Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

Document Type

Article

Anticipated Volume

96

Anticipated Issue

1

Abstract

Historical accounts document that the shift from rural settlement to urban settings and from employment in cottage industries to factory working at the turn of the 19th century had a negative impact on the lower classes.

In 2015, the relocation of the cemetery of St Peter’s Churchyard in Blackburn, Lancashire, provided an opportunity to study the effects of industrialization on the diets and health of an early to mid-19th-century population through osteological and biomolecular analyses. Those interred at St Peter’s represent a socioeconomic cross-section of the church’s parishioners. In this paper, we present an evaluation of the lifetime dietary biographies of the St Peter’s population modelled from bone collagen and incremental dentine stable isotope ratios (δ13C, δ15N and δ34S). These data are combined with the results of aDNA and osteological analyses to explore the relationship between diet, health and socioeconomic status.

Dietary models determined from stable isotope data suggest that contrary to historical accounts there are no substantial differences between the diets of the lower, and middle/upper classes. Nor are there differences between the diets of most men and women, although there are a small number of women who did consume a greater proportion of sugar or maize than the rest of the population. Weaning typically commenced before one year of age and was completed by two years. Notably, there were no isotopically discernible differences in the weaning practices evident between those of lower and higher socioeconomic status. Additionally, there was little evidence for physiological stress during the weaning process.

Download

Share

COinS