About This Project

What will you leave behind when you die? A diary? A blog? A "Remembering (name here)" Facebook page? What if you couldn't read or write? After the British occupation of Ireland, Catholics weren't allowed to go to school, and most never learned to write. A story was told of their superb health, but was that story's true? How can one be healthy when starving? Your contribution will help them tell their own stories through their bones in a skeletal analysis of health before the Famine.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

The Great Famine marks one of the most significant events in Irish history (Geber 2015:2). While it is often assumed that these events kill indiscriminately, recent studies in bioarchaeology have shown that these disasters are selective (DeWitte 2010, 2014), killing individuals who are most frail. It is therefore possible that underlying health prior to the Famine could have contributed to the catastrophic mortality. Between the late medieval (AD 1250-1550) and post-medieval periods (AD 1550-1880), England intensified its colonization efforts in Ireland to prevent the spread of Catholicism, a perceived threat to the British monarchy. Such efforts could have resulted in adverse health outcomes for the Irish, making them more vulnerable to death.

What is the significance of this project?

My research challenges the assumption that Irish health improved in the post-medieval period (e.g., Clark and Kelly 2010:110, Novak et al. 2017) despite endemic destitution and increasing reliance on the potato. Sinclair (1828), for example, writes that potatoes were a “blessing” and that they had greatly improved the condition of the poor. This project will contribute to Irish history by testing the veracity of such statements. Moreover, if it is found that health declined during this period, this would suggest that underlying population frailty contributed to death during the Famine because poor health in one generation can contribute to poor health in subsequent generations (Gowland, 2015), ultimately increasing risk of death when faced with famine.

What are the goals of the project?

I am testing the veracity of modern narratives and contemporary accounts of Irish health by conducting a bioarchaeological analysis of stress lines in teeth (LEH) and age-at-death in Irish skeletons. Both childhood stress and younger age-at-death are associated with poorer health. I expect that health will have declined during the post-medieval period and that the individuals from this period will exhibit a greater number of LEH and a lower age-at-death. I will test this hypothesis by making casts of teeth and bringing the casts back to the US to examine them under a microscope. This will allow me to count the number of stress lines in the teeth. While I am in Ireland, I will evaluate the age of skeletons in both samples.