Ascetic or affluent? Byzantine diet at the monastic community of St. Stephen’s, Jerusalem from stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes

Monks on the move: Evaluating pilgrimage to byzantine St. Stephen's monastery using strontium isotopes

“…While radiocarbon dating clearly places human remains within the Byzantine period, the dating of commingled animal bone from the same repository has proven more temporally variable, and in some cases, suggests that fauna recovered from the crypt were placed there centuries after its Byzantine human occupants had been laid to rest (Gregoricka and Sheridan, 2013). This assemblage consisted of teeth from domesticated donkey (n 5 1), dog (n 5 3), goat (n 5 4), and pig (n 5 2).…”

“…Degenerative lesions of the lower limb were plentiful (Driscoll and Sheridan, 2000), but there was very little evidence of neoplastic, congenital, infectious, inflammatory, or traumatic pathological conditions in the collection (Sheridan, 1999). Analysis of diet using stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes from bone collagen indicated these monks consumed more animal protein than prescribed in the patristic literature (Gregoricka and Sheridan, 2013). However, given the urban setting for the monastery and the wealth indicated by surviving texts (Hunt, 1982;Binns, 1994), it is entirely possible that the inhabitants of St. Stephen's had a wider array of menu items available than their counterparts in desert monasteries (about whom most dietary accounts were written).…”

“…The burial crypt at St. Stephen's Monastery, as well as a map with the location of St. Stephen's relative to the Old City of Jerusalem during the Byzantine period (Adapted from Lagrange, 1894 andGregoricka and Sheridan, 2013).…”

Paleopathology

“…The coevolution of Taenia tapeworms and their human and nonhuman hosts have generated interesting scenarios for the origins of omnivory in humans, with domestic cattle and pigs eventually replacing their wild kin in the life cycle of the parasite. Medieval monks, mocked since Chaucer's time for their luxurious habits, have been a particularly fruitful subject for research of this kind, and several monastery cemeteries have revealed high rates of DISH (Rogers and Waldron, 2001) and diets surprisingly rich in meat or dairy (Gregoricka and Sheridan, 2013). Even the lice found in ancient mummies tell a fascinating story.…”

Continuity and change in subsistence at Tell Barri, NE Syria

“…Studies on dietary variation within and between populations (e.g., Le Huray and Schutkowski, 2005;Knipper et al, 2013) as well as overarching questions about diachronic change (e.g., Grupe et al, 2013;Müldner et al, 2014) have produced an increasingly fine-grained appreciation of past subsistence regimes and dietary behaviour. While this includes the Eastern Mediterranean, Anatolia and adjacent regions (e.g., Budd et al, 2013;Gregoricka and Sheridan, 2013;Pearson et al, 2013;Schutkowski and Richards, 2014), there is still little understanding of subsistence change in Mesopotamia, and sporadic attempts to address this so far were either confined or met with limited success (Batey, 2011;Hornig, 2010;Schutkowski, 2012). The site of Tell Barri, which is representative of the dry farming zone in the central part of the Fertile Crescent, and which was continuously inhabited from the beginning of the Early Bronze Age until the Roman/Parthian period (Pierobon Benoit, 2008), offers a rare opportunity to explore this in diachronic detail (Fig.…”