Nine human skeletons of medieval date from a rural English burial site show signs of skeletal tuberculosis. They were subject to polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays aimed at detecting traces of DNA from infecting mycobacteria, with the purpose both of confirming the paleopathological diagnosis of tuberculosis and determining in individual cases whether disease was due to M. tuberculosis or M. bovis. In all nine cases, evidence for M. tuberculosis complex DNA was found, and in all instances it appeared that disease was due to M. tuberculosis rather than M. bovis. The significance of the findings for understanding tuberculous infection in rural agrarian communities in medieval England is discussed.

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The application of medical scanning technologies to archaeological skeletons provides novel insights into the history and potential causes of osteoporosis. The present study investigated bone mineral density (BMD) in medieval skeletons from England and Norway. Comparisons between the two adult populations found no statistically significant differences. This compares with a modern fracture incidence for the femoral neck in women from Norway that is almost three times that in the UK. The pattern of age-related bone loss in medieval men was similar to that seen in men today. In contrast, the pattern in medieval women differed from that of modern young women. On average, medieval women experienced a decrease in BMD at the femoral neck of approximately 23 per cent between the ages of 22 and 35. These losses were partially recovered by age 45, after which BMD values show a decline consistent with post-menopausal bone loss in modern western women. A possible explanation of the rapid decline in BMD in young medieval women is bone loss in connection with pregnancy and lactation in circumstances of insufficient nutrition.

Recently, palaeopathologists have begun to diagnose brucellosis in skeletal remains from minor lytic lesions located on the anterior margins of one or some few vertebral bodies, taking these lesions to represent brucellar epiphysitis. However, review of the literature indicates that these lesions have been sporadically noted for some time by palaeopathologists and various different interpretations have been placed upon them. In view of this, a study of these vertebral marginal lesions (VML) was undertaken in a large series of archaeological skeletons from England, with the aim of characterising their morphology and frequency and shedding light upon their causes. In the study material, VML were found only in the lumbar spine, where they occurred with a prevalence of approximately 4%. It was argued that VML are consistent with two principal alternative diagnoses: brucellosis and traumatic anterior disc herniation. Differentiating these possibilities for the VML in the study material was difficult, but the balance of the evidence seemed to favour traumatic anterior disc herniation as the more likely cause. It is concluded that VML should not be used to identify the presence of brucellosis in skeletal remains unless there is further evidence, in the form of additional skeletal lesions or biomolecular evidence for residual brucella bacterial DNA, to support such a diagnosis.