High status diet and health in Medieval Lisbon: a combined isotopic and osteological analysis of the Islamic population from São Jorge Castle, Portugal

Abstract

This paper presents the first bioarchaeological study of Islamic diet and lifeways in medieval Portugal. Stable isotopes of δ 13 C and δ 15 N and osteological and paleopathological analyses are combined to explore the diet and health status of 27 humans buried within São Jorge Castle, Lisbon (eleventh to twelfth century), interpreted as a high status population. Human isotopic data are considered alongside an animal baseline comprised of 30 specimens sampled from nearby Praça da Figueira, including the main domesticates and fish. Isotopic data indicate an age-and sex-related difference in diet among the population, suggesting a difference in food access between females and children compared to males. Palaeopathological analysis indicates a low prevalence of non-specific stress indicators such as Harris lines (HL), linear enamel hypoplasia (LEH) and cribra orbitalia (CO) in this population in comparison to other medieval populations. LEH is only present in adults. These results suggest the presence of socio-cultural patterning relating to the organisation of the Islamic family, where women and men occupied different places in the household and society. This paper demonstrates the utility of a combined osteological and isotopic approach to understand the lifeways of Islamic populations in Medieval Iberia, as well as illuminates the lifeways of understudied segments of the population.

Paleodiet in the Iberian Peninsula: exploring the connections between diet, culture, disease and environment using isotopic and osteoarchaeological evidence

“…Nevertheless, Alaica et al (2018) found that among a population of Late Roman-Early Byzantine individuals from Ibiza, women tended to consume more C 4 crops. Toso et al (2019) also report sex differences in diet among the high-status (but not low status) individuals of São Jorge Castle in Lisbon, revealing that men consumed more higher trophic level protein than females and non-adults, which was hypothesised to reflect the division of male and female roles within the elite Islamic household.…”

“…Figure 1 depicts the locations of the sites included in the publications in this volume. Coastal, inland areas and surrounding islands are well-represented, but the majority them are focused on the modern geopolitical area of Spain (16/19) with two in Portugal (Curto et al 2018;Toso et al 2019) and one considering sites across the Iberian Peninsula as a whole (Cubas et al 2018, not depicted in Fig. 1).…”

“…Clear sex differences in diet were only identified in a few papers (Alaica et al 2018;Toso et al 2019), indicating that either differences in diet were not universal during the historic periods despite the differing roles of men and women in medieval society (Ward 2016), or, that bulk stable isotope analysis is not sensitive enough to reveal subtle differences in diet that may have existed. Sample sizes are often perhaps too small to adequately explore the issue.…”

“…Four papers discussed weaning linked with bulk nitrogen stable isotope values for non-adults in their populations. Despite the generally low sample sizes, weaning appears to have been completed by aged three in Early Medieval (García-Collado et al 2018), Visigothic (Jordana et al 2019) and Islamic (Inskip et al 2018;Toso et al 2019) contexts. This fits well with elsewhere in Medieval Europe in terms of historical documents (Fildes 1986) and isotopic studies (e.g.…”

“…López-Costas and Müldner (2018) report clear evidence for marine fish consumption by Christian communities on the Atlantic coast, despite the presence of C 4 protein in the diets that led to only moderately 15 N-enriched nitrogen isotope values, a phenomenon also reported for other sites in coastal north-west Iberia (López-Costas and Müldner 2016). Marine foods, however, appear to be intriguingly absent from the diet of the Islamic population of Lisbon, despite their location on the Atlantic coast (Toso et al 2019). The lack of marine fish consumption on the Mediterranean coast and the islands (Alaica et al 2018;Alexander et al 2019;Dury et al 2018) is surprising and is probably due to the limitation of bulk isotopic analysis in the Mediterranean, an area of comparatively low productivity compared to the Atlantic, where nitrogen values for marine resources tend to be lower due to the shorter length of the food chain.…”