Care in the Past: Archaeological and Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Care-giving is an activity that has been practiced by all human societies. From the earliest societies through to the present, all humans have faced choices regarding how people in positions of dependency are to be treated. As such, care-giving, and the form it takes, is a central experience of being a human and one that is culturally mediated. Archaeology has tended to marginalise the study of care, and debates surrounding our ability to recognise it within the archaeological record have often remained implicit rather than a focus of discussion. These 12 papers examine the topic of care in past societies and specifically how we might recognise the provision of care in archaeological contexts and to open up an inter-disciplinary conversation, including historical, bioarchaeological, faunal and philosophical perspectives. The topic of ‘care’ is examined through three different strands: the provision of care throughout the life course, namely that provided to the youngest and oldest members of a society; care-giving and attitudes towards impairment and disability in prehistoric and historic contexts, and the role of animals as both recipients of care and as tools for its provision.

Table of Contents

Preface – Charlotte Roberts

1. Introduction

William Southwell-Wright, Rebecca Gowland and Lindsay Powell

Section 1: Care and the Life Course

2. Childcare in the Past

Mary Lewis

3. The “Terrible Tyranny of the Majority”: Recognising Population Variability and Individual Agency in Past Infant Feeding Practices

Ellen Kendall

4.–Precious Things: Examining the Status and Care of Children in Late Medieval England Through the analysis of Cultural and Biological Markers

Heidi Dawson

5. “That Tattered Coat Upon a Stick the Ageing Body”: Evidence for Elder Marginalisation and Abuse in Roman Britain

Rebecca L. Gowland

Section 2: Care Impairment and Disability

6. The Palaeolithic Compassion Debate – Alternative Projections of Modern Day Disability into the Distant Past

Nick Thorpe

7. Setting the Scene for an Evolutionary Approach to Care in Prehistory: A Historical and Philosophical Journey

David Doat

8. “A Long Waiting for Death”: Dependency and the Care of the Disabled in a Nineteenth Century Asylum

Shawn Phillips

9 Prayers and Poultices: Medieval Health Care at the Isle of May, Scotland. C. AD 430-1580

Marlo Willows

Section 3: Animal and Plant Evidence for Care

10. Towards a Zooarchaeology of Animal ‘Care’

Richard Thomas

11. Rare Secrets of Physicke: Insect Medicaments in Historical Western Society

Gary King

12. Conclusion

Lindsay Powell, William Southwell-Wright, Rebecca Gowland