Child Health in the Crusader Period Inhabitants of Tel Jezreel, Israel

Abstract

This study assesses the state of health of children from the medieval Christian population living at Tel Jezreel, when it was known as Parvum Gerinum. This is the first ever project to investigate health at a farming village in the Frankish States of the Latin East during the crusader period. In consequence, the findings at a population level are of particular importance.Analysis of the skeletal remains of fifty children allowed determination of the age when each died. This shows that 60% of child deaths occurred by the age of one year, and that age distribution was similar to the poorest developing world countries today. Comparison with research in these modern populations allows us to suggest which types of disease were most likely to have been responsible for deaths in the different age groups. This age at death profile and nonspecific indicators of ill health were compared with other archaeological series of childhood skeletal remains from the Middle East. This suggests that health amongst the children at Parvum Gerinum was probably better than the children at a twelfth century crusader castle in Jordan, but worse than health in children from a Bronze Age site in Anatolia.