Malaria in the UK - offshoot thread

[Sparky]

Thanks Jack. It was inspired by a few forum members.

[url=http://malaria.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD023991.html][/url]

[Sparky]

Or even better
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles...1-0007.pdf

[Dinosaur]

There you go then! So back to whatever the original question was in the original thread...oh yes, is there any evidence for people in the British Iron Age (however long that took!) suffering from malaria, and is that why there seems to be a (perceived) shortage of water-sources actually within IA settlement sites? :face-thinks:

[Jack]

Think that was on another thread..............

[Dinosaur]

You can't just go around starting up threads willy-nilly off the back of other people's brainstorms! Think of your own!

[Jack]

Think I just did...........too slow old man

[Dinosaur]

Surprised you haven't used that pile of books you just lent me to start a thread querying how many thousands of pages have been written on the way Iron Age people liked chucking their rubbish in the ends of their ring-gullies (I notice preferential to the right as they were leaving the house, quite logical for predominantly right-handed people, if you think how you automatically empty a bucket, can't believe how many writers have felt the need to include diagrams and site plans), and then round the back once they'd realised the front was starting to look a bit messy)..... :face-stir:

[P Prentice]

of course, they were incredibly careful outside but clumsy as hell inside - and the same applies to enclosure ditches - couldnt see for looking

[Dinosaur]

and of course where there's layers surviving the stuff's everywhere (eg. see Thorpe Thewles)....think Iron Age people were mainly just messy and certainly hadn't invented dustmen....in half the stuff I've spent the day reading whole socio/behavioral structures seem to have been postulated on the basis of the position of a couple of tiny potsherds - and why would communities be 'making statements of their social identity' by hiding a couple of tiny bits of crappy black poorly fired undecorated pots somewhere where no one from another community would be able to find them anyway? A b****y-great big sign or a few heads on posts would surely have worked rather better? - ah, that'll be the great big chalk horses and naked blokes with big clubs come in then.....

[Dinosaur]

:face-topic:In answer to Jack's original question (think it was in the parent thread) re. whether there's any archaeological evidence for malaria in ancient populations, check out:-

Gowland, R and Garnsey, P (2010) 'Skeletal evidence for health, nutritional status and malaria in Rome and the empire', in Eckardt, H (ed.) Roman Diasporas: Archaeological Approaches to Mobility and Diversity in the Roman Empire. JRA Supplementary Series 78, 131-56

Covers the subject pretty well, apart from the unsupported bald statement that there wasn't any malaria in Northern Europe (which I think we've established above isn't true).....