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An absolutely fantastic and enthralling book that approaches history from a perspective that was completely new to me, but very informative. The author, professor Alice Roberts, is a palaeopathologist, which means she studies the history of diseases and disorders, and how they affected historical societies.
The book presents a few important archeological digs and uses those as launching points for bigger discussions on medieval English society. For each one of those professor Roberts presents the premise -- for instance a medieval leper hospital -- and then gives the wider historical context in which they existed. What is the history of leprosy? Where did it come from? When was it most active? How has history traditionally believe that lepers were viewed from a societal and religious (which were very intertwined contexts in medieval society) context? Then she presents the dig, goes over what they found, and then discusses how those findings changed our views on established history and what we can learn from them.
It's absolutely fascinating, and it's so cool to me how much these fields of science have progressed in a relatively short amount of time. Extremely intelligent people are applying knowledge from a wide variety of academic disciplines to learn so much from the location of the graves, their condition, the condition of the human remains (and grave goods) found within and so on and so on. Professor Roberts also does a great job of presenting these difficult, multi-disciplinary concepts in an understandable and even entertaining fashion. Not only will you learn a lot about medieval society, you'll also learn a ton of other cool stuff about how the human body works, how archeologists can determine gender from even small bone samples and so much more!
The Audible audiobook I listened to is read by professor Roberts herself, which is an added bonus. Not only is she pleasant to listen to and a good speaker, as the author she fully understands the text and its natural flow, and as a result the listening experience is very enjoyable. It's obvious she has genuine affection for the human subjects at the center of all these digs, and the warmth and care shines through constantly.
An incredible book and one that I would recommend to anyone interested in history, science or just learning new things.
The book presents a few important archeological digs and uses those as launching points for bigger discussions on medieval English society. For each one of those professor Roberts presents the premise -- for instance a medieval leper hospital -- and then gives the wider historical context in which they existed. What is the history of leprosy? Where did it come from? When was it most active? How has history traditionally believe that lepers were viewed from a societal and religious (which were very intertwined contexts in medieval society) context? Then she presents the dig, goes over what they found, and then discusses how those findings changed our views on established history and what we can learn from them.
It's absolutely fascinating, and it's so cool to me how much these fields of science have progressed in a relatively short amount of time. Extremely intelligent people are applying knowledge from a wide variety of academic disciplines to learn so much from the location of the graves, their condition, the condition of the human remains (and grave goods) found within and so on and so on. Professor Roberts also does a great job of presenting these difficult, multi-disciplinary concepts in an understandable and even entertaining fashion. Not only will you learn a lot about medieval society, you'll also learn a ton of other cool stuff about how the human body works, how archeologists can determine gender from even small bone samples and so much more!
The Audible audiobook I listened to is read by professor Roberts herself, which is an added bonus. Not only is she pleasant to listen to and a good speaker, as the author she fully understands the text and its natural flow, and as a result the listening experience is very enjoyable. It's obvious she has genuine affection for the human subjects at the center of all these digs, and the warmth and care shines through constantly.
An incredible book and one that I would recommend to anyone interested in history, science or just learning new things.