Reconstructing smoking history through dental cementum analysis - a preliminary investigation on modern and archaeological teeth.

Acellular extrinsic fibre cementum (AEFC) has been widely utilised in cementochronology to estimate age at death, seasonality, and for life-history reconstruction. Smoking has been commonplace in the UK since the 17th century and is known to compromise oral health and to modulate physiological processes. This study aimed to investigate whether AEFC analysis could identify smoking activity in both modern and archaeological populations.

"A custome lothsome": Investigating the association between tobacco consumption and respiratory inflammation in two post-medieval English populations (c. CE 1500-1855).

Despite current clinical knowledge of the risks associated with tobacco consumption, the bioarchaeological investigation of tobacco's effect on health in past populations remains woefully underexamined. This study explores the potential respiratory health implications of the rapid incorporation of tobacco-use into the everyday lives of English citizens during the post-medieval period. Adult skeletons from urban post-medieval St James's Gardens Burial Ground, Euston, London (N = 281; CE1789-1853) and rural post-medieval (N = 151; CE1500-1855) and medieval (N = 62; CE1150-1500) Barton-upon-Humber were examined.

Correction: Badillo-Sanchez et al. Human Archaeological Dentin as Source of Polar and Less Polar Metabolites for Untargeted Metabolomic Research: The Case of . 2023, , 588.

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An 'Index of Oro-dental Disease': A holistic method for understanding the impacts of different risk factors on oral health in archaeological populations.

Objective: To gain a more holistic understanding of oral health in the past by producing an 'Index of Oro-dental Disease' (IOD), incorporating multiple oro-dental diseases and accounting for differences in antemortem/postmortem alveolar bone and tooth loss.

Materials: UK Adult Dental Health Survey, 2009 anonymised dataset (N = 6206). Archaeological dental data from skeletal individuals from medieval and post-medieval Barton-upon-Humber, North Lincolnshire (N = 214, 1150-1855) and St James's Gardens Burial Ground, London (N = 281, 1789-1853).

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).

Seven recommendations for scientists, universities, and funders to embrace interdisciplinarity : Practical guidelines to enabling interdisciplinarity.

Successful interdisciplinary research requires proactive efforts by researchers, institutions, funders, and publishers. This article offers practical recommendations at each decision-making level to holistically enhance interdisciplinarity. [Image: see text]

Ancient Mycobacterium leprae genome reveals medieval English red squirrels as animal leprosy host.

Leprosy, one of the oldest recorded diseases in human history, remains prevalent in Asia, Africa, and South America, with over 200,000 cases every year. Although ancient DNA (aDNA) approaches on the major causative agent, Mycobacterium leprae, have elucidated the disease's evolutionary history, the role of animal hosts and interspecies transmission in the past remains unexplored. Research has uncovered relationships between medieval strains isolated from archaeological human remains and modern animal hosts such as the red squirrel in England.

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.

Investigating the association between intestinal parasite infection and cribra orbitalia in the medieval population of Cambridge, UK.

Objective: Cribra orbitalia is believed to be a skeletal indicator of chronic anaemia, scurvy, rickets or related metabolic diseases. It has been suggested that it may be used as a proxy indicator for intestinal parasite infection, as parasites often cause anaemia today. Our aim is to investigate this association in the medieval population of Cambridge, UK.

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.

Metabolomics in archaeological science: A review of their advances and present requirements.

Metabolomics, the study of metabolites (small molecules of <1500 daltons), has been posited as a potential tool to explore the past in a comparable manner to other omics, e.g., genomics or proteomics.

Human Archaeological Dentin as Source of Polar and Less Polar Metabolites for Untargeted Metabolomic Research: The Case of .

Metabolomic approaches, such as in clinical applications of living individuals, have shown potential use for solving questions regarding the past when applied to archaeological material. Here, we study for the first time the potential of this Omic approach as applied to metabolites extracted from archaeological human dentin. Dentin obtained from micro sampling the dental pulp of teeth of victims and non-victims of (plague) from a 6th century Cambridgeshire site are used to evaluate the potential use of such unique material for untargeted metabolomic studies on disease state through liquid chromatography hyphenated to high-resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS).

Ancient dental calculus preserves signatures of biofilm succession and interindividual variation independent of dental pathology.

Dental calculus preserves oral microbes, enabling comparative studies of the oral microbiome and health through time. However, small sample sizes and limited dental health metadata have hindered health-focused investigations to date. Here, we investigate the relationship between tobacco pipe smoking and dental calculus microbiomes.

Examination of human osteoarchaeological remains as a feasible source of polar and apolar metabolites to study past conditions.

Metabolomics is a modern tool that aids in our understanding of the molecular changes in organisms. Archaeological science is a branch of archaeology that explores different archaeological materials using modern analytical tools. Human osteoarchaeological material are a frequent finding in archaeological contexts and have the potential to offer information about previous human populations, which can be illuminating about our current condition.

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.

One Health Approaches to Trace 's Zoonotic Potential Through Time.

Hansen's disease (leprosy), mainly caused by infection with , has accompanied humanity for thousands of years. Although currently rare in Europe, there are over 200,000 new infections annually in South East Asia, Africa, and South America. Over the years many disciplines - palaeopathology, ancient DNA and other ancient biomolecules, and history - have contributed to a better understanding of leprosy's past, in particular its history in medieval Europe.