Health and Disease in the Neolithic Lengyel Culture

Václav Smrcka, Olivér Gábor

• Publisher: Karolinum Press, Charles University
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9788024645216
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Medical Theory, Practice & Reference

Lasting from around 4800 to 4000 BCE, the Lengyel culture helped usher in the Copper Age in Central Europe with the rise of mining, craft production, and the trading of copper and obsidian, in addition to larger-scale farming. In Health and Disease in the Neolithic Lengyel Culture, the authors investigate the migration of the Lengyel people as they moved west from their place of origin in modern-day Hungary to areas in what is now the Czech Republic and Poland. By drawing on research into the trace elements of strontium, carbon, and nitrogen found in human bone tissue, as well paleopathological analyses of congenital defects, this book proves that the Lengyel migration occurred in waves, providing important details about the changes in the diet, health, and mobility of a people who were crucial to the development of early European civilization

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction (Václav Smrčka)
• 2. The Lengyel Culture in Hungary (Olivér Gábor)
• 3. Lengyel Culture Sites in Baranya and Tolna County: Paleopathologica and Archaeological Description
• 4. Carbon and Nitrogen Analysis: Zengővárkony and Villánykővesd (Václav Smrčka, Jakub Trubač, Martin Hill, Zdenka Musilová, Lenka Půtová, Sylva Drtikolová Kaupová, Štefan Rástočný)
• 5. Strontium Analysis: Zengővárkony, Villánykővesd, Belvárdgyula, Borjád-Kenderföld (Václav Smrčka, Jakub Trubač, Zdenka Musilová, Martin Hill, Lenka Půtová, Štefan Rástočný)
• 6. Villánykővesd and Zengővárkony: Trace Elements in Tooth Enamel and Femurs of the Lengyel Culture (Václav Smrčka, Martin Mihaljevič, Jakub Trubač, Zdenka Musilová, Martin Hill, Lenka Půtová, Štefan Rástočný, Ivo Němec)
• 7. Lengyel Culture in Moravia (Zdeněk Hájek, Alžběta Čerevková)
• 8. Anthropological Analysis of Skeletal Remains of People of the Lengyel Culture in Moravia (Martina Fojtová, Zdeněk Tvrdý, Ivana Jarošová)
• 9. Survey of Bone Diseases in Moravian Neolithic Cultures (Václav Smrčka, Zdeněk Tvrdý)
• 10. Comparison of the Diet of the Lengyel Culture with those of Earlier Neolithic Cultures of Moravia: Stable Carbon and Nitrogen Isotope Analysis (Václav Smrčka, František Bůzek, Jarmila Zocová, Ivan Zoc, Marta Dočkalová)
• 11. Neolithic Human Migration of Moravia in Strontium Isotopes (Vojtěch Erban, Václav Smrčka, Marta Dočkalová)
• 12. Trace Elements in Bones of the Neolithic Cultures of Moravia (Václav Smrčka, Martin Mihaljevič, Jarmila Zocová, Ivan Zoc, Ivo Němec)
• 13. Conclusion: The Lifestyle and Morbidity of the Lengyel Culture (Václav Smrčka)
• Appendix: Methodology
• Bibliography
• List of Contributors