engleski

Investigating health status of the late medieval inhabitants of Ilok, eastern Croatia – some preliminary results

During the test excavations at the Ilok - Ađanski kraj/Krstbajer site in September 2015 a late medieval cemetery was discovered. The excavations were carried out by the Ilok Municipal Museum in cooperation with the Institute of Archaeology in Zagreb. The site is located in the eastern part of the town, about 200 meters from the border crossing between Ilok (Croatia) and Bačka Palanka (Serbia). The area excavated so far is quite small (approximately 52 m2), but excavations at the site are planned for near future. The archaeological context and artefacts date the use of the cemetery between the 13th and the 16th century CE, i.e. to the period before the Ottoman conquest of Ilok. It is highly likely that the site is a medieval parish cemetery where Ilok’s middle class population was buried as supported by historic documents for the Ilok Lower Town. In total, 30 inhumation burials (all single) have been excavated so far yielding the remains of 29 individuals: eight adult males, six adult females, 11 subadults and four individuals whose sex and age at death could not be estimated with certainty due to bad preservation. Most of the adults are of younger/middle age, and only two individuals reached the age of 50. The frequency and patterning of the long-bone and rib trauma point to accidents as a major cause for the occurrence of these injuries. Most of the subadult skeletons show pathological changes associated with infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, metabolic disorders, and/or anaemia. In order to get a better picture on the health status of the studied population, comparisons will be made with contemporaneous samples from this part of Croatia, but also southern Hungary and northern Serbia (Vojvodina). In addition, written historical sources on everyday life of the medieval inhabitants of Ilok will be consulted.

bioarchaeology ; late medieval period ; Ilok ; pathology

nije evidentirano