Low Genetic Impact of the Roman Occupation of Britain in Rural Communities.

The Roman period saw the empire expand across Europe and the Mediterranean, including much of what is today Great Britain. While there is written evidence of high mobility into and out of Britain for administrators, traders, and the military, the impact of imperialism on local, rural population structure, kinship, and mobility is invisible in the textual record. The extent of genetic change that occurred in Britain during the Roman military occupation remains underexplored.

Health inequality in medieval Cambridge, 1200-1500 CE.

Health inequality is not only a major problem today; it left its mark upon past societies too. For much of the past, health inequality has been poorly studied, mostly because bioarchaeologists have concentrated upon single sites rather than a broader social landscape. This article compares 476 adults in multiple locations of medieval Cambridge (UK).

Histotaphonomic analysis of bone bioerosion reveals a regional framework of diverse deathways in the Neolithic of Southeast Italy.

The wide diversity of Neolithic funerary practices is increasingly recognised. In Southeast Italy, recent studies have drawn attention to the co-existence of multiple ways of treating the dead within single sites and across the region. In this study, we address how such diverse deathways form a regional framework of ritual practice through histotaphonomic analysis of bone bioerosion.

Genetic history of Cambridgeshire before and after the Black Death.

The extent of the devastation of the Black Death pandemic (1346-1353) on European populations is known from documentary sources and its bacterial source illuminated by studies of ancient pathogen DNA. What has remained less understood is the effect of the pandemic on human mobility and genetic diversity at the local scale. Here, we report 275 ancient genomes, including 109 with coverage >0.

Tuberculosis before and after the Black Death (1346-1353 CE) in the Hospital of St John the Evangelist in Cambridge, England.

This research explores how the prevalence of tuberculosis (TB) in a medieval hospital was affected by the demographic and social changes that following the Black Death (1346-1353 CE), the initial years of the Second Plague Pandemic. To do this, skeletal remains of individuals buried at the Hospital of St John the Evangelist in Cambridge, England, that could be dated to living before (n = 77) or after (n = 55) the Black Death were assessed for evidence of TB (indicated by destructive lesions of the spine, ribs, large joints, and other recognised criteria). Overall, the odds of females having skeletal lesions caused by TB were over four times higher than males.

Caring for the injured: Exploring the immediate and long-term consequences of injury in medieval Cambridge, England.

Objective: To combine paleopathological and biomechanical analysis to reconstruct the impact that a severe skeletal injury had on an individual's ability to function and participate in medieval society.

Materials: Three medieval individuals from Cambridge, England with ante-mortem fractures to the lower limb were analyzed.

Methods: Plain X-rays were used to determine the degree of malunion, rotation and overlap of each fracture.

Ancient herpes simplex 1 genomes reveal recent viral structure in Eurasia.

Human herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1), a life-long infection spread by oral contact, infects a majority of adults globally. Phylogeographic clustering of sampled diversity into European, pan-Eurasian, and African groups has suggested the virus codiverged with human migrations out of Africa, although a much younger origin has also been proposed. We present three full ancient European HSV-1 genomes and one partial genome, dating from the 3rd to 17th century CE, sequenced to up to 9.

An invasive Haemophilus influenzae serotype b infection in an Anglo-Saxon plague victim.

Background: The human pathogen Haemophilus influenzae was the main cause of bacterial meningitis in children and a major cause of worldwide infant mortality before the introduction of a vaccine in the 1980s. Although the occurrence of serotype b (Hib), the most virulent type of H. influenzae, has since decreased, reports of infections with other serotypes and non-typeable strains are on the rise.

Assessing the relative benefits of imaging with plain radiographs and microCT scanning to diagnose cancer in past populations.

Objective: To determine the degree to which plain radiographs (x-rays) and microCT scans can improve accuracy in the diagnosis of cancer in human remains from past populations.

Materials: The skeletal remains of 143 individuals from medieval Cambridgeshire, dating from 6th-16th century CE.

Methods: Visual inspection of the skeletons for lesions compatible with malignancy, coupled with plain radiographs and microCT scans of the pelvis, femora and vertebra.

Fancy shoes and painful feet: Hallux valgus and fracture risk in medieval Cambridge, England.

Objective: Hallux valgus, the lateral deviation of the great toe, can result in poor balance, impaired mobility and is an independent risk factor for falls. This research aims to compare the prevalence of hallux valgus in subpopulations of medieval Cambridge, England, and to examine the relationship between hallux valgus and fractures to examine the impact of impaired mobility and poor balance caused by this condition.

Materials: 177 adult individuals from four cemeteries located in Cambridge, England.

Gout and 'Podagra' in medieval Cambridge, England.

Objective: To estimate the prevalence rate of gout and to explore the social factors that contributed to its development in the various sub-populations in medieval Cambridge.

Materials: 177 adult individuals from four medieval cemeteries located in and around Cambridge, UK.

Methods: Lesions were assessed macroscopically and radiographically.

The prevalence of cancer in Britain before industrialization.

Background: To plan for cancer services in the future, the long view of cancer prevalence is essential. It might be suspected that cancer prevalence before tobacco and industrial revolution pollutants was quite different to today.

Methods: To quantify the degree to which cancer prevalence may be changing over time, the authors analyzed 143 skeletons from 6 cemeteries from the Cambridge area (6th-16th centuries).

Medieval injuries: Skeletal trauma as an indicator of past living conditions and hazard risk in Cambridge, England.

Objective: To explore how medieval living conditions, occupation, and an individual's role within society impacted their risk of skeletal trauma.

Materials: The skeletal remains of 314 individuals from medieval Cambridge that were buried in the parish cemetery of All Saints by the Castle (n = 84), the Augustinian friary (n = 75), and the cemetery of the Hospital of St John the Evangelist (n = 155) were analyzed.

Methods: Macroscopic examination and plain radiographs were used to classify fracture type.

Intrapopulation variation in lower limb trabecular architecture.

Objectives: Trabecular structure is frequently used to differentiate between highly divergent mechanical environments. Less is known regarding the response of the structural properties to more subtle behavioral differences, as the range of intrapopulation variation in trabecular architecture is rarely studied. Examining the extent to which lower limb trabecular architecture varies when inferred mobility levels and environment are consistent between groups within a relatively homogenous population may aid in the contextualization of interpopulation differences, improve detectability of sexual dimorphism in trabecular structure, and improve our understanding of trabecular bone functional adaptation.

Phylogeography of the second plague pandemic revealed through analysis of historical Yersinia pestis genomes.

The second plague pandemic, caused by Yersinia pestis, devastated Europe and the nearby regions between the 14 and 18 centuries AD. Here we analyse human remains from ten European archaeological sites spanning this period and reconstruct 34 ancient Y. pestis genomes.

East Anglian early Neolithic monument burial linked to contemporary Megaliths.

In the fourth millennium BCE a cultural phenomenon of monumental burial structures spread along the Atlantic façade. Megalithic burials have been targeted for aDNA analyses, but a gap remains in East Anglia, where Neolithic structures were generally earthen or timber. An early Neolithic (3762-3648 cal.

Ancient genomes from across Western Europe reveal early diversification during the First Pandemic (541-750).

The first historically documented pandemic caused by began as the Justinianic Plague in 541 within the Roman Empire and continued as the so-called First Pandemic until 750. Although paleogenomic studies have previously identified the causative agent as , little is known about the bacterium's spread, diversity, and genetic history over the course of the pandemic. To elucidate the microevolution of the bacterium during this time period, we screened human remains from 21 sites in Austria, Britain, Germany, France, and Spain for DNA and reconstructed eight genomes.