"My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?" Religious Persecution and the Irish Famine

Methods

Summary

Adult skeletons from late medieval (n=184) and post-medieval (n=154) sites within the English Pale were selected for analysis. The English Pale was selected as the region of study because it is comprised of the counties (Dublin, Louth, and Meath) under direct English rule in the post-medieval period. To test for differences in the prevalence of LEH, anterior teeth with similar degrees of wear from the above sample of late medieval and post-medieval remains will be observed. Photographs will be taken and negative impressions will be made at the NMI CRC. Dental impressions will be made using Coltene’s President Jet Regular Body dental impression material, and casts of the impressions will be made at The Ohio State University (OSU) Dental Anthropology Laboratory in Columbus, Ohio. Casts will be dyed red to enhance visibility. To better determine the number of LEH within a tooth even in the absence of visible perikymata (i.e., incremental enamel growth lines), this project will use micro-polynomial analysis (Henrequez et al. 2017). To count LEH using the micro-polynomial method, casts will be viewed under a measuring microscope housed at OSU. The measuring microscope will be used in conjunction with the software Vision Gauge to construct enamel surface profiles and perikymata spacing. Then, a moving mean and standard deviation of perikymata spacing will be estimated for each region of the tooth. It is important to calculate a moving average and standard deviation because perikymata are more densely packed in the cervical portion of the crown compared to the middle or incisal portions. LEH will be counted when a depression in the profile of the enamel surface is at least one moving standard deviation below the polynomial that best describes the curve of the tooth and occurs for at least the width of a single perikyma (Henrequez et al. 2017).