Reconstructing Past Monastic Life: Volume 1: Bioarchaeology, Life and Death

Explores health and lifeways in monastic communities, focusing on palaeopathological insights into well-being, disabilities, and burial practices across various periods.

Monasticism is a form of religious life in which participants renounce worldly activities to dedicate themselves primarily to spiritual matters, living in small communities subject to a set of rules and isolated from the secular world. Christian monasticism, which originated at the end of the 3rd century in Egypt and North Africa, spread to different parts of Europe in the 6th century. However, it was not until the Middle Ages that monastic communities became one of the most powerful institutions in Europe. Monasteries and convents played a very important role not only as centers of spirituality but also as focal points of economic, technological and cultural activity. This multiplicity of activities carried out alongside their religious, social and political roles make monasteries spaces that can be studied from very different perspectives and that unfailingly provide essential information about our history.

This first of two titles originates from an international conference that took place in Barcelona in January 2024, which sought to examine different aspects related to monastic life in the past and to promote and disseminate the results obtained in the latest studies undertaken within the framework of monastic complexes and their environments. These include contributions and multidisciplinary studies from archaeological, bioanthropological and/or documentary perspectives. Specialists from different disciplines present developments on the topic of monasticism from different fields of study, such as zooarchaeology, bioanthropology, palaeopathology, archaeology, history, documentary disciplines, archives, cultural heritage, etc.

Volume 1 concentrates on health and lifeways within monastic communities, focusing on palaeopathological information providing insights into physical well-being and, in particular, the presence and significance of disabled individuals and evidence for long-term health and dental issues. A variety of scientific methods of analysis are applied to cemetery populations from monasteries and nunneries of different periods to examine both causes of and contributions to the death of individuals, the composition of communities and the treatment of the dead. Studies of assemblages of faunal remains from monastic complexes consider how faunal analysis can help interpret the role of domestic species.

Table of Contents

List of contributors
List of reviewers
Introduction by the editors

Part 1: State of health and human remains
1. Unusual and exuberant dental calculus in an 18–19th-century nun from Santa Catalina de Siena, Belmonte (Cuenca, Spain): oral/joint dysfunction or facial paralysis?
Laura González-Garrido, Álvaro M. Monge Calleja, Natasa Sarkic, Sofía Zdral, António Pereira Coutinho, Lídia Catarino, Jesús Herrerín López, Ana Luisa Santos
2. Disabled individuals in a Belgian medieval Cistercian monastic community: a palaeopathological perspective
Mathilde Daumas, Caroline Polet, Stéphane Louryan
3. A high-ranking cleric with arterial calcification: vascular disease in medieval England.
David Bennett-Jones, Louise Loe

Part 2: Life pathways in monastic contexts
4. Unveiling the past. Bioanthropological insights into life and death at the friary of Santa Caterina (Barcelona) in the 13th to15th centuries
Andrea Sanz, Andreu Falcó, Lluís Lloveras, Carme Rissech
5. The early medieval necropolis of the Former Municipal Courts of Barcelona: a unique discovery
Marta Merino, Carme Rissech
6. Bioanthropological study of human remains from funerary unit UF228 (14th to 15th centuries) at the archaeological site of the friary of Santa Caterina (Barcelona)
Carme Rissech, Marina Gascà, Anna Llauradó
7. The cloister of the monastery of Santa Maria de Roses in the early modern period Study of a secular funerary space in a religious centre.
Marc Bouzas, Neus Coromina, Lluís Palahí, Jordi Vivo
8. Life and death of the Poor Clare nuns of the Holy Trinity in Monte Sant'Angelo (Puglia, Southern Italy): archaeological, anthropological, pathological, botanical, entomological, textile, chemical and documentary data
Ginevra Panzarino, Elena Varotto, Francesco Maria Galassi, Agustín Pastor, Gianni Gallello, Stefano Vanin, Giuseppina Carta, Francesco Breglia, Annalisa Biselli, Donatella Pian, Elena Dellù
9. The tomb of Prioress Jerònima de Gort (1586-1601). An interdisciplinary approach to the female Hospitaller Monastery of Santa Maria d'Alguaire.
Maria Soler, Walter Alegria, Izaskun Ambrosio, Sílvia Marín, Araceli Coll
10. ‘The Greatest Evil is Physical Pain.’ An Exploration of Suffering from a Medieval Austin Friary in Cambridge, UK using an ‘Avatar Model’.
Benjamin Neil
11. The ossuary of the Teutonic monastery of San Leonardo di Siponto in Manfredonia (Puglia, Southern Italy): anthropological and palaeopathological data for the reconstruction of the monastic community.
Ginevra Panzarino, Elena Varotto, Francesco Maria Galassi, Donatella Pian, Elena Dellù
12. The everyday life of a female religious community from a multidisciplinary approach: the convent of Santa Clara (Pontevedra, Spain).
María Martín-Seijo, Carlos Fernández-Rodríguez, Eduardo González Gómez de Agüero, Rafael M. Rodríguez Martínez, Israel Picón Platas

Part 3: Animals in the monastic environment
13. Paw prints in the cloister. The study of ichnites on tiles from the Monastery of Santa Maria de Pedralbes (Barcelona, Spain)
Jordi Nadal, Philip Banks, Anna Castellano-Tresserra, Santiago Riera, Marina Fernández-Liarte, Lluís Lloveras.
14. Bilateral skull asymmetries in two ancient semi-feral horse breeds and their implications for archaeological equine studies. How can help us in monastic contexts?
Pere M. Parés-Casanova, Nuno Carolino, José V. Leite, Ruy Dantas, Susana Lopes, Abu B. Siddiq
15. Estimating the withers height and body length of domestic cattle from head values. Its applications to archaeological samples.
Arcesio Salamanca-Carreño, Pere M. Parés-Casanova, Germán Martínez Correal, Mauricio Vélez-Terranova, David Eduardo Rangel, Abu B. Siddiq

Lluís Lloveras is a researcher in the department of Archaeology and History at the University of Barcelona, from which he obtained a PhD. He is a specialist in zooarchaeology and taphonomy, focusing on the procurement of animal foods, past animal hunting and husbandry economies and examining the role of animals in past societies beyond serving as food, employing, in particular, neotaphonomic research, geometric morphometrics, isotopic analysis, animal palaeopathological and forensic taphonomic analysis.

Carme Rissech is a senior lecturer in the Department of Basic Medical Sciences, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Reus, Spain and holds a PhD from the University Autonomous of Barcelona. She is an expert in the fields of palaeoanthropology and forensic anthropology, employing interdisciplinary approaches combining human bone analysis with documentary sources, histological and biomolecular analysis and medicine.