justus  University of Dundee, Dundee, Scotland, UK Yukari  Kakinuma  The University Museum, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan K.  Saige  Kelmelis  Department of Anthropology and Sociology, University of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD, USA Jieun Kim  Department of Anatomy/Institute of Forensic Science, Seoul, National University College of Medicine, Seoul, South Korea Anna Kjellström  Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies, University of Stockholm, Stockholm, Sweden Marta  Krenz-Niedbała  Institute of Human Biology and Evolution, Faculty of Biology, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland Vicki R. L. Kristensen  Department of Forensic Medicine, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark Alysha  J.  Lieurance  Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA Sylwia Łukasik  Institute of Human Biology and Evolution, Faculty of Biology, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland Sarah  MacInnes  Parks Canada, Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site, Louisbourg, NS, Canada Dorthe  Dangvard  Pedersen  Department of Forensic Medicine, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark The Danish National Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark Megan  A.  Perry  Department of Anthropology, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, USA

List of Contributors

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Rebecca  C.  Redfern  Centre for Human Bioarchaeology, Museum of London, London, UK School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK Sarah Reedy  Department of Sociology and Criminology, Quinnipiac University, Hamden, CT, USA Charlotte  Ann  Roberts  Department of Archaeology, Durham University, Durham, UK Gwen Robbins Schug  Department of Anthropology, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC, USA Amy  B.  Scott  Department of Anthropology, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada Min  Seo  Department of Parasitology, Dankook University College of Medicine, Chonan, South Korea Sang-Yuck  Shim  Department of History, Kongju National University, Kongju, Chungcheongnam-do, South Korea Dong  Hoon  Shin  Department of Anatomy/Institute of Forensic Science, Seoul, National University College of Medicine, Seoul, South Korea Takumi  Tsutaya  Research Institute for Marine Resources Utilization, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Yokosuka, Kanagawa, Japan Department of Evolutionary Studies of Biosystems, The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, Miura, Kanagawa, Japan Brittany  S.  Walter  Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency Laboratory, Offutt AFB, NE, USA Minoru  Yoneda  The University Museum, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan

Chapter 1

Introduction to the Bioarchaeology of Urbanization Sharon N. DeWitte and Tracy K. Betsinger

Abstract  Over half of people today live in cities, and urban populations will increase in the future. It is thus crucial to understand the consequences that urbanization has for human populations. Urbanization has long been a focus of bioarchaeological research, but what is missing from the literature is an exploration of the geographic and temporal range of human biological, demographic, and sociocultural responses to this major shift in settlement pattern. Studies of contemporary urbanization have found both positive and negative outcomes, which likely have parallels in past human societies. Bioarchaeological studies have similarly yielded varying results, and the impacts of urbanization in the past were surely shaped by local ecological and sociocultural conditions. In this Introduction to the volume, we explore some of the consequences of urban living, how those contrast with rural settings, and provide examples of previous bioarchaeological scholarship on the topic, highlighting the need for further examination of urbanization in the past. To explore the variability in human responses to urbanization, this volume includes studies from a wide range of geographic locations and temporal periods. These studies enable cross-cultural and temporal comparisons and a more holistic understanding of the impact of urbanization. Keywords  Rural · Urban · Cities · Urbanism · Anthropology · Health

S. N. DeWitte (*) Department of Anthropology, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA e-mail: [email protected] T. K. Betsinger Department of Anthropology, SUNY Oneonta, Oneonta, NY, USA © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 T. K. Betsinger, S. N. DeWitte (eds.), The Bioarchaeology of Urbanization, Bioarchaeology and Social Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53417-2_1

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S. N. DeWitte and T. K. Betsinger

1.1  Introduction Cities, in the simplest of terms, are relatively large human settlements with systems of infrastructure, governance, and organization necessary to accommodate and support large numbers of people, and urbanization can be defined as an increase in the proportion of a given population that lives in cities. However, as the contributions to this volume demonstrate, definitions of “city”, “urban”, “urbanism”, and “urbanization” may vary, and though numerous studies of urbanization contrast conditions in cities with those in nearby rural areas, many scholars recognize that rather than there being a strict urban-rural dichotomy, there is a continuum of settlement patterns between those two ends of the spectrum (e.g., Christenson et al. 2014; Corker 2017; Dahly and Adair 2007). Regardless of how these terms are defined, cities and urban contexts originated, at most, only a few thousand years ago and thus have had the potential to shape human experience for just a tiny fraction of the total time that our species has existed. Life in urban areas is becoming increasingly predominant globally, with 55% of people currently living in cities and nearly 70% projected to do so by 2050; the majority of people in North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, and Oceania live in urban areas, and levels of urbanization in Asia and Africa are currently above 40% and rising (United Nations 2018). Though the average rate of human population growth worldwide has slowed since the latter half of the twentieth century (United Nations Department for Economic and Social Affairs 2019, p. 209), human population sizes nonetheless are staggeringly high and getting larger. With so many people currently residing in and projected to live in cities, it is imperative to understand the consequences of urbanization and to assess the sustainability of urban environments and urban growth, particularly in the face of global crises such as those produced by climate change and emerging disease pandemics. Cities have created novel forms of human interactions with the physical environment, with each other, and with other organisms, including pathogens. Urbanization has had profound effects, including substantially influencing the ecology and behavior of other animals (Cabrera-Cruz et  al. 2019), promoting the emergence and spread of new infectious diseases (Neiderud 2015), and contributing to climate change or vulnerability thereof (Garschagen and Romero-Lankao 2015; Satterthwaite 2009). Thus, urbanization represents one of the most important adaptive shifts experienced by and produced by humans. It is therefore not surprising that a significant amount of scholarship has focused on urban life in the past and today in an effort to understand the forces that drive the process of urbanization and the variation that exists in human biological, demographic, economic, and sociocultural responses to this major shift in settlement pattern. Bioarchaeological studies of urbanization, including comparisons of urban and rural communities, have been conducted over the past several decades. However, to date, there has been no comprehensive consideration of urbanization in the past and its impacts on humans from a bioarchaeological perspective. Examining the literature reveals that there is no predictable pattern in outcomes, indicating that local factors, environment, age, sex,

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and social status play important roles in determining how and if urbanization affects those residing in such settlements. This variability, then, requires closer attention and a more comprehensive and nuanced examination of urbanization and its effects in the past across a variety of populations. Our goal, in planning this volume, is to achieve and stimulate new syntheses of and insights on the variation in experiences and outcomes of urbanization in the past. We asked each of the authors in this volume to include the following in their chapters: (1) define urbanization and the urban features that characterize the population under consideration; (2) identify whether and how urbanization affected the population or subsets of the population; (3) where relevant, describe the skeletal manifestation of any effects; and (4) discuss implications for modern urbanization studies. We highlight in this chapter some of the consequences of urbanization and the ways in which bioarchaeological investigations uniquely contribute to our understanding of this phenomenon. The following individual chapters present interpretations of skeletal data that are framed by theoretical perspectives on social determinants of health, the human life course, agency, and identity, and as a whole, this volume serves to test the assumption that urban environments have uniformly negative consequences for human health.

1.2  Consequences of Urbanization and Life in Urban Areas Studies of living populations have revealed numerous ways in which urban inhabitants can experience advantages and disadvantages compared to contemporaneous people living in rural environments. Given the huge volume of literature on the effects of urban environments and of the differences that exist between urban vs. rural contexts, we do not provide an exhaustive summary here, but instead provide a few illustrative examples that contrast the positives and negatives of human experiences in urban spaces. We note that the benefits and costs of urban living are not necessarily experienced equally by all city dwellers; heterogeneity in the experience and consequences of urban environments is shaped by factors such as socioeconomic status, age, gender, occupation, and migrant status (see, e.g., Harpham 2009). Further, distinctions between urban and rural environments are not necessarily the same in every location or across time. Thus, the summary below should be read as presenting a relatively small selection of the observed trends and possible outcomes associated with living in cities; for the sake of brevity we do not fully examine here how these outcomes are highly dependent upon context and individual social position and biology.

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1.2.1  P  ositive Outcomes of Urbanization in Modern Populations Several scholars have found that, for modern populations in general, standards of living (as measured by such things as asset poverty, educational attainment and sex differences thereof, infant mortality rates, use of reproductive health services, malnutrition, and mean per capital expenditure per household) are better in urban areas compared to surrounding rural areas in many parts of the world today (Fang and Sakellariou 2013; Sahn and Stifel 2003; Storper and Scott 2016; Thu Le and Booth 2014; Young 2013). Indeed, according to Storper and Scott (2016, p. 1114), on average, even the poor inhabitants of cities are better off than poor people in rural areas worldwide. This pattern, however, is complex and not universal; for example, Ezeh et al. (2017) note that health outcomes are frequently worse for poor individuals living in urban slums compared to their rural counterparts. Where observed, the generally higher standard of living in modern cities reflects, at least in part, easier and better access to various resources and services in cities than in surrounding rural areas. This can include better immunization coverage and greater availability of, access to, and use of health facilities and social services in cities than in rural areas (Harpham 2009; Harpham and Molyneux 2001; Vlahov et al. 2007). There are also greater educational and economic opportunities in cities (Fields 1975; McMichael 2000). Cities are characterized by enhanced market access, which in some contexts can lead to better childhood nutrition (Headey et al. 2018). Moreover, cities often have better sanitation and water infrastructure than rural areas (Galea and Vlahov 2005; McMichael 2000). Some measures, in some contexts, indicate better health in general in urban areas compared to rural areas. Demographic variables, such as life expectancy at birth, survivorship, and age-specific rates of or levels of mortality, are frequently used as broad measures of health within populations, with longer lives and lower risks and rates of mortality presumed to reflect relatively good health in general (Gage 2005). Numerous studies have found rural-urban disparities in mortality rates that favor urban areas. Many of these studies focus on infant and childhood mortality (Harpham 2009). For example, Vlahov et  al. (2007) highlight the negative associations that have been found between infant mortality and the percentage of a country that is urbanized; that is, several studies have documented a trend of lower infant mortality rates in more highly urbanized regions. As infants are often among the most vulnerable individuals in a society, patterns of health and demography for the very young are frequently used as a general barometer of general population-wide conditions. However, urban mortality advantages are not limited to infancy and childhood. Singh and Siapush (Singh and Siahpush 2014a) found, for example, higher age-­ specific, all-cause (i.e., from all causes of death), and cause-specific mortality across the entire lifespan in rural areas compared to metropolitan areas in the US (ca. 1969–2009). Studies by these authors and others have also found increasing disparities over time in life expectancy at birth in urban vs. rural US, and that life expectancy is inversely related to levels of rurality (Long et al. 2018; Singh and Siahpush

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2014b). However, the findings of Jian et  al. (2019) and Geronimus et  al. (2001) suggest that trends in health, as reflected by life expectancy, across the rural-urban gradient may vary by age group and “race.”1 In some countries, there are disparities in the predominant causes of death between urban and rural areas that, perhaps unintuitively, may reflect better general health, at least at younger ages, in urban areas. Since the mid-nineteenth century, shifts in cause-of-death structure, referred to as the second epidemiological transition, have been documented, first in industrializing populations in Western Europe and more recently elsewhere (Gage 2005; Zuckerman 2014). The second epidemiological transition, as outlined by Omran (1971), is characterized by an overall decline in the numbers of deaths attributable to infectious diseases and an increase in the number of deaths resulting from chronic or degenerative diseases (non-­ communicable diseases). The “transition” refers to the point at which the chronic or degenerative diseases surpass infectious diseases as predominant causes of death. The second epidemiological transition is associated with decreased levels of mortality and increases in life expectancy at birth that occur at later stages of the demographic transition. Several different mechanisms have been proposed to explain the second epidemiological and demographic transitions, including improvements in sanitation, the development and enhanced distribution of modern medicine, improvements in nutrition, political stability, and the evolution of pathogens or their human hosts (Mackenbach 2013; McKeown 1976, 2009; Omran 1971). Regardless of the ultimate underlying cause(s), several studies have found that the second epidemiological transition occurs earlier in urban areas than in surrounding rural areas (e.g., Budnik 2014; Harpham and Molyneux 2001; Schmidt and Sattenspiel 2017) and, at least in the Americas, it is happening more rapidly in countries with the highest levels of urbanization than elsewhere. The changes in demographic patterns that accompany the second epidemiological transition – i.e., reductions in levels of mortality, particularly infant mortality – are by themselves measures of improvements in health. The increased proportion of people who die from non-communicable diseases is also, perhaps paradoxically, ultimately reflective of underlying improvements in health. As Gage (2005) notes, the increased proportion of deaths from non-communicable diseases in transitioning and post-­ transition populations does not reflect an increased risk of death from those diseases, but rather is an artifact of an increased number of people who, by not dying from infectious diseases (i.e., as a result of being in better health at younger ages), are therefore vulnerable to death from other causes. The actual risks of mortality associated with those other, non-communicable, causes might remain unchanged or even decrease over time. Observed differences in average levels of health and mortality between urban and rural areas exist in part because of better standards of living in cities (for at least some of the inhabitants), but these differences might also reflect the “healthy 1  Race is a social category that, while not reflecting a biological reality, does have biological consequences. We refer readers to the American Association of Physical Anthropologist’s statement on race and racism to learn more (Fuentes et al. 2019).

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migrant effect” in some cities. That is, some studies have found that successful migrants, including within-country (internal) rural to urban migrants, are healthier on average than both the source and receiving populations (Chen 2011; Nauman et al. 2015). This trend might occur in some cases because migration is a selective process and thus successful migrants are a select subpopulation of healthy individuals (Lu 2008; Wallace and Kulu 2014). In addition to affecting physical well-being, urban-rural differences in living standards may also influence psychological well-being. For example, Requena (2016) found that in lower income countries, subjective well-being is higher in cities than in rural areas; however, this was not the case in wealthy countries where standards of living in rural areas are high.

1.2.2  Negative Outcomes of Urban Life in Modern Populations Despite providing opportunities for enhanced access to various services and factors that can positively affect health, there are conditions unique to cities that can also have negative effects on human health and well-being within modern populations. We note that many studies that address the negative health consequences of urban environments, including some that we mention here, focus on impoverished urban dwellers and conditions within slums. This underscores the heterogeneity that exists among individuals living in cities. For example, in populations where overall mortality rates from infectious diseases have declined and mortality rates from non-­ communicable diseases have increased (i.e., the second epidemiological transition), the urban poor face an unfortunate double burden of both major classes of diseases, despite population-wide apparent improvements in health (see, e.g., Harpham and Molyneux 2001). Conditions in cities can promote the persistence and spread of a variety of parasitic and infectious diseases. Cities, particularly those in areas experiencing very rapid urbanization (without concurrent, similarly-paced economic growth) or in lower-income countries, can face problems of poor sanitation and insufficient waste disposal. The accumulation of garbage and human and animal waste attracts and sustains rodents and insects that act as reservoirs of or vectors for numerous diseases, such as Chagas disease, dengue, leptospirosis, plague, and typhus (Armelagos et al. 2005; Costa et al. 2017; Tong et al. 2015). Urbanization can result in “biotic homogenization”, i.e., a loss of both vector- and host-species biodiversity in favor of species that can thrive in urban environments alongside humans; this can result in increased contact between humans and disease vectors (Wilke et al. 2019). Pollution of water sources and inadequate (or non-existent) water treatment facilities promote the transmission of water-borne diseases, such as cholera, dysentery, and giardiasis (Galea and Vlahov 2005). The high populations densities that are characteristic of cities enhance (via higher contact rates) the transmission of diseases that are spread from person to person, such as influenza and tuberculosis (Alirol et al. 2011; Santos-­ Vega et al. 2016). Further, the large population sizes and densities in cities create

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ideal conditions for the persistence of viral diseases, such as measles, and obligate pathogens (those that must infect a host to survive), such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Indeed, this association between urban environments and exposure to infectious diseases has left its mark on the human genome; the duration of urbanization has been found to be positively associated with the frequency of an allele that confers resistance to intracellular pathogens including M. tuberculosis (Barnes et  al. 2011). Because of relatively recent growth in the rates and scale of international travel and migration, cities are becoming important hubs for the transmission of infectious diseases, and rapid urbanization is playing a major role in the emergence and re-emergence of numerous diseases (Alirol et al. 2011; Hassell et al. 2017). Poor urban inhabitants can face food insecurity even in wealthy nations and in the context of high food production and availability in general (Crush and Frayne 2011; Roberts et al. 2019). People living in cities often rely more heavily than rural inhabitants on purchasing food prepared outside of the home for a variety of reasons, such as engaging in work that leaves little time to prepare meals, relatively small in-home facilities for cooking or food storage, a higher proportion of women in the workforce, and a greater availability of processed and packaged foods than in rural areas (Codjoe et al. 2016). The proportion of urban households that produce some portion of their own food (e.g., via backyard gardening) varies considerably, but is often very low (Codjoe et al. 2016; Crush and Frayne 2011). In combination, these factors mean that urban inhabitants, in general, are more vulnerable to fluctuations in food prices, and food insecurity can therefore be substantial in cities. Though some studies have found that food insecurity is actually lower in urban areas than comparative rural areas (Tomayko et al. 2017), even if some measures of diet might suggest urban advantages, the ultimate consequences for health might still be negative in cities. For example, Codjoe et al. (2016) found that dietary diversity was relatively high in Accra, Ghana, but that micronutrient levels were low. Given the strong influence of nutritional status on immune competence (Katona and Katona-Apte 2008; Scrimshaw 2003; Wolowczuk et al. 2008), urban food insecurity likely exacerbates vulnerability to infectious disease for some urban dwellers. In addition to the problems posed by infectious diseases, urban environments might also increase the risk of some non-communicable diseases. For example, close proximity of human habitation to accumulations of waste, such as landfills, has been linked to a variety of poor health outcomes in addition to infectious diseases, such as cancers, congenital abnormalities, anemia, and cardiovascular disorders (Heller and Catapreta 2003). City life is generally more sedentary, and urban inhabitants rely more on cars and other vehicles for transportation and have reduced opportunities for physical activity (Mathieu and Karmali 2016). This, in combination with easier access to energy-dense processed foods, contributes to an increased prevalence of obesity with attendant elevated risks of type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and respiratory disease among urban inhabitants (McMichael 2000; Oyebode et al. 2015; Patil 2014). Urban inhabitants face risks of certain forms of injury and interpersonal violence that are less common in rural areas (Harpham and Molyneux 2001). There is, for example, a higher prevalence of violent crime and a greater risk of death and injury due to traffic accidents in cities (Dahly and Adair

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2007). Further, facing chronic or periodic threats of violence or witnessing violence can have deleterious effects on health even if physical violence is not directly experienced (Chen and Miller 2012; Kuehn 2019). The risk of exposure to certain environmental pollutants may be higher in cities than in rural areas. For example, there are relatively high levels of potentially hazardous metals in urban soils and storm water because of vehicle exhaust, industrial waste disposal, and other factors (Ma et al. 2016; Yu et al. 2019); exposure to heavy metals is linked to cancers, renal disorders, and other health problems. Specifically, environmental lead exposure (e.g., because of leaded vehicle fuels and house paint) is higher in cities (McMichael 2000), and exposure to even low levels of lead is associated with, among other things, cognitive impairments, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes and other metabolic disorders (He et al. 2018; Leff et al. 2018; Tong et al. 2000). Outdoor air pollution (e.g., particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, nitrous dioxide) has been shown to be worse in urban vs. rural areas (Monn et al. 1995; Strosnider 2017). Long-term exposure to air pollution, among other ill effects, increases all-cause mortality and cause-specific mortality rates (e.g., mortality from cardiopulmonary, respiratory, and cardiovascular diseases) (Fischer et  al. 2015; Romieu et al. 2012), and reduces life expectancy (Hanigan et al. 2019) and fertility (Zhou et al. 2014). In addition to these perhaps more obviously harmful forms of pollution, urban areas are also more likely to be affected by light pollution and noise pollution, both of which can negatively affect health. Light pollution can disrupt circadian rhythms and neuroendocrine physiology, potentially leading to such deleterious outcomes as sleep disorders, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes (Chepesiuk 2009; Falchi et  al. 2011; Navara and Nelson 2007). Noise pollution, such as that produced by automotive and aviation traffic, can cause sleep disturbances, hearing loss, cardiovascular disease, endocrine disorders, diabetes, and other health problems (Goines and Hagler 2007; Hammer et al. 2014). For example, noise pollution can produce chronic stress reactions and thus increased risk of cardiovascular disease (Hahad et al. 2019), and there is an increased risk of cardiovascular mortality associated with exposure to transportation noise in particular (Héritier et al. 2017). Cities are often presumed to contribute disproportionately to greenhouse gas emissions, either directly as a result of such things as urban industrial activities, electricity generation, and transportation, or indirectly through the expenditure of energy required to support the flow of food, goods, and other things from areas outside of cities (Satterthwaite 2009; United Nations HABITAT 2011). Thus, urbanization is perceived to be a major contributor to climate change. However, per capita greenhouse gas emissions in cities is, in most of the cases studied, lower than the corresponding national average (Dodman 2009). Regardless of whether cities are to blame for climate change, there is, in many areas, heightened vulnerability of urban inhabitants to the effects of climate change, such as coastal flooding and heat waves (Garschagen and Romero-Lankao 2015). Cities can produce “heat island” effects, i.e., higher temperatures than in surrounding rural areas as a result of the built environment (e.g., heat-retaining buildings, large expanses of tree-less concrete and asphalt, and physical obstruction of breezes) (McMichael 2000). As global

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temperatures increase as a result of climate change, there is a worsening of heat island effects; importantly, the heat island effect can contribute to heat stress and thus can increase risks of mortality (Oleson et al. 2015). The potential negative effects of urbanization are not limited to human occupants of cities. For example, urban areas can disrupt plant-pollinator interactions (Harrison and Winfree 2015) and the flight patterns of migratory birds (Cabrera-Cruz et al. 2019), and artificial light pollution can alter intertidal ecosystems (Garratt et  al. 2019). These effects, in turn, can have long-term negative consequences for humans. The preceding sections reveal the complexity that exists in modern cities and in approaches to assessing the impacts of urbanization. These modern examples clearly emphasize the need for careful comparative approaches and balanced interpretations when we investigate urban environments in the past.

1.3  Studies of Urbanization in the Past Important contributions to our understanding of the origins of, variation in, and consequences of life in cities have been made by scholars in other fields. For example, archaeological research has, among other things, examined the factors that promote and sustain urbanization, settlement patterns within and surrounding urban centers, systems of production within and in support of cities, and the emergence and reproduction of social inequality in cities (Smith 2014). Economic historians and historical demographers – using anthropometric, demographic, and economic data from historical records such as vital registers and military recruitment records – have revealed urban-rural differentials and changing patterns of health during the process of urbanization in various past populations (e.g., Fogel et al. 1983; Komlos 1998; Torres et al. 2019; Wilson 2019; Woods 2003). These studies are informative about the effects of urban living for some individuals, but historical documents are not representative of everyone within the population under consideration. Further, historical studies of urbanization have traditionally, primarily focused on industrializing or industrialized European and Euro-American populations and on data from the nineteenth century onward. However, bioarchaeological investigation of urbanization in the past provides a much-needed and unparalleled perspective on urbanization that can complement and, in some cases, correct the narratives produced by scholars in other disciplines. Bioarchaeology provides evidence about urbanization from the remains of people who are, for the most part, missing from documentary sources and from a broader selection of past populations than are traditionally the focus of research in other fields, such as economic history. By directly examining the skeletal remains of people who lived in cities in the past, bioarchaeology can uniquely assess the embodied experiences of urban inhabitants and how those experiences differ from those of their rural counterparts. Bioarchaeological studies of urbanization enable the examination of geographic and temporal variation in the individual- and population-­ level experiences of urban environments, thus improving our

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understanding, for example, of how and why these experiences have changed over time, how the benefits and disadvantages of urbanization are distributed within and between populations, and how social position and identity mediates these effects. Many bioarchaeological studies have investigated the effects of past urban environments on human health. Because bioarchaeologists work with collections of human skeletal remains, which are subject to several sources of bias – including that produced by the interaction between heterogenous frailty and selective mortality, preservation bias, and incomplete excavations (see Milner et al. 2019) – our studies of health are often not directly comparable to those done in contemporary populations. Several scholars have outlined the problems inherent in assessing health using human skeletal remains (e.g., DeWitte and Stojanowski 2015; Reitsema and McIlvaine 2014; Wood et al. 1992), and several of the contributors to this volume acknowledge these potential limitations. Nonetheless, there are important contributions that bioarchaeologists can make to our understanding of trends in health in past cities and the heterogeneity that exists within and between past populations with respect to urban health. Some bioarchaeological studies focus on specific health conditions and their associations with urban contexts. For example, Mays et al. (2018) assess vitamin D deficiency disease (rickets and osteomalacia) in several sites from the Roman Empire and do not find an association, in general, between urban habitation and higher rates of vitamin D deficiency (in contrast to findings from Industrial-era sites), which they interpret as reflecting weakly developed urbanization for most of their urban sample. The exception is a relatively high rate of vitamin D deficiency disease in an urban site characterized by densely occupied apartments in high-rise buildings. Other studies evaluate non-specific physiological stress markers or collections of pathological conditions presumed to reflect health in general rather than (or in addition to) examining particular etiologies. For example, Sparacello et al. (2017) evaluate temporal trends in stature, as a general indicator of environmental quality during development, in Iron Age sites from Italy, and attribute an observed decline in stature to increasing urbanization. Zhang et al. (2016) interpret high frequencies of enamel hypoplasia, porotic hyperostosis, and periosteal new bone formation as indicating intense stress experienced by non-elites during the process of early urbanization in China. Gowland et  al. (2018) report similar frequencies of dental disease and skeletal pathology indicative of metabolic disease in urban vs. rural nonadults from eighteenth – nineteenth-century Northern England, but greater growth disruption and more evidence of respiratory disease in the rural population. Roberts (2009) concludes, based on the analysis of a variety of pathological conditions, that people in early medieval rural England were healthier than those in cities. According to Lewis (2016), urban adolescents from medieval England exhibited a higher prevalence of joint and spinal disease compared to their rural counterparts, and urban females appeared most vulnerable to respiratory and infectious diseases. Several studies have examined demographic measures of population health and well-being in general rather than or in combination with evaluation of skeletal pathologies. Redfern et al. (2015), for example, report risks of mortality (as a proxy for health) that were higher for urban nonadults compared to those in rural

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cemeteries in Roman Britain; however, risks of mortality did not appear to differ between adults in these contexts, in general. Further, there were significantly higher frequencies of some, but not all skeletal pathologies in the urban cemeteries. Walter and DeWitte (2016) compare adult mortality patterns in urban vs. rural medieval England and find that risks of mortality were higher for urban vs. rural females, but that there was no difference in mortality between adult males in these contexts. Betsinger and DeWitte (2017) find that rates of porotic hyperostosis, cribra orbitalia, linear enamel hypoplasia, periosteal reaction, and specific infectious diseases did not change significantly with increasing urbanization in medieval Poland cemeteries, but that risks of death did increase over time, suggesting underlying declines in health. Bioarchaeologists have assessed patterns of interpersonal violence in past urban environments. For example, Robbins Schug et al. (2012) examines trends in traumatic injuries, over time and by age and sex, at Harappa (3300–1300 BC), and finds a higher prevalence of violence in the post-urban context, particularly among females and children. Krakowka (2017) examines patterns of traumatic injuries to the skull in medieval London and concludes that males in the city may have experienced higher rates of violence compared to contemporaneous rural males. However, comparison of long bone fracture patterns in urban vs. rural medieval England has revealed higher frequencies in the rural context, which Judd and Roberts (1999) attribute to the greater dangers of farm labor compared to the craft specialization more typical in medieval cities. Similarly, Agnew et al. (2015) find more injuries in rural compared to urban contexts in medieval Poland. Elevated risk of exposure to environmental contaminants, including heavy metals, appears not to be limited to modern, industrialized urban contexts. For example, Delile et al. (2017) document temporal trends in lead contamination of soils from ancient Rome, which reflect the use of lead pipes in the city’s water distribution system. Further, several bioarchaeological studies have examined the possible effects of air pollution in past populations. Lewis et al. (1995) for example, found higher rates of maxillary sinusitis in medieval York, England, compared to a contemporaneous rural site, possibly reflecting elevated exposure to occupational and industrial air pollution in the city. These studies represent a small sample of the bioarchaeological analyses that have been done on urbanization, and even this brief summary reveals the complexity of and variation in the impacts of urbanization on individual health and lived experiences, between the sexes, across the life course and through time. Findings from and references to other bioarchaeological studies can be found in the chapters that follow.

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1.4  Why Does the Study of Urbanization in the Past Matter? Though urbanization is a relatively recent phenomenon, there has been tremendous change in the forms and scale of urbanization since its emergence. Modern urban contexts are very different in important ways from those that existed in the past. For example, modernization is associated with advances in biomedical knowledge and practice; improved understandings of hygiene, nutrition, and disease transmission and advances in infrastructures and systems that can improve all of them; globalization and an extraordinary scale and speed of transportation of people and pathogens around the world; and easy dissemination of information about disease outbreaks, prevention, and control. These factors were largely or totally absent in past populations. As a result, we cannot expect our current and expanding understanding of the impacts of modern urbanization to necessarily reflect the impacts of urbanization in the past. This volume, however, was developed to provide an opportunity to explore where similarities and differences with respect to these impacts exist, not only within and between the specific populations studied by the contributors to this volume, but also between these pre-modern populations and contemporary societies already living in urban areas and those undergoing the urbanization transition. Bioarchaeologists can provide perspectives on the cross-cultural variation in and the temporal depth of the effects of urbanization that are inaccessible through any means other than the analysis of human skeletal remains and their burial contexts. As anthropologists, bioarchaeologists take a holistic approach to the study of urbanization in the past, thereby potentially revealing the interdependence of the myriad factors that influence the experience of urban environments and of the context-­ dependent outcomes of urbanization. Beyond improving our understanding of the lived experiences of people in past cities, bioarchaeological analyses of urbanization and urban contexts can reveal forces in the past that are still at work in these contexts today, potentially in ways that can lead to positive changes for living people.

1.5  Chapters in This Volume Despite the predominance of cities in shaping the lives of the majority of people on earth today and several decades of bioarchaeological research on urbanization, there has not yet been a comprehensive bioarchaeological consideration of urbanization in the past and its impacts on human behavior, culture, health, and demography. Our goal with this volume is to explore urbanization and its outcomes across a broad geographic range, including North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Collectively, the contributors to this volume examine a large temporal span of several thousand years (5000 BCE – 1900 CE); such a broad temporal focus is crucial as the timing of urbanization is quite variable. The chapters in this volume consider urbanization utilizing a range of bioarchaeological methods, and the combination of various lines of evidence serves to clarify the different ways in which urbanization

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affected past populations and to provide insights regarding aspects of urbanization that persist today. The chapters include macroscopic and microscopic studies of skeletal indicators of stress and disease, archaeoparasitology, ancient DNA analysis, isotopic analysis, assessment of frailty, mortuary analysis, and analysis of growth patterns. These variable methods address questions of how urbanization impacted infectious and parasitic disease, biological stress, breastfeeding patterns, migration and mobility, and survivorship and morbidity. These studies ideally will enable cross-cultural and temporal comparisons and a more holistic understanding of the impact of urbanization. Since definitions of urban and urbanization are manifold, it is essential to understand the type or level of urbanization for each population in question to enable valid comparisons. As a result, each chapter specifically defines what urbanization is for the population under consideration, including population size and density, and urban features, for example. Based on these definitions, the chapters are grouped into three broad categories: early urban centers (ca. 4000 BCE – 660 CE), medieval and post-medieval cities (tenth  – seventeenth century CE), and premodern and industrial cities (eighteenth century CE to present.) Within these three categories, the chapters are ordered geographically and, where relevant, temporally within a given geographic area. The following overview highlights the key themes, which span time and space, that emerged among the chapters in this volume. As is true of research on urbanization in general, the majority of chapters in this volume are concerned with the health consequences of life in urban environments, with some comparing skeletal assemblages from contemporaneous urban and rural contexts. Several chapters focus primarily on evaluating urban health based on biological patterns of skeletal responses to stress and illness. Redfern (Chap. 2) summarizes analyses of several specific- and non-specific skeletal pathological conditions and indicators of trauma that reveal heterogeneity in the experiences of people living in Britain following the Roman conquest. Krenz-Niedbała and Łukasik (Chap. 10) examine signs of respiratory disease among nonadults in medieval and early modern Poland, and find more cases in proto-urban children and adolescents compared to their rural peers. Boyd (Chap. 15) also examines signs of respiratory stress and considers disease co-occurrence with skeletal evidence of rickets among individuals living in and just outside Industrial-era London, and finds similar rates in both contexts. Kelmelis and colleagues (Chap. 7) examine tuberculosis and leprosy prevalence across rural, suburban, and urban sites in medieval Denmark; the results might reflect the relocation of people with facial sequelae of leprosy to leprosaria in suburban and urban contexts and the role that economic connections between rural and urban areas play in the spatial distribution of tuberculosis. Gamble (Chap. 8) also studies medieval Denmark, focusing on enamel hypoplasia, evaluated microscopically and interpreted in light of demographic patterns (survivorship); her study reveals a variable pattern of mortality and non-specific stress between the urban and rural sites. Crane-Kramer and Buckberry (Chap. 16) compare patterns of health in nineteenth-century England derived from analyses of historical records (civil registrations of births, marriages, and deaths) to those assessed via skeletal data, highlighting the different aspects of health that might be captured

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(and missed) by each line of evidence. Robbins Schug (Chap. 3) in her review of mortuary behavior in Indus cities, examines a variety of skeletal conditions and argues that mortuary behavior reflects the diversity of people present in those cities. Scott and colleagues (Chap. 11) compare frequencies of skeletal stress markers in two eighteenth-century North American French colonies with differing investments in infrastructure and urban planning, and colonial versus European origins; they find evidence of stress associated with urban living in both contexts. Ives and Humphrey (Chap. 13) analyze appositional growth as a reflection of growth disturbance (or lack thereof) in eighteenth – nineteenth-century sites from London compared to post-medieval children from Birmingham, rural medieval children, and modern children; they find that the urban series show deficits in femoral total width compared to the medieval rural and modern groups, perhaps reflecting inadequate diets or infection. Reedy (Chap. 14) investigates risks of mortality and frequencies of stress markers by sex and socioeconomic status within Industrial-era London, Lisbon, and Bologna, and generally finds higher morbidity and mortality in lower SES individuals and in boys. Perry and Lieurance (Chap. 17) examine several markers of dental disease in individuals from first-century BCE – first-century CE Petra and find variable patterns across these markers but that, in general, children in “elite” communities suffered from and survived stress during childhood, but faced higher risks of mortality in adulthood. Several chapters have approached assessing the general health impacts of urbanization by stepping away from evaluating specific skeletal evidence of pathological conditions alone. Betsinger and colleagues (Chap. 9) compare survivorship and risks of mortality, as proxies for health, along with classic stress indicators, between urban and rural populations in medieval Poland (ca. tenth – twelfth centuries AD), revealing divergent patterns across the lifespan. Rather than focusing on human skeletal remains themselves to assess health and disease, two chapters focus on evidence of parasites from past populations to examine the kinds of diseases to which urban inhabitants might have been exposed. Shin and colleagues (Chap. 4) investigate the presence of parasite eggs in soil sampled from urban and non-urban sites in Korea dating from 18 BCE to 660 CE; their findings, combined with those from previous studies, indicate a greater burdern of parasitism in the urban contexts in South Korea across a long temporal span. Fonzo and colleagues (Chap. 12) examine the diversity of parasites present in pelvic soil in an urban context from eighteenth century Nova Scotia, Canada, revealing active parasitic infection in several individuals and more generally indicating how the close living quarters and poor sanitation practices in this context would have promoted the transmission of parasites. Several contributors use isotopic data in their investigations of urbanization. Walter and colleagues (Chap. 5) evaluate trends in δ13C and δ15N stable isotope values from individuals buried in a late medieval London cemetery (ca. 1120–1539 CE) to determine whether diet fluctuated in response to increased urbanization or periodic severe famines; their findings suggest variation in diet during this period by age but, perhaps surprisingly, not by sex. Tsutaya and colleagues (Chap. 18) use δ13C and δ15N isotope values to evaluate weaning age and thus interbirth

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interval and fertility in pre-modern, urban Japan; the relatively young weaning age might have had effects on fertility that balanced the effects of delayed age-at-­ marriage. Kjellström (Chap. 6) combines isotopic data on diet, ancient DNA data informative about migration, and skeletal pathological data in her study of the late Viking Age–early Middle Ages town, Sigtuna, Sweden; the combination of these various lines of evidence are informative about a variety of social and biological interactions. Redfern (Chap. 2) also draws on isotopic data on diet and migration to examine the consequences of Roman conquest of Britain and variation in experiences of people in the post-Conquest period. The chapters in this volume demonstrate that in past populations, as is true today, there is considerable variation in the impacts of urbanization. Rich contextual information is clearly crucial for understanding how urban environments can affect our species, and bioarchaeology, given the holistic nature of our field, can provide this information. It is our hope that the insights gained from this volume will provide not only a better understanding of urbanization in our past, but will also contribute to the efforts of those studying urbanization in contemporary communities. The contributions to this volume have the potential to help address questions that are important in current studies, such as which factors intensify or alleviate the potential negative consequences of urbanization? How might those factors be addressed in communities today? Which populations are particularly likely to experience the possible negative outcomes from urbanization? Urbanization is one of the most important adaptive shifts in the history of humanity. Bioarchaeology is well situated to examine this phenomenon along with its accompanying outcomes to determine what urbanization means for human populations.

References Agnew, A.  M., Betsinger, T.  K., & Justus, H.  M. (2015). Post-cranial traumatic injury patterns in two medieval polish populations: The effects of lifestyle differences. PLoS One, 10(6), e0129458. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0129458. Alirol, E., Getaz, L., Stoll, B., Chappuis, F., & Loutan, L. (2011). Urbanisation and infectious diseases in a globalised world. The Lancet Infectious Diseases, 11(2), 131–141. https://doi. org/10.1016/S1473-3099(10)70223-1. Armelagos, G.  J., Brown, P.  J., & Turner, B. (2005). Evolutionary, historical and political economic perspectives on health and disease. Social Science & Medicine, 61(4), 755–765. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2004.08.066. Barnes, I., Duda, A., Pybus, O.  G., & Thomas, M.  G. (2011). Ancient urbanization predicts genetic resistance to tuberculosis. Evolution, 65(3), 842–848. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1558-5646.2010.01132.x. Betsinger, T. K., & DeWitte, S. (2017). Trends in mortality and biological stress in a medieval polish urban population. International Journal of Paleopathology, 19, 24–36. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.ijpp.2017.08.008. Budnik, A. (2014). The second epidemiologic transition in Western Poland. In Modern environments and human health (pp. 137–161). https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118504338.ch8.

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Part I

Early Urban Centers

Chapter 2

Changing People, Changing Settlements? A Perspective on Urbanism from Roman Britain Rebecca C. Redfern

Abstract  The conquest of Britain by the Roman Emperor Claudius from AD 43, saw the introduction of urban settlements, associated infrastructure (e.g., roads, water supply), and Imperial governance to a territory characterized by small dispersed farming communities, organized into tribal confederacies. The integration of Britain into the Empire was marked by the imposition of entirely new, and often unfamiliar, economic and social practices, and ways of living, particularly those from the Mediterranean and more distant parts of Continental Europe. These developments are evidenced by changes in the patterns of diseases and mortality risks observed post-Conquest in Britain’s population. However, research has shown that the bioarchaeological data are heterogeneous, revealing marked differences between towns, as well as between urban and rural settlements. This chapter seeks to understand the reasons for this heterogeneity, focusing on the theme of migration. Keywords  Britain · Diet · Inequality · Migration

2.1  Introduction One of the defining characteristics of Roman Britain is urbanism, which Roman scholarship considers to be settlements with public buildings (e.g., market-places), a defined political territory, and used by the Imperial administration to govern the locale (Perkins and Nevett 2000). As Roman settlements have been studied since Antiquarian times, their physical remains have become bound-up with modern “urban archaeological resource management” (Bryant and Thomas 2015, p. 7), as R. C. Redfern (*) Centre for Human Bioarchaeology, Museum of London, London, UK School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 T. K. Betsinger, S. N. DeWitte (eds.), The Bioarchaeology of Urbanization, Bioarchaeology and Social Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53417-2_2

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many cities and towns across Britain still have visible standing Roman architectural features, such as gates and walls (Rogers 2014); their management gives them legal protection, and they are often used by councils for public education (e.g., Leicester). Much of our knowledge about Roman Britain derives from rescue and professional excavations since World War II, as the bombing of many English urban centers during the Blitz (1940–41) exposed the underlying archaeology. The most famous example of this is the Temple of Mithras in London, which when excavated in 1952, was visited by 30,000 members of the public (Museum of London Archaeology 2017). These excavations, particularly from the 1980s, have also provided a wealth of environmental archaeology data (e.g., hair lice), especially at York (Hall et al. 1980; Kenward and Williams 1979). They have also uncovered in excess of 11,000 burials, although because most excavations are undertaken in response to development, the majority of these have been documented in the large towns of southeast England, such as Canterbury, Colchester, and London (Pearce 2008, 2013a, b). This chapter explores the osteological, stable isotopic and genomic evidence for urban life in Roman Britain, focusing on diet, demography, trauma, inequalities, and migration.

2.2  Roman Urban Settlements in Britain Before the Claudian conquest of AD 43, the indigenous late Iron Age communities of Britain (first century BC to first century AD) were agrarian-based societies, and some of these dispersed communities concentrated their political and social power in large defensive sites that also acted as centers of wealth and status. These sites are known as oppida (e.g., Chichester), or when situated on strategic landscape features, as hillforts (e.g., Ham Hill, Somerset) (Burnham et  al. 2001). Continental imports of exotic and luxury goods (e.g., wine and olive oil) and objects associated with their consumption have been found at these sites (and associated burial grounds) (Moore 2012, 2017; Pitts 2010; Trow 2016). Many of the oppida became urban settlements (see below) within the first years of conquest and colonization, reinforcing the power and influence of indigenous elites, without whom these emerging tribal capitals (civitates) as demonstrations of “Roman” culture and social behaviors and activities would have failed. The adoption of “Roman” culture and lifestyles was recorded by Tacitus (1973, p. 21) in the account of his father-in-law Agricola’s career in Britain: “[He] gave private encouragement and public aid to the building of temples, courts of justice and dwelling-houses… a liking sprang up for our style of dress, and the ‘toga’ became fashionable. Step-by-step they were led to things which dispose to vice, the lounge, the bath, the elegant banquet.” Across Britain, evidence for these “vices” has been found in the archaeological records of these new settlements (see Fulford and Holbrook 2015). The fluctuating political fortunes of Britain (Table 2.1), its communication network, military installations and community further contributed to the shaping of these new urban settlements (Mattingly 2006; Millett 2001). These were further

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Table 2.1  Summary of major events in Roman Britain (Jones 2004; Mattingly 2006) Date (AD) 43 First century 60–61 69 Second century 122 192–196 211 259–274 286–296 280s Fourth century 383–388 401 400s

Event Claudian invasion of Britain Creation and expansion of urban settlements (e.g., aqueducts and forums) Boudican rebellion: Destruction of St Albans, Colchester and London “Year of the Four Emperors”: Unrest in northern Britain Large architectural projects (e.g., public baths) not completed until the middle of this century. No new urban settlements after the mid second century Visit to Britain by the emperor Hadrian Death of emperor Commodus led to civil war. Clodius Albinus (governor of Britain) lost to Severus in 196 Emperor Severus dies in York Britain becomes part of the Gallic empire Britannic empire Construction of forts in southeastern Britain to protect against Saxon invasions After 350s, the public buildings of many centers become ruined or are repurposed, such as the orchestra area of St Alban’s theatre being used as the town’s rubbish dump Magnus Maximus controls much of western empire, many military personnel moved to the continent End of Roman rule Some urban centers (e.g., Canterbury and Winchester) remain active

molded by the diverse nature of the tribal communities, the disruption of existing political landscapes, and the migration of people from across the Empire (Hingley 2018; Jones 2004; Millett 2001); as Rogers notes (2014), “towns could be disruptive, even built over pre-existing features, but also … incorporated into the existing geographies.” A range of urbanized settlements developed that were characterized by some or all of the following: planning and organization, concentration of population, a variety of building types (e.g., industrial production and concentrations of workshops), displays of a certain degree of wealth and status (e.g., mosaics in domestic residences), a variety of cultural activities (e.g., bathhouse and forum), religious activity (e.g., temples), fortifications and the infrastructure for and the undertaking of political and administrative functions (e.g., minting coins) (Jones 2004; Millett 2001). These urban settlements were a new presence in the landscape, and they created new ways of organizing space and the movement of people (i.e., orthogonal street plans). They introduced stone-built public and private architecture, and new building forms (e.g., sewers and theatres), thereby creating new environmental conditions, such as homes with under-floor heating and bath-houses (Jones 2004; Wacher 1997). The Romans were aware of the relationship between living environment and health, as the early Roman author, Vitruvius, (1999) had written extensively about this in his book on architecture. He stated that settlements should be placed where food was abundant and near transport links; this guidance appears to

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have been followed in Britain (e.g., York) (Salway 1985). This seminal work, written between 30-15 BC, also advised that settlements should be located in “healthy” places, away from areas of “bad” air (miasma) (e.g., marshes) that could cause illness (Barton 2018). The Romans recognized that urban settlements created pollution and did build sanitation works (e.g., sewers and public toilets) to mitigate this (Koloski-Ostrow 2015), but placed greater emphasis on where a settlement should be located; they conceived public health to be directly caused by the siting of a settlement, so healthy people could create a healthy community (Nutton 2002). Roman settlements had physical, ritual, economic, and legal boundaries, and the enforcing of these social and legal rules meant that activities thought to be dangerous or hazardous could only take place on their peripheries. For example, the Twelve Tables, the foundation for Roman legislation, stated that the dead could not be buried or cremated within a settlement (Cicero 1999; Patterson 2002), a proscription that reflected religious and hygiene considerations (miasmic contagion theory) (Patterson 2002), and the separation of the dead from the living is evidenced across the Empire. In Britain, the majority of towns were for relocated and newly centralized indigenous communities (civitates), reflecting the Roman perception that towns were symbols of civilization and wealth (Erdkamp 2014). Others were created from garrison settlements, founded by military veterans, and a small number were created by independent groups, such as merchants and traders (e.g., London) (Mattingly 2006). There were an estimated 20–24 major towns in the province, which acted as centers of trade, political, and military power, and many other smaller urbanized settlements have been identified by archaeological fieldwork (Mattingly 2006). However, the majority of the population lived in the countryside, and a recent review of rural settlements and economy has shown that rural-urban boundaries and differences were more porous and hybrid than previously thought (Allen et al. 2016; 2017). In contrast to other urban settlements in the northwest provinces of the Empire, such as those in France (Gaul), the British ones were less affluent and impressive in terms of size, architecture, and the presence of stone-built monuments, such as amphitheatres.1 This may well be because Iron Age Britain did not build using stone, so the necessary quarrying industry and masonry skills quite literally had to be imported to the province (Russell 2013). The urban sanitation infrastructure (Koloski-Ostrow 2015) was also less-developed in Britain than elsewhere in the Empire (e.g., Italy), but is present, including public baths, covered sewers, and houses connected to water supplies (Burgers 1997; Rogers 2013).2 Towns were key to the acquisition and distribution of goods, and reshaped the existing agrarian economy. They were dependent on local agricultural production and the extractive industries, and were also areas where manufacturing occurred (Jones 2004). For example, in northwest Britain on the Cheshire Plain, groups of

 E.g., the Colosseum-like arena at Arles (France) compared to London’s, which was made of wood.  Ingate (2019) provides an overview of the evidence for aqueducts in Britain, which were frequently used to bring water to public services in towns (e.g., fountains, bath-houses). 1 2

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settlements were involved in the production of salt, pottery, tile, glass, iron, bronze, and lead, as well as leather and textiles (Mattingly 2006). Roman texts describe how Britain’s exports comprised textiles, grain, metal, and the enslaved, the latter two along with cattle, hides, and hunting dogs being noted as pre-Conquest commodities (Mattingly 2006). The role of merchants and military were central to these exchanges, as their connections and infrastructure allowed for the flow of commodities. Funerary and religious inscriptions show that these people were predominantly from Gaul, Germany (Germania), the Netherlands, and the Mediterranean (Tomlin et al. 2009; Tomlin 2018). Wallace’s (2014) analysis of pre-Boudican (AD 60-61) material culture excavated from London also led her to argue that the overwhelming number of merchants were from Gaul and Germania, whose move to Britain, where the “frequent rains and mist is wretched” (Tacitus 1973, p. 12), did not prevent them from having luxurious lifestyles and access to international networks. This evidenced by the re-use of an Egyptian basalt vase as a cremation vessel in an early burial from the settlement, perhaps indicating a connection between the deceased and the Imperial household (Hingley 2018). Indeed, Perring and Pitts (2013, p. 245) characterize urban inhabitants as consumers, “whereby the best resources were mobilised and consumed at the principle nodes [e.g., Colchester], where imperial power was most visibly articulated”; their study of southern Britain emphasized the considerable amount of intra-settlement variation present in material culture, with these “nodes” having higher frequencies of imported pottery, glassware, and foodstuffs (see Garnsey and Saller 1987; Garnsey and Scheidel 2004).

2.3  Environment Considerable scholarship has been devoted to the living conditions of towns and cities within the Empire, with the detailed work of Scobie (1986) dominating the discourse; his review characterized urban settlements as hotbeds of disease, rubbish, and high mortality. His research focused on the Mediterranean (e.g., excavations of preserved cities, such as Herculaneum), and relied heavily on textual sources focused on Rome. This perspective has become the archetype for the rest of the Empire, despite archaeological evidence to the contrary (see, Killgrove 2017; Lo Cascio 2006). In the northern reaches of the Empire (e.g., Netherlands, Germany, and Britain) this perspective has been re-framed and localized by environmental archaeology. Insect fauna excavated from houses suggests that domestic cleanliness was good, with domestic and industrial waste buried in landfill, and cesspits used to dispose of human fecal material (Dobney et  al. 1999; Smith 2012). Studies of human parasites recovered from latrines or pelvic cavity samples have found evidence for lice (hair and body), pubic crabs, and parasitic worms (Kenward 1999); an Empire-wide study found that fish tapeworm infection increased during the Roman period, perhaps spread by the popularity of fish sauce (garum) (Mitchell 2016). Zooarchaeological and paleobotanical evidence shows that species diversity varied between military, urban, and rural settlements (King 1999a, b; 2001; van der Veen

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et al. 2007; van der Veen 2008, 2014), with urban centers having the most evidence for the consumption of exotic and expensive imports such as lentils, black cumin, and pine-nuts, whilst military and urban centers have greater evidence for pig rearing (Maltby 2015; Robinson 2015).

2.4  Bioarchaeological Perspectives The examination of rural-urban health disparities and the impact of urbanism on health are well-trodden paths in paleopathology and bioarchaeology, and significant studies have been published in this area (e.g., Gowland et al. 2018; Lewis 2003; Milne 2015; Waldron 1989). Recent work by Schell (2018) on rural-urban health differences in historical and modern populations heavily critiques this type of comparison, noting that anthropological studies (must) assume homogeneity of an individual’s exposure within each group and heterogeneity of exposure between the two groups, questioning the ability of scholars to actually undertake such comparisons because of these weak foundations. These issues are relevant to archaeological populations, as documentary and stable isotope analyses of individuals buried in rural and urban cemeteries across many different time periods reveal the presence of rural to urban travellers, as well as long-distance migrants (amongst others, Alexander et al. 2017; Henderson et al. 2013). These results underscore the extent to which we have previously underestimated this complexity in bioarchaeology, but are addressing it in new research (e.g., Baker and Tsuda 2015; Walter and DeWitte 2017). However, to a certain extent we are still bound to these “weak foundations,” because it is not always possible to differentiate between locals and newcomers, nor to reconstruct individual mobility over a lifetime, because of issues such as preservation and completeness.3 Population and regional-scale studies of disease, stress, and stature in the Roman Empire reflect the diverse communities, environments, and living conditions contained within its borders (amongst others, Capasso et al. 2003; Cucina et al. 2006; Gowland and Redfern 2010; Gowland and Walther 2018; Jongman et  al. 2019; Killgrove and Tykot 2018; Paine and Storey 2006; Paine et al. 2009; Prowse 2011; Scheidel 2010). Outside of Italy, Britain is one of the best-studied provinces in the Empire with respect to bioarchaeology, because the majority of extant individuals were inhumed rather than cremated (Pearce 2013b), which plays a role in the amount and type of data that can be collected for analysis (Schmidt and Symes 2015).4 Furthermore, many thousands of human remains are available for analysis through years of excavation work, and the shift to standardized recording methods 3  In contrast, tombstone evidence reveals complex mobility patterns, particularly for those in the military. For example, one centurion (name unknown) who died in Chester, came from Italy but spent his career in numerous postings across eastern and western Europe (Carroll 2006, 217). 4  No regional/ large-scale analyses of the cremated remains have been undertaken, although large cemetery populations exist (e.g., Biddulph 2006; Cool 2004). In preliminary work for this chapter,

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in the late 1990s-early 2000s, combined with online publication or deposition of archives means that unlike other locales, it is possible to examine large-scale datasets from Britain. At present, it is only possible to compare populations before and after the Claudian conquest (AD 43) in Dorset and Yorkshire, as these two counties have continuity in burial from the Iron Age period. Analyses of those populations reveal that in the Roman period, dental health declines; osteoarthritis, trauma, and indicators of stress and of infectious (e.g., tuberculosis) and metabolic diseases (e.g., rickets) increase; and average male stature decreases (Peck 2009; Redfern 2008); notably the spread of stature data widens and body proportions alter, reflecting migration and population diversity (Gowland and Walther 2018; Redfern 2008). When the Dorset results were analyzed in more detail, it was observed that post-­ conquest, differences between sex and age groups were evident, with an increase in mortality risk in the Roman period for subadults, adult males, and the elderly compared to other age and sex categories (Redfern and DeWitte 2011b). At the national level, the frequencies of specific infectious diseases increase, particularly for tuberculosis in urban centers (Redfern and Roberts 2005), and this period provides the first cases of leprosy in Britain (Manchester and Roberts 1989; Reader 1974). This is important evidence not only for mobility within the Empire, as individuals with leprosy have been found elsewhere during this period (e.g., Rubini et al. 2014), but also because leprosy can only exist where there are relatively high population densities (Roberts and Cox 2003).

2.5  Diet In addition to the environmental evidence for diet (e.g., seeds), there have been a number of stable isotope studies of dietary contributions (Katzenberg 2008), which are dominated by nitrogen (ð15N) and carbon (ð13C) analyses. These show that people buried in urban cemeteries have the greatest diversity in dietary contributions and that post-conquest, there is a significant rise in nitrogen values, believed to indicate the increased consumption of marine products across Britain, with eating of freshwater fish also attested by sulphur isotope values (Müldner 2013; Nehlich et  al. 2011). However, the increase in nitrogen values as being solely driven by marine dietary contributions is no longer a straightforward conclusion, given that these results could also reflect physiological stress and episodes of food shortages (see discussion in Redfern 2018, Redfern et al. 2019; see also Reitsema 2013). The differences between urban sites emphasize the diverse nature of urban centers in Britain. Müldner’s (2013) review found that larger towns (e.g., Winchester and York) had the greatest dietary diversity (based on ð13C data). Importantly,

data from cremated populations were collected, but paleopathological data were infrequently reported/observed.

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building on the earlier review, we can now identify that the trend for inter-urban variation continues, but also that in some locales, dietary differences exist between the burial grounds surrounding one urban settlement (Redfern et  al. 2010). Interestingly, it is the subadult datasets5 that underline the trend for inter-urban variation, with various locales often employing different weaning foods, reflecting not only availability but childcare practices. In Oxfordshire, breastmilk was not supplemented until babies were a year old, and their weaning foods contained an abundance of marine resources; in contrast, babies in Dorset were being fed supplementary foods from the age of 6 months, and their weaning diet was low in marine resources (Fuller et  al. 2006; Nehlich et  al. 2011; Redfern et  al. 2012). Furthermore, in London, comparison of early and late Roman samples revealed evidence that the protein contributions of children’s diets could be linked to the declining economy and abandonment of areas of housing in the later period (third-fourth centuries AD), where from the third century AD, more marine products than terrestrial protein sources were consumed by children, because fish and shellfish could be caught for free from the River Thames, and they were cheaper to purchase than animal products (Powell et al. 2014; Redfern et al. 2018b). Müldner’s (2013) review also indicates that sex differences in diet are rarely identified (contra Italian studies, see Craig et al. 2009; Prowse et al. 2004), which is surprising given the significant differences in rates of dental diseases between the sexes in many urban populations (see below). Müldner (2013) also identifies a relationship between diet and mobility; individuals who consumed millet (a C4 pathway plant) must have been first-generation migrants to Britain (e.g., Pollard et al. 2011), as this cereal was not grown in Iron Age or Roman Britain. Therefore, individuals with this signature died before their rib bone collagen had sufficiently remodelled to show a “local” signature; comparisons of bone and dentine values have been able to trace migrants who show “local” dietary signatures (Müldner et al. 2011). For many years, studies have also investigated dental health variables in Romano-­ British populations (Moore and Corbett 1973; Whittaker et al. 1981). As observed above, post-Conquest populations show a marked deterioration in dental health (Roberts and Cox 2003). Several authors have observed that Romano-British urban populations have higher rates of dental disease, observed in both adults and subadults (Bonsall 2013a; Rohnbogner and Lewis 2016). Only one study has compared a small town (Ancaster) to a larger settlement (Winchester), but did not find any significant differences between them (Bonsall 2014). In many regions (e.g., Hampshire & Dorset), regardless of urban settlement size, females have the highest rates of carious lesions (Avery et al. 2019; Bonsall 2014; Redfern 2008) (this wider trend in bioarchaeology is explored by Lukacs and Largaespada 2009). However, this is not a universal finding, as it was not observed for Roman York (Peck 2009) nor for Colchester (Pinter-Bellows 1995). The complexity of these findings is

5  The studies in this section are based on bone collagen analysis. Since completing this chapter, a study by Beaumont et al. (2018) suggests that dentine is more reliable for investigating weaning, as collagen appears to reflect a combination of diet and stress.

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underscored by the majority of stable isotope analyses of these populations failing to reveal sex-differences in dietary contributions (e.g., Bonsall and Pickard 2015).

2.6  Demography It has long-been recognized that Romano-British cemeteries are biased toward males, and when data are broken down by settlement type, urban centers are overwhelmingly male (Crowe 2001; Davison 2000; Watts 2001)6; however, rural cemeteries (e.g., Pepper Hill (Biddulph 2006)) do not have a female bias, suggesting that greater numbers of females were not living in rural locales (Pearce 2011; Rohnbogner 2018, 294–296). Furthermore, by only counting inhumations, this pattern is likely to be continually repeated within the literature. For example, in the Eastern cemeteries of Roman London, the male-female ratio for cremation burials is 1:2.3 (males 17, females 39), whereas for inhumations the trend is reversed – 1.7:1 (males 186, females 109) (data from Barber and Bowsher 2000). As the male bias is also observed at the regional level, it suggests that despite cemeteries not being fully excavated and burials being truncated because of later activities, this male bias in Roman Britain is a real trend (Redfern 2008), with Esmonde Cleary (1992, p. 39) observing, “settlement type was probably among the less important” reasons for this finding. Crowe’s (2001) review focuses on how the general “exclusion”’ of females from Roman cemeteries may reflect the post-Conquest decline in female status, reflected in them receiving a less “visible” funerary rite. Various other reasons have been posited, ranging from the presence of military personnel, segregated use of burial grounds, and infanticide (Davison 2000). However, no suggestion withstands close scrutiny, particularly because greater numbers of females are not encountered in rural cemeteries (Pearce 2011). Scientific analyses have also over-turned much of the evidence once considered to be indicative of infanticide (Bonsall 2013b). Non-­ cemetery graves, such as those found in under the floors of villa buildings, were considered to be indicative of the clandestine burial of female infants, but this has been robustly refuted (Gowland et al. 2014); CT imaging of bioerosion has shown that many full-term infants were delivered stillborn (Booth et al. 2016), and ancient DNA analysis of infants from villa sites has identified higher numbers of males (Abu-Mandil Hassan et al. 2014).

6  Note that these sources use data published before the widespread use of standard methods of recording. See also Sect. 2.9

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2.7  Trauma It is well-established that the local and wider living environment directly influences the location and type of trauma sustained by a population and, in some instances, can increase one’s likelihood of becoming a victim of violence (Redfern 2016). One of the most well-studied bioarchaeological paradigms is the rural-urban difference in the body distribution and type of fracture, a pattern which continues into the present-day, highlighting the differences in occupation and risk that exist between urban and rural contexts, particularly related to interactions with large animals (Redfern 2016; e.g., Saw et al. 2010). Broadly speaking, rural dwellers are more likely to sustain accidental fractures, particularly to the lower limb, whereas urban dwellers have more fractures caused by assaults (Judd and Roberts 1999; Redfern 2016). Several studies have observed rural-urban differences in fracture data in Romano-­ British populations (Allen et  al. 2018; Farwell and Molleson 1993), and many believe that military personnel were the cause for the high numbers of assault fractures observed in urban cemeteries (McIntyre 2014).7 One study found differences between Ancaster (small town) and Winchester (large town), with Ancaster displaying a rural pattern of trauma, whereby there were fewer assault fractures (Bonsall 2013a). Powell’s (2008) national study of individuals from high ranking (colonia), tribal capitals (civitas), small towns, and rural populations using the zonation recording method (Knüsel and Outram 2004) revealed further differences. Civitas capitals had a similar crude prevalence rate of fractures to rural populations, far higher than small towns and coloniae. Differences in body distribution were also observed, with small towns having the highest total number of fractures to the shoulder/arm, civitas had the most fractures to the trunk, and coloniae had the highest rates of leg fractures (Powell 2008) – an unexpected finding given that these are more typically seen in rural populations (Redfern 2016). These differences reveal variation in occupations and environments, but also between status groups (see Redfern 2018). Powell’s (2008) and other studies have shown that Roman adult males have higher rates of fracture than females (e.g., Peacock 2019), with Jennings’ (2017) analysis of fracture mechanism showing that the majority were caused by high-­ energy direct forces, results which are believed to reflect the greater involvement of men in manual labor and exposure to interpersonal violence, as some urban centers were based around or near to a military community (e.g., London and York). Many of these males were also injury recidivists with healed assault fractures (e.g., facial bones and ribs) and /or weapon injuries (McWhirr et al. 1982; Redfern et al. 2017),

7  Note that the military bias in some urban centers (e.g., York and Colchester) is likely to have influenced these results. Unfortunately, in Britain, it is not possible to identify the burial of serving/ retired military personnel in the absence of in situ tombstones, so it is unknown whether a male injury recidivist was a soldier, a victim of physical abuse, and/or an enslaved person.

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and may potentially include amphitheatre combatants (Redfern and Bonney 2014), as one male from York had evidence of a big-cat bite (Caffell and Holst 2012). Urban centers also provide evidence for different forms of physical abuse. Many females with fractures indicative of intimate partner violence have been identified, with the majority of cases in settlements associated with the military (Redfern 2019). Females with fracture patterns characteristic of elder abuse have also been found in Roman Britain, with the highest numbers identified in urban cemeteries (Gowland 2016, 2017). The evidence for child abuse is more opaque, as no specific fracture location or type is pathognomonic of this type of violence (Redfern 2016). Rohnbogner’s (2015) analysis of multiple sites from across Britain did not identify any children who may have been victims,8 but at least two subadults with humeral shaft fractures have been found urban centers (Ives 2015; Pinter-Bellows 1995) – these are high energy fractures which are often observed in child abuse cases (Redfern 2016).

2.8  Inequalities: Status, Location and Health The Roman Empire was a patriarchal and strongly hierarchical society, with free, elite high-status men holding the majority of the power and resources, and the enslaved at the bottom of the social hierarchy, with free-women and children slightly above them in the social ranking. Although people could move within the hierarchy either by chance or design, male bodies were still valued above female ones (Peachin 2011). These social differences influenced access to food, healthcare, and other resources, which in turn impacted health and are evidenced in the remains of people themselves (Redfern and DeWitte 2011b; Redfern 2018). Primary source evidence from across the Empire has revealed status-related differences in disease and health (Paine et al. 2007; Scheidel 2006, 2010). These have been traced in the human remains (Killgrove and Tykot 2018; Sperduti 1997) and can be associated with Empire-wide economic downturns caused by political instabilities and episodes of invasion (Jongman et  al. 2019). In order to investigate inequalities, we must attempt to construct a framework by which to differentiate people but also accept that over the course of a lifetime, an individual may experience changes in status.9 Although not without its biases, the study of Roman funerary practices from across the Empire has shown differences based on age, gender, and status (Toynbee 1996), whilst also reflecting more localized expressions of identity and community belonging (Gowland 2001; Pearce 2013a, 2015; Pearce and Weekes 2017).

8  Rohnbogner’s (2018) review of the rural British data identified five subadults with fractures, including one individual with a dislocated femur. 9  We recognize that experiences and outcomes are shaped by gender and by maternal health during gestation (Gowland 2015; Wadsworth 1997; Wells 2010).

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To the best of the author’s knowledge, Roman Britain is the only part of the Empire where health inequalities and funerary data have been compared. Pitts and Griffin (2012) examined this at the national level, taking data from 30 cemetery populations for a variety of indicators of stress, disease, and dental health variables. They found that social inequalities appear to have impacted health within each population (Griffin et al. 2011), and at the national level, health differed according to settlement type, with rural and nucleated settlements having the poorest health statuses. Their study found that people buried in urban cemeteries had better health compared to their rural counterparts; particularly those of higher status (e.g., those who were inhumed with greater numbers of grave goods); this result was also found in Dorset by Redfern and DeWitte (2011a). Overall, British data show that although there is variation within both groups, there are nonetheless clear differences between rural and urban cemetery populations, most likely reflecting the role of status as an influencing factor in both locales (Allen et al. 2016; Pitts and Griffin 2012). When examined closely, age appears to be a driving force behind this outcome, as a study of burials from Dorset found that children (under the age of ten) buried in urban cemeteries had a higher mortality risk compared to their rural counterparts, as did those over 35 years old (Redfern et al. 2015). This is argued to reflect the greater adoption or maintenance of Mediterranean lifestyles and patterns of behavior with respect to child-rearing in urban settings, such as swaddling (Redfern and Gowland 2011; Redfern et al. 2012). This result is also seen in other urban populations across Britain at both national and local levels (e.g., Jenny 2011; Rohnbogner and Lewis 2016).

2.9  Migration: Britain Within the Empire Following the Claudian invasion, Britain became formally and firmly embedded in the Roman Empire. This level of inter-connectivity created and facilitated major population movements both within the Empire, but also on its margins (Eckardt and Müldner 2014; Ligt and Tacoma 2016; Prowse 2016), particularly because of the military and slave trade (Harris 1999; Ivleva 2016; Webster 2010). Material culture and stable isotope evidence suggests that in Britain, this was a two-way process, with people leaving and entering Britain over the course of a lifetime (Eckardt and Müldner 2014; Geerdink 2011; Ivleva 2009, 2012; Montgomery et al. 2017). One consequence of this connectivity was changes in health, with the number of individuals with bony changes diagnostic of tuberculosis noticeably increasing from the late Iron Age (see above). At present, only one project has investigated the relationship between mobility and tuberculosis in the Roman Empire, using 21 individuals excavated from Britain. Quinn’s (2017) research discovered that the majority of individuals had, in all likelihood, spent their childhoods in Britain, and that there was no statistically significant difference in the number of migrants vs. locals with the disease. However, the majority of cases were identified in urban centers, which have greater numbers of migrants present anyway (Redfern et al. 2016; Shaw

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et al. 2016). This result suggests that diseases could be easily transmitted in urban centers due to higher population density. Vitamin D deficiency diseases (rickets and osteomalacia) have also been associated with urbanism, with the bowed legs of children described by the Roman doctor Soranus (1991). As the rates of these dramatically increased post-Conquest (Redfern 2007; Roberts and Cox 2003), for many years, we assumed that they were associated with the introduction of urban living and Roman childcare practices (e.g., swaddling) (Gowland and Redfern 2010). However, as more data have become available and we have employed more sophisticated methodologies, the disease has been diagnosed in both rural and urban subadults (Brickley and Ives 2008; Rohnbogner 2017), and a review of populations from across the Empire has shown that it is latitude rather than settlement type that is the determining factor, exacerbated in northern climates by swaddling practices (Mays et al. 2018). Given the change in rates and types of disease post-Conquest, this shift was explained as being both a consequence of the development of urban settlements and of migration. However, when stable isotope information about mobility and skeletal evidence for disease were combined, it was discovered that there were statistically significant differences between migrants and Britons with respect to periosteal new bone formation (PNBF), rib lesions, residual rickets, and dental health (Redfern et al. 2018a). Unfortunately, the published stable isotope dataset was too small to explore rural-urban differences, but because the dataset is dominated by urban cemetery populations and given the finding that PNBF and dental health data are biased by the presence of migrants, we now must be cautious in assuming a direct link between urban living itself in Britain and higher rates of these diseases reported in urban populations. Furthermore, because of the paucity of robust and published datasets from elsewhere in the Empire, at present it is difficult to see whether this result just reflects Britain or if rural/urban differences are as marked elsewhere.

2.10  Conclusions The Claudian invasion (AD 43) resulted in the creation of urban environments and settlements, populated by individuals from Britain and a vast Empire, many arriving as merchants, members of the military community, or as the enslaved. Over the past 100 years, archaeological investigations have revealed a wealth of data that increasingly show not only how diverse these places were with respect to people, diet and resources, but also how they differed from each other, as well as from rural settlements and smaller nucleated centers across Britain. It is this evidence for intra- and inter-site variation which is perhaps has the most significant implication for contemporary studies  – as noted by Schell (2018). It emphasizes that for thousands of years, urban centers have been home to diverse cultural groups, with their own distinctive origin communities, dietary and health-care practices, all factors which shape their own bodies, health, and lifestyles, as well as those of their descendants (see Mascie-Taylor and Krzyźanowska 2017).

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The bioarchaeological evidence does show rural-urban differences in lifestyles and experience, perhaps with trauma being the most reflective and insightful dataset of past Roman lives in urban Britain (e.g., injury mechanism and patterning). Studies of the relationship between disease and social status demonstrate that this is a further complicating factor, but one which is tremendously difficult to study using the funerary record. Above all, recent work on ancestry, migration, and disease shows us that our idées fixes about urbanization in Britain (e.g., as a cause of increases in tuberculosis and vitamin D deficiency) must be re-examined, because skeletal data are actually providing information about experience over a lifetime, which for many people involved a considerable amount of mobility, rather than the direct and straightforward impact of conquest and colonization by the Roman Empire. Overall, the evidence shows us the “messy” side of urban living, one which we still experience today – urban life is complicated, where people are able to move up and down the social hierarchy, experience new ways of living and being, buy imported goods and meet new people, and create unique communities. This “messiness” is captured in the remains of the Roman people excavated from Britain, but more work needs to be carried out elsewhere in the Empire in order to understand the extent to which the British evidence is “typical” of the northern territories and of being part of the Empire as a whole. Acknowledgements  The groundwork for this work was made in the Redfern et al. (2015, 2018a, 2019) papers, and I am indebted to my co-authors for helping develop those ideas. Additional thanks goes to Becky Gowland for her help tracking down some of the literature, Kendra Quinn for sharing unpublished findings, and John Pearce for agreeing to read through early drafts of this work. I am also grateful to Sharon and Tracy for inviting me to write a contribution and for being excellent editors!

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Chapter 3

Ritual, Urbanism, and the Everyday: Mortuary Behavior in the Indus Civilization Gwen Robbins Schug

Abstract  Human skeletal material from archaeological sites is the most important source of evidence about embodied experience, habitual behaviors, and aspects of health in past people. Within bioarchaeology’s broad area of inquiry, analysis of mortuary behavior (particularly when combined with paleopathology) is potentially the most critical tool for archaeologists to reconstruct ritual and meaning in the past. This work typically combines embodiment and practice theory to examine the importance of ritual, its contours, and its social function. This chapter asks what we mean by “ritual” and how “ritual” emerges from mortuary artifacts and features. This chapter seeks to move away from mortuary ritual as a distinct category of behavior in the Indus context, separate from a secular life in the urban environment. I argue that mortuary behavior for individuals in the Indus civilization varies because of the nature of the heterogeneous populations that occupied these urban settlements but perhaps also that mortuary and other ritual behaviors in the Indus civilization were entangled, enmeshed, and interacted with the everyday heterogeneity of people’s life in the urban environment. While there is no common tradition apparent within or among all Indus cities, what is clear is that the urban lifestyle and environment participated in creating diverse rituals performed in a funerary context and that participation would contribute to memories of the cities long after their decline. Evidence is drawn from mortuary archaeology and objects, bodies and emergent behaviors, pathophysiology and health. These ritual and everyday dimensions of life in South Asia’s first urban period speak to the deepest anthropological questions we can ask about meaning in the past and how it was lived in the urban context. Keywords  Harappan civilization · Indus archaeology · Bioarchaeology · Urban · Bronze Age · South Asia

G. Robbins Schug (*) Department of Anthropology, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 T. K. Betsinger, S. N. DeWitte (eds.), The Bioarchaeology of Urbanization, Bioarchaeology and Social Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53417-2_3

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3.1  Ritual and Everyday Life in Urban Communities Mortuary rituals and traditions emerge from the archaeological record with reasonable consistency for the small villages of rural India’s prehistory—the cemeteries of mid-Holocene foragers of the Gangetic Plains; across villages of west-central India in the second millennium BCE; and the Neolithic Ashmounds of South India. In fact, sometimes mortuary ritual has been the only consistent feature across periods of substantial sociocultural change and subsistence transition (Raczek 2003). There is arguably much less in the way of uniformity in the mortuary archaeology of the mature Indus civilization (2600–1900 BCE), the first urban period in South Asia (Fig. 3.1). This is ironic given that the Indus civilization is famous for certain kinds of uniformity—large cities were built with uniform planning, brick sizes, weights and measures, seals and signs—spanning one-million square kilometers of territory. Unlike contemporaneous classical Egyptian or Bronze Age Arabian sites, where there are clear mortuary traditions and a small range of variation around those

Fig. 3.1  Map of Indus cities considered in this chapter. (Adapted from Shinde et al. 2018a)

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practices, gender or social class-based differences for example, the Urban Period of the Indus Age (c. 2600–1900  BCE) is primarily characterized by a bewildering array of variation and diverse mortuary practices. The term urban refers here to the Latin urbs (city, or town) and urbana or urbanus (of the city) (https://latin-dictionary.net/definition/38160/urbanus-urbana-urbanum). In The Archaeology of Urban Landscapes, Monica Smith (2014, p.  308) describes the phenomenon of urbanization as having occurred relatively rapidly in the human career, compared to other transitions like food production that took several millennia. She defines the urban center as population aggregations whose archaeological dimensions materially record the historical, sociocultural, politico-­ economic and ritual interactions of their inhabitants. While these are bounded spaces, they are also intimately connected to the surrounding landscape because they rely on “outer” lands for food and other resources, including immigrants. Urban centers and their hinterlands are in relationship, one that is not purely extractive or exploitative and the size of a settlement does not always predict its relative prominence or centrality. Smith also mentions that the archaeological study of urban ritual landscapes is underdeveloped but clearly, there are examples of urban ritual centers or ritual infrastructure that can serve as anchors for spiritual or religious meaning, venues for interaction, and that can transcend the boundaries of the city to serve as pilgrimage sites (p. 311). One reasonable explanation for the noted variation in Indus mortuary behavior might simply be that urban phenomenon—that Indus cities were comprised of an incredibly heterogeneous living population of immigrants from across a vast area, people who brought with them to the cities their diverse traditions for dealing with death and maintained those over time. This idea is supported by archaeological and bioarchaeological evidence. Many Indus cities were built on sterile soil1 around 2600 BCE and then were rapidly occupied by tens of thousands of people, sometimes within a span of less than a century (Shinde 2016). Isotopic analysis has demonstrated that many of the males buried in the Indus city of Harappa‘s Urban Period cemetery were immigrants (Kenoyer et  al. 2013). I would add that when these immigrants arrived in the urban spaces of “accelerated producer-consumer dynamics“(Smith 2012), these built environments were largely devoid of public, monumental, ritual architecture. The people of the Indus civilization came to occupy cities that were effectively a spiritual blank slate—literally built on sterile soil and with no public ritual spaces—and over the centuries, while the inhabitants adopted many standardized measures, weights, a uniform script, brick sizes, and construction techniques, they never adopted a common, formal, prescribed mortuary ritual between individuals within one cemetery or between different cemeteries at different cities in this territory known as a “civilization.” This chapter seeks to describe variation in mortuary behavior at Indus cities and considers two main ideas. The first is the idea that “Indus mortuary treatment“is so 1  Possehl (2002: 50) claims 755 of 1058 (71%) of Indus cities were built on “virgin soil” and 324 (62%) Early Harappan (3300–2600  BCE) sites were abandoned prior to the Mature Period (2600–1900 BCE). He explained this pattern using the concept of a nihilistic ideology.

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diverse because “Indus people” were not buried here; the civilization was fundamentally a temporary economic phenomenon enacted by people who retained separate identities—which had developed in their natal villages all over South and West Asia—even after centuries inhabiting shared urban environments. These types of questions about identity—or in this case, the lack of a coherent identity—are often addressed using mortuary archaeology, that “dense forest of symbols” (Rosaldo 1989, p. 167) that elucidates not just the meaning of death and grief but more importantly, the meaning of life, community, social structure, relations, and culture in past societies. Typically, bioarchaeologists try to infer the meaning of mortuary “rituals”—symbolic, formal, prescribed, structured, and repetitive behaviors that appear primarily symbolic, communicative (or performative), and as intended to exert control. However, although repetitive routines may emerge in the archaeological record, it is reductionist to reduce the concept of ritual to something that “…more resemble[s] a recipe, a fixed program, or a book of etiquette than an open-ended human process.” (Rosaldo 1989, p. 172). Archaeologists must not assume rituals to be “deep or conventional, or immediately transformative or but a single step in a lengthy series of ritual and everyday events” (Rosaldo 1989, p. 174). Just as the emotions of death are not confined to the circumstances of death—the emotions of grief, sadness, loss, fear, and loneliness are experienced in a variety of contexts—"ritual“, too, is not always a distinct category of behavior reserved for spiritual, symbolic moments in dedicated spaces (Brück 1999). In fact, symbolic, formal, prescribed, structured, repetitive, communicative (or performative) behaviors that are intended to exert control are suffused throughout the repertoire of daily activities in human life: from cooking, to “getting ready” for bed, to participating in academic faculty meetings. The mundane contains irrational elements and thus “ritual” performance and attempts to control are entangled in all spheres of human life, experience, and society. Mortuary treatment is a fundamental dimension of human existence and an intimate human moment that matters but it is also part of mundane, everyday action and routine (Nilson Stutz 2003, p. 19). That brings me to the second point I would like to consider using Indus mortuary evidence: to understand the lack of a single “Indus mortuary tradition“, perhaps we must discard dualistic thinking inherent to distinguishing ritual from mundane, rational structure from spiritual relations in the Indus context. To understand what that would look like we can turn to contemporary South Asia, where a million little religious traditions, god and goddesses, are hosted in processional performances of ritual throughout the city streets, as participants move together in embodied devotional performances (Srinivas 2004). All of the city’s inhabitants may not be involved in a specific devotional procession but all of the inhabitants’ senses are involved in a moving devotion that invokes a “kinesthetic imagination” (Srinivas 2004, p. 29): an effigy of the deity is built from clay, colorfully decorated, transported in the midst of a crowded field of music, recitations, scents, bodily contact, and food offerings (prasad). The locations of temples within the urban environment are spotlighted but the civic and the sacred intermingle in a ritual landscape and memories of these rituals and “sacredness“are tied to specific urban locations that would not seem spiritual unless one was aware of their significance; street corners, lanes, and

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niches between buildings take on ritual significance. Local recent history is staged and frames of reference enacted. The social memory of these processions is infused with intersecting human social relations, human-environmental interactions, urban experiences, and access to resources, such as water. During the Indus Age, it is often mentioned that there is no archaeological evidence for a common spiritual or religious tradition; there is no public architectural feature that has obvious religious connotations; and there are instead small items of devotion—figurines and other homemade, handheld items for personal, familial, or small group devotion in the home, the place of work, the everyday spaces that individuals occupy. One might argue that if there is no apparent ritual architecture or infrastructure in Indus cities, and if we agree that “Indus people” do not share a coherent, normative burial tradition, then perhaps this is because of a deep intermingling of the sacred and the mundane. If this were the case, it might emerge archaeologically as a lack of defined ritual spaces—large, public, monumental architectural spaces were not required. Perhaps, like the villages and cities of modern India, the entirety of the city was the space for ritual; any given street, structure, or other space in the urban environment could be simultaneously mundane and a deeply spiritual ritual space where ritual performance had intermingled with everyday activities and peoples’ experiences. The sheer fact of the heterogeneous population of immigrants and the lack of shared formal traditional spaces and mortuary rituals, might suggest that these cities were both entirely suffused with individual spiritual practices and at the same time, devoid of communal memories of religious devotion. Rituals are always embodied practices that explore memories (Hallam and Hockey 2001), so if each urban environment is the ritual canvas for thousands of little traditions, then any space within the city could hold the memories of ritual significance. If we apply this concept to the question of why Indus mortuary tradition is so highly variable, one thing that immediately comes to mind is that, in fact mortuary behavior in Indus cities is also not always confined to specific mortuary spaces—like formal cemeteries; for example, at the Indus city of Mohenjo Daro, the human remains themselves are not confined to a particular space but are instead found scattered in the everyday spaces of the city: a stairwell, lanes, a room in a house (Fig. 3.2). Perhaps the long-noted lack of monumental architecture and the lack of homogeneous mortuary ritual that I will demonstrate here might be explained by immigration but also by an intermingling of the spiritual and the secular, the ritual and mundane categories of life. Just as today’s god and goddesses reside on the human landscape of South Asia—their exploits occurring in historical time and in the forests and mountains of the observable, physical landscape—human death too is mingled with the sights, sounds and scents of the city as it is paraded through the urban spaces on a path to the afterlife. Perhaps in the Indus, burials and other forms of interment represent those thousand little spiritual traditions that bridged the worlds of the living and the dead as well as the city and the natal village. This is the concept I want to explore in this chapter.

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Fig. 3.2  Mohenjo Daro skeletons are not found in what would be considered a formal cemetery. These individuals in the lane between houses in the VS Area are typical of the site, wherein most of the skeletons are found in public lanes and residential areas. (Reproduced from Marshall 1931)

3.2  D  escribing Things: The Cities, the Burials, and the Bodies in Relation 3.2.1  Mohenjo Daro Mohenjo Daro was the largest, and remains the most visually impressive city at the core of urban centers in the Indus River Valley. It provides perhaps the strongest possible evidence that the Indus civilization had no common mortuary tradition but also that rituals surrounding death and the memories of the dead are found in the ordinary spaces of life in the city. Mohenjo Daro does not appear to have a formal space reserved for mortuary ritual. Instead, parts of 37 individual bodies have been recovered from different areas of the archaeological site (Dales 1964); 32 complete skeletons and remains from five additional fragmentary, incomplete (or “fractional”) individuals were excavated from within buildings, lanes, and stairwells of the city’s lower town. Remains from three additional skeletons were included in the fill of accumulated debris in a courtyard of an Intermediate Period2 house (House III, HR  Mohenjo Daro was occupied between c. 2500–1900  BCE and the excavators (Marshall 1931, p. 10) divided the site into rough temporal divisions based on the stratigraphy and apparent shifts 2

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Area), possibly dumped there in preparation for a building phase in the Late Period of the site (Dales 1964). Later excavations by Mackay (1938) uncovered another 13 skeletons: bones from 9 skeletons3 (remains of 4 adults and 5 subadults) interred “in a heap” in a lane; and 2 skeletons in a stairwell.4 Two isolated skulls were discovered nearby, one in the lane above the stairwell and one in a pit at the bottom of the stairwell. Marshall (1931) also excavated a handful of fractional secondary burials, post–cremation urns, and 21 additional skeletons at Mohenjo Daro; unfortunately, these were all surface finds so they are not securely dated. He described: 14 skeletons5 in a house; six skeletons6 in a lane; and one prone skeleton7 in another lane. Perhaps because it was difficult to imagine an explanation for what seems to be a complete lack of a mortuary program at Mohenjo Daro, or perhaps because of the infamous difficulty of obtaining permission to study remains housed at Anthropological Survey of India in Kolkata, these 32 skeletons have been subject to very little research. Because of the relatively bizarre postures in which they were found and lack of a formal cemetery, Marshall (1931) attributed these deaths to bandits and raiders from marauding tribes of the Indus Valley hinterlands. Wheeler (1953) saw these haphazard assemblages as evidence for a massacre that was perhaps part of a larger invasion of “Aryans” (Indo-European language speakers) who brought about the end of the first urbanization phase in the subcontinent. This interpretation is obviously incorrect as there was no Aryan Invasion (Danino 2016; Mushrif Tripathy et  al. 2014; Walimbe 2016); however, the greatest challenge to interpreting this assemblage is that dates for the skeletal material are uncertain. According to Hargreaves (the person who excavated the first set of remains described above), four of the 14 skeletons in Room 74 were lying partly over the remains of the south wall of the chamber, thus proving that death must have taken place at some point after the wall in question had fallen to ruin. Marshall (1931) disputed this claim, saying that the wall was part of the Intermediate Period of the city’s occupation and, thus, the skeletons were from the Late Period.8 Unfortunately, the remains themselves have yet to be dated using AMS, which should eventually be done. It appears likely that many of these individuals at Mohenjo Daro are from the Late Period of the Indus Age. Of the six skeletons in the VS Area5, Marshall suggested they represented interments that intruded into the area that had earlier been a lane, causing the appearance of them having been left in the middle of the lane (Dales 1964). However, an examination of the photographs of these individuals calls this idea into question. The bodies are far from one another and yet appear to in material culture such that the Intermediate Period is strata 4–6 and the Late Period is strata 1–3. The Early Period is comprised by the seventh stratum and below. Marshall’s excavations stopped at the seventh stratum. The Intermediate Period roughly corresponds to c. 2400–2200 BCE. 3  Long Lane (DK Area) between block 10a and 11 4  Room 42 of block 8a 5  Room 74 of House V, in Section B of the HR Area 6  Lane 4 of the VS Area, between Houses XVIII and XXXIII 7  Deadman’s Lane, HR Area, Section A.8 8  Roughly corresponding to the end of the second millennium BCE.

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have been interred at the same stratigraphic level, making individual graves improbable. Also, the limbs and the bones of the pelvis and shoulders are splayed in a manner that is inconsistent with interment in a grave. These individuals appear to have decomposed in an open area or a large pit. This is also true of most of the other assemblages at Mohenjo Daro (such as the 9 skeletons in the DK Area). The only bioarchaeological work that has been done was conducted by Kennedy (1984, 1987, 1990, 2000) and Lovell (1997), who examined the skeletal material from Mohenjo Daro and reported evidence for healed traumatic injuries and that almost 20% of the individuals had evidence of abnormal porosity on the cranial vault bones that suggested a genetic form of anemia was becoming prevalent due to a heterozygous advantage in resistance to malaria (Lovell 2016). These remains could be restudied to describe the traumatic injuries, obtain AMS dates, and apply an isotopic approach to reconstruct the geographical origins of these individuals. Modern archaeological techniques must be applied to these long-standing questions about when these individuals died, what was their relationship to the city, and how they came to be interred in this fashion. However, the evidence from Mohenjo Daro does provide support for the argument that heterogeneous ritual performances played out in the everyday spaces of the cities because the heterogeneity of the population was anathema to a common tradition and centralized ritual spaces.

3.2.2  Harappa Harappa was one of the largest cities in the Indus River Valley and served as a kind of “type site” of the Harappan civilization because it was first scientifically investigated in 1926. It is the longest studied site—with more than 25 seasons of excavation—and one that has yielded highly significant insights to the complexity, social organization, cultural, and ideological aspects of Harappan society. The site is located in the Sahiwal District of Punjab, Pakistan. First occupied around 3300 BCE, the city grew to a population size of approximately 22,000–30,000 inhabitants (Wright 2010, p.  107) between 2600–2450  BCE, until it covered approximately 150 ha at the height of the Mature Period (2450–2150 BCE). There are two formal cemeteries here but the dead were not confined to those spaces. Here again, there were many instances of human remains (primarily skulls) uncovered outside of the recognized burial areas (Kenoyer and Meadow 2016), particularly on Mound AB, but the majority of individuals were interred in 280 burials that have been excavated at Harappa from three burial areas—two cemeteries (R-37 and H) and an ossuary, or pit of bones, at Area G. The human remains comprise 196 individuals from the Mature Period (2450–2150 BCE), body parts from 23 individuals from Area G (ca. 2000 BCE), 26 individuals from Cemetery H stratum II (1900–1700 BCE), and 45 individuals from Cemetery H stratum I (1700–1300 BCE). Comprehensive description and photographs of the recovered remains (Gupta et  al. 1962; Lovell 2014a) and detailed studies of pathophysiological markers (Kennedy 1990, 1992, 2000, 2002; Kennedy

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et al. Hemphill 1993; Lovell 1994, 1997, 2014a, 2016; Lovell and Kennedy 1989; Lukacs 1989, 1992, 1996, 2017) eventually led to scientific explorations of patterns of migration (Hemphill 1998, 1999a, b; Hemphill and Lukacs 1991; Hemphill 1991; Hemphill et al. 2000; Kenoyer et al. 2013; Valentine 2016), interpersonal violence (Kennedy 1984, 1987, 1990; Lovell 2014b; Robbins Schug et al. 2012), and infection and disease patterns (Robbins et al. 2006, 2007, 2009; Robbins Schug 2016, 2017; Robbins Schug et al. 2018; Robbins Schug et al. 2013). At this point, these remains are the best known and the most completely studied remains of people from any Indus city, although much work remains to be done. There are several important aspects of the skeletal remains from Harappa that must be taken into consideration. First, they make up only a tiny fraction of the living population of the city and thus are obviously not representative of the spectrum of human experience here across two millennia of occupation (from the earliest settlement at 3300 BCE to the last remaining occupants ca. 1300 BCE). Second, while we know many people died here and were not buried in the cemetery, we do not know why these particular individuals were buried in these areas, and we have yet to understand the full range of variation in what was clearly a highly heterogeneous society. Third, one thing we do know about the individuals buried at Harappa is that the majority of the males studied were not born locally, but the females do appear to have been local (Kenoyer et  al. 2013). One isotopic analysis also suggested that the males might have immigrated to the city early in life (Valentine 2016), though these results have yet to be validated. The heterogeneity we see in mortuary treatment at Harappa is certainly due to migration and heterogeneous community membership, and this suggests a rationale or motive for the lack of common ritual experience. Cemetery R-37 has typically been an exemplar of “Indus mortuary traditions,” but, in fact, disposal of the dead in this cemetery was also heterogeneous. At cemetery R-37, there were a number of individuals buried singly, in rectangular pits and an extended, supine posture, with the body oriented North-South, with the head to the north. This has been classified as the “normative practice,” but even burials that follow these customs are not actually uniform. Some of these graves were lined with bricks, some individuals were buried in a shroud, and some were placed inside a wooden coffin. Additionally, there were four burials excavated by Vats (1940) that contained elements from multiple individuals. Two of these “multiple burials,” 779c and 820, each contained one cranium with visible signs of infectious disease (leprosy) (Robbins Schug et al. 2013). The mortuary traditions at Harappa (and at numerous other Indus sites) included many episodes of living people interacting with the dead after burial. Kenoyer and Meadow (2016) noted a systemic pattern of disturbance in Cemetery R-37 and described these interactions as a common feature. The living would clear out previous burials, intentionally reburying or dumping the human remains in other areas (Kenoyer and Meadow 2016, p. 151), perhaps suggesting a lack of regard for those buried earlier from other communities. At Area G (Fig. 3.3), interaction with the dead during and after decomposition is evidenced by the piling of 20 human crania, an articulated spinal column, isolated body parts (e.g., entire legs), and one prone

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Fig. 3.3  Photograph of the partially complete excavation at Harappa‘s Area G, Trench II. Photo taken by M.S. Vats from the North-East corner of Am 42/22 in the 1928–1929 excavation season. (Reproduced from the original at the British Library)

burial (G.289) whose cranium was removed and placed to the left of the body when it was interred, which suggests the decapitation occurred as part of the mortuary ritual (Robbins Schug et al. 2018). Interaction with the dead continued in the post-urban, or Late Period (1900–1300 BCE). In this cemetery (H), 135 jars9 were found to contain secondary burials and fractional adult and subadult skeletons, some of whom showed evidence of partial cremation. Here too there was diversity in the mortuary behavior, with earth or “open” burials also found in the earliest (lowest) layers of this cemetery. These individuals were either laid out in a supine, extended posture, or laid on their side with flexed or extended legs, often with arms crossed over their torso. Ceramics were the only grave goods, and were inconsistently present (Possehl 2002). While some of the mortuary heterogeneity might be explained by high rates of migration and differences in community membership, some of the differences in mortuary treatment might also be due to social inequality, exclusion, and inequities that were exacerbated by the process of urbanization itself. The greatest risk of both trauma and infectious disease at Harappa appears to have been for the individuals who were interred in Area G. Leprosy was relatively common in the 23 individuals interred at Area G (22%), though the sample size from this area is small, and this may be coincidental. Interpersonal violence was also found here at a higher rate than any other Indus city. While subadults were recovered from every burial area,

 Of these interments, only 26 individuals were from the post-urban Late Period (1900–1700 BCE), 78 were from a later Chalcolithic Period (1700–1300 BCE). 9

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two of nine subadult crania recovered from Area G suffered cranial trauma. Rates of traumatic injury were much lower than in other urban cemeteries (Lovell 2014a, b; Lukacs and Hemphill 1990), and thus we have hypothesized that the individuals buried here were from a community that was more at risk for both infectious disease and interpersonal violence (Robbins Schug 2017; Robbins Schug et al. 2012, 2013). I have argued elsewhere that this result also supports the idea that the Harappan civilization was at least somewhat hierarchical (Robbins Schug 2017). Archaeological evidence for hierarchy, as opposed to heterarchy (or different, parallel systems of rank) emerges from the archaeological record in the form of exclusion (Crumley 1979, 1995, 2001, 2005). In the skeletal assemblage at Area G, we find piles of skulls and one prone burial. These remains are not included in a formal cemetery, and they are not buried as individuals, in graves, in pots, or in coffins, like those interred in cemetery R-37 or cemetery H. Interpretation of this area requires additional excavation, as there is some question about the temporal context and the relationship between the ossuary and possibly a more formal cemetery located in this area (Kenoyer and Meadow 2016; Kenoyer, personal communication). It remains to be seen, with further excavation, whether there is also a cemetery in Area G, but the nature of this assemblage must still be understood within the context of the rest of the burials at the site. Based on the evidence at hand, these individuals were provided very different treatment, and they demonstrated the most evidence of violence and infectious diseases. This suggests social differentiation and possibly structural violence—a lack of access to basic resources like health and security for some members of a society. It is also very important to recognize that evidence for traumatic injuries is not limited to Harappa. There is evidence for traumatic injuries at Mohenjo Daro (Kennedy 1990), Kalibangan (Sharma 1999), Rakhigarhi (Lee et al. 2019), Farmana (Mushrif Tripathy and Shinde 2019), and Lothal (Sarkar 1972, 1985). Thus, although the mortuary traditions are not held in common across different cities in different areas of the Indus civilization, there are common elements; the evidence of interpersonal violence is among those common elements.

3.3  P  ost-urban Communities and Cities Outside the Core Indus Valley Territory are Similarly Diverse A number of important cities are located outside of the core Indus River Valley, which has led archaeologists to expand their conception of the “core Indus territory“since their discovery post-Independence (1947 CE). Archaeological surveys have also located at least 106 Indus sites in the Sindh region of contemporary Gujarat and 239 sites in Cholistan, in northwest India (Possehl 2002: 50). The Mature Period (2600–1900 BCE) settlements in these regions maintain the typical features of Indus urban identity and material culture but they are far outside of the Indus Valley. Typically, these cities are located along the banks of (or in the beds of)

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rivers, tributaries, and canals leading off of the Ghaggar-Hakra river system (Singh et al. 2011). Many of these cities were really large, and they formed an integral part of the civilization (Kalibangan, Dholavira, Rakhigarhi). Some of them were smaller (Balathal, Farmana) but have yielded critical evidence as to mortuary variation.

3.3.1  Balathal Balathal is one of the most fascinating sites in regard to mortuary behavior in the Indus Age despite having skeletal remains from only five individuals (Robbins et al. 2006, 2007, 2009). Of the handful of people buried at Balathal, three individuals were Early Historic and two were buried from the Mature Period, including one middle-aged man, approximately 45  years of age, with a severe case of leprosy (Robbins et al. 2009). This individual was interred inside a stone enclosure 500 m2 (27 m × 37 m) at the eastern edge of the settlement. While the structure was said to resemble an Indus “citadel,” it was empty except for stratified layers of vitrified cow dung ash that appeared to have accumulated after the dung was tossed in from the top of the wall and then periodically burned. At approximately 2.66  m down, in layer 7 of the NE quadrant, the middle-aged man with leprosy was laid directly on the surface in a tightly flexed burial. Higher layers in the sequence were undisturbed, suggesting the burial dates to 2500–2000 BCE. The presence of severe mycobacterial infection at Harappan-era sites in the Thar desert of India, far from Harappa, supports the suggestion that these mycobacterial pathogens might have emigrated here as a consequence of the exchange network, migration, and contact (Monot et al. 2005; Pinhasi et al. 2006; Robbins et al. 2009). More interesting for this discussion is the mortuary behavior. The man with leprosy is the only known example of an individual interred in a stone enclosure of this magnitude and within layers of vitrified cow dung ash. In all likelihood this does not represent a tradition that was brought to Balathal from this individual’s natal place (as it is unprecedented) but, rather, represents an attempt to ritually control or exert influence on this individual’s journey to the afterlife (Robbins Schug 2016). It is not clear whether the burial is deviant in relation to necrophobia or if the mortuary treatment was to facilitate his journey after death; however, it should be noted that cow dung in Hinduism historically is the most purifying substance and is used to correct the deepest forms of spiritual corruption. This burial could suggest an exception to the concept of ritual and spiritual practice occurring within the everyday spaces of life; rather in this case, the individual was secluded within a veritable fortress dedicated to his burial and entirely walled off from the everyday space of the city.

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3.3.2  Dholavira The site of Dholavira demonstrates important evidence of mortuary variation, traditions that maintained regular interaction among the living and the dead, and connections to everyday life in the city. This 70-hectare site was occupied in the post-urban, or Late Period (2000–1800 BCE). It is located in Gujarat, in a particularly challenging environment with infrequent and low volume of rainfall, and little opportunity for agricultural production although rain water storage and abundant marine resources made up for the harsh landscape (Bisht 2015). The site has a cemetery located southwest of the main town. The mortuary treatment here demonstrates even more diversity than other Indus sites. There are two primary burials, one in a grave and the other buried within the ruins of the lower town, but there are five additional types of burials at Dholavira that do not have parallels in any other Indus cities thus far excavated; however, similar mortuary monuments may be present in surrounding Harappan communities (which have yet to be systematically investigated) (Bisht 2015, p. 633). Remarkably, at Dholavira there are hemispherical monuments (or tumuli) here that are most similar to those found in Dilmun; rectangular rock-cut, cist, or built stone memorials; round or oval cairns; composite burials; and fractional, secondary burials. Aside from the two primary burials and a few fractional burials, the site’s mortuary complex is devoid of human remains. Although the 36 monuments in the western part of the cemetery that were excavated did not yield human remains, all were built above an underground pit in which there were funerary offerings: pottery, beads, gold, and jewelry. Like many graves containing skeletons at Indus sites, these pits were oriented North-South; the overlying monuments had orientation varying from North-South, East-West, or Northeast-Northwest. The archaeologists have suggested that perhaps these mortuary monuments were raised to honor the memory of those who died locally, but were disposed of in some other fashion. However, given the wide-ranging network of exchange, and the presence of so many foreigners in the cemetery at Harappa, it is also possible that these structures were constructed as monuments to those who died elsewhere, either in preparation for the eventual return of the remains, or perhaps with the knowledge that those remains would not return but necessitated acknowledgement of their death in a foreign place. Archaeological evidence suggests the mortuary area at Dholavira was intimately tied to everyday life in the city. A long, wide path was built in the Bronze Age, which connected the top of the living city’s outer wall to the tumulus. Two circular structures (Tumulus I and II) were built by Indus people, and archaeologists have suggested these resembled buried water reservoirs, located in the midst of the cemetery, with graves surrounding them to the north, south, and west. These are rock-­ cut chambers, surrounded by mud-brick structures in two tiers. In addition, six of the mortuary tumuli are arranged on the banks of another buried water body. Remote sensing was used to establish the function of this feature, which may have been a water storage facility, but additional investigation is required. Other evidence of ceremonial activity includes the painting of the cists or cists in cairns with red ochre.

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Some of these cists contained a small space, just large enough to seat a person, in which the archaeologists have suggested a priest or family member might have inserted offerings (Bisht 2015, p. 639). In this case, the memorials to the dead were given a dedicated space but with concrete connection to the city in the form of passageways for pilgrimages and other interactions. Finally, like the evidence from major Indus cities like Harappa and Mohenjo Daro, unlike these tumuli, the human remains at Dholavira were not confined to a mortuary area or necropolis, but were found within the habitation area itself. There was a skull stuck in a drain leading away from a structure known as “the castle,” and some human remains were located on top of the defensive wall (Bisht 2015, p. 645). There are also graves located in the lower town itself, but these date to a time after the Mature Period ended.

3.3.3  Sanauli Sanauli is located on an ancient oxbow lake bed near the Yumna River, about 80 km north of New Delhi. This cemetery (which is not associated with a settlement) dates to the post-urban, disintegration phase of the Harappan civilization (2000–1800 BCE) and is contemporaneous with Cemetery H at Harappa (Prabhakar 2012; Sharma et al. 2003, 2007). The first season of excavation, from 2005–2006 by DV Sharma, exposed 116 graves in what has been called the “classic Harappan tradition“—52 primary extended burials, which were primarily oriented Northwest-Southeast (head to the northwest), 35 secondary burials, and 29 symbolic burials (without skeletal remains). These were studied by Dr. SR Walimbe, who discovered that one double secondary burial contained two males (both aged 30–35 years), and one triple secondary burial contained the bones of three skeletons placed in anatomical position alongside one another. One cranium was placed upside down, and the other two were missing (Sharma et al. 2007). In fact, this Late Harappan cemetery demonstrates some of the range of variation typical of sites from this time and this mention of skulls being placed upside down in the grave suggests that the mortuary tradition was not so straightforward as “primary inhumations in a cemetery“but rather interaction after a period decomposition was part of the mortuary behavior. However, an excavation conducted at this same site in 2018 uncovered some of the most spectacular mortuary diversity in this region of India. This excavation revealed a cemetery that connects the post-urban phase Harappan cemetery traditions described above and typical Late Harappan material culture—Harappan script, decorative motifs, figurines, ivory combs, carnelian beads—with (1) the ceramic styles of the so-called “Ochre Coloured Pottery (OCP) Culture” and (2) the copper and gold weapons, jewelry, and other adornments typically associated with “Copper Hoard Culture” of the eastern Gangetic Plains. While the mortuary traditions and material culture in the burials excavated at Sanauli in the initial round of excavation (2005–6) shared many features with other post-urban Harappan sites (Prabhakar 2012; Sharma et al. 2003, 2007), the more recent excavations by the Archaeological

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Survey of India in 2018, directed by S.K. Manjul, have yielded striking differences with what has been labeled the “Mature Harappan mortuary tradition” (Kumar 2019). At Sanauli, archaeologists have found one grave that contained two four-legged coffins, the tops of which are decorated with carvings and which were covered with a thin plate of copper (Kumar 2019). This one very large grave also contained two chariots of wood and copper that were buried next to the coffins. The ceramics found in these burials are all from the OCP culture, similar to the pottery found at Faizabad, Sultanpur, and Kalibangan (Kumar 2019). At Sanauli, weapons are also found in the burials, including antennae swords and other forms typically found in the “Copper Hoard Culture.” While the mortuary treatment has been initially described (Kumar 2019), additional analysis and publications are eagerly awaited. The bioarchaeological analysis has yet to be performed, and this is a critical step toward understanding the site and its relationship to the Harappan civilization.

3.3.4  Kalibangan The ancient small city of Kalibangan is another site occupied during the Mature Period and located in the northwestern region of Rajasthan, approximately 200 km southeast of Harappa and 300 km northwest of New Delhi. Kalibangan was excavated by the Archaeological Survey of India over nine field seasons beginning in 1959, and five cultural phases were delineated. The city was first occupied in the Early (2920–2550  BCE) and Mature (radiocarbon dates were 2550–2440  BCE) Periods (Allchin and Allchin 1982:159). At its height, the city probably included about 800–1000 residents (Possehl 2002, p. 173). The city was constructed of mud brick as well as stone. The Early Harappan Period settlement does not appear to have had a regular plan, but in the Mature Period settlement, the main thoroughfares are oriented in a North-South direction, with lanes running East-West in a fashion similar to Mohenjo Daro. The settlement pattern, with a mud-brick citadel on the western end of the site and a lower residential area to the east, has led some archaeologists to consider Kalibangan one of the provincial government centers of the Harappan civilization, like Harappa and Mohenjo Daro. This city was, however, much smaller than these other urban centers, with an estimated population size in the mature phase of 1000 inhabitants in the lower town (8.6  ha). The bricks had standardized dimensions (3,2:1) that differ from the standard associated with the Mature Harappan Phase in the Indus River Valley (4:2:1), but they were nonetheless standardized according to the Indus concept. Like Harappa and unlike the other sites discussed above, the dead were interred in a formal cemetery, 300  m West-Southwest of the higher town, of 102 burials, most of which remain unexcavated (Possehl 2002, p. 173). Primary burials (n = 88) were in rectangular or oval pits, their bodies in an extended, supine posture (Sharma 1999). Grave goods included ceramics and decorative items. However, there were also secondary burials, which occurred in pots buried in round pits; “symbolic” burials contained only ceramics. Each tradition had its own demarcated

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geographical area in the cemetery, which could represent different communities within Kalibangan society or various social strata; the symbolic burials could represent individuals who died far from the city but whose families chose to mark their memory in the cemetery. Sharma (1999) also suggested that within each area there were spatially clustered burials that might represent familial units.

3.3.5  Rakhigarhi Rakhigarhi (2600–2200 BCE) is located 150 km northwest of New Delhi. At a size of more than 2.2 km2, it is one of the largest Harappan cities outside of the Indus River Valley, in India (Dibyopama et al. 2015; Nath 1999, 2001; Nath et al. 2014; 2015). Recent excavations at Rakhigarhi (Shinde et al. 2012; Shinde et al. 2018a) have yielded a large, well-preserved cemetery and in combination with excavations at Farmana (Shinde 2006; Shinde and Osada 2008; Shinde et  al. 2011; Mushrif Tripathy and Shinde 2019), important new information about mortuary behavior and Harappan society in northwest India has been gained (Mushrif Tripathy and Shinde 2019; Shinde et al. 2018a, b; Woo et al. 2018). Excavations here have demonstrated a cemetery, north of the settlement. The cemetery does not really have a single, monolithic mortuary tradition. Of 53 burials excavated here, 35 were primary interments of single individuals in rectangular graves, and the other 18 excavated burials were not treated in that manner (Shinde et al. 2018a). Bodies interred in single inhumations were primarily placed with their heads to the north; grave goods included ceramics and gold and bead jewelry. Thirty-six percent of individuals had different mortuary treatments (Shinde et al. 2018a). Mortuary elements shared in common across Harappa, Rakhigarhi, Farmana, and Kalibangan include the designation of a formal cemetery apart from the city, the inclusion of pottery and other artifacts in graves, the apparently haphazard disregard for intrusion on earlier interments, graves oriented roughly North-South for primary interments, and the predominance of the extended, supine posture of skeletons (Kenoyer and Meadow 2016; Mushrif Tripathy and Shinde 2019; Sharma 1999; Shinde et al. 2018a). All of the variants in mortuary treatment described as “atypical” at Rakhigarhi— brick-lined graves, multiple burials, secondary pot burial, burial of subadults, and bodies in a prone posture—are actually elements of mortuary behavior that have also been reported at Harappa (Kenoyer and Meadow 2016; Robbins Schug 2016, 2017; Robbins Schug and Blevins 2016; Robbins Schug et al. 2012, 2013, 2018; Sastri 1965; Wheeler 1953; Vats 1940). While these variants are less common, they are not unique, and with one-third of individuals falling into this category, they are not really “atypical.” Three individuals at Rakhigarhi were buried in a prone posture. One of the prone individuals was a young adult female in a brick-lined grave, while two others were young adult males. All these burials had a large quantity of fine ceramics, which the

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authors interpreted as indicating that high social status might have been ascribed to these individuals. In all three cases, there was no evidence of necrophobia or intentional disrespect. The prone burial posture is relatively rare worldwide, but has been described at Kalibangan (Sharma 1999) and in two burial areas at Harappa: cemetery R-37 (Kenoyer and Meadow 2016) and Area G (Robbins Schug et al. 2018). At Kalibangan, individual 29 was interred in a prone posture, over a bed of ceramics. Two Rakhigarhi burials also occurred on a bed of pottery, but the skeletons were not face-down. At Harappa, Kenoyer and Meadow (2016) state that all of the graves excavated in cemetery R-37 that contained single individuals were placed in a supine posture, except for one adult female (152a), who was buried in a prone position (Kenoyer and Meadow 2016). The description of this individual suggests the burial was disturbed, and the excavators were unsure if this posture was how the body was originally laid out or was a product of later disturbance, particularly given the positioning of her feet on her pelvis. Vats (1940) also excavated a prone burial at Area G at Harappa. In this area, the skeletal materials are located below a large deposit of ceramics, not above (Robbins Schug et al. 2018). In this trench, located southeast of the city wall around Mound E, there was also a collection of isolated post-cranial remains of humans and other animals and a single prone burial described in the section on Harappa above. Shinde et al. (2018a) describe evidence for burial of eight subadult individuals at Rakhigarhi as “atypical” for an Indus city, but that practice is not in fact, atypical. Their report does not indicate subadults were treated differently other than that they had fewer grave offerings. Kenoyer and Meadow (2016) reported 15 subadult skeletons (under 16 years of age) in Cemetery R-37 at Harappa. Like Rakhigarhi, subadults buried in cemetery R-37 at Harappa also had no pottery and no ornaments. There were 33 subadults in the materials studied by Robbins Schug and colleagues (Robbins Schug and Blevins 2016; Robbins Schug et al. 2012, 2013) from the earlier excavations at Harappa: three from R-37, nine from Area G, six from cemetery H stratum I, and 15 from stratum II. The subadults in cemetery H were each buried with an adult female. What has been described as “atypical” at Rakhigarhi is in fact within the broad range of variation for Indus mortuary behavior if we approach the data honestly and abandon the notion of supine, single interments as a normative practice in the Indus Age.

3.3.6  Farmana Farmana was an Early (3500–2600 BCE) to Mature Period (2600–2000 BCE) site located southeast of Rakhigarhi in the state of Haryana (Shinde 2006; Shinde et al. 2008, 2011). The site has a classic Mature Period cemetery, situated 900 m northwest of the site, where 70 primary, secondary and “symbolic” burials have been excavated (Mushrif Tripathy and Shinde 2019). All the graves (whether or not they contained a human burial) were rectangular in shape and cut large enough for an adult human body, but the graves vary somewhat in their orientation, North-South

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and Northwest-Southeast. Unlike other sites, at Farmana, ceramics were invariably placed near the head; copper jewelry and beads were also included in the burials. Skeletons were found in 30 of the primary burials, which were placed in a supine, extended posture. The burials were all single individuals with the exception of one double burial. Subadult individuals, as well as adult males and females were buried in the cemetery.

3.4  Discussion and Conclusion Cities are social landscapes, providing opportunities for immigrants to engage in new forms of interaction, economy, and politics. In many cases, a heterogeneous urban immigrant community might seek to integrate themselves or their communities into a pre-existing social fabric: as Monica Smith writes, “Because cities even in ancient times grew quickly through migration, there must have been many cases in which nearly everyone in a newly emergent city was a migrant or a first-generation offspring of migrants. Only when cities had been in place for some time would there have been any sense of established residents, and they would have been continually juxtaposed against more recent immigrants who brought with them their own social networks and settled in communities where they shared languages, customs, religion, or national backgrounds” (Smith 2014: p. 315). In the case of the Indus civilization, there were some Mature Period cities that developed from previously existing Early Harappa communities, at the type site of Harappa or at Kalibangan, for example. In other cases, like Mohenjo Daro, the city was built from the ground up and there was no pre-existing town on that precise spot. Everyone was an immigrant, tied to their natal communities and their own little traditions in their spiritual and ritual life. The Indus civilization cities are paradoxical in an important way. The civilization is well known, on the one hand, for an unprecedented level of highly standardized city planning, sanitation and water management, weights and measures, seals and script in South Asia. On the other hand, we know the human population was comprised of a very diverse population of immigrants, people who moved to the cities in the tens of thousands upon their completion ca. 2500 BCE. The material culture was strongly uniform over the entire Indus territory, yet the population was highly heterogeneous (Kenoyer 2005; Possehl 2002; Shinde 2016; Wright 2010) and as has been demonstrates, the mortuary behavior also highly diverse. The mortuary treatment suggests the city’s inhabitants largely did not share ethnic or community membership, histories or sociocultural traditions, spiritual or ritual practices; nor did a common tradition emerge after centuries of urban habitation. Another striking feature I have tried to demonstrate is that mortuary ritual is not always confined to specific spaces in these settlements; instead, the living and the dead interacted and often shared urban settings, like streets, wells, or rooms. Many archaeologists have also wondered why there is no evidence for big public ritual facilities in Indus cities but perhaps that is because the relationships with god and

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goddesses were also maintained in highly individual or small-group based performances—interacting with terracotta figurines, in the making of the tiny stamp seals that portrayed religious figures or rituals, and in the painting of spiritual figures on ceramics—that occurred in diffuse locations throughout the city. No monumental religious architecture was required. Perhaps the urban landscape itself was fundamentally a space of both secular and spiritual interaction: migrants, traders, and local people lived and/or worked in this place, they experienced both the secular and the spiritual moments of their lives in these newly built environments. Perhaps the mundane streets and houses of the city itself contained spiritual meaning and memories. The mortuary traditions found in Indus cities seem to reflect this idea of little traditions, the diversity of the cities and their people. This chapter clearly demonstrates that the major common feature of mortuary traditions across and within Indus cities is the heterogeneity of the treatment of human remains. Bodies and parts of bodies are not restricted to mortuary areas, but they can be found in residential and public areas as well as in cemeteries or necropolises. Clearly there was regular interaction with the dead. At Dholavira, the necropolis is a rare example of shared public ritual space. The grave sites of Harappa were regularly disturbed. This heterogeneity not only confirms diverse community memberships re-enacted in diverse ritual performances of death, but in some cases, explicit connections were being made to histories, people, and places far from Indus cities themselves. While the landscape of the city represented economic opportunities and a kind of proto-­ historic multicultural society of people with diverse identities, it was also a place devoid of shared spiritual meaning (memories, monuments, and religious spaces). The treatment of the dead was one arena for ritual and spiritual practice, and here the idea of diverse small traditions is confirmed. In this chapter, I have presented one explanation for the heterogeneous mortuary behavior in Indus cities, for the lack of monumentality in general, and for the apparent lack of interest in deep integration or state-level control over any aspect of life not related to economic or organizational relationships. By extension, I also present a possible explanation for why it became so easy for so many to walk away from these cities once the commercial opportunities folded in on themselves. Perhaps there was only a shallow degree of connectivity among the diverse inhabitants of these communities. When climate, economic, and other social changes made urban life untenable, their ties to kin in their natal villages, familiarity with other lifestyles in outside communities, and lack of deep ties to the city “enabled rural dwellers to seek ‘safety in numbers’ at times of … crisis and enabled urban dwellers to take advantage of rural economic opportunities and to disperse into the countryside when urban warfare, natural disasters, or epidemics made cities unappealing” (Smith 2014: p. 315) Although Smith was not speaking explicitly about the Indus context in this quote, it is remarkably applicable here. Rather than wondering why people appear to have abandoned the cities and left behind all the “Indus traditions” (ceramic styles, script, weights and measures) at the end of the Mature Period (1900 BC), this model would suggest that shared features of the civilization were actually shallow in meaning and once the economic

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party was over, the inhabitants of the cities simply packed up and went back home, leaving all the artifacts of exchange behind. This model begs the question, if many of the individuals buried in the Indus cities are not “Indus people” but instead immigrants from places far afield, how should we define “Indus people” and in what far off places might we find them? Aside from the archaeological implications of this project, it might also seem to have contemporary relevance as understanding urban community dynamics becomes an important part of predicting migrant flows—and their implications for pathogen flows and other human health impacts—in the planning for a changing climate. Climate change will impact population sizes and mobility and migration is a principal biocultural response to changing environments; however, bioarchaeology demonstrates that not everyone moves in the face of environmental changes. It is the historical and sociocultural dynamics of human agency that determine diverse responses in human communities and the outcomes of those different strategies and bioarchaeology can provide a more nuanced view of who leaves and who might choose to remain.

References Allchin, B., & Allchin, R. (1982). The rise of civilization in India and Pakistan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bisht, R.  S. (2015). The excavations at Dholavira (1989–90 to 2004–2005). New Delhi: Archaeological Survey of India. Brück, J. (1999). Ritual and rationality: Some problems of interpretation in European archaeology. European Journal of Archaeology, 2(3), 313–344. Crumley, C. L. (1979). Three locational models: An epistemological assessment for anthropology and archaeology. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, 2, 141–173. Crumley, C. L. (1995). Heterarchy and the analysis of complex societies. Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association, 6(1), 1–5. Crumley, C. L. (2001). Communication, holism, and the evolution of sociopolitical complexity. In J. Haas (Ed.), From leaders to rulers (pp. 19–33). Boston: Springer. Crumley, C. L. (2005). Remember how to organize: Heterarchy across disciplines. In W. W. Baden (Ed.), Nonlinear models for archaeology and anthropology (pp. 35–50). London: Routledge. Dales, G. F. (1964). The mythical massacre at Mohenjo-daro. Expedition Magazine, 6(3), 36–43. Danino, M. (2016). Aryans and the Indus civilization: Archaeological, skeletal, and molecular evidence. In G. Robbins Schug & S. R. Walimbe (Eds.), A companion to South Asia in the past (pp. 205–224). Boston: Wiley Blackwell. Dibyopama, A., Kim, Y. J., Oh, C. S., Shin, D. H., & Shinde, V. (2015). Human skeletal remains from ancient burial sites in India: with special reference to Harappan civilization. Korean Journal of Physical Anthropology, 28(1), 1–9. Gupta, P., Dutta, P. C., & Basu, A. (1962). Human skeletal remains from Harappa (p. 74). New Delhi: Anthropological Survey of India, Memoire. Hallam, E., & Hockey, J. (2001). Death. Memory and Material Culture. Oxford: Berg. Hemphill, B. E. (1991). Biological adaptations and affinities of Bronze Age Harappans. Harappa Excavations 1986–1990: A multidisciplinary approach to Third Millennium urbanism (Monographs in World Archaeology No. 3), 137–182. Hemphill, B.  E. (1998). Biological affinities and adaptations of Bronze Age Bactrians: III.  An initial craniometric assessment. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 106(3), 329–348.

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Hemphill, B.  E. (1999a). Biological affinities and adaptations of Bronze Age Bactrians: IV.  A craniometric investigation of Bactrian origins. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 108(2), 173–192. Hemphill, B.  E. (1999b). Foreign elites from the Oxus civilization? A craniometric study of anomalous burials from Bronze Age Tepe Hissar. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 110(4), 421–434. Hemphill, B. E., & Lukacs, J. R. (1991). Hegelian logic and the Harappan civilization: An investigation of Harappan biological affinities in light of recent biological and archaeological research. South Asian Archaeology, 1991, 101–120. Hemphill, B. E., Lukacs, J. R., & Walimbe, S. R. (2000). Ethnic identity, biological history and dental morphology: Evaluating the indigenous status of Maharashtra’s Mahars. Antiquity, 74(285), 671–681. Kennedy, K. A. R. (1984). Trauma and disease in the ancient Harappans. In Frontiers of the Indus Civilization (pp. 425–436). New Delhi: Books and Books. Kennedy, K. A. R. (1987). Reconstruction of trauma, disease and lifeways of prehistoric peoples of South Asia from the skeletal record. South Asian Archaeology, 1984, 61–77. Kennedy, K. A. R. (1990). Reconstruction of trauma, disease and lifeways of prehistoric peoples of South Asia from the skeletal record. In M. Taddei (Ed.), South Asian Archaeology 1987 (p. 61). Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estermo Oriente (IsMEO). Kennedy, K. A. R. (1992). Biological anthropology of human skeletons from Harappa: 1928 to 1988. Eastern Anthropologist, 45, 55–85. Kennedy, K. A. R. (2000). God-apes and fossil men: Paleoanthropology of South Asia. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Kennedy, K.  A. R. (2002). Biological anthropology of human skeletons from Harappa. Indian Archaeology in Retrospect, 2, 293–316. Kennedy, K. A. R., Lovell, N. C., Lukacs, J. R., & Hemphill, B. E. (1993). Scaphocephaly in a prehistoric skeleton from Harappa, Pakistan. Anthropologischer Anzeiger, 51(1), 1–29. Kenoyer, J. M., & Meadow, R. H. (2016). Excavations at Harappa, 1986–2010: New insights on the Indus Civilization and Harappan burial traditions. In G. Robbins Schug & S. R. Walimbe (Eds.), A companion to South Asia in the past (pp. 145–168). Boston: Wiley Blackwell. Kenoyer, J.  M., Price, T.  D., & Burton, J.  H. (2013). A new approach to tracking connections between the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia: Initial results of strontium isotope analyses from Harappa and Ur. Journal of Archaeological Science, 40(5), 2286–2297. Kumar, V. (2019). A note on the Chariot Burials found at Sinauli district Baghpat U.P. Indian Journal of Archaeology. http://www.ijarch.org/Admin/Articles/9-Note%20on%20Chariots. pdf. Last accessed 3 June 2019. Lee, H., Waghmare, P., Kim, Y., Hong, J. H., Yadav, Y., Jadhav, N., et al. (2019). Traumatic injury in a cranium found at Rakhigarhi cemetery of Harappan civilization as anthropological evidence of interpersonal violence. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 23, 362–367. Lovell, N. C. (1994). Spinal arthritis and physical stress at bronze age Harappa. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 93(2), 149–164. Lovell, N.  C. (1997). Anaemia in the ancient Indus Valley. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 7(2), 115–123. Lovell, N.  C. (2014a). Additional data on trauma at Harappa. International Journal of Paleopathology, 6, 1–4. Lovell, N. C. (2014b). Skeletal paleopathology of human remains from cemetery R37 at Harappa, excavated in 1987 and 1988. https://era.library.ualberta.ca/items/cb2eab00-d67b-4574-9e8ecfe54f2966bf. Last accessed 3 June 2019. Lovell, N. C. (2016).. Bioarchaeology of the Indus Valley). In G. Robbins Schug & S. R. Walimbe (Eds.), A companion to South Asia in the past (pp. 169–186). Boston: Wiley Blackwell. Lovell, N. C., & Kennedy, K. A. R. (1989). Society and disease in prehistoric South Asia. Old problems and new perspectives in the archaeology of South Asia, 2, 89–92. Lukacs, J. R. (1989). Harappan dentition. Pakistan Archaeology, 25, 315–332.

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Lukacs, J. R. (1992). Dental paleopathology and agricultural intensification in South Asia: New evidence from Bronze Age Harappa. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 87(2), 133–150. Lukacs, J. R. (1996). Sex differences in dental caries rates with the origin of agriculture in South Asia. Current Anthropology, 37(1), 147–153. Lukacs, J. R. (2017). Dental adaptations of Bronze Age Harappans: Occlusal wear, crown size, and dental pathology. International Journal of Paleopathology, 18, 69–81. Lukacs, J. R., & Hemphill, B. E. (1990). Traumatic injuries of prehistoric teeth: New evidence from Baluchistan and Punjab provinces, Pakistan. Anthropologischer Anzeiger, 48, 351–363. Mackay, E. J. H. (1938). Further excavations at Mohenjo-Daro: Text (Vol. 1). Director General, Archaeological Survey of India. Marshall, S. J. (1931). Mohenjodaro and the Indus Valley civilization. London: Arthur Probsthain. Monot, M., Honoré, N., Garnier, T., Araoz, R., Coppée, J. Y., Lacroix, C., et al. (2005). On the origin of leprosy. Science, 308(5724), 1040–1042. Mushrif Tripathy, V., Shinde, V., & Chakraborty, K.  S. (2014). Preliminary findings on human skeletal remains from Harappan site of Farmana. Iranian Journal of Archaeological Studies, 2(2), 51–64. Mushrif Tripathy, V., & Shinde, V. (2019). Human skeletal assemblage from the Harappan site of Farmana: Bioarchaeological analysis. New Delhi: Kaveri Books. Nath, A. (1999). Further excavations at Rakhigarhi. Puratattva, 29, 46–49. Nath, A. (2001). Rakhigarhi: 1999–2000. Puratattva, 31, 43–46. Nath, A., Law, R., & Garge, T. (2014). Initial geologic provenience studies of stone and metal artefacts from Rakhigarhi. Heritage: Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies in Archaeology, 2, 74–100. Nath, A., Walimbe, S.  R., Garge, T.  M., Mushrif Tripathy, V., Dehuri, R., & Malik, A. (2015). Harappan interments at Rakhigarhi, Haryana. Man and Environment, 40, 2. Pinhasi, R., Foley, R., & Donoghue, H. D. (2006). Reconsidering the antiquity of leprosy. Science, 312(5775), 846–846. Possehl, G. L. (2002). The Indus civilization: A contemporary perspective. Maryland: Rowman Altamira. Prabhakar, V. N. (2012). Burial practices of the Harappans: Sanauli Excavation–A Case Study. Unpublished PhD. thesis. Kurukshetra: Kurukshetra University. Raczek, T. P. (2003). Subsistence strategies and burial rituals: Social practices in the late Deccan chalcolithic. Asian Perspectives, 42, 247–266. Robbins Schug, G. (2016). Begotten of corruption? Bioarchaeology and “othering” of leprosy in South Asia. International Journal of Paleopathology, 15, 1–9. Robbins Schug, G. (2017). A hierarchy of values: The bioarchaeology of complexity, order, health, and hierarchy at Harappa. In H. D. Klaus, A. Harvey, & M. N. Cohen (Eds.), Bones of complexity: Osteological indicators of emergent Heterarchy and hierarchy (pp. 263–289). Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Robbins Schug, G., & Blevins, K. E. (2016). The center cannot hold: A bioarchaeological perspective on environmental crisis in the second millennium BCE, South Asia. In G. Robbins Schug & S. R. Walimbe (Eds.), A companion to South Asia in the past (pp. 255–273). Boston: Wiley Blackwell. Robbins Schug, G., Gray, K., Mushrif Tripathy, V., & Sankhyan, A. R. (2012). A peaceful realm? Trauma and social differentiation at Harappa. International Journal of Paleopathology, 2(2-3), 136–147. Robbins Schug, G., Blevins, K. E., Cox, B., Gray, K., & Mushrif Tripathy, V. (2013). Infection, disease, and biosocial processes at the end of the Indus Civilization. PLoS One, 8(12), e84814. Robbins Schug, G., Parnell, E. K., & Harrod, R. P. (2018). Changing the climate: Bioarchaeology responds to deterministic thinking about human-environmental interactions in the past. In J. Buikstra (Ed.), Bioarchaeologists speak out (pp. 133–159). Cham: Springer.

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Robbins, G., Mushrif, V., Misra, V. N., Mohanty, R. K., & Shinde, V. (2006). Biographies of the skeleton: Palaeopathological conditions at Balathal. Man and Environment, 31(2), 50–65. Robbins, G., Mushrif, V., Misra, V. N., Mohanty, R. K., & Shinde, V. S. (2007). Adult skeletal material from Balathal: A full report and inventory. Man and Environment, 32(2), 1–26. Robbins, G., Tripathy, V. M., Misra, V. N., Mohanty, R. K., Shinde, V. S., Gray, K. M., et al. (2009). Ancient skeletal evidence for leprosy in India (2000 BC). PLoS One, 4(5), e5669. Rosaldo, R. (1989). Introduction: Grief and a headhunter’s rage. In R. Rosaldo (Ed.), Culture and Truth: The remaking of social analysis. Boston: Beacon Press. Sarkar, S. S. (1972). Ancient races of the Deccan. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal. Sarkar, S.  S. (1985). Human skeletal remains from Lothal. Lothal—A Harappan port town 1955–62, 2, 269–304. Sastri, K. N. (1965). New light on the Indus Civilization: Disposal of the dead, the Aryan problem and the Atharvaveda (Vol. 2). Delhi: Atma Ram. Sharma, A. K. (1999). The departed Harappans of Kalibangan. New Delhi: Sundeep Prakashan. Sharma, D. V., Nauriyal, K. C., & Prabhakar, V. N. (2003). Sanauli: A late Harappan burial site in the Yamuna-Hindon Doab. Puratattva, 34, 35–44. Sharma, D. V., Nauriyal, K. C., & Prabhakar, V. L. N. (2007). Excavations at Sanauli 2005–06: A Harappan necropolis in the upper Ganga-Yamuna Doab. Puratattva, 36, 166–179. Shinde, V. (2006). Harappan cemetery at Farmana. Excavations at Farmana: District Rohtak, Haryana, India, 2008, pp. 550–673. Shinde, V. (2016). Current perspectives on the Harappan civilization. In G.  Robbins Schug & S. R. Walimbe (Eds.), A companion to South Asia in the past (pp. 127–144). Boston: Wiley Blackwell. Shinde, V., & Osada, T. (2008). A report on excavations at Farmana 2007–2008. Kyoto: Research Institute for Humanity and Nature. Shinde, V., Osada, T., & Kumar, M. (Eds.). (2011). Excavations at Farmana, District Rohtak, Haryana, India, 2006–2008. Kyoto: Indus Project, Research Institute for Humanity and Nature. Shinde, V., Green, A., Parmar, N., & Sable, P. D. (2012). Rakhigarhi and the Harappan civilization, recent work and new challenges. Bulletin of the Deccan College Research Institute, 72, 43–53. Shinde, V.  S., Kim, Y.  J., Woo, E.  J., Jadhav, N., Waghmare, P., Yadav, Y., et  al. (2018a). Archaeological and anthropological studies on the Harappan cemetery of Rakhigarhi, India. PLoS One, 13(2), e0192299. Shinde, V., Lee, H., Yadav, Y., Waghmare, P., Jadhav, N., Hong, J.  H., et  al. (2018b). A young couple’s grave found in the Rakhigarhi cemetery of the Harappan civilization. Anatomy & Cell Biology, 51(3), 200–204. Singh, R. N., Petrie, C. A., Pawar, V., Pandey, A. K., & Parikh, D. (2011). New insights into settlement along the Ghaggar and its hinterland: A preliminary report on the Ghaggar Hinterland Survey 2010. Man and Environment, 36(2), 89–106. Smith, M. L. (2012). Seeking abundance: Consumption as a motivating factor in cities past and present. Research in Economic Anthropology, 32, 27–51. Smith, M. L. (2014). The archaeology of urban landscapes. Annual Review of Anthropology, 43, 307–323. Srinivas, S. (2004). Landscapes of urban memory: The sacred and the civic in India’s high-tech city. Hyderabad: Orient Longman. Stutz, L.  N. (2003). Embodied rituals and ritualized bodies: Tracing ritual practices in late Mesolithic burials (Acta Archaeologica Lundensia. Series in 8, 46). Valentine, B. (2016). More than origins: Refining migration in the Indus civilization. In G. Robbins Schug & S. R. Walimbe (Eds.), A companion to South Asia in the past (pp. 187–204). Boston: Wiley Blackwell. Walimbe, S. R. (2016). Human skeletal studies: Changing trends in theoretical and methodological perspectives. In G. Robbins Schug & S.R. Walimbe (Eds.) A Companion to South Asia in the Past (pp. 482–95). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Vats, M. S. (1940). Excavations at Harappa (Vol. 2). Delhi: Manager of Publications.

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Chapter 4

Urbanization and Parasitism: Archaeoparasitology of South Korea Dong Hoon Shin, Min Seo, Sang-Yuck Shim, Jong Ha Hong, and Jieun Kim

Abstract  In parasitology, it has been observed that human populations in highly-­ populated areas are highly vulnerable to parasite infection. In this regard, the emergence of urbanized societies in history might have caused human parasite infection rates to increase. However, except for a few parasitological reports, the overall pattern of ancient parasitic infection still remains obscure for urbanized society in history. Since corroborative evidence thus far has been too insufficient to posit a relationship between historical urbanization and parasitism, a more detailed picture of the parasitism in urbanized as well as non-urbanized societies needs to be revealed. Recently, we have performed a series of scientific analyses on the specimens obtained from archaeological sites in order to answer these queries. The studies have focused mostly on archaeological specimens obtained from certain urban areas, such as palaces and residences, where pre-modern people from all walks of life once interacted. Using these specimens, we successfully revealed different patterns of ancient parasitism in urban and non-urban areas, thus allowing us to consider whether it actually varied by the degree of urbanization in history. Keywords  Urbanization · Parasitism · Korea · Archaeoparasitology · Silla · Joseon

D. H. Shin (*) · J. Kim Department of Anatomy/Institute of Forensic Science, Seoul, National University College of Medicine, Seoul, South Korea M. Seo (*) Department of Parasitology, Dankook University College of Medicine, Chonan, South Korea S.-Y. Shim Department of History, Kongju National University, Kongju, Chungcheongnam-do, South Korea J. H. Hong Institute of Korean Archaeology and Ancient History, Kyunghee University, Seoul, South Korea © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 T. K. Betsinger, S. N. DeWitte (eds.), The Bioarchaeology of Urbanization, Bioarchaeology and Social Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53417-2_4

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4.1  Introduction Archaeoparasitology is the scientific study of parasitism in history through the examination of ancient parasite eggs or larvae remaining in archaeologically obtained specimens (Kim et al. 2016). Using morphological and molecular research tools, parasitologists are able to reveal evidence of ancient parasite infection, and are thus not only studying parasitism in the past, but also tracing changes in parasite-­ host interaction, and widening knowledge about parasitism in human history (Ferreira et al. 1979, 2011; Kim et al. 2016; Reinhard and Araújo 2008; Seo et al. 2014, 2016). Archaeoparasitology emerged in the early twentieth century when Marc Ruffer developed a special technique for the rehydration of mummified specimens (Ruffer 1910; Seo et al. 2014). Archaeoparasitologists seek to find any traces of parasitic infection pattern in the past through microscopic and molecular examination of sediments or coprolites from archaeological sites (Seo et al. 2014). To be successful, archaeoparasitology should be based upon interdisciplinary collaboration between parasitologists and archaeologists (Seo et al. 2014). Today, archaeoparasitology has become one of the most significant areas of archaeological science, through which new information can now be acquired and in great detail. As lifestyles have changed over time, the biological and medical aspects of human populations have also shifted, and understanding the relationship between these is not always simple. For instance, though the agricultural revolution is regarded as a revolutionary moment in human history, anthropological research on skeletal and dental remains has revealed that for some populations, nutritional and health status declined, longevity decreased, and workload increased during the transition from hunter-gathering to farming (Larsen 1995). Similarly, the pattern of and changes in human parasitism likely varied according to time period and other cultural factors. Therefore, ancient parasite infection patterns cannot be simply interpreted from a medical perspective alone. Sociocultural aspects need to be considered, as Reinhard (2000) detailed in his explanation of the role of parasitology in archaeological reconstruction of ancient societies. In brief, information on human diet in history could be obtained by research on ancient parasite remains. For example, finding Diphyllobothrium pacificum (tapeworm) in the Pacific coast of Chile and Peru revealed the details of fish consumption among pre-agricultural peoples. The discovery of the tapeworm, Hymenolepidid, is potential evidence of the grain stores used by the agriculturalists in the Colorado Plateau. Taenia solium (pork tapeworm) cysts and eggs found in an ancient mummy demonstrate the consumption of pork among Egyptian people (Reinhard 2000). All these reports demonstrate that the outcomes of archaeoparasitological studies must be interpreted in the sociocultural context because a population’s lifestyle, including dietary habits, etc., is closely related to the pattern of parasitic infection (Reinhard 2000). In parasitology, pioneering studies also provided fundamental information about parasitism in highly-populated societies. When many people live in a very limited

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space, parasitologists noted that the high population density generally caused serious contamination by parasite eggs of the settlement soils where they live (Schulz and Kroeger 1992; Uga et al. 1995). This has also been shown to be true for ancient specimens obtained from archaeological sites. Scholars have argued that the detection of ancient parasite eggs in archaeological soil specimen likely correlates with the parasitism patterns in historic or prehistoric populations (Shin et al. 2015). In fact, high levels of parasitism could be a consequence of filthy environmental conditions that prevailed in densely populated areas. Urbanization might therefore be regarded as one of the most important events in the history of human parasitism (Reinhard and Araújo 2008). In spite of this, corroborative evidence thus far is insufficient to argue for a direct relationship between urbanization and parasitism. Since the general pattern of ancient parasitic infection in urban areas still remains unclear except for a few archaeoparasitological reports, more information about the patterns in urbanized and non-urbanized societies in the past needs to be attained. To address this issue, over the past several years, South Korean parasitologists have conducted multiple analyses on parasite specimens obtained from archaeological sites of both urban and non-urban areas. They have mostly focused on the archaeological specimens of the urbanized areas like palaces, residences, streets, alleys, side gutters, cesspits, latrines, streambeds, moats, and reservoirs of different historical periods. Comparing these specimens with those from non-urban areas, parasite infection patterns of the past can be analyzed to determine whether the severity of parasitism actually varied in accordance with the degree of urbanization.

4.2  Archaeoparasitological Materials and Methods To conduct the archaeoparasitological analyses from the sites described below, the relevant specimens were first rehydrated in a trisodium phosphate buffered solution. After the solution was precipitated for a day, the precipitates were dissolved again in the solution and then added to slides for microscopic examination. The preparation was examined under a microscope (total magnification: X40 or X100; BH-2, Olympus, Japan), during which the sizes of the parasite eggs were measured and the number of eggs per gram (EPG) was estimated (Kim et al. 2016; Seo et al. 2017). Microscopic examination enables the differentiation of each parasite species by their morphologies or sizes. The ancient parasite eggs that have been found in Korea to date are Ascaris lumbricoides, Clonorchis sinensis, Trichuris trichiura, Paragonimus westermani, Enterobius vermicularis, Metagonimus yokogawai. Strongyloides stercoralis, Gymnophalloides seoi, Trichostrongylus spp. and Taenia etc. (Seo et al. 2017). Among them, Ascaris and Trichuris spp. are generally found in the same human host (Fernandes et al. 2005) and are known to be among the most common parasite species detected in archaeological specimens. Similarly, A. lumbricoides and T. trichiura eggs were identified from almost 80% of European archaeological specimens microscopically examined (Gonçalves et al. 2003; Leles et al. 2008; Shin et al. 2009).

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In the case of A. lumbricoides, fertile roundworm eggs (55–75 μm by 35–50 μm) are generally golden yellow to brown in color and are oval to round in shape. Embryos can be seen within the shell, though they may not preserve well in ancient eggs. The egg is surrounded by three different layers: the outer protein layer, the middle chitinous shell, and the inner lipoid layer. Although the rough (mamillated) surface is usually observed in the outer protein layer, ancient Ascaris eggs may lose their surface roughness, and the embryo may be partly or completely degraded (Fig. 4.1a). However, aDNA analysis may be conducted with the remaining embryo remnants. The eggs of Trichuris trichiura (whipworm) are 50–55 μm by 20–25 μm in size. The color is yellow brown, and they are barrel or lemon-shaped, thick-shelled, and possess a pair of unstained hyaline polar plugs at each end. Like Ascaris, an embryo is present inside the egg shell and could be used for aDNA analysis as well. In case that the embryo of ancient Trichuris eggs often degrades until no longer visible, the shell survives well (Fig. 4.1b). For trematode species, the eggs of C. sinensis, the Chinese liver fluke, are 27–35 μm by 12–19 μm in size. Their color is yellow, and they have a seated operculum (lid that opens). A thickened rim or shoulders can be seen around the operculum. The egg shell also has a small protuberance at the opposite end, although the structure cannot be as easily found in ancient Clonorchis eggs. The shell has minute adherent debris (muskmelon-like structure in SEM). The embryo may be seen inside the shell (Fig. 4.1c). In the case of P. westermani, the oriental lung fluke eggs are usually 80–120 μm by 45–70 μm in size. The color is yellowish brown, and they are asymmetric as a whole. They have a thick shell and a prominent operculum. The

Fig. 4.1  The characteristics of ancient parasite eggs observed by microscope. (a) Ascaris lumbricoides; (b) Trichuris trichiura; (c) Clonorchis sinensis; (d) Paragonimus westermani; (e) parasite egg sizes on scale

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shell is thickened at the opposite side of opercular (a covering, lid-like structure) end (Fig. 4.1d). For M. yokogawai, the eggs were dark brown and elliptical shaped. Their operculum was less prominent than that of C. sinensis. The muskmelon pattern was not observed on the eggshell (Seo et al. 2008). The information for the scale of parasite eggs is summarized in Fig. 4.1e.

4.2.1  The Capital City of the Joseon Dynasty In Korean history, the Joseon kingdom was a dynasty spanning 1392 to 1910  CE.  Until Japanese imperialism annexed and destroyed it, the dynasty survived several foreign invasions and political turmoil, thus having brought in a tradition that forms the fundamental basis of modern Korean society. Old Seoul City (or Hanseong), the capital city of the Joseon kingdom, was established in the late fourteenth century (Shin et al. 2013) (Fig. 4.2). As the political powerhouse and cultural center, Old Seoul City enjoyed very high status in Joseon society, as the king lived in the capital city and most governmental offices and several military headquarters were located there. Historians estimate that Old Seoul City’s population reached as many as 200,000 by the seventeenth century, thus making it one of the most populous urban areas in East Asia at the time (Shin et al. 2011, 2013). Even in the twenty-first century, the original urban layouts still remain intact in the Old Seoul City area underground. That is, archaeological excavations of Old Fig. 4.2  Location of the 1 Old Seoul City; 2 Weolseong palace at Gyeongju, the capital of Silla; 3 Hwawangsanseong fortress; and 4 Buyeo, the capital of Baekje on the map of South Korea

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Seoul City confirmed that the ruins of gates, private houses, and government buildings constructed hundreds of years ago still exist several meters below the ground (Fig. 4.2). For the past decades, therefore, the archaeological remains of Old Seoul City have been investigated by archaeologists and have been restored for tourism and education after the excavation projects. When the archaeologists wanted to investigate these sites in more detail, parasitologists collected samples at the various locations (Fig. 4.3). The sites included the royal palace wall and its vicinity, Yukjo Street, the royal arsenal, and the marketplace at Jongmyo Shrine (Shin et al. 2011). According to the historical literature, the districts where parasitological samples were collected were very busy and crowded intersections or streets during the Joseon period (Shin et al. 2011, 2013). At these archaeological sites, parasitologists collaborated closely with local archaeologists who provided relevant archaeological information useful for parasitological analysis and interpretation. The collected specimens were moved to the lab at Seoul National University, where they were rehydrated and microscopically examined for the presence of any ancient parasite eggs. In microscopic studies of the pre-twentieth century geological layer specimens of Old Seoul City, many parasite eggs were detected (Shin et al. 2011, 2013). The

Fig. 4.3 (a) The Joseon period ruins still preserved in Old Seoul City area underground, site preserved under Seoul City Hall; (b) the Hanseong city map of Joseon period, the Old Seoul City area is represented by shaded area; farmlands were present outside of the Old Seoul City; (c) sampling site at Old Seoul City (marked in b with circle); asterisk indicates the geological strata, arrow indicates the sampling tube inserted into the strata

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identified eggs include Ascaris sp., Trichuris sp., C. sinensis, and Diphyllobothrium latum. In brief, the eggs of Ascaris and Trichuris spp. were found in the specimens of the royal palace wall. Ascaris, Trichuris, and C. sinensis spp. eggs were discovered in Yukjo Street samples; Ascaris, Trichuris, and D. latum spp. were found in those of royal arsenal (Shin et  al. 2011). In the marketplace area (at Jongmyo Shrine), the eggs of A. lumbricoides and T. trichiura were identified in the streambed, alley, and alley-gutter samples. However, we did not find any parasite eggs in the samples of the private residences in Old Seoul City. Since the street, alley, and streambed specimens were much more seriously contaminated by ancient parasite eggs than those of nearby private residences, we argued that Old Seoul City inhabitants often dumped rubbish, trash, or even night soils into the alleys, in order to keep their homes as clean as possible (Shin et al. 2013). As in all other medieval cities in history, Old Seoul City might have been contaminated by night soils or open refuse that could be flushed away only during the rainy season (Shin et al. 2013). Before the establishment of modern sewage system, the inadequate removal of human waste often caused serious hygienic problems, especially in urbanized areas, as night soils were mostly thrown into the public cesspits, latrines, or onto dung heaps. Sometimes, they were even tossed out of windows and were emptied into the nearest streets, alleys, or gutters (Taylor 2005). Since the city soils could have been contaminated easily by the night soils and the parasite eggs contained within them, the emergence of highly populated societies would have eventually influenced the pattern of parasitism among the city-dwelling inhabitants (Barnes 2005; da Rocha et al. 2006; Fernandes et al. 2005; Kim et al. 2014; Matsui et al. 2003; Mitchell et al. 2008; Monckton 1995; Reinhard and Araújo 2008; Seo et al. 2016; Wheelwright 2015). Besides overcrowding and concomitantly poor sanitary conditions, periodic flooding is another potential cause of such contamination. Historical records suggest that the heavy rain caused human refuse to overflow from latrines, making parasite eggs in the latrines spread over the entire area of Old Seoul City. This means that repeated bouts of seasonal flooding in the rainy season increased the risk of inhabitants’ contact with parasite eggs in the soils of the Old Seoul City (Shin et  al. 2011). According to parasitological reports, such poor conditions were not unique to the urbanized area in Korean history. Many cities in different countries experienced similar disasters as a result of seasonal flooding. Heavy rain thus resulted in serious contamination of parasite eggs in the city soils, making the inhabitants’ parasite infection rate increase (Isaac et al. 2019; Paller and de Chavez 2014; Steinbaum et al. 2017). Historians also showed that the parasite egg contamination of Old Seoul City could have been facilitated by the habit of recycling night soils (Ki et al. 2013; Kim et al. 2014). Historically, the people living in heavily populated areas tried to achieve a fine balance between the accumulated refuse and the measures to control them. When this balance was lost (e.g., the failure in removal of human waste), serious health problems (e.g., typhoid fever, cholera, etc.) often occurred. Prior to the emergence of modern sanitary systems in East Asia, night soil recycling contributed to making major cities much cleaner and more hygienic. In East Asian countries,

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before the twentieth century, human waste from urban areas was commonly used as a fertilizer constituent. Using fertilizer containing night soil, farmers in nearby rural areas engaged in large-scale vegetable cultivation in Old Seoul City’s outer environs, and then sold the products mostly to the city-dwellers (Ki et al. 2013; Kim et al. 2014). Through the recycling of human waste as fertilizer, the farmers were able to provide large crops of vegetables to the multitudes living in the urbanized area. Moreover, the recycling of night soils in East Asia likely was the cheapest and most efficient means of maintaining adequate sanitation and providing vegetables to city-dwellers. This system, however, also had obvious drawbacks as well. By consuming vegetables grown with night soil fertilizer, soil-transmitted parasitism (Ascaris, Trichuris, etc.) could have re-infected the individuals, thus increasing the parasite infection prevalence among them (Kim et al. 2014). The increasing demand for food in quantities needed for pre-twentieth century Asian city-dwellers made the recycling of night soil a means of enhancing agricultural productivity. Though speculative, this is consistent with the findings of a parasitological report in modern Vietnam. In that country, farmers’ application of human excreta as fertilizer has become an important causal factor in the high parasite infection rate (Pham-Duc et al. 2013). Urban people in Asia have been deeply influenced by the socioeconomic interdependence between cities and nearby rural areas both historically and in modern times. Indeed, as extensive as the use of night soil as a fertilizer ingredient was, parasitic infections could not have been successfully eradicated in East Asia. However, due to the very positive role of night soil recycling in urbanized society’s food industry in Asia, the accompanying high parasitic infection prevalence might be just an unavoidable, unfortunate tradeoff. When the recycling of human waste ceased and was replaced by chemical fertilizer in the twentieth century, the change reduced the value of night soil in agriculture, eventually reducing the parasite infection rate in East Asia (Kim et al. 2014). Taken together, a series of archaeoparasitological studies of the Old Seoul City specimens corroborates the hypothesis that the geological strata of urbanized areas were heavily contaminated by ancient parasite eggs, and the city residents were on the verge of becoming more seriously infected during the Joseon period (Shin et al. 2011, 2013).

4.2.2  The Capital of Ancient Silla Dynasty Our studies of parasitism in archaeological urban settlements have not been limited to the Joseon period. Rather, Korean archaeoparasitologists hoped to determine whether similar findings were also observed in other urban areas from different time periods. Korea has a long history, and during several centuries after 108 BCE, when the Chinese Han Empire established colonies in the territory of Gojoseon (?  – 108 BCE), the Korean kingdoms vied for a political hegemony in the peninsula and Manchuria. In the northern part of the Korean peninsula and in southern Manchuria,

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the Goguryeo kingdom (37 BCE – 668 CE) was established. The southwest part of the Korean peninsula evolved into the kingdom of Baekje (18 BCE – 660 CE), and the southeast region became part of the Kingdom of Silla (57 BCE – 935 CE). By the sixth century, there was a well-established bureaucratic system in these kingdoms (Overy 2007). Silla became the ultimate power in 676 CE, annexing the territories of all its foes throughout the Korean peninsula. Since the Silla Kingdom prospered thereafter in Korean history, ancient cultural heritages have been massively concentrated in the present southeastern provinces of the peninsula, the political and cultural stronghold of the Silla kingdom. Archaeoparasitological studies in the region thereby provide invaluable information about one of the most prosperous and populated areas in ancient East Asia (Kim et al. 2016). The capital of the Silla kingdom, according to the historical record, had as many as 170,000 homes (the possible equivalent of one million people) located in an ancient metropolitan area (now Gyeongju city). Therefore, the archaeoparasitological study on the Silla kingdom’s capital and other urbanized areas around Gyeongju city provides an invaluable opportunity to examine the pattern of parasitism among the city-dwellers of the first millennium CE in East Asia. To evaluate how seriously parasite eggs contaminated the urbanized area in first-­ millennium Korea, samples from an ancient moat located around the Silla King‘s royal (Weolseong) palace were examined (Fig.  4.2). Historically, the palace was used as a royal residence since 487 CE. Historical research revealed that there were many buildings around the Weolseong palace until final abandonment in 935 CE; therefore, this area must have been particularly highly populated at its peak (Park 2007; Shin et al. 2009). The royal palace’s circumference is 1841 m. The periphery could be still delineated by the ruins of the palace wall, and there were huge moats on the outside of the palace wall (Fig. 4.4a). Historical and archaeological research revealed that the moat was constructed in the late fifth century, maintained as

Fig. 4.4 (a) The excavation of the moat around the Weolseong palace, asterisk indicates the mud soil layer where many parasite eggs were discovered; (b) Trichuris trichiura egg (indicated by arrow) found in the specimen from the moat (bar = 20um)

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defensive structure, and became finally unused in the seventh to eight centuries (Kim 1998; Yoon 2005). In the parasitological study of Weolsong palace, microscopic examination revealed no parasite eggs in the surface soil specimens. This rules out the possible contamination of modern parasite eggs in archaeological strata from the surface soil. When specimens from the archaeological strata of the palace were examined, there were very few parasite eggs found in the soil strata of post-eighth century, which means that the parasite eggs in sewage did not flow in the moat after eighth century when it was no longer in use (Shin et al. 2009). Meanwhile, when the specimens of the mud-soil layer 2 m below the surface (estimated as dating to the fifth to eighth centuries CE) were examined, many Trichuris and Ascaris eggs were discovered (Fig. 4.4b) (Shin et al. 2009). Ancient moats were constructed and maintained around city areas in many East Asian countries, playing an important role in defending the population from attacks by hostile intruders. However, to archaeoparasitologists, the moats are considered important for a different reason. The ancient settlement moats in East Asia likely caused serious sanitary problems for the inhabitants as stagnant water was present in them (Matsui et al. 2003; Shin et al. 2009). The contamination of parasite eggs on the moat floor could have been caused by a stream inflow from the ancient settlements or palaces. In previous research on the Wanggung-ri site, the seventh century palace ruins of the ancient Baekje Kingdom had cesspit-type toilets. Archaeoparasitologists demonstrated that the toilets located inside the palace block were seriously contaminated by many parasite eggs (Buyeo National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage, 2006; Shin et al. 2009). During the Baekje Period, there might have been two possible ways to remove the contents from the toilets. First, the human waste could have been carried out by night-soil men, or, they could have been drained away outside of the palace through a sewage system. For example, in the Wanggung-ri palace ruins, archaeologists found a well-developed drainage system. According to the archaeologists, the toilet contents likely were drained into a sewage system, which was then connected to a waterway, finally being transported to the outside area (Buyeo National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage, 2006; Shin et  al. 2009). Similar outcomes were also reported from the archaeoparasitological research on a moat encircling a pre-historic Yayoi period (450 BC–AD 300) village in Japan. In that study, the ancient parasite eggs were found in the specimens of Yayoi moat sediments, suggesting the possibility that domestic excrements were continuously discharged into the water of the outside moat (Matsui et al. 2003). Likewise, the parasitological survey of the moats provides important scientific information about the contamination status of the palace because the sewage of the Weolseong palace likely flowed into the moats around the palace. As a result, human waste that was scattered inside the highly populated areas of the Weolseong palace may have been drained into the moats surrounding those settlements (Kim et  al. 2016; Shin et al. 2009). Considering that the parasite eggs detected in specimens retrieved from the moat floor could well have originated from the settlement-­ dwellers’ feces, parasite re-infection rate among the palace dwellers must have been

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very high during the Silla Period. It is presumed that the ancient people living in the area encircled by the moat had to endure bad smells, mosquito proliferation, and an elevated risk of related infectious diseases (e.g., malaria etc.) (Shin et  al. 2009, 2018). This could explain why the moat around the Weolseong palace was abandoned immediately after their enemy kingdoms were destroyed in the late seventh century, though it must have been very beneficial for wartime defense (Shin et al. 2009).

4.3  Urban Area of Ancient Fortress In addition to the samples from the moats surrounding ancient urban settlements, another type of urbanized area occurring in ancient Korean society was examined by archaeoparasitologists. For thousands of years, many fortresses were built on the mountaintop areas throughout Korean peninsula. Building a fortress in such an inaccessible place must have been an advantage in defending against invading enemies. Recent studies revealed that the fortresses were more than simple refuges during wartime. Rather, the mountaintop fortress was an administrative center through both times of peace as well as during periods of war (Seo 2010, 2012). All year, there must have been a large population living inside the mountaintop fortress. Hwawang Sansung was an ancient fortress built on the top of Hwawang Mountain (Fig.  4.2). The samples obtained from the fortress represented the sixth to ninth century ruins. It was the political center of the province that was highly populated during the Silla Period. Therefore, by examining the specimens of the Hwawang Sansung fortress (Fig.  4.5), archaeoparasitologists revealed how seriously the ancient parasite eggs contaminated the soils of the highly urbanized area (Kim et al. 2016).

Fig. 4.5 (a) Hwawang Sansung, mountaintop fortress of Silla dynasty period; left side of the wall is the inside of the fortress; (b) excavation site of reservoir inside the fortress

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Inside the Hwawang Sansung fortress, parasitological samples were collected from the reservoir ruins. Considering many people lived in the Hwawang Sansung area, the fortress’ inner area might have been highly populated during Silla Period, as the area was contaminated by human waste as well as parasite eggs. The evidence gathered by archaeoparasitologists corroborate this presumption. Parasitological examination showed that the specimens of the Silla Period reservoir included ancient parasite eggs of Ascaris, Trichuris, and Taenia spp., whereas none were detected in the surface soils (negative-control specimen) (Kim et al. 2016). As to why parasite eggs were found in the fortress reservoir samples, the above-­ mentioned theory about parasitism and ancient moats could be informative. That is, the detection of parasite eggs in the ancient moat precipitates might have been caused by the wastewater or excrement of the settlements that was continuously discharged into the surrounding moats (Matsui et  al. 2003; Shin et  al. 2009). Likewise, it could be presumed that the streams or creeks could have flown into the reservoir of the fortress as well. Actually, human wastes scattered in the fortress might have ridden on the stream flows, finally being drained into the reservoir located at the lowest altitude (Kim et al. 2016). Taken together, the parasite eggs detected in the reservoir samples must have originated from human or animal waste scattered inside the fortress (Kim et  al. 2016). A large number of parasite eggs in the ancient reservoir specimens indicated that parasite re-infection could have continuously occurred among the Silla dwellers of the Hwawang Sansung fortress; and therefore, they must have been chronically infected by various parasite species such as Ascaris, Trichuris, and Taenia spp. (Kim et al. 2016).

4.4  Comparison of Urbanized and Non-urbanized Area The studies mentioned above collectively demonstrate the heavy contamination of ancient parasite eggs in highly populated areas during the past two millennia in Korean history. However, in spite of this, there were no sufficient comparative data on the patterns of parasitism between urban and non-urban areas before the twentieth century. Therefore, the next step of archaeoparasitological research was to show whether pre-twentieth century parasite infection rates were actually higher in urban areas than in rural areas. To understand the exact pattern, more archaeoparasitological studies were needed for specimens representing ancient city versus rural dwellers (Shin et al. 2015). In this regard, the research on the soil specimens of Buyeo was very significant. Today, Buyeo is only a small rural town located at the southwestern part of the Korean peninsula; however, in 538 to 660 CE, it was the highly populated capital city of the ancient Baekje Kingdom, one of the most outstanding politico-cultural centers at that time in Korea. Recently, a number of archaeological excavations have been performed on Buyeo city’s different districts. Through analysis of specimens

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from Baekje Period ruins preserved several meters underground, archaeoparasitologists obtained more detailed data to understand the life and disease pattern of ancient urban people (Shin et al. 2015). In brief, around the Buyeo city, a series of parasitological investigations were conducted on urban and non-urban archaeological sites (Fig. 4.2). Whether the sampling location was an urban or rural area was established through a review of historical literature and the archaeological research on the sites. For example, if the location of the site was inside the capital city of Buyeo and there were a number of residence ruins found during excavations, the site was then identified as an urban area. Geological-strata soils from the urban areas of Baekje Period (n = 5) were obtained inside the Buyeo city. The non-urban samples (n = 4) were also acquired from the excavation sites in the rural counties around the Buyeo. The dates of specimens were confirmed by archaeological or carbon-dating estimations (Shin et al. 2015). The information of the specimens is summarized in Table 4.1. Table 4.1  Comparison of archaeoparasitology between urban and non-urban regions Urban/Non-­ Urban Rural

Rural

Nasung-ri A (Yeongi)

Rural

Seoksam-ri (Yeongi)

Rural

Songguk-ri a (Buyeo)

Urban

Seokmok-ri 143-16 (Buyeo)

Urban

Ssangbuk-ri 314-5 (Buyeo) Seokmok-ri 143-26 (Buyeo) Ssangbuk-ri 184-11 (Buyeo) Dongnam-ri 321-3 (Buyeo)

Urban Urban Urban

a

Sites Tancheon (Gongju)

Non-urban area in Buyeo city

Excavated by Baekje Cultural Properties Research Institute Korea Institute for Archaeology and Environment Korea Institute for Archaeology and Environment Korea National University of Cultural Heritage The Baekje Culture Foundation

Korea Cultural Heritage Foundation Korea Cultural Heritage Foundation Buyeo Cultural Heritage Center Korea Cultural Heritage Foundation

Period Parasite Eggs Discovered Baekje None

Baekje None

Baekje None

Baekje None

Baekje Trichuris trichiura Ascaris lumbricoides Paragonimus westermani Clonorchis sinensis Toxocara canis Echinostoma Baekje Ascaris lumbricoides Trichuris trichiura Baekje Ascaris lumbricoides Trichuris trichiura Baekje Ascaris lumbricoides Trichuris trichiura Baekje None

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In archaeoparasitological examination, no parasite eggs were detected in any negative control (surface-soil) samples; thus, false positives due to accidental introduction of the surface soil into archaeological strata could be ruled out (Shin et al. 2015). Meanwhile, of the specimens from the urban Buyeo sites, four areas contained ancient parasite eggs. Microscopic analysis revealed the eggs of A. lumbricoides, T. trichiura, P. westermani, C. sinensis, Toxocara canis, and Echinostoma (Seo et  al. 2020; Shin et  al. 2015). These findings suggested that Baekje people might have suffered from various pathological symptoms, such as mild inflammatory reaction and irritation (A. lumbricoides, T. trichiura, T. canis, or Echinostoma) and serious medical problems, like coughing up blood or blood-tinged sputum (hemoptysis) (P. westermani), jaundice, or liver cancer (hepatoma) (C. sinensis). By comparison, few parasite eggs were detected in any samples collected from non-­ urbanized areas around the Buyeo city (Seo et  al. 2020; Shin et  al. 2015). The archaeoparasitological details are summarized in Table 4.1. The parasitological study of the specimens of urban Buyeo and its neighboring suburb areas provides clues to the parasite infection pattern of the Baekje Period. The urban specimens from the capital region of Baekje yielded a number of ancient parasite eggs, which means that these urban people, like those of Old Seoul City in Joseon period, suffered from serious parasite infection. Meanwhile, the samples of non-urban areas where the population density was lower, were devoid of parasite eggs (Seo et al. 2016; Shin et al. 2015). Possible contamination of animal parasite eggs in the archaeoparasitological specimens was excluded, as human parasite eggs can be differentiated by morphology and size of the eggs. In addition, according to historical records, for example, by royal decree in 1469 CE, the raising of domesticated animals like pigs had been strictly prohibited inside the capital area. We thus speculate that most parasite eggs found in ancient urbanized areas could be of human origin, but not of animal origin (Shin et al. 2013). Although this study provided insight to broader aspects of parasitism in Korean history, it is unclear why the difference between the urban and non-urban samples was found. However, according to the earlier studies, it seems highly probable that the outcome might have been related to the population density of each area. In the study on Puebloans on the Colorado Plateau, Reinhard and Araujo (2008) speculated that the parasitism among hunter-gatherers might have been limited by their smaller band size, low regional population density, and high mobility of band. On the other hand, he thought that the parasitism was more common in agricultural communities due to the effects of contaminated water sources and concentrated population size Reinhard and Araujo (2008). In other words, the finding of Buyeo specimens might not have been a phenomenon specifically limited to historical Korean societies, but is a pattern more in line with the results observed in different human societies: parasitism closely related to the degree of urbanization. Finally, it is also important to note that the ancient parasite eggs were distributed diffusely and indiscriminately in the urban areas of the Baekje Kingdom, irrespective of those sites’ original purposes. Considering that dumping human waste into the street was very common in any ancient or medieval cities around the world (Taylor 2005), it is no wonder that the urban streets at the Baekje capital were

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seriously contaminated by human excretions and, therefore, by parasite eggs (Shin et al. 2015). However, the indiscriminate presence of parasite eggs in every urbanized district may also be the result of recurrent flooding in the city (Ki et al. 2013; Kim et al. 2014; Shin et al. 2015). Recurrent floods and relevant overflows during rainy seasons might have resulted in the parasite eggs’ wider distribution in the urban area even during Baekje Period of the first millennium, very similar to the case of Old Seoul City in the Joseon period (Shin et al. 2015).

4.5  Conclusion In general, parasitologists have found positive associations between degree of contamination with parasite eggs in soil to levels of parasitism among the people living there. Recently, studies of parasite infection in history have yielded fascinating results by archaeoparasitological techniques that are currently gaining momentum in South Korean academia. Since large numbers of parasite eggs were recovered from the archaeological strata of urbanized areas, but few in those of non-urban sites, archaeoparasitologists have concluded that the city dwellers of Joseon, Silla, and Baekje dynasties were likely predisposed to higher risk of contracting parasite infections in history. This strongly suggests that the urban populations in East Asian history must have been more vulnerable to parasite infections than were rural people in general. The results of studies comparing the level of parasitism between urban and rural sites are very significant and relevant to studies of urbanization and parasitism in modern populations. Acknowledgements  This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIP) (NRF-2016R1A2B4015669; NRF-2019R1H1A2080094).

References Barnes, E. (2005). Diseases and human evolution. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Buyeo National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage. (2006). Wanggung-ri site (Research Report of Antiquities 39). Buyeo: Buyeo National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage. da Rocha, G. C., Harter-Lailheugue, S., Le Bailly, M., Araújo, A., Ferreira, L. F., da Serra-Freire, N.  M., et  al. (2006). Paleoparasitological remains revealed by seven historic contexts from “Place d’Armes”, Namur, Belgium. Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, 101(2), 43–52. Fernandes, A., Ferreira, L. F., Gonçalves, M. L., Bouchet, F., Klein, C. H., Iguchi, T., et al. (2005). Intestinal parasite analysis in organic sediments collected from a 16th-century Belgian archeological site. Cadernos de Saúde Pública, 21, 329–332. Ferreira, L.  F., Araújo, A., & Confalonieri, U. (1979). Subsidios para a Paleoparasitologia do Brasil I. (Abstract). In IV Congresso Brasileiro De Parasitologia (p. 56). San Paulo: Congresso Brasileiro De Parasitologia.

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Seo, M., Shin, D. H., Guk, S. M., Oh, C. S., Lee, E. J., Shin, M. H., et al. (2008). Gymnophalloides seoi eggs from the stool of a 17th century female mummy found in Hadong, Republic of Korea. Journal of Parasitology, 94(2), 467–472. Seo, M., Araujo, A., Reinhard, K., Chai, J. Y., & Shin, D. H. (2014). Paleoparasitological studies on mummies of the Joseon Dynasty, Korea. The Korean Journal of Parasitology, 52, 235–242. Seo, M., Chai, J. Y., Kim, M. J., Shin, S. Y., Ki, H. C., & Shin, D. H. (2016). Detection trend of Helminth eggs in the Strata soil samples from ancient historic places of Korea. Korean Journal of Parasitology, 54(5), 555–563. Seo, M., Oh, C.  S., Hong, J.  H., Chai, J.-Y., Cha, S.  C., Bang, Y., et  al. (2017). Estimation of parasite infection prevalence of Joseon people by paleoparasitological data updates from the Coprolites of pre-modern Korean Mummies. Anthropological Science, 125(1), 9–14. Seo, M., Shim, S.-Y., Lee, H. Y., Kim, Y., Hong, J. H., Chai, J.-Y., & Shin, D. H. (2020). Ancient echinostome eggs were discovered in the archaeological strata specimens from a Baekje capital ruins of South Korea. Journal of Parasitology, 106(1), 184–187. Shin, D. H., Oh, C. S., Chung, T., Yi, Y. S., Chai, J. Y., & Seo, M. (2009). Detection of parasite eggs from a moat encircling the royal palace of Silla, the ancient Korean Kingdom. Journal of Archaeological Science, 36(11), 2534–2539. Shin, D. H., Oh, C. S., Lee, S. J., Chai, J. Y., Kim, J., Lee, S. D., et al. (2011). Paleo-parasitological study on the soils collected from archaeological sites in old district of Seoul City. Journal of Archaeological Science, 38, 3555–3559. Shin, D. H., Oh, C. S., Shin, Y. M., Cho, C. W., & Seo, M. (2013). The pattern of ancient parasite egg contamination in the private residence, alley, ditch and streambed soils of old Seoul City, the capital of Joseon dynasty. International Journal of Paleopathology, 3, 208–213. Shin, D. H., Shin, S. Y., Jeong, H. J., Kim, M. J., Lee, M. H., Kim, K. Y., et al. (2015). A paleoparasitological study on the capital area of the ancient Korean kingdom. Journal of Parasitology, 101(4), 458–461. Shin, D. H., Seo, M., Hong, J. H., & Lee, E. (2018). Paleopathological considerations on malaria infection in Korea before the 20th century. BioMed Research International, 2018, 8516785. Steinbaum, L., Kwong, L. H., Ercumen, A., Negash, M. S., Lovely, A. J., Njenga, S. M., et al. (2017). Detecting and enumerating soil-transmitted helminth eggs in soil: New method development and results from field testing in Kenya and Bangladesh. PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, 11(4), e0005522. Taylor, C. (2005). The disposal of human waste: A comparison between Ancient Rome and Medieval London. Past Imperfect, 11, 53–72. Uga, S., Ono, K., Kataoka, N., Safriah, A., Tantular, I. S., Dachlan, Y. P., et al. (1995). Contamination of soil with parasite eggs in Surabaya, Indonesia. The Southeast Asian Journal of Tropical Medicine and Public Health, 26, 730–734. Wheelwright, J. (2015, May). Days of Dysevolution. Discover. pp. 32–39. Yoon, S.-T. (2005). The Silla wooden strips, excavated at the moat of the Weolseong Palace in Gyeongju. Quarterly Review of Korean History (Yeoksawahyeonsil), 56, 113–142. (in Korean).

Part II

Medieval and Post-medieval Cities

Chapter 5

Dietary Variation in an Urbanizing City: A Temporal Analysis of Diet in Late Medieval London Using Stable Isotope Analysis Brittany S. Walter, Sharon N. DeWitte, Tosha Dupras, and Julia Beaumont

Abstract  The process of urbanization is often characterized by high levels of migration, elevated food insecurity, and risks of disease epidemics. Stable isotope analysis of human skeletal remains can be used to identify dietary trends associated with urbanization that may not be evident using osteological analyses alone. δ13C and δ15N stable isotope values from individuals from a late medieval London cemetery (ca. 1120–1539 CE) are evaluated to assess how diet changed through time in an urbanizing environment with increasing population density and periods of famine, including separate analyses for age groups and the sexes. Analyses reveal stable isotope values varied both through time and by age group, but not by sex. Post-hoc regression analysis indicates that δ13C and δ15N values increase steadily from ca. 1120 to 1400 CE, which could reflect a decrease in the variation of food sources as a result of changing import strategies or famine conditions prior to the Black Death. Post-hoc pairwise comparisons show adults exhibit elevated δ15N values compared to nonadults, which may be a result of physiological changes affecting stable isotope values of growing individuals, migration, or differential access to certain protein sources. Analyses between and within the sexes indicate a lack of difference between the sexes through time, contrary to previous studies of less-urbanized English towns that have found a significant difference in stable isotope values between the sexes.

B. S. Walter (*) Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency Laboratory, Offutt AFB, NE, USA S. N. DeWitte Department of Anthropology, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA T. Dupras Department of Anthropology, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA J. Beaumont School of Archaeological and Forensic Sciences, University of Bradford, Bradford, UK © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 T. K. Betsinger, S. N. DeWitte (eds.), The Bioarchaeology of Urbanization, Bioarchaeology and Social Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53417-2_5

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Keywords  Medieval London · Urbanization · Stable isotope analysis · Diet

5.1  Introduction Stable isotope analysis of human tissue has recently gone beyond simple diet reconstruction to investigations of disease patterns (e.g., Curto et al. 2019; Richards and Montgomery 2012), nutrition (e.g., Beaumont and Montgomery 2016; Neuberger et al. 2013), and physiological changes (e.g., Crowder et al. 2019; Fuller et al. 2004; Reitsema et al. 2016; Waters-Rist and Katzenberg 2010) of past populations. When interpreted with demographic data, archaeological evidence, and historical documentation, stable isotope analysis has the potential to inform research on differential access to food sources, social practices, and mobility patterns that may not be evident using only osteological analyses of a skeletal assemblage. This is particularly useful in the context of urbanization, as constant migration (Williamson 1988), fluctuations in food supplies (Satterthwaite et  al. 2010), and disease epidemics (Phillips 1993) are characteristic of this transition in settlement pattern. Urbanization is generally referred to as a transformative process in which an increasing proportion of a population moves from rural areas to cities and population density increases in those urban areas, and it is often associated with deleterious environmental conditions such as poor sanitation, pollution, elevated risk of disease, and lack of food security (Dyson 2011). Specifically in late medieval London, urban growth was extensive, with the population density increasing rapidly from the eleventh to sixteenth centuries as a result of rural-to-urban migration (Magnusson 2013) largely due to increased labor opportunities in London (Dyer 2002) and harvest failure in rural areas (Walter and Schofield 1989). With individuals living in such close proximity, disease was easily spread, and means of disposing sewage and waste became problematic, causing sanitation issues. Further, food availability fluctuated as population density increased in London (Rawcliffe 2013), which was compounded by several instances of famine due to recurring poor harvests throughout the Late Medieval Period (Keys et  al. 1950). Environmental archaeology has contributed to our understanding of the effects of pollution and urban growth on the landscape in London (see Hall and Kenward 1994; Schofield 2011). Bioarchaeological research has examined differences in mortality and survivability between English urban and rural populations and found that the effects of urbanization were particularly hazardous for females (see Walter and DeWitte 2017). Though these are important components of urbanization that contribute to our understanding of the effects of urban growth on late medieval Londoners, diet is also a crucial factor that must be examined. As stated, London experienced famine and fluctuation of foodstuffs in general as population density increased (Keys et al. 1950; Rawcliffe 2013). These food shortages had the greatest impact on the poor, particularly those in crowded urban settings where food was in short supply and disease spread easily (Walter and Schofield 1989). In this study, we evaluate patterns of stable isotope values during

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urbanization in late medieval London (ca. 1120–1539  CE) to assess whether an unstable urban environment with increasing population density and food shortages affected diet by comparing δ13C and δ15N values of Londoners across time periods. It is expected that the diet of Londoners will differ among time periods as Londoners had to adapt to fluctuating food supplies due to urbanization. Comparisons among age groups and between the sexes are also conducted to assess whether urbanization disproportionately affected the diet of certain sub-populations. Urbanization is a complex phenomenon that does not simply progress linearly, in part because of the complex way in which humans adapt to changing environmental conditions. Thus, the inclusion of a temporal element in isotopic analyses of urbanization is necessary to gain a nuanced understanding of how populations adapted to dietary changes as urbanization progressed. In addition to incorporating a temporal element, it is essential to consider different sub-populations, as intra-population differences in stable isotope values may reflect underlying mechanisms that produced health disparities. Though stable isotopic analyses for a cemetery as a whole are informative about population-wide consumption patterns, it is important to use approaches that allow for the examination of heterogeneity in past populations (Wright & Yoder 2003) so that intra-population variation in dietary trends can be identified and potential disproportionate effects of urbanization may be revealed. Assessing demographic and biochemical data from skeletal assemblages together can be useful in reconstructing a comprehensive picture of diet and health, and can contribute to the evaluation of dynamic relationships among inequities of nutrition. Specifically, as with this study, dietary information gleaned from stable isotope data (δ13C and δ15N) has the potential to provide valuable information about dietary variation experienced by individuals during times of stress such as urban intensification (Tsutaya et al. 2013; Tykot 2002).

5.2  Diet in London The medieval English diet was primarily comprised of terrestrial C3 protein and differing amounts of marine protein (Müldner and Richards 2005, 2007a, b). The omnivore protein consumed in medieval London was most likely composed of pork and fowl and, along with beef and mutton, were available fresh or cooked at market stalls (Carlin 1998). Dyer (1989) notes that pork was often cited in laborer employment agreements. The ease in preserving pork as bacon or cured ham, along with the high fat content of the meat, made it a common option for the lower classes (Jørgensen 2013). Pigs were also plentiful in urban areas because they were allowed to scavenge through the streets to keep areas clean (Jørgensen 2013; Thrupp 1989). In general, zooarchaeological evidence of cattle in England is more prevalent in urban areas than rural areas (Thomas 2002). Cattle were often raised in rural areas, and then sent to towns to be butchered (Tames 2003). Mutton was consumed in similar quantities as beef, but these protein sources were not as abundantly available as pork (Sykes 2006).

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During the Late Medieval Period, fish were a relatively cheap source of protein, particularly preserved fish (Barrett et  al. 2004a), but were still more costly than protein sources such as beef and pork. At the markets in London, fish were available from a wide variety of sources and could be purchased fresh or preserved (Woolgar 2000), or as part of a meal from vendors at food stalls in the market (Carlin 1998). The role of fish during religious fasting also contributed to the increase in the fish market (Simoons 1994). Fasting for religious purposes (i.e., abstention from foods, usually meat, as a symbol of faith) became a regular practice around the beginning of the fourteenth century, with some religious leaders calling for abstinence as many as three times a week (Woolgar 2000). Both marine and freshwater fish, which exhibit different isotopic signatures (marine fish with less negative δ13C values compared to freshwater fish), were consumed. Marine fish would have been more common in the diet, however, because it was less expensive (Dyer 1988). Several species of marine fish were available in London, although the most common were herring and cod. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, there was an increase in cod-related species from more distant sources such as Norway (Barrett et al. 2004b), which would have contributed to the already diverse isotopic signature of Londoners. Marine fish that came in from farther distances were usually salted or cured for preservation. Preservation was also useful to sustain the market and keep prices from increasing when fish stock was low (Woolgar 2000). Whether fish, pork, fowl, beef, or mutton, all varieties of protein prepared in different ways were available at food stalls, also referred to as cookshops, in the market. From the twelfth century, the number of food stalls increased throughout London (Carlin 1998), further elevating the range of, and access to, different protein sources available to the population. Poor urban workers were the principal clientele of cookshops because they were easily accessible and did not require fuel or supplies necessary for food preparation (Carlin 2008). Pottage, a thick soup or stew, was also a major source of protein for the poor, serving as the “major vehicle for the consumption of meat” (Tames 2003, p.16). Low-status pottage was made from grains such as barley, and by-products, such as lungs, blood, lard, and marrow of different animals (Tames 2003). Though the typical London diet was composed of foods found in English villages and towns, Londoners had more variety. London relied heavily on sources outside the city for its food (Galloway and Murphy 1991; Tames 2003), and this resulted in foodstuffs from a variety of places outside of London that could have exhibited slightly different isotopic signatures. Moreover, London’s function as the largest port in England would also have introduced exotic foods and consumption practices to the city, though these foods would generally not have been accessible to the majority population- the poor.

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5.3  Materials and Methods 5.3.1  St Mary Spital Cemetery St Mary Spital cemetery (SRP98) is a large, well-dated skeletal assemblage curated by the Museum of London Of the over 10,000 individuals excavated from the site, the remains of 5387 individuals have been catalogued by the Museum of London Center for Human Bioarchaeology and are therefore available for analysis. SRP98 spans a long time period (ca. 1120–1539 CE) and was in use during the early urbanization of medieval London when the city experienced increasing population density (Connell et al. 2012). In the early twelfth century, the population doubled to 20,000 residents and then doubled again just prior to the fourteenth-century Black Death (Barron 2000). As discussed above, the rapid population growth in London resulted in deleterious living conditions, such as sanitation issues, precarious food supplies, and elevated risk of infection. Moreover, excessive rains and flooding across Europe during the twelfth to sixteenth centuries caused recurring poor harvests (Farr 1846; Scrimshaw et  al. 1968) that resulted in food shortages across Europe and several instances of famine throughout the period (Keys et  al. 1950; Rawcliffe 2013). St Mary Spital cemetery contains individuals of all ages, with people from the general community, the associated infirmary, and officials and benefactors of the hospital, and includes attritional burials and mass burials (Connell et  al. 2012). Given that the individuals interred in the cemetery are drawn “from across London and the wider region” (Connell et  al. 2012, p.14), the cemetery is likely biased toward lower status individuals who made up the bulk of the English population at this time. Additionally, no individuals from the church, where high-status burials are more likely, were included in this study. This cemetery is particularly appropriate for this study because it provides the temporal control necessary to investigate trends in stable isotope values through time. Based on high-precision Bayesian radiocarbon dating within a well-defined stratigraphic framework, burials in SRP98 have been classified into four distinct chronological phases: Period 14 (ca. 1120–1200 CE), Period 15 (ca. 1200–1250 CE), Period 16 (ca. 1250–1400 CE), and Period 17 (ca. 1400–1539 CE) (see Sidell et al. 2007 for details regarding phasing of the cemetery using Bayesian modeling). Within SRP98, different burial types are associated with periods of attritional mortality patterns (type A: single body in a grave, type B: 2–7 bodies horizontally interred in a single grave, or type C: 2–11 bodies stacked in a single grave) and crisis mortality patterns (burial type D: 8–45 bodies in a single grave) (Connell et  al. 2012). Differences in demographic patterns between attritional and mass graves and the correlation of these burials with documented years of famine indicate that the mass burials in SRP98 are the result of famine-related crises. For Period 16, however, it is not possible to determine whether the mass graves are associated with either the Black Death epidemic of 1347–1351 CE or famine (Connell et al. 2012).

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Lakin (2010) conducted carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis of individuals from Periods 15 and 16 (ca. 1200–1400 CE) in SRP98. Lakin’s study focused on comparing carbon and nitrogen stable isotope ratios between Yorkshire and London, and examining whether migrants to the city could be identified based on dietary differences. Isotopic analyses of carbon and nitrogen revealed that the herbivore δ15N value baseline in London is slightly higher than in contemporaneous English assemblages, and it was not possible to conclusively identify migrants in the sample based on δ13C and δ15N alone. In contrast to the objectives of Lakin’s (2010) study, we focus on dietary change through time in London by comparing all four of the time periods in SRP98, rather than only two of the periods, and thus examine a larger and more representative sample of the cemetery. This study also provides a more nuanced examination of SRP98 by evaluating stable isotopic differences between sub-populations. Changes in food sources due to urbanization could be evident in different δ13C and δ15N values between time periods, and differing δ13C and δ15N values between age groups could be reflective of young migrants traveling to the city for work opportunities. Further, differences, or a lack thereof, in δ13C and δ15N values between the sexes could be informative about sex-related consumption practices in urbanizing areas (e.g., Tsutaya et al. 2013).

5.3.2  Skeletal Analysis and Sampling Sex was estimated for each individual by the first author using sexually dimorphic features of the pelvis and skull (Buikstra and Ubelaker 1994; Phenice 1969). Nonadults (individuals with an estimated age-at-death younger than 15 years) and individuals for whom sex estimation was not possible or deemed questionable were not included in analyses evaluating sex differentials. Adult age-at-death was estimated by the first author using transition analysis as described by Boldsen et  al. (2002) via the Anthropological Database, Odense University age estimation software with an informative, “archaeological,” prior distribution of age-at-death (the Gompertz-Makeham model, see Wood et  al. 2002) estimated from seventeenth-century Danish rural parish records. Nonadult age-at-­ death (individuals younger than 15  years of age) was estimated based on dental development (Al Qahtani et al. 2010) and epiphyseal closure (Cunningham et al. 2016). To assess whether diet for age groups was affected differently during urbanization, individuals were divided into age groups that reflect stages across the lifespan (see Table 5.1 for specific ages of each age group and associated sample sizes). Nonadults were not analyzed separately because of the small sample size.

5  Dietary Variation in an Urbanizing City: A Temporal Analysis of Diet in Late… Table 5.1 Estimated age intervals and sample sizes for age groups including Lakin (2010) samples

Age group Nonadult Young adult Middle adult Old adult Elderly All

5–14.99 years 15–24.99 years 25–39.99 years 40–59.99 years 60–100 years

99 N 19 65 49 13 15 161

Table 5.2  Sample sizes for adults and the sexes by temporal period including Lakin (2010) samples Periods All Adult Female Male

14 39 37 16 20

15 50 42 19 21

16 37 35 15 19

17 37 33 18 15

Total 163 147 68 75

5.3.3  Sampling and Stable Isotope Analysis To represent all temporal periods equally, an approximately equal number of individuals were randomly sampled from each period (see Table 5.2 for sample sizes). Bone samples were obtained from ribs with no evidence of pathological bone formation and were prepared using the modified Longin method (Brown et al. 1988) at the University of Bradford Stable Light Isotope Laboratory (UBSLI). Samples were measured in duplicate and compared with UBSLI and international standards (see Beaumont et al. 2013, for preparation and analysis details used by UBSLI). Collagen preservation was determined following Van Klinken (1999), DeNiro (1985), and Ambrose (1990), and resulted in the exclusion of three samples. Stable isotope values of bone collagen from a previous stable isotopic analysis of SRP98 (Lakin 2010; n  =  13) were included and follow the same sample preservation requirements; sex and age for these individuals were estimated by the first author. There are no correlations between any of the collagen preservation indicators (e.g., collagen yield, atomic C:N, %N, and %C), indicating that there is minimal diagenetic alteration of the stable isotope signatures (Ambrose 1990). The results are expressed using the delta (δ) notation in parts per thousand (per mil or ‰). The instrument measurement standard deviation from runs of standards was determined to be ±0.2 (1 SD) for nitrogen and ± 0.1 (1 SD) for carbon. Carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios of contemporaneous faunal samples presented in Lakin (2010) were used in the interpretation of stable isotope ratios of the human bone samples in this study. The faunal samples (cattle, sheep/goat, pig, chicken, and goose) were obtained from Spital Square, which is a contemporaneous archaeological site near SRP98 (Lakin 2010).

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5.3.4  Statistical Analyses To assess differences in stable isotope signatures between (1) temporal phases, (2) age groups (with pooled temporal phases), (3) the sexes (with pooled temporal phases), and (4) between temporal periods for each sex, Mann-Whitney U tests for pairwise comparison and Kruskal-Wallis test for comparison of more than two groups were used. Because distributions are similar between all compared groups, these tests appropriately assess differences of the medians rather than the distributions across subgroups (Kruskal and Wallis 1952; Mann and Whitney 1947). Post-­ hoc Mann-Whitney U tests were performed for significant pairwise comparisons from Kruskal-Wallis tests. Analyses were conducted separately for δ13C and δ15N values. A Pearson’s regression analysis for the different temporal periods was performed to assess whether individuals from each period consumed more varied protein sources through time. By evaluating the correlation of δ13C and δ15N values, it is possible to evaluate whether more varied proportions of protein sources or more varied types of protein sources were consumed. Specifically, by comparing the correlation of δ13C and δ15N in different temporal periods, it is possible to elucidate dietary variability patterns through time, and δ13C and δ15N correlations can also be used to compare cemeteries to evaluate geographic differences in protein consumption. The correlation coefficient measures the linear correlation between two variables (in this case, δ13C and δ15N), providing a value between 1 and − 1 to indicate the correlation (0 = no correlation, 1 = perfect correlation) and direction of correlation (−1 = negative correlation, 1 = positive correlation) between the variables, and thus estimating the amount of variation within the data. Per Richards and Hedges (1999), the regression line is a line of best fit through the stable isotope data and represents a hypothetical mixing line, assuming that individual diets are comprised of two end-members. The two end-members in this case are marine protein and terrestrial C3 protein, consistent with protein sources found in the medieval English diet (Müldner and Richards 2007a). Thus, any deviation seen from the line of best fit would indicate variation in the consumption of protein. For example, an r2 closer to 1 would mean that the differences in δ13C and δ15N values between individuals within the population is due to diets in differing proportions of marine and terrestrial foods, while an r2 closer to 0 would mean that the differences between δ13C and δ15N is due to different types of marine and terrestrial foods consumed.

5.4  Results Carbon and nitrogen stable isotope ratios and collagen quality indicators, including samples from Lakin (2010), are available in Walter (2017). The δ13C and δ15N values in SRP98, for all temporal periods, are similar to other medieval English sites with the exception of Wharram Percy (Fig. 5.1), a poor rural community in Yorkshire

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Fig. 5.1  Plotted mean carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) isotope ratios (1 σ bars) of bulk bone collagen of individuals from St Mary Spital cemetery and of individuals from contemporaneous medieval English cemeteries (data from St Mary Spital ca. 1200–1400  CE and St Nicholas Shambles from Lakin (2010)); Fishergate from Müldner and Richards (2007a); St Giles from Müldner and Richards (2005); Wharram Percy from Fuller et al. (2003)

with fewer marine foods in the diet (Fuller et al. 2003), which may be a result of the village’s inland location and/or a relative lack of trade. The mean isotopic signature of SRP98 is similar to the medieval town of York (Fishergate) (Müldner and Richards 2007b). Based on stable isotope analysis of faunal remains at Spital Square, an adjacent medieval site near St Mary Spital, Lakin (2010) determined that the δ15N-rich protein characteristic of SRP98 mostly came from omnivore protein and some herbivore protein and fish. Müldner and Richards (2007a) propose that the diet at Fishergate in York was based on terrestrial plant and herbivore protein, with differing quantities of marine and omnivore protein, which is consistent with the results from SPR98. When all temporal periods are considered, however, SRP98 displays more variable δ15N values and a correlation of δ13C and δ15N that is notably closer to 0 (r2 = 0.49) compared to Fishergate (r2 = 0.81), suggesting that Londoners consumed different species of terrestrial animals and fish compared to those consumed in York.

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Table 5.3  Results of Kruskal-Wallis comparisons of δ15N and δ13C values for all individuals and adults by temporal period All Period 14 (ca. 1120–1200 CE) Period 15 (ca. 1200–1250 CE) Period 16 (ca. 1250–1400 CE) Period 17 (ca. 1400–1539 CE) Adults Period 14 (ca. 1120–1200 CE) Period 15 (ca. 1200–1250 CE) Period 16 (ca. 1250–1400 CE) Period 17 (ca. 1400–1539 CE)

δ15N Median 12.8 12.3 12.6 12.9

δ15N p 0.07

δ13C Median −19.1 −19.0 −19.1 −19.3

δ13C p 0.45

12.8 12.5 12.6 12.9

0.11

−19.1 −19.1 −19.1 −19.2

0.94

Fig. 5.2  Plotted carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) stable isotope ratios of bulk bone collagen for all individuals by temporal period

5.4.1  Temporal Periods Analyses were conducted for all individuals and separately for adults only (see Table 5.3 for results). Stable isotope values for all individuals by temporal period are plotted in Fig. 5.2, mean stable isotope values by period are plotted in Fig. 5.3, and boxplots of δ15N by temporal period are provided in Fig. 5.4.

5  Dietary Variation in an Urbanizing City: A Temporal Analysis of Diet in Late…

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Fig. 5.3  Plotted carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) stable isotope ratio means (± 1 σ bars) by temporal period of all individuals

For all individuals, the results reveal a difference between temporal periods for δ15N, but not for δ13C. Post-hoc pairwise comparisons for periods with statistically significant differences indicate that Period 15 exhibits significantly lower δ15N values compared to Periods 14 (p = 0.06) and 17 (p = 0.03). The δ15N and δ13C values from Period 16 do not differ significantly from those in any other temporal period; the Period 16 δ15N and δ13C median values fall between increasing δ15N and δ13C values of adjacent temporal Periods 14 and 17 (see Table 5.3), indicating a steady increase in stable isotope values through time. When nonadults are excluded, there is no significant difference between temporal periods for δ15N or δ13C, and thus no post-hoc comparisons were conducted. The results of the Pearson’s regression analysis of δ13C and δ15N values are provided in Table 5.4. All correlations are statistically significant, and r2 values indicate moderate correlation between δ13C and δ15N for the different temporal periods. Notably, Periods 16 and 17 exhibit correlations closer to 1 compared to Periods 14 and 15.

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Fig. 5.4  Boxplot of nitrogen (δ15N) stable isotope ratios of bulk bone collagen by temporal period of all individuals

Table 5.4  Results of Pearson correlation analyses  of δ13C and δ15N values for all periods and for each period

Period All (ca. 1120–1539 CE) 14 (ca. 1120–1200 CE) 15 (ca. 1200–1250 CE) 16 (ca. 1250–1400 CE) 17 (ca. 1400–1539 CE)

r2 p 0.49 < 0.001 0.44 < 0.001 0.43* < 0.001 0.68 < 0.001 0.57 < 0.001

*r2 = 0.59 (p